scholarly journals Revisiting Jane Jacobs’s Urban Complexity in Global Sustainability City Discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
May Ee Wong

Since the 1990s, a recurrent trope of the ‘global sustainable city’ has emerged in popular and professional discussions of globalization, sustainable development and urban innovation. Published in commercial publications and grey literature on policy, design and global trends, the trope is also articulated in a genre of trade books by urban consultants and in public showcases that project the city as a socially, economically and environmentally beneficial entity – a sustainable complex system that is even promoted to be humanity’s best hope for solving the global ecological problems of the twenty-first century. This article traces how urbanist Jane Jacobs’s notion of urban complexity becomes an allusive reference in examples of popular global sustainability discourse that present the city as an evolutionary self-organizing entity of systemic networks and physical flows. It examines urban economist Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, and Greener (2011), urbanist Leo Hollis’s Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis (2013) and urban strategist Jeb Brugmann’s Welcome to the Urban Revolution (2009), as well as the smart building showcase of engineering multinational conglomerate Siemens, The Crystal. The article demonstrates how the trope of urban complexity is mobilized to project the city as a generic scalable entity of creativity and energy efficiency. It becomes the basis of an infrastructural imaginary of neoliberal innovation that supports entrepreneurial and ‘smart-eco’ agendas of urban design and governance that promise – but have yet to deliver – planetary ecological amelioration.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-46
Author(s):  
Rebecca Oberreiter

Rapidly changing framework conditions for city development such as globalization, demographic trends, deindustrialization, technological developments or the increasing urbanization as well as the economic, social and political changes are profound and change our urban life. This leads, that the cities of tomorrow will differ essentially from today´s city principles. Therefore innovative, strategically wise and quick action becomes a criterion for success. Here, more than ever, local conditions and requirements must be taken into account as well as global framework conditions. The responsible parties have to set the course so that the “City” remains competitive and sustainable in the future. Therefore, innovation processes and sustainable strategies for dealing with the diverse and complex agendas of a city in dialogue with those who are responsible for it must be initiated and management systems established so that new things can develop continuously and systematically. This work illustrates how the boundaries created to manage and market future liveable and sustainable city destinations are the root of the practical and academic problems that trouble city management these days.  This paper aims to develop the new integrated Smart Urban Profiling and Management model, which presents a new integrated approach for city marketing as an instrument of sustainable urban development. In this way, comprehensive research was conducted to evaluate if the holistic city marketing concept that integrates elements of smart city strategies and adaptive management is a more suitable instrument and integrative process than conventional city marketing in order to improve the sustainable urban development. Therefore, in this work, the designed “Smart Urban Profiling and Management model” for city management introduces an alternative and holistic perspective that allows transcending past boundaries and thus getting closer to the real complexities of managing city development in dynamic systems. The results offer the opportunity to recognize the city and consequently allow to developing successful strategies and implementation measures. This study targets to contribute to this endeavor in order to produce new impulses and incitements in the city management field and shall provide a fresh impetus for a new understanding of city marketing as the initiator of development processes, mobilization and moderator in concerning communication and participation processes. This paper is written from a perspective addressing those responsible for the city- management, city- & urban marketing and development.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Bob Brown

A new urban paradigm, the global city, emerged in the late 20th Century finding acceptance in discussions of urban development. Tied into a global network of exchange, it exists principally as a place of financial speculation and transaction. It is marked by a parallel economy of culture, which underpins a re-conceptualisation and spatial re-formation of the city. Despite its widespread currency, criticisms have challenged its economic sustainability. Further questions have contested its tendency to impose a singular, homogenized space prioritizing consumption while marginalising other concerns. Post-independence Riga's recent experience provides a platform from which to critique the global city paradigm, which the city embraced as it sought to embed itself in the West not only politically but culturally and economically as well. In opposition to this model's intrinsic singular emphasis and exclusionary tendencies, this text will explore the concept of palimpsest; this proposition understands the city as a multiplicity of layers, within which convergences and divergences offer a site from which to generate synergies. This will be framed in reference to recent discourse on the sustainable city and development practice. Recent design-led inquiry situated in the context of Riga will then provide a lens on palimpsest as an alternative form of praxis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Sanecka ◽  
Stephan Barthel ◽  
Johan Colding

In the midst of the epoch of the Urban Anthropocene, citizen engagement is an important step on the path of creating local and global sustainability. However, the factors that motivate civic urban dwellers to become voluntary stewards of nature environments inside cities need research. This is an empirical study based on deep interviews and a grounded theory approach focused on the “inner world” of people in Warsaw, Poland, that engage in green area stewardship. Our approach reveals a commonly shared vision as the prime motivator powering agency in green area stewardship. This vision was articulated as creating a countryside within the city characterized by a stronger sense of community, a shared sense of place and an enhanced connection with nature. While other studies have found inner values or direct benefits as motivating factors for engaging in urban stewardship, we instead found a green vision for re-designing what the “urban” could be like as the prime motivator for transformation—a vision with potential global sustainability implications.


Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
İmre Eren

Cities are trying to adapt to the rapidly changing global trends by regenerating themselves. Approaches and practices of this regeneration are different in several countries. In big Turkish cities, particularly in the past decade, urban regeneration practices, processes and consequences have sparked several debates. The ?new? gained or converted spaces in the city are also significant in terms of their impacts on urban identity. In this context, this study aims to identify the impacts of urban regeneration, which occurred in historical city centres, on urban identity in the case of Turkey. The study determines general framework of urban regeneration and then defines a conceptual framework of urban identity. It focuses on urban regeneration projects in the case of Turkey. Then, the topic is explored through two case studies which are selected from Turkey, Istanbul and Bursa. The findings of the study indicate that there are several problematic aspects of urban regeneration. The findings also show that urban identity was ignored in urban regeneration projects, which caused significant breaks in the context of physical, cultural, historical and semantic continuity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 34-56
Author(s):  
Méropi Anastassiadou-Dumont

The article examines Muslim pilgrimages to Christian places of worship in Istanbul after the 1950s. It aims to answer whether and how the Ottoman heritage of cultural diversity fits or does not fit with the pattern of the nation-state. After a brief bibliographic overview of the issue of shared sacred spaces, the presentation assembles, as a first step, some of the key elements of Istanbul’s multi-secular links with religious practices: the sanctity of the city both for Christianity and Islam; the long tradition of pilgrimages and their importance for the local economy; meanings and etymologies of the word pilgrimage in the most common languages of the Ottoman space; and the silence of the nineteenth century’s Greek sources concerning the sharing of worship. The second part focuses more specifically on some OrthodoxGreek sacred spaces in Istanbul increasingly frequented by Muslims during the last decades.


2021 ◽  
Vol 878 (1) ◽  
pp. 011001

Proceedings are prepared as a continuation of the 1st Webinar International Conference on Sustainable Architecture International and Engineering with theme: Building, and Technology Towards Society 5.0 which was held Hybrid (Offline and Online) on 28th October 2020. This Webinar is also consist of 4 tracks such as: 1. Electrical Engineering : Renewable Energy, Energy Access, Microgrid, Modern System, an Control Engineering. 2. Mechanical Engineering : Manufacture Materials, and Energy Convertion 3. Architecture : Green Building, Smart Building and Sustainable City 4. Civil Engineering : Water Resource, Structure, Transportation and Geotechnical This Webinar was attended by 6 countries from 23 universities such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. So, We would like to thank to all presenters and participants who took part in this Webinar as well and also to all those people who supported this Webinar that can be held well. Hopefully, this Proceedings will be useful for all of us. The conference was conducted virtually as the global pandemic of COVID-19 is not currently being able to be controlled well. Consequently, the government keep extending lockdown in non-essential sectors, including international conferences held by higher education. Therefore, the committee agreed to have the conference virtually on Wednesday, 28 October 2020. The conference was opened at 9 AM (GMT+7) and the first three plenary sessions proceeded from 09.30 to 11.00 featuring three international speakers namely Prof. Dr. Ismunandar, Prof. Manukid Parmichkan, and Prof. Dong-Seong Kim. The sessions were then followed by a 30-minute question and answer session. In total, there were around 150 participants attending the sessions. Panel session I then took place at 11.40 to 01.10 PM in 10 breakout rooms in accordance with the predetermined scope. Each speaker was given 10 minutes for both presentation and discussion and one moderator was in charge in each breakout room. Following the session, there were the second three plenary session in which the speakers were Prof. Dr. Ir. Widodo M. Arch Eng, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim Safawi Mohd Zain, and Prof. Dr. Ing Uras Siahaan. A discussion session was held in 30 minutes after the last session. Panel session 2 was taking place from 03.10 to 04.40 with the same mechanism as that of session I and the conference was officially closed at 5 PM. Jakarta, October 2020 1st International Conference on Sustainable And Architecture Head Committee of The 1st ICoSAE Ulinata, ST. Ars., MT COMMITTEE, CONFERENCE DOCUMENTATIONS, All photos are available in the pdf


2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 583-598
Author(s):  
Yacine Benjelloun ◽  
Julia de Sigoyer ◽  
Hélène Dessales ◽  
Laurent Baillet ◽  
Philippe Guéguen ◽  
...  

Abstract The city of İznik (ancient Nicaea), located on the middle strand of the North Anatolian fault zone (MNAF), presents outstanding archeological monuments preserved from the Roman and Ottoman periods (first to fifteenth centuries A.D.), bearing deformations that can be linked to past seismic shaking. To constrain the date and intensity of these historical earthquakes, a systematic survey of earthquake archeological effects (EAEs) is carried out on the city’s damaged buildings. Each of the 235 EAEs found is given a quality ranking, and the corresponding damage is classified according to the European Macroseismic Scale 1998 (EMS-98). We show that the walls oriented north–south were preferentially damaged, and that most deformations are perpendicular to the walls’ axes. The date of postseismic repairs is constrained with available archeological data and new C14 dating of mortar charcoals. Three damage episodes are evidenced: (1) between the sixth and late eighth centuries, (2) between the nineth and late eleventh centuries A.D., and (3) after the late fourteenth century A.D. The repartition of damage as a function of building vulnerability points toward a global intensity VIII on the EMS-98. The 3D modeling of a deformed Roman obelisk shows that only earthquakes rupturing the MNAF can account for this deformation. Their magnitude can be bracketed between Mw 6 and 7. Our archeoseismological study complements the historical seismicity catalog and confirms paleoseismological data, suggesting several destructive earthquakes along the MNAF, since the first century A.D. We suggest the fault might still have accumulated enough stress to generate an Mw 7+ rupture.


Author(s):  
Ares Kalandides ◽  
Boris Grésillon

City Marketing has a strong tradition in Berlin, with two organisations, Berlin Partner and Visit Berlin, responsible for designing and implementing relevant strategies. Sustainability has been on and off the city marketing agenda, almost exclusively in its environmental dimension. In this article we examine the current representations of Berlin as a “sustainable city” in the official City Marketing strategies. We look at how sustainability is used and instrumentalized to create a specific city profile, and also to attract particular target groups in tourism. We propose an analysis of sustainable planning in Berlin since reunification, to show how it has moved into different directions over time and how this has (or has not) been followed by City Marketing. In this endeavour we move between the existing, and as we argue deeper and more sophisticated, environmental planning of the city on the one hand, and the reductions and simplifications of City Marketing representations on the other. Finally, we argue that there are inherent contradictions in marketing a sustainable city, where both in terms of tourism and economic development, the concept of growth seems to be reaching environmental limits.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 497-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuefei Ren

Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, cities in the Global South have seen extraordinary growth, with China and India as the epicenters of urbanization. This essay critically assesses the state of the field of global urban studies and focuses particularly on the scholarship relating to urban China and India. The essay identifies three dominant paradigms in the scholarship: the global city thesis, neoliberalism, and postcolonialism. In contrast to US urban sociology, which is often preoccupied with the question of how neighborhood effects reproduce inequality, global urban studies account for a much wider array of urban processes, such as global urban networks, social polarization, and the transformation of the built environment. This essay points out the disconnect between US urban sociology and global urban studies and proposes a comparative approach as a way to bridge the divide.


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