City as Flux: Interrogating the Changing Nature of Urban Change

What do we mean by the changing nature of urban change? First of all, in the 20th and 21st centuries, cities have been changing in different and dramatic ways, whether through grassroots mobilizations, through technological leaps, or through profit-driven speculations. Second, our understanding of how cities change has also been evolving, in particularly through empirical work that challenges the broad-brush universalizations of conventional thinking. The authors of the six selected articles take us through an around-the-world tour of cities and regions that range from Mulhouse in France to Dakar in Senegal to Las Vegas in the United States to Bogota in Colombia and beyond. Each author carefully examines the nature of urban change and how planners, developers, and citizens are either dealing with that change or even shaping it. Together, what the articles suggest is that we need a more fine-grained understanding of the city as flux in order to obtain better theoretical insights as well as urban practices that can better manage and ultimately shape urban change to benefit citizens, especially those who are marginalized.

Fits-and-Starts: The Changing Nature of the Material City

How and why does the material city in the late 20th and early 21st century change? This article examines one type of prominent urban change, which is “fits-and-starts” and represents change that is concentrated in space and time and that nonetheless has longer term repercussions with high economic and environmental costs. Through a review of the literature and an illuminating case study in Las Vegas, this article reveals how human perception and decision-making via two interrelated phenomena, future speculation and manufactured obsolescence, drive such change. The case study in Las Vegas is particularly fascinating because as a city of apparent extremes, it not only reveals in clear relief phenomena that are present in the capitalist city but it also offers insights into basic patterns of decision-making that actually shape—or design—the contemporary city. The article concludes with more general insights into the nature of this type of urban change and implications for alternative types of urban practices.

Planning Adaptation: Accommodating Complexity in the Built Environment

Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.

Change by Activism: Insurgency, Autonomy, and Political Activism in Potosí-Jerusalén, Bogotá, Colombia

Cities today face a context in which traditional politics and policies struggle to cope with increasing urbanisation rates and growing inequalities. Meanwhile, social movements and political activists are rising up and inhabiting urban spaces as sites of contestation. However, through their practices, urban activists do more than just occupy spaces; they are fundamental drivers of urban transformation as they constantly face—and contest—spatial manifestations of power. This article aims to contribute to ongoing discussions on the role of activism in the field of urban design, by engaging with two concepts coming from the Global South: <em>insurgency</em> and <em>autonomy</em>. Through a historical account of the building of the Potosí-Jerusalén neighbourhood in Bogotá in the 1980s, it illustrates how both concepts can provide new insight into urban change by activism. On the one hand, the concept of insurgency helps unpack a mode of bottom-up action that inaugurates political spaces of contestation with the state; autonomy, on the other hand, helps reveal the complex nature of political action and the visions of urban transformation it entails. Although they were developed at the margins of conventional design theory and practice, both concepts are instrumental in advancing our understanding of how cities are shaped by activist practices. Thus, this article is part of a broader effort to (re)locate political activism in discussions about urban transformation, and rethink activism as a form of urban design practice.

How Does Water Behave? Unstable Milieu and Stable Agencements in Dakar’s Flooded Suburbs

In the suburbs of Dakar, matter as a flux is not a metaphor anymore, but a concrete process of city fluidification, disintegration, or solidification. Indeed, the city has been concerned for more than 30 years by regular floods that were established permanently in some districts. Drawing from an assemblage perspective, this article aims to understand how people deal with untamed waters in flooded neighbourhoods and at the city scale. It also raises questions about how we can capture the processes of production, maintenance, and disintegration of cities by identifying stable forms of assemblages and by comparing them according to the specific action that they support.

The Changing Nature of In-Between Spaces in the Transformation Process of Cities

In the <em>in-between </em>spaces of cities, there are many problems of various nature and scale: functional, spatial, economic, environmental, visual, and social. There are also some hidden potentials that can be activated. The aim of the article is to explore the possibilities of solving existing problems and to show the possibilities of using the potentials of <em>in-between </em>spaces with regard to the changing nature of a city. The article, of a discursive character, aims to answer the questions of whether connecting a city with public spaces can be a catalyst of changes, and what tools should be used to facilitate the flux of material factors (like goods or natural resources) and immaterial matter (e.g., ideas or cultural patterns). The new approach is based on the assumption that this would be most effective when using landscape architecture, green/blue infrastructure, artistic strategies, and universal design in public spaces. The expected result of the research is to show the purposefulness and possibilities in creating attractive and safe public areas of <em>in-between </em>spaces as an on-going micro- or macro-process of urban change on a wider scale. It was recognised that integrated actions combining the humanistic, ecological, and technical approaches could bring significant benefits to society, preventing existing problems, not only spatial and visual (changing the city directly), but above all social and environmental, having an impact on the functioning of the city from a much longer perspective. The results of the research show how the transformation process of public spaces may change the nature of the cities, improve the compactness of existing cities, and increase the quality of life. Selected case studies are presented to show the scale, scope, and benefits of possible actions.

Agents of Change in the Domestic Built Environment

As our cities age, a large number of spatial structures experience physical change. A better understanding of what this process may entail and the agents involved in it can extend the knowledge of practitioners, activists, and policy experts regarding the resilience of our domestic building stock and cities. Awan et al. (2013) explain that agents are not entirely free from societal and spatial constraints; instead, they are characterised by intent, shaped by their own visions and actions, and context, the spatial and social structures of which they are part and which they negotiate. This article discusses the intent and context of the agents involved in the construction and transformation of the Cité Ouvrière in Mulhouse in Eastern France from the mid-19th century to date. With 1,253 houses built for the workers of the Dollfus-Mieg et Compagnie (DMC) textile factory between 1853 and 1897, Cité Ouvrière was the largest and most successful employer-constructed housing scheme of its time, setting an example for many other European company towns. Through this exceptional case study, the article identifies the levels at which spatial agents operate, the means they use to instigate change, their dynamic relations, and the ways these are influenced by the wider historical context while influencing the making and evolution of the built form. Using historical and archival documents, it amounts to recognise an interplay of individuals and public and private groups, who have been responsible for taking decisions at different scales—the city, the neighbourhood, and the houses—and have instigated changes of different effect—from more localised to more aggregate.

The Evolutions, Transformations, and Adaptations in Beirut’s Public Spaces

Beirut, Lebanon, has been a nexus for the east and west, has undergone episodes of conflict including the civil war between 1975 and 1989, and still witnesses instability to the present. This status has affected its everyday life practices, particularly as manifested in its public spaces. Over time, Beirut’s population has reflected the ability to adapt to living with different states of public spaces; these include embracing new public space models, adjusting to living in the war-time period with annihilated public spaces, and establishing a reconnaissance with post-war reintroduced, securitized, or temporary public spaces. Lefebvre’s space production triad serves to distinguish among spaces introduced through planning tools, from spaces appropriated through immaterial space-markers, or spaces established through social practices. This article provides an overview of the evolution of Beirut’s public spaces, starting with the medieval city and through into the 19th century, before examining the impact of instability and the conditions leading to the emergence of social spaces in the post-war period. It particularly highlights public spaces after 2005—when civic activism played an important role in raising awareness on the right to inclusive public space—by referring to literature, conducting interviews with public space protagonists, and addressing a questionnaire survey to inhabitants. The cases of Martyrs Square, Damascus Road, and the Pine Forest are presented, among other spaces in and around Beirut. The article reflects on the ability of some public spaces to serve as tools for social integration in a society that was segregated in the bouts of Beirut’s instability.

The Equity Dimension of Climate Change: Perspectives From the Global North and South

The articles in this thematic issue represent a variety of perspectives on the challenges for equity that are attributable to climate change. Contributions explore an emerging and important issue for communities in the Global North and Global South: the implications for urban social equity associated with the impacts caused by climate change. While much is known about the technical, policy, and financial tools and strategies that can be applied to mitigate or adapt to climate change in communities, we are only now thinking about who is affected by climate change, and how. Is it too little, too late? Or better now than never? The articles in this thematic issue demonstrate that the local impacts of climate change are experienced differently by socio-economic groups in communities. This is especially the case for the disadvantaged and marginalized—i.e., the poor, the very young, the aged, the disabled, and women. Ideally, climate action planning interventions should enhance quality of life, health and well-being, and sustainability, rather than exacerbate existing problems experienced by the disadvantaged. This is the challenge for planners and anyone working to adapt to climate change in our communities.

Towards Intergenerational Equity: Analysis of Youth Engagement Strategies in Climate Action Planning in Mzuzu, Malawi

Globally, meaningful youth participation in planning processes aimed at dealing with climate change impacts has been advocated for sustainability purposes. Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change requires parties to ensure there is public participation in addressing climate change, its effects, and the development of responses. In the city of Mzuzu, Malawi, local community members have been involved in planning processes at different planning levels but more intensively at the community level. Despite this approach receiving much attention, minimal consideration has been put on which societal groups are to be engaged directly, with youths being excluded to a large extent, even though about 49% of the population in Malawi is aged between 10 and 34 years. This article, therefore, seeks to foreground how current stakeholder engagement strategies in climate change planning marginalise the youth. To do this, this article critically reviews current stakeholder engagement strategies and assesses the extent to which youth are involved in the planning processes in Mzuzu City. It further assesses the factors affecting youth involvement in the planning process and subsequently recommends how stakeholder engagement strategies can be designed and implemented to ensure effective youth engagement in climate change planning processes in the city.