scholarly journals Post-Socialist Urban Futures: Decision-Making Dynamics behind Large-Scale Urban Waterfront Development in Belgrade and Bratislava

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Branislav Machala ◽  
Jorn Koelemaij

This article discusses the implementation of two large-scale urban waterfront projects that are currently under construction in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) capital cities of Belgrade and Bratislava. Against the backdrop of postsocialist urban studies and recent reflections on urban or ‘world-city’ entrepreneurialism (Golubchikov, 2010), we reveal how both elite-serving projects are being shaped according to their very own structure and agency relations. Our comparative analysis unravels the power-geometry of the decision-making processes that reshape urban planning regulations of both transforming waterfronts. The path-dependent character of “multiple transformations” (Sykora & Bouzarovski, 2012) in the CEE region can, even after three decades, still be traced within the institutional environments, which have been adapting to the existing institutional architecture of global capitalism. Yet, at the same time, the dynamic globalization of this part of the world intensifies its further attractiveness for transnational private investors. As a consequence, public urban planning institutions are lagging behind private investors’ interests, which reshape the temporarily-fixed flows of capital on local waterfronts into landscapes of profits, politics and power. We argue that suchlike large urban developments, focused on promoting urban growth, accelerate the dual character of these cities. Thus, while the differences between both investigated case studies are being highlighted, we simultaneously illustrate how national and local state actors respectively paved the way for private investors, and how this corresponds to similar overarching structural conditions as well as outcomes.

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efrat Eizenberg

Urban planning deploys large-scale urban development as a preferred strategy in many places around the world. Such an approach to development transforms the urban form, generates new socio-spatial urban relations, and changes planning principles, decision-making and urban power dynamics. This editorial introduces large scale urban development as the current urban policy, discusses possible checks and balances and presents the thematic issue on "Large Urban Development and the Future of Cities."


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pranav C

UNSTRUCTURED The word blockchain elicits thoughts of cryptocurrency much of the time, which does disservice to this disruptive new technology. Agreed, bitcoin launched in 2011 was the first large scale implementation of blockchain technology. Also, Bitcoin’s success has triggered the establishment of nearly 1000 new cryptocurrencies. This again lead to the delusion that the only application of blockchain technology is for the creation of cryptocurrency. However, the blockchain technology is capable of a lot more than just cryptocurrency creation and may support such things as transactions that require personal identification, peer review, elections and other types of democratic decision-making and audit trails. Blockchain exists with real world implementations beyond cryptocurrencies and these solutions deliver powerful benefits to healthcare organizations, bankers, retailers and consumers among others. One of the areas where blockchain technology can be used effectively is healthcare industry. Proper application of this technology in healthcare will not only save billions of money but also will contribute to the growth in research. This review paper briefly defines blockchain and deals in detail the applications of blockchain in various areas particularly in healthcare industry.


Author(s):  
Richard Gowan

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 13849-13850
Author(s):  
Donghyeon Lee ◽  
Man-Je Kim ◽  
Chang Wook Ahn

In a real-time strategy (RTS) game, StarCraft II, players need to know the consequences before making a decision in combat. We propose a combat outcome predictor which utilizes terrain information as well as squad information. For training the model, we generated a StarCraft II combat dataset by simulating diverse and large-scale combat situations. The overall accuracy of our model was 89.7%. Our predictor can be integrated into the artificial intelligence agent for RTS games as a short-term decision-making module.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quansen Wang ◽  
Jianzhong Zhou ◽  
Kangdi Huang ◽  
Ling Dai ◽  
Gang Zha ◽  
...  

The risk inevitably exists in the process of flood control operation and decision-making of reservoir group, due to the hydrologic and hydraulic uncertain factors. In this study different stochastic simulation methods were applied to simulate these uncertainties in multi-reservoir flood control operation, and the risk caused by different uncertainties was evaluated from the mean value, extreme value and discrete degree of reservoir occupied storage capacity under uncertain conditions. In order to solve the conflict between risk assessment indexes and evaluate the comprehensive risk of different reservoirs in flood control operation schemes, the subjective weight and objective weight were used to construct the comprehensive risk assessment index, and the improved Mahalanobis distance TOPSIS method was used to select the optimal flood control operation scheme. The proposed method was applied to the flood control operation system in the mainstream and its tributaries of upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin, and 14 cascade reservoirs were selected as a case study. The results indicate that proposed method can evaluate the risk of multi-reservoir flood control operation from all perspectives and provide a new method for multi-criteria decision-making of reservoir flood control operation, and it breaks the limitation of the traditional risk analysis method which only evaluated by risk rate and cannot evaluate the risk of the multi-reservoir flood control operation system.


Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Dolores Brandis García

Since the late 20th century major, European cities have exhibited large projects driven by neoliberal urban planning policies whose aim is to enhance their position on the global market. By locating these projects in central city areas, they also heighten and reinforce their privileged situation within the city as a whole, thus contributing to deepening the centre–periphery rift. The starting point for this study is the significance and scope of large projects in metropolitan cities’ urban planning agendas since the final decade of the 20th century. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the correlation between the various opposing conservative and progressive urban policies, and the projects put forward, for the city of Madrid. A study of documentary sources and the strategies deployed by public and private agents are interpreted in the light of a process during which the city has had a succession of alternating governments defending opposing urban development models. This analysis allows us to conclude that the predominant large-scale projects proposed under conservative policies have contributed to deepening the centre–periphery rift appreciated in the city.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422198997
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou

The article presents the reasons for which the issue of providing housing to low-income citizens has been a real challenge in Addis Ababa during the recent years and will continue to be, given that its population is growing extremely fast. It examines the tensions between the universal aspirations and the local realities in the case of some of Ethiopia’s most ambitious mass pro-poor housing schemes, such as the “Addis Ababa Grand Housing Program” (AAGHP), which was launched in 2004 and was integrated in the “Integrated Housing Development Program” (IHDP) in 2006. The article argues that the quotidian practices of communities and their socio-economic and cultural characteristics are related to the spatial attributes of co-housing practices. Drawing upon the idea that there is a mutual correspondence between social and spatial structures, it places particular emphasis on the analysis of the IHDP and aims to show that to shape strategies that take into account the social and cultural aspects of daily life of the poor citizens of Addis Ababa, it is pivotal to invite them to take part in the decision-making processes regarding their resettlement. Departing from the fact that a large percentage of the housing supply in Addis Ababa consists of informal unplanned housing, the article also compares the commoning practices in kebele houses and condominium units. The former refers to the legal informal housing units owned by the government and rented to their dwellers, whereas the latter concerns the housing blocks built in the framework of the IHDP for the resettlement of the kebele dwellers. The article analyzes these processes of resettlement, shedding light of the fact that kebele houses were located at the inner city, whereas the condominiums are located in the suburbs. Despite the fact that the living conditions in the condominium units are of a much higher quality than those in the kebele houses, their design underestimated or even neglected the role of the commoning practices. The article highlights the advantages of commoning practices in architecture and urban planning, and how the implementation of participation-oriented solutions can respond to the difficulties of providing housing. It argues that understanding the significance of the endeavors that take into account the opinions of dwellers during the phase of decision-making goes hand in hand with considering commoning practices as a source of architecture and urban planning frameworks for low-cost housing in this specific context. The key argument of the article is that urban planning and architecture solutions in Addis Ababa should be based on the principles of the so-called “negotiated planning” approach, which implies a close analysis of the interconnections between planning, infrastructure, and land.


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