scholarly journals Large-Scale Urban Developments and the Future of Cities: Possible Checks and Balances

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."

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Große ◽  
Christian Fertner ◽  
Niels Boje Groth

Transforming energy use in cities to address the threats of climate change and resource scarcity is a major challenge in urban development. This study takes stock of the state of energy in urban policy and planning and reveals potentials of and constraints to energy-efficient urban development. The relationship between energy and urban structure provides a framework for discussing the role of urban planning to increase energy efficiency in cities by means of three in-depth case studies of medium-sized cities in Northern Europe: Eskilstuna in Sweden, Turku in Finland and Tartu in Estonia. In some ways these cities go ahead when it comes to their national climate and energy policies and aim to establish urban planning as an instrument to regulate and influence the city’s transition in a sustainable way. At the same time, the cities are constantly facing goal conflicts and limitations to their scope of action, which creates dilemmas in their strategic orientation and planning activities (e.g. regional enlargement and increased commuting vs. compact urban development). Finally, considering urban form and spatial structure along with the policy context as well as regional drivers and functional relations is suggested as a suitable approach for addressing the challenges of energy-efficient urban development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Christian Peer

With the beginning of the 21st century a series of large-scale urban development projects (LUDPs) were planned alongside the transformation or modernization of federal railway stations in Vienna. Herein, in October 2012 the City of Vienna together with the landowner set the course for a telling modified urban development project: the new general concept for the former railway station Wien Nordbahnhof. Just a stone’s throw away from the city’s center a new generation of citizens will find its home close or within the typological setting of an experimental superstructure, that is one of today’s biggest inner-city transformation zones, originally called the future city (“Stadt der Zukunft”). According to the city planners’ intentions the Nordbahnhof will be finished until the year of 2025 after a development process of more than three decades and a multifaceted process of public participation. The long period of development led to illuminating different imaginations of the future city and to a particular materialization of the shift of planning ideology into urban form, which accentuates a dialectical process of transformation. This paper focuses on crucial acts of resistance playing a role for the interplay of democracy and innovation within the transformation process in question.


Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Peter Newman ◽  
Sebastian Davies-Slate ◽  
Daniel Conley ◽  
Karlson Hargroves ◽  
Mike Mouritz

The need for transit oriented development (TOD) around railway stations has been well accepted and continues to be needed in cities looking to regenerate both transit and urban development. Large parts of suburban areas remain without quality transit down main roads that are usually filled with traffic resulting in reduced urban value. The need to regenerate both the mobility and land development along such roads will likely be the next big agenda in transport and urban policy. This paper learns from century-old experiences in public–private approaches to railway-based urban development from around the world, along with innovative insights from the novel integration of historical perspectives, entrepreneurship theory and urban planning to create the notion of a “Transit Activated Corridor” (TAC). TACs prioritize fast transit and a string of station precincts along urban main roads. The core policy processes for a TAC are outlined with some early case studies. Five design principles for delivering a TAC are presented in this paper, three principles from entrepreneurship theory and two from urban planning. The potential for new mid-tier transit like trackless trams to enable TACs is used to illustrate how these design processes can be an effective approach for designing, financing and delivering a “Transit Activated Corridor”.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-671
Author(s):  
Nadja Weck

Like in many other provinces, during the Habsburg period, the main point of orientation for Galicia was Vienna. This also applies to architecture and urban development. Galicia’s technical elite applied the theoretical and practical experience it gathered in Vienna to the towns and cities of this northeastern Crown land. Ignacy Drexler, born in 1878 in the Austro-Hungarian Lemberg, was a representative of a new generation of engineers and architects who did not necessarily have to spend time in the imperial capital to earn their spurs. Increasingly, besides the more or less obligatory stay in Vienna, other European countries became points of reference. Drexler did not live to see the realization of important aspects of his comprehensive plan for the city, but his ideas and the data he compiled were indispensable for the future development of his hometown. They shape urban planning in Lviv to this day.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Rong Guo ◽  
Xiaoya Song ◽  
Peiran Li ◽  
Guangming Wu ◽  
Zhiling Guo

Urban sustainable renewal has received extensive attention in a wide range of fields, including urban planning, urban management, energy management, and transportation. Given that environmental resource conservation is critical to urban sustainability renewal, this study highlighted the imbalance among green space, urban development, and transportation accessibility. Here, a novel node-place-green model is presented to measure sustainable urban development; meanwhile, deep learning is utilized to identify and extract the green space to measure the environmental index. Based on the generated node, place, and green value, urban developing status could be classified into nine modes for further analysis of transportation, urban function, and ecological construction. The experimental results of Harbin reveal the feasibility of the proposed method in providing specific guidelines for urban planning and policies on sustainable development.


Author(s):  
Taha Yasseri ◽  
Jannie Reher

AbstractThrough a large-scale online field experiment, we provide new empirical evidence for the presence of the anchoring bias in people’s judgement due to irrational reliance on a piece of information that they are initially given. The comparison of the anchoring stimuli and respective responses across different tasks reveals a positive, yet complex relationship between the anchors and the bias in participants’ predictions of the outcomes of events in the future. Participants in the treatment group were equally susceptible to the anchors regardless of their level of engagement, previous performance, or gender. Given the strong and ubiquitous influence of anchors quantified here, we should take great care to closely monitor and regulate the distribution of information online to facilitate less biased decision making.


Author(s):  
Georgii Gennadyevich Malinetskii

A computer project in the world and in Russia is now usually viewed as an economic, technological or military one. At the same time, it is a global social project. From the theory of the humanitarian and technological revolution, it follows that at the current point of bifurcation, its results can determine the path of humanity to the future. I show that the results of this project reflect the readiness of civilizations for socio-technological change. The COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be a test for social imperatives and had a huge impact on computer reality in the formation of a new sociality. Book by K. Schwab, T. Mallerert “COVID-19: The great reset” represents a variant of such sociality. The analysis presented in this work shows the unacceptability of the proposed changes for the world of Russia. A study of large-scale computer projects in Russia and Belarus shows the need to bring them to a new sociocultural level, much higher than the current one. The unsuccessful experience of mass e-education in the Union State confirmed the imperative of Norbert Wiener: “Render unto man the things which are man’s and unto the computer the things which are the computer’s”. This should, apparently, be a reasonable line of behavior in organizing joint actions of people and machines.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Maier

One of the most fundamental insights into the nature of our subjective perception of the world around us is that it is not veridical. In other words, we tend to not perceive information about the world around us accurately. Instead, our brains interpret new information through a host of innate and learned mechanisms that can introduce bias and distortions One of the best studied mechanisms that guide – and distort – our perception is the psychophysical Weber-Fechner law. According to this empirically derived, mathematically formulated law we tend to put more emphasis on smaller deviations in size while underestimating larger changes. The original formulation of the Weber-Fechner law takes the shape of a logarithmic function and is commonly applied to somatosensory perception such as the weight of an object. However, later work showed that the Weber-Fechner law can be generalized and describe a large variety of perceived changes in magnitude that even go beyond the sensory domain. Here we investigate the hypothesis that our perception of data associated with the spread of COVID-19 and similar pandemics is governed by the same psychophysical laws. Based on several recently published studies, we demonstrate that the Weber-Fechner law can be shown to directly affect the decision-making of officials in response to this global crisis as well as the greater public at large. We discuss how heightened awareness of the non-linear nature of subjective perception could help alleviate problematic judgements in similar situations in the future.


2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Berg-Schlosser

Capitalism and democracy have transformed the world, but not in a harmonious way. This article provides a broad overview of the major driving forces of democracy, its relationship with ongoing socioeconomic developments and some of the countervailing factors. It points to the inherently conflictive nature of democratic procedures and decision-making, but also emphasizes the potentially universal implications of basic democratic values. Against this background, the future prospects of democracy and possible alternatives in the age of globalization are assessed. All this is based, as far as space permits, on the huge body of available theoretical and empirical literature, but also on the author’s long-term preoccupation with this topic and some of his personal views and experiences.


Author(s):  
Heloisa Soares de Moura Costa

Poucos conceitos têm sido tão amplamente utilizados como o de desenvolvimento sustentável, num aparente consenso revelador mais de imprecisão do que de clareza em torno de seu significado. Com base em uma revisão de abordagens recentes, argumenta-se que a noção de desenvolvimento urbano sustentável traz consigo conflitos teóricos de difícil, porém não impossível, reconciliação: a) entre as trajetórias da análise ambiental e da análise urbana que, originando-se em áreas do conhecimento diferentes, confluíram na proposta de desenvolvimento sustentável; b) entre formulações teóricas e propostas de intervenção, traduzindo-se no distanciamento entre análise social/urbana crítica e planejamento urbano. São examinadas propostas de planejamento que adotam o discurso e/ou pressupostos de sustentabilidade urbana, discutindo exemplos da literatura internacional — as cidades compactas européias, o movimento californiano por cidades sustentáveis — e, no caso brasileiro, a experiência recente de planejamento urbano em Belo Horizonte.Palavras-chave: planejamento urbano; desenvolvimento sustentável; meio ambiente; política urbana. Abstract: Few concepts have been so widely adopted as sustainable urban development, an apparent consensus revealing more imprecision than coherence of meaning. The paper discusses some aspects of such theoretical and conceptual fragility as a contribution to building an alternative for the future. The concept is considered to have been worn out by excessive fashionable repetition. The paper argues, however, based on a review of recent approaches ranging from political economy to the contributions of political ecology and post-structuralism, that the concept of sustainable urban development embodies conflicts that are difficult but not impossible to solve: a) the conflict between the different origins of and paths followed by environmental analysis and urban analysis, both converging on the proposition of sustainable development; b) the conflict between theory and practice represented by the growing distance between critical social/urban analysis and urban planning. Finally, some planning proposals are examined as examples of adoption of the discourse and assumptions of sustainable development. They are the European compact city proposal; the Californian sustainable cities movement; and, in the Brazilian case, the recent urban planning experience in Belo Horizonte.Keywords: urban planning; sustainable development; environment; urban policy.


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