Promises of Urbanism: New Songdo City and the Power of Infrastructure

All around the world, new cities are popping up. Magically, they all closely resemble each other. They claim a cosmopolitan vibe that one typically associates with the big metropoles such as New York City, Buenos Aires, or Paris. These cities have become prototypical for 21st-century urbanism. They claim to be smarter and ecologically superior, seemingly providing a city-level answer to urging global problems like climate change. This account draws on critical urbanism to critically investigate the promises of model cities. I point out how these high-tech utopias are engineered in ways that render them logically feasible, drawing on the lively example of New Songdo City, South Korea. The powerful, formulaic logic of logistics does not only shape Songdo’s physical transportation and communication networks but also its political structures and economic unfoldings. Infrastructure becomes a medium of what Easterling (2014) calls “extrastatecraft”; spatial infrastructure dictates and polices behaviors, thus becomes a medium of polity.

Exploring the resilience movement through an urban planning and water management lens

Land use planning recognizes the need for incorporating climate change adaptation strategies to address natural disaster reoccurrence. In 2013, the Rockefeller Foundation developed the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) model to support initiatives related to climate change and resilience. Globally through the model, cities appointed Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) to develop a vision, lead implementation and establish long-term city resilience. Three major cities in Canada (Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) are now RC100 cities and subsequently introduced the positions of CROs. The purpose of this research paper is to highlight the current state of interventions in Toronto water management strategies to emphasize the role land use planning can have in Resilience Strategy development. Recommendations will be made based on literature review, policies and best practices scan, as well as stakeholders’ interview analysis. Safety and wellbeing of citizenry are at the forefront of the urban agenda, requiring utmost attention to climate change and precautionary measures against natural disaster. Key words: land use planning, urban water management, Canada, resilient cities

Exploring the resilience movement through an urban planning and water management lens

Land use planning recognizes the need for incorporating climate change adaptation strategies to address natural disaster reoccurrence. In 2013, the Rockefeller Foundation developed the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) model to support initiatives related to climate change and resilience. Globally through the model, cities appointed Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) to develop a vision, lead implementation and establish long-term city resilience. Three major cities in Canada (Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) are now RC100 cities and subsequently introduced the positions of CROs. The purpose of this research paper is to highlight the current state of interventions in Toronto water management strategies to emphasize the role land use planning can have in Resilience Strategy development. Recommendations will be made based on literature review, policies and best practices scan, as well as stakeholders’ interview analysis. Safety and wellbeing of citizenry are at the forefront of the urban agenda, requiring utmost attention to climate change and precautionary measures against natural disaster. Key words: land use planning, urban water management, Canada, resilient cities

High-speed railway and tourism development in China

High-speed railway (HSR) is a new and increasingly popular transportation mode in China bringing about a significant impact on the economy, including tourism development. This article investigates the effect of HSR on tourism development in China based on a time-varying difference-in-differences model. Cities connected by HSR in 2013 and 2014 are regarded as the treatment group, while those without HSR services until 2017 are placed in the control group. The empirical analyses cover a large panel dataset comprising 163 cities in 2009–2017. The empirical results suggest that both domestic tourism revenue and tourist number are positively affected by HSR, and the effect is stronger for the undeveloped or geopolitically less important regions such as the inland or prefecture-level cities. Other relevant determinants of tourism include the availability of airports and the number of hotels in the cities. Our research findings have important policy implications for tourism development in China with respect to HSR.

“The Magna Carta to Liberate Our Cities”

Starting in 1964, the U.S. federal government under President Lyndon Johnson passed an ambitious reform program that included social security, urban renewal, anti-poverty initiatives, and civil rights legislation. In cities like Los Angeles, these reforms fueled urban revitalization efforts in communities affected by economic decline. These reforms closed the gap between local residents and government officials in California and even subsequently brought the city’s African American and Mexican American population into greater political proximity. Looking closely at the impact of the Chicano Movement on the Model Cities Program, a federal initiative designed specifically for urban development and renewal, this article brings the role of U.S. government policy in shaping social justice priorities in Los Angeles, and the U.S. Southwest more broadly, into sharper view.

Analysis of the transport sector in the eco-policy of Kyoto Eco-model city

Global warming countermeasures are being taken around the world, and every country and every city is trying to minimize emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, on its territory. This article is devoted to the environmental policy of the Kyoto cityin the transport sector. Kyoto city is the former capital of Japan, where Kyoto Protocolwas adopted. During the study of the environmental policy, the authors identified the most important political measures based on important official documents of the local government. Not only the measures adopted by the city mayor’s office in the transport sector, were studied, but their assessment and results were examined too. However most information on eco-model cities of Japan is presented in Japanese, access to basic information is limited. Thus, this article offers new information from the original sources

YOKOHAMA ECO-MODEL CITY’S POLICY ON WASTE MANAGEMENT

Projects transforming the concept of eco-city into practices became a challenge to the Eastern countries to countermeasure with the global warming and climate change. We can be witnesses of rising number of significant eco-city models than might be a real fine model to other countries and cities that would like to change their current environmental situation. In particular Japan Government launched “Eco-model cities” program in 2008, to create model cities replicable elsewhere both in Japan and in the world.

Between the Ideal and Reality of City Resizing Policy: Focused on 25 Cases of Compact City Plans in Japan

Since 2014, Japan has implemented a policy for forming a compact urban structure at a national level through an urban planning technique called a location normalization plan. A residence-induced zone included in the location normalization plan is considered as the essence of forming a compact urban structure and can be characterized as a policy that compactifies cities for a long period not only by inducing residence functions into the inside of the zones but also by applying regulations to the outside of the zones. This study examined the status of the dichotomous compact city policy applied in reality by analyzing various cases in Japan that established location normalization plans, and its implications. The conditions commonly observed in the induced zone in model cities indicated that the validity of residence-induced zones—how and where residence-induced zones had to be designated—was prioritized in many cases. Some cities, however, designated independent zones that maintained a certain level of residential functions outside the induced zones. Utilizing independent zones in non-induced zones can be assessed not as an act of simply dividing cities by a dichotomous way but as an attempt to reflect the situations and characteristics of individual cities.

Model Cities for Resilience: Climate-led Initiatives

Paris Agreement of December 2015 was the last official initiative led by the United Nations (UN) as the driver of climate change mitigation. Climate change was hence linked with an increase in the occurrence of natural hazards. A variety of initiatives were consequently adopted under different themes such as sustainable cities, climate-friendly development and low-carbon cities. However, most of the initiatives targeted by global cities with urban areas being the focus in terms of taking action against global warming issues. This is due to the structural and environmental features of cities characterized by being populated, as such, they not only generate a large number of carbon emissions but also happens to be the biggest consumer of natural resources. In turn, they create a microclimate, which contributes to climate change. Masdar City, for example, was designed as the first fully sustainable urban area, which replaced fuel-based energy with the electric-based energy. China, as another example, introduced the Sponge Cities action, a method of urban water management to mitigate against flooding. Consequently, architects and urban planners are urged to conform to the proposals that would mitigate global warming. This paper, as a result, examines some of the models that have been internationally adopted and thereafter provide the recommendations that can be implemented in large urban areas in Turkey, primarily in Istanbul.