Urban Social Sustainability - Case Study; Gellerupparken–Denmark

Urban social sustainability represents a more specific part of urban development. Citizen involvement is a vital element of any future urban social development and helps to maintain the vision of human and diverse cities because it provides vibrant and sustainable cities in which everyone has a seat and can speak. Gellerupparken, as something new, also meets all five criteria for when an area is a ghetto during a given year. The criteria generally consist of income, ethnic origin, level of education, crime, and employment. The study’s aim is to present an objective means, to the reactivation of a passive multicultural zone in Aarhus city of Denmark to integrate it in the social life city by using the appreciative inquiry method by an introduction of new city functions. The study will assume the effect of sustainability in an urban social area, in a case study using the application of the pedagogical method, namely, the “appreciative inquiry” method.

New Metrics for Spatial and Temporal 3D Urban Form Sustainability Assessment Using Time Series Lidar Point Clouds and Advanced GIS Techniques

Monitoring sustainability of urban form as a 3D phenomenon over time is crucial in the era of smart cities for better planning of the future, and for such a monitoring system, appropriate tools, metrics, methodologies and time series 3D data are required. While accurate time series 3D data are becoming available, a lack of 3D sustainable urban form (3D SUF) metrics, appropriate methodologies and technical problems of processing time series 3D data has resulted in few studies on the assessment of 3D SUF over time. In this chapter, we review volumetric building metrics currently under development and demonstrate the technical problems associated with their validation based on time series airborne lidar data. We propose new metrics for application in spatial and temporal 3D SUF assessment. We also suggest a new approach in processing time series airborne lidar to detect three-dimensional changes of urban form. Using this approach and the developed metrics, we detected a decreased volume of vegetation and new areas prepared for the construction of taller buildings. These 3D changes and the proposed metrics can be used to numerically measure and compare urban areas in terms of trends against or in favor of sustainability goals for caring for the environment.

Toward Practical Criteria for Analyzing and Designing Urban Blocks

The streets, blocks, lots, and buildings are the main elements of cities’ texture. Surrounded by streets and surrounding the buildings, urban blocks invariably interact with these components dialectically, in that it can connect the network of streets and buildings, hence its significance in urban design. However, affected by unsound formal and spatial changes of urban forms in modern and postmodern eras, space coherence reduction led to a loss of blocks’ identity. Therefore, we can barely find a comprehensive functional tool structured on a solid understanding to design this very component of the urban morphology. In this regard, this study seeks to define a practical tool for analyzing and designing this crucial element developing an operational, yet expandable, checklist for urban blocks including various factors, from concepts to indices. All these factors are classified under three main concepts: spatial balance, spatial continuity and integration, and durability. In fact, as a primitive step, this research can enable urban designers to understand urban blocks more effectively and use the framework to assess the current situation and design the future.

Integrated Approach towards Participatory Development of Urban Neighborhood Spaces: Chennai, India

The social living of the urban households depends on the physical manifestation of spaces arranged to carry out their day-to-day activities of members including children, adult, women, men, old age, and differently able persons. Urban neighborhoods undergo changes in the spaces in house and building, places in a locality, and the overall built form. The city spaces experience transformation in the house spaces and common places, and the built form experienced the residential character change towards commercial and other nonresidential uses in the neighborhood. The impact of the spatial transformation demands to make redevelopment strategies to resolve the conflict between residential and commercial spaces in the neighborhood. So, the need for an integrated approach towards “Participatory Redevelopment” (PRD) of the urban neighborhood becomes a challenge for the city planners. The new planning model on PRD as an integrated approach developed by the author is followed in the redevelopment project hosted by the Corporation of Chennai. The PRD approach used “C-TC-C” model to follow participation as “Collective-Target Centered-Collective”. The PRD adopts the approach called the five-pillar system (FPS). These aspects are the main focus of this chapter within the context of T. Nagar, a residential neighborhood transforming into a busy retail commercial market area and residential living and parking spaces situated in the midst of Chennai City, the capital of the Tamil Nadu State in India.

Approaching Urban Design through the Analysis of Structural Differences within Three Neighborhood Typologies in Basra City

Recognizing the importance of physical environments as a major product of an urban design process for the livability of the built environment, this study focuses on urban planning and design characteristics within three different neighborhood typologies of Basra City. The aim of the study is to support future urban developments in the city based on evidences from the association between the current qualities of neighborhood design and the computed walking minutes of residents. These characteristics are determined from reviewed literature in urban design as reliable physical environmental perceived or objectively measured qualities. The methodology of this study describes four steps of analysis such as: (1) the use of the cadastral maps of the case studies as a source of raw information for objective measurement; (2) the use of objective and subjective measures as defining indicators that are utilized from previous studies; (3) the application of defined indicators for the selected neighborhoods through a comparative analysis; and (4) the conducting of statistical analysis to reveal the influence of the defined indicators on the walking. The findings of this study have led to conclusions on the importance of design attributes to future master planning of neighborhoods especially those of the traditional neighborhood, such as the Al-Saymmar neighborhood in Basra city.

The Role of Public Spaces in Small Municipality

Public spaces are a subspace of municipality space: they are its physical type, closely linked to permanent settlements, especially to cities. There are both social communication and movement of people, things and goods. These are classic, usually architecturally designed spaces between buildings: squares, agora, streets and parks. Public spaces in small municipalities have been crucial to the functioning of the community, their social, historically, and also economic life. In various types of rural municipalities, the function and formation of public spaces have changed over the course of history, often in relation to the geographical location of the municipality in terms of location or local conditions and customs. Nowadays, the tourist attraction of the place is also an important driving element in the form of public spaces. This chapter should show how public spaces have changed over time using examples of different types of municipalities and show examples of good and somewhat worse care for them.

The Rise and Decline of Car Use in Beijing and Shanghai

Chinese cities have primarily evolved around walking, bicycling and public transport with their dense, linear form and mixed land use. The recent urban growth spurt has involved private motorisation, but because of land constraints and not fearing urban density, as in Anglo-Saxon cities, the same dense urbanism has been maintained. This means that automobiles do not easily fit into this traditional fabric and especially the historic walking fabric. Issues like congestion and air quality have become major constraints to further growth. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, the next phase of urban and transport development now appears to be to reduce car use with the dramatic growth in urban rail as in most developed cities in the twenty-first century. This decoupling of car use from economic growth is consistent with other developed cities but is a first for emerging cities, hence the paper aims to explain this pattern from the cultural, political and especially urban fabric perspectives. The application to other Chinese cities and emerging cities is now possible following Beijing and Shanghai’s lead.

Assessing the Urban Design Quality of Turkish Cities

The common characteristic of qualified urban spaces is that they offer an environment enriched with livability criteria, protecting and maintaining the elements of identity and offering flexibility and diversity compatible with the current conditions. Nowadays, the first condition of creating such qualified/successful urban spaces is to reflect the “urban design” processes on the urban spaces. Therefore, the present study aims to discuss the “urban design” quality (the level of success) of the Turkish cities shaped within the scope of urban plans. This discussion was performed using the urban design criteria determining and assessing the actors, which play an effective and relevant role in urban design and planning processes. The fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method was used. By making use of the results of the present study, the conditions influencing the urban design aspect were re-discussed via current state analysis, and the foundation for a general assessment about the urban design quality of Turkish cities was established.

Sustainable Design in Urban Green Space

As a fundamental part of the urban function, urban green space faced a long-term maintenance requirement. The maintenance of urban green space (i.e., trimming, irrigation, fertilization, pesticide, and plant waste removal) can have environmental impacts, such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. This chapter focuses on the adjustment of the plant communities’ combinations in urban green space to reduce the environmental impacts in long-term maintenance. The plant communities in urban green spaces are a combination of four plant layers: woodland, shrubs, herbicides, and grassland. In this chapter, we will start to investigate the environmental impacts in the maintenance of urban green space. Then we introduced the quantitative method life cycle assessment (LCA), to quantify the environmental impacts of the maintenance tasks. We analyzed the maintenance environmental impact (MEI) index of 95 plant community samples (20 m × 20 m) in Zhengzhou (China) through LCA and sorted out the changing curves of the MEI index during the change of the combined amount in each plant layers. Finally, we sorted out the MEI strength of the plant layers and summarized the low MEI plant community model. The low MEI model can save energy consumption and GHG emissions of the maintenance tasks, to contribute to the sustainable development of the urban green space.

Future Planning of Global South Cities with Inclusive Informal Economic Growth in Perspective

Current urbanization trends and projections clearly indicate that the global South cities, especially of Asia and Africa, would be at the receiving end of about 80% of the expected 2.7 billion increase in urban population between 2010 and 2050. These trends and projections make it imperative for the future planning of the global South cities to step out of the box, away from the traditional planning systems, and begin to adopt inclusive and innovative planning approaches that would efficiently tackle the current and emerging urban realities in these cities rather than sticking to rigid planning standards that ignore realities, generate continuous conflict, and fail to take advantage of the potentials of these urbanization consequences, especially the resilient informal economy. The chapter examines the urbanization trends and one of its major challenges in global South cities; informal economic activities, the planning implications of these informal economic activities, various approaches that have been adopted by different governments and the effectiveness or otherwise of the approaches in tackling the challenges of informal economy. The chapter also focuses on the successful planning approaches that have been implemented with a view to portraying the key lessons that can ensure its applicability in other global South cities facing similar challenges.