scholarly journals Mapping participatory planning in Havana: patchwork legacies for a strengthened local governance

2021 ◽  
pp. 095624782110325
Author(s):  
Catalina Ortiz ◽  
Alejandro Vallejo ◽  
Jorge Peña ◽  
Emily Morris ◽  
Joiselen Cazanave Macías ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Planning Strategy ◽  
Neighbourhood Level ◽  
The City

In 2019, Cuba approved a new political constitution that calls for deepening citizen participation to strengthen local governance. The emerging decentralization processes and the role of new actors in urban development open new possibilities for inclusive planning. While citizen participation is widely documented in the global South and under Western liberal democracy regimes, participatory urban planning in the context of Southern socialist cities such as Havana has been less scrutinized. This paper aims at mapping the framings, trajectories and legacies of such participatory planning initiatives. Based on mapping workshops and desktop research, we find that participatory initiatives within Havana are spatially dispersed, sporadic, lacking at the city level, and occurring in isolation at the neighbourhood level. We argue that establishing sustained participatory urban planning practices in Havana requires decision makers to scale outwards and upwards the lessons learned from existing initiatives to foster a city-wide participatory planning strategy.

scholarly journals The Role of Biophilic Agents in Building a Green Resilient City; the Case of Birmingham, UK

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5033
Author(s):  
Linda Novosadová ◽  
Wim van der Knaap
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
Natural Land ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Community Projects ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
The City

The present research offers an exploration into the biophilic approach and the role of its agents in urban planning in questions of building a green, resilient urban environment. Biophilia, the innate need of humans to connect with nature, coined by Edgar O. Wilson in 1984, is a concept that has been used in urban governance through institutions, agents’ behaviours, activities and systems to make the environment nature-inclusive. Therefore, it leads to green, resilient environments and to making cities more sustainable. Due to an increasing population, space within and around cities keeps on being urbanised, replacing natural land cover with concrete surfaces. These changes to land use influence and stress the environment, its components, and consequently impact the overall resilience of the space. To understand the interactions and address the adverse impacts these changes might have, it is necessary to identify and define the environment’s components: the institutions, systems, and agents. This paper exemplifies the biophilic approach through a case study in the city of Birmingham, United Kingdom and its biophilic agents. Using the categorisation of agents, the data obtained through in-situ interviews with local professionals provided details on the agent fabric and their dynamics with the other two environments’ components within the climate resilience framework. The qualitative analysis demonstrates the ways biophilic agents act upon and interact within the environment in the realm of urban planning and influence building a climate-resilient city. Their activities range from small-scale community projects for improving their neighbourhood to public administration programs focusing on regenerating and regreening the city. From individuals advocating for and educating on biophilic approach, to private organisations challenging the business-as-usual regulations, it appeared that in Birmingham the biophilic approach has found its representatives in every agent category. Overall, the activities they perform in the environment define their role in building resilience. Nonetheless, the role of biophilic agents appears to be one of the major challengers to the urban design’s status quo and the business-as-usual of urban governance. Researching the environment, focused on agents and their behaviour and activities based on nature as inspiration in addressing climate change on a city level, is an opposite approach to searching and addressing the negative impacts of human activity on the environment. This focus can provide visibility of the local human activities that enhance resilience, while these are becoming a valuable input to city governance and planning, with the potential of scaling it up to other cities and on to regional, national, and global levels.

scholarly journals Lost in Transition? Directions for an Economic Geography of Urban Sustainability Transitions

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Fastenrath ◽  
Boris Braun
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Sustainability Transitions ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The City

Socio-technical transitions towards more sustainable modes of production and consumption are receiving increasing attention in the academic world and also from political and economic decision-makers. There is increasing demand for resource-efficient technologies and institutional innovations, particularly at the city level. However, it is widely unclear how processes of change evolve and develop and how they are embedded in different socio-spatial contexts. While numerous scholars have contributed to the vibrant research field around sustainability transitions, the geographical expertise largely has been ignored. The lack of knowledge about the role of spatial contexts, learning processes, and the co-evolution of technological, economical, and socio-political processes has been prominently addressed. Bridging approaches from Transition Studies and perspectives of Economic Geography, the paper presents conceptual ideas for an evolutionary and relational understanding of urban sustainability transitions. The paper introduces new perspectives on sustainability transitions towards a better understanding of socio-spatial contexts.

scholarly journals New Challenges for a Collaborative Urban Planning: Digital Platform for Promoting Relationship Between Local Administration and Citizens in the City of Malaga

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Francisco Jose Chamizo Nieto ◽  
Nuria Nebot Gomez De Salazar ◽  
Carlos J. Rosa-Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Digital Tool ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
The One ◽  
Conventional Systems ◽  
The City

The most conventional systems in the Urban Planning practice leave out needs and real social demands through inefficient management models in many cases. Nowadays there is a social, professional and institutional demand to transform these models into new ways of thinking and planning the city that are closer to its inhabitants. In fact, there is a high social involvement of people that are helping or developing activities in favour of their local communities. However, this social activism is not visible nor recognised as the one made by regulated associations. Undoubtedly, the use of new technologies offers a framework of opportunity in these new ways of ”making the city”, as well as it becomes a new area of work and research.In this sense, there are many experiences that incorporate technology as a resource to promote citizen participation in the management of cities. However, only some of them are effective and achieve the goal of becoming a useful tool for citizens. In the city of Malaga, there are already some digital tools at the service of citizenship, although these require a process of revision and updating that allows optimizing existing resources and increasing their impact as a participation tool. As a first step, it is necessary to identify the agents and social initiatives of existing participation in the city.The objective of this project is to create an interactive digital platform that shows the city of Malaga from a real social perspective, as it makes visible and map the emerging non regulated movements, neighbourhood initiatives and new urban trends with low visibility. Finally, the aim is to create a tool for collectives, associations, administrations and other urban agents to promote synergies and relationships among all of them. The incorporation of all of them is essential for the success of the platform as a participation tool. For this, a methodology of actions is established, and it begins with the identification of possible agents and the way of interaction with each one of them. The digital tool that is used is based on the use of geographic location systems.This article collects the results of the first phase of the research project that includes a methodological proposal for mapping the real social activist reality in cities and a functional test of the digital platform created for this. Likewise, an evaluation of the experience and possible improvements to be incorporated in the successive phases of the project is advanced

scholarly journals Dialectical Design Dialogues: Negotiating Ethics in Participatory Planning by Building a Critical Design Atlas

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-251
Author(s):  
Barbara Roosen ◽  
Liesbeth Huybrechts ◽  
Oswald Devisch ◽  
Pieter Van den Broeck
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
The City

This article explores ‘dialectical design dialogues’ as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched through David Harvey’s (2000, 2009) dialectical approach. A dialectical approach to design dialogues acknowledges and renegotiates contrasts and convergences of ethical concerns specific to the reality of concrete daily life, rather than artificially presenting daily life as made of consensus or homogeneity. The article analyses an atlas as a tool to facilitate dialectical design dialogues in a case study of a low-density residential neighbourhood in the city of Genk, Belgium. It sees the production of the atlas as a collective endeavour during which planners, authorities and citizens reflect on possible futures starting from a confrontation of competing uses and perspectives of neighbourhood spaces. The article contributes to the state-of-the-art in participatory urban planning in two ways: (1) by reframing the theoretical discussion on ethics by arguing that not only the verbal discourses around designerly atlas techniques but also the techniques themselves can support urban planners in dealing more consciously with ethics (accountability, morality and authorship) throughout urban planning processes, (2) by offering a concrete practice-based example of producing an atlas that supports the participatory articulation and negotiation of dialectical inquiry of ethics through dialogues in a ‘real-time’ urban planning process.

scholarly journals Participatory Urban Planning: What Would Make Planners Trust the Citizens?

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Åström
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Trust Building ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
General Weakness

Based on the critical stance of citizens towards urban planning, growing attention has been directed towards new forms of citizen participation. A key expectation is that advanced digital technologies will reconnect citizens and decision makers and enhance trust in planning. However, empirical evidence suggests participation by itself does not foster trust, and many scholars refer to a general weakness of these initiatives to deliver the expected outcomes. Considering that trust is reciprocal, this article will switch focus and concentrate on planners’ attitudes towards citizens. Do urban planners generally think that citizens are trustworthy? Even though studies show that public officials are more trusting than people in general, it is possible that they do not trust citizens when interacting with government. However, empirical evidence is scarce. While there is plenty of research on citizens’ trust in government, public officials trust in citizens has received little scholarly attention. To address this gap, we will draw on a survey targeted to a representative sample of public managers in Swedish local government (N = 1430). First, urban planners will be compared with other public officials when it comes to their level of trust toward citizens’ ability, integrity and benevolence. In order to understand variations in trust, a set of institutional factors will thereafter be tested, along with more commonly used individual factors. In light of the empirical findings, the final section of the article returns to the idea of e-participation as a trust-building strategy. What would make planners trust the citizens in participatory urban planning?

Trendy urbanists, innovation laboratories and best practices: in pursuit of ‘progressive’ urban planning in Mexico City

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (0) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Ryan A. Whitney
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
The City

This research explores the role of trendy urbanists in best practice uptake within an innovation laboratory in Latin America. Trendy urbanists are the privileged professionals who aspire to be on the cutting edge of urban planning, frequently referencing best practice policies and programmes that they see as supporting ‘livable’ and ‘sustainable’ city building. Taking the case of the Laboratory for the City in Mexico City, I illustrate that the preferred best practices of trendy urbanists are reflective of their own privilege. I conclude that, by relying on best practices and trendy urbanists, innovation laboratories are susceptible to fostering inequitable planning outcomes.

Current Features and Developments of Local Governance in Finland

2016 ◽  
pp. 304-327
Author(s):  
Hanna Vakkala ◽  
Jaana Leinonen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Process Efficiency ◽  
Structural Reforms ◽  
Local Democracy

This chapter discusses local governance renewals and the recent development of local democracy in Finland. Due to profound structural reforms, the role of municipalities is changing, which is challenging current local government processes, from management to citizen participation. Nordic local self-government is considered strong, despite of tightening state steering. Ruling reform politics and the increasing amount of service tasks do not fit the idea of active local governance with sufficient latitude for decision-making. To increase process efficiency, electronic services and governance have been developed nationally and locally, and solutions of eDemocracy have been launched to support participation. Developing participative, deliberative democracy during deep renewals creates opportunities but also requires investments, which create and increase variation between municipalities. From the point of view of local democracy, it becomes interesting how strong municipal self-governance and local governance renewals meet and how the role and status of municipalities are changing.

Responding to the Information Needs of Citizens in an Open Society

2011 ◽  
pp. 216-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger W. Caves
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
Smart Community ◽  
Community Concept ◽  
Smart Communities

The use of ICTs in community development areas has increased over the past 10 years. This chapter examines how the “Smart Community” concept can help areas of various sizes accomplish a variety of local and regional development processes. The chapter covers such issues the role of citizen participation, the roles of information technologies, the components of a “Smart Community”, the California Smart Communities Program, and the lessons learned to date from the program. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the “digital divide” between people with access to various ICTs and those without access any access to ICTs.

Citizens in the Smart City

2022 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Tomor
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
European City ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City

While the role of citizens in smart cities is hotly debated, there is a dearth of empirical research on the subject. This in-depth study of a European city, selected for its typical smart city ambitions, explores the roles that citizens actually play in smart city projects. The study examines twelve initiatives in the City of Utrecht (NL) using a framework that differentiates between types of citizen participation. The findings show that technology-enabled citizen participation in Utrecht is highly diverse and embraces all types of participation rather than simply taking the form of either “citizen empowerment” (as the advocates argue) or “citizen subjugation' (as the critics stress). The diversity found in the study highlights the need to conceptualize the role of the smart citizen at the micro (project) level rather than at the level of the city as a whole. The study shows that citizen participation in the smart city should not be understood as a technological utopia or dystopia but as an evolving, technologically mediated practice that is shaped by a variety of factors.

scholarly journals Features of the formation of the St. Petersburg agglomeration by the beginning of the XX century

2020 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 05009
Author(s):  
Sergey Sementsov ◽  
Svetozar Zavarikhin ◽  
Yuryi Kurbatov ◽  
Yuryi Pukharenko
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Communication Analysis ◽  
Garden Cities ◽  
Central Russia ◽  
Environmental Transport ◽  
Spatially Extended ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The City

The study of the Russian historical St. Petersburg agglomeration at all stages from its foundation (from 1703) until the final imperial stage (1917) required the use of complex functional, urban-planning and landscape, socio-economic, environmental, transport and communication analysis on the basis of data from archives, historical cartography and iconography. The main results were the conclusions that during the XVIII - early XX centuries, there was a crystallization of a huge agglomeration around the city of St. Petersburg, which included three belts: “external”, “middle”, “nearby”, which spatially extended from Yaroslavl (in Central Russia) to Riga (in the Baltic). The paper discusses the features of the formation of the “nearby belt” of agglomeration in the initial (1703 - January 1725) and in the final (1901-1916) development periods. The study revealed a significant role of special types of objects in these processes - estates of the aristocratic society and “garden cities” that provided a belt (around St. Petersburg and the largest settlements and complexes), linear (along radial and ring highways), and nodal (around individual large settlements) construction, spreading in the latitudinal direction from Narva and Ivangorod to the mouth of the Syas river, and in the meridian direction - from Vyborg to the city of Luga. Within the boundaries of this agglomeration zone, four sub-agglomerations had begun to emerge since the 1710s and have fully formed by the 1910s. The materials of the paper can be useful both for historians of urban planning and for modern urbanists.

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