A review on the integration between urban and energy planning considering the planning tools

The increasing energy demand is a global concern, directly associated with indicators of greenhouse gases and air pollution. These, in turn, are directly related to the physical, social and economic aspects of cities. One way to minimize such impacts is to diversify the energy matrix with renewable sources. On the other hand, the use of wind and solar plants are susceptible to multiple conflicts, due to urban aesthetics, technology scale or directionality of the energy flow across individual property limits. Considering that the urban form directly impacts the energy demand and the existence of conflicts arising from the use of renewable sources, the integration between urban and energy planning plays an important role in mitigating the risks associated with the growth of renewable generation. With such motivation, we propose a comparative analysis of the main tools of urban and / or energy planning through a systematic review of the literature. The methodology of the literature review and the results are presented through a table with the evaluated functionalities: Scenarios, simulations, energy conditioning, integration with GIS systems and ability to integrate with cities master plans.

Proposing a checklist for aesthetic control and management in a city under neo-liberal influences: Istanbul case

PurposeThe increased flexibility in urban planning practice under neoliberal policies had impacts on urban aesthetics, such as causing cities to lose their unique character and identity, especially in developing countries. However, importance of the control and management of aesthetics has not been adequately addressed in the current planning legislations in the literature. Conventional legislation devices (such as zoning ordinances, building codes, etc.) provide little effect on aesthetic control for the flexible planning era. The aim of the study is to examine how a supplementary legal tool (a checklist) can be developed to provide urban aesthetics control and management for a city under neo-liberal influences by taking into consideration the relationship between urban environmental aesthetics and related legal regulations.Design/methodology/approachThe research focusses on the Istanbul case. In this study, the aesthetic parameters with factor analysis using urban design parameters that affecting urban aesthetics are determined, how inclusion into the planning laws and regulations of these aesthetic parameters are examined and a checklist for aesthetics control and management are proposed.FindingsThe findings reveal that although there are different and fragmented legal sources that directly or indirectly deal with the aesthetic control and management for urban design and there is a lack of a supplementary legal tool as control management.Originality/valueChecklists in the aesthetic control area can be a practical legal tool, which can establish a routine by giving proper attention to aesthetic quality and its related parameters of planning for all developing countries under the influence of neoliberal policies.

Urban Aesthetics and Technology

Technology in one form or another has always been a part of urban life. Its development and uses have traditionally been dictated by the practical needs of the community. However, technologies also impact how a city looks and feels. Some technologies have a clear perceivable presence, whereas others are more invisibly embedded into the material structures of the city. This chapter is a study of how the aesthetic features of cities manifest through and in relation to technologies. The chapter bridges recent developments in philosophical urban aesthetics and contemporary approaches in the philosophy of technology. Central concepts include perception, aesthetic experience, aesthetic value, affordance, and attention. The chapter presents urban mobility as an example of how technology can be studied through the framework of urban aesthetics. The final part of the chapter highlights some implications of the aesthetics of technology for urban design.

Blackfishing on Instagram: Influencing and the Commodification of Black Urban Aesthetics

This article examines blackfishing, a practice in which cultural and economic agents appropriate Black culture and urban aesthetics in an effort to capitalize on Black markets. Specifically, this study analyzes the Instagram accounts of four influencers (Instagram models) who were accused of blackfishing in late 2018 and is supplemented with a critical analysis of 27 news and popular press articles which comprise the media discourse surrounding the controversy. Situated within the literature on cultural appropriation and urban redevelopment policies, this study explores how Black identity is mined for its cultural and economic value in the context of digital labor. I assert that Instagram’s unique platform affordances (including its racial affordances) and the neoliberal logics which undergird cultural notions of labor facilitate the mechanisms by which Black identity is rendered a lucrative commodity vis-à-vis influencing.

Speculative Spaces in Grand Paris : Reading JR in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil

This chapter engages with the spatial politics of aesthetics in the Parisian suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. It examines how JR’s street art brings into view the lines of tension informing neighbourhood change. Firstly, the chapter explores how urban aesthetics have become important to gentrification analysis and looks at the commodification of socially engaged aesthetic practices via the “creative cities” ethos. In the subsequent sections, the chapter introduces a relational reading of JR’s artistic practice in “Clichy- Montfermeil.” The central questions guiding the enquiries are as follows: What can street art tell us about the antagonisms shaping processes of speculation in these towns? What can its aesthetic presence reveal about shifts in spatial imaginaries that are disarticulating the banlieues as “deviant,” “no-go zone” to rearticulate them “as a hunting ground for seasoned investors” (Clerima 2019)?

A broom to the head: ‘Cleaning Day’ and the aesthetics of emergence in Dakar

Senegal has a long tradition of the collective management of public space via community cleaning. Since the explosion of the popular ecology movement Set Setal (meaning clean and be clean in Wolof) in the early 1990s, ‘set’ or hygienic aesthetics have been central to the construction and control of urban space and deployed to include and enfold but also expel citizens. In January 2020 the Senegalese President Macky Sall called on the population to join him in ‘Cleaning Days’, bypassing ‘set’ practices. Cleaning Day was met with a response ranging from indifference to anger and open conflict. In this article I use Cleaning Day as a lens to analyse the production and reception of set aesthetics in a time of ‘emergence’. Focusing on the power of subaltern practice to resist the encroachment of a state in search of meaningful symbols, I challenge the idea that contemporary urban aesthetics is geared towards the creation of a perceived continuity of interests organised around an aspiration to a global urban standard.