This study examines the complex challenges inherent in the public-public partnership established in 2023 between SEPESโthe Public Land Entity under the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility, and Urban Agenda (MITMA)โand the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The primary objective of this partnership is to repurpose decommissioned military sites for social housing, thereby fostering socially...
The growing percentage of seniors as a demographic trend presents significant societal challenges, impacting various aspects of urban life, including housing policy and spatial development (Huang, 2015). On one hand, changing housing needsโsuch as accessibility features, smaller units, and affordabilityโdemand housing redevelopment (Luciano et al., 2020). On the other hand, there is an...
Low-rise, low-density housing dominates Irelandโs housing sector, even as growing housing demand and ambitious carbon reduction targets necessitate a shift toward sustainable development. Compact urban growth (CUG) has emerged as a critical strategy to address these challenges, offering transformative environmental, social, and economic benefits. Promoted in key policies such as the National...
The City of Naples is facing the complex challenge of dealing with the consequences of a persistent housing crisis. The reconfiguration of public housing settlements, often marked by serious conditions of blight and poverty, represents a structural problem for the city, a long-term emergency to be governed, recently carried out in the framework of National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP),...
Gentrification, a term first introduced in 1964, initially referred to the process of middle-class re-entry and transformation of working-class communities in central London (Glass, 1964). Over time, the concept has expanded beyond the return of capital to cities or the pursuit of specific lifestyle by the middle class (Zhang et al., 2014). Today, gentrification is increasingly linked to urban...
Enhancing urban water resilience is a key challenge for climate change adaptation. Cities worldwide are implementing strategies to address increasing threats such as flooding, drought, and water scarcity. These efforts depend on local community engagement, alignment with national policies, and financial support from international donors. At the same time, national governments and donors rely...
Longstanding institutional fragmentation of public transport services leads to service gaps, poor coordination and discourages ridership. The current conversations about service adaptation are shining a light on long-standing transport institutional challenges like fragmentation, inconsistent fare structures & financing and lack of coverage. In many cities, there are multiple operators,...
This paper explores governance frameworks and transferable policy innovations within the European bioeconomy planning context, drawing insights from Germany, France, and Belgium to address planning challenges for developing the bioeconomy in counties with slow development such as Ireland. It situates the bioeconomy as a transformative regional planning concept requiring multi-level governance,...
Water plays a crucial role in sustaining life, maintaining ecosystems, and facilitating economic progress. Nevertheless, its management presents complex challenges in the face of growing demands and environmental changes. Effective water governance is essential for enhancing resilience and ensuring the sustainable management of water resources. The mismanagement or overexploitation leads to...
In this research we explore how urban planners negotiate and respond to changing industry and land use governance contexts. We seek to better understand if and how planning systems adapt in response to emerging and ongoing urban challenges. Our focus is on urban industrial land use planning and the role of planners in shaping productive city futures oriented toward reintegrating manufacturing...
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected trade in Italy, highlighting structural weaknesses and catalyzing significant changes in the production and distribution sectors. This aspect emerges prominently in Lombardy, the epicenter in Europe of the health and economic crises.
During this period (2019-2022) the Regional Council of Lombardy has drafted and approved the Multi-Year Programme...
The involvement of young people in urban development is mandated by the UN Convention and has become a normative goal in regional and urban planning. This goal resonates in particular with the debates on urban commons, which emphasize the importance of engaging young people in shaping shared urban spaces, extending the concept of commons beyond lived experiences to the domain of shared urban...
The success of energy transitions depends not only on technological advancements and funding mechanisms but also on the ability of local and regional policies to effectively engage communities. Just energy transition requires special attention to disadvantaged communitiesโ needs and capacities for transformation.
Despite increasing policy attention, marginalised neighbourhoods often face...
This research explores the role and social value of community infrastructure (McShane, 2006; McShane & Coffey, 2022) in regional Victoria, Australia in fostering social connections and place attachment, enhancing community resilience, and promoting psychological well-being. While facilities such as community hubs and recreational facilities serve as vital hubs for social cohesion, their...
Refugee camps are established to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced populations (UNHCRa, 2022) and originally are intended as temporary spaces until durable solutionsโrepatriation, local integration, or resettlementโare achieved (UNHCRb, 2022). However, over time, many transform into protracted settlements, undergoing significant changes (Turner, 2015). The complex realities of...
Population ageing is one of the major challenges facing cities today. As life expectancy continues to rise faster than healthy life expectancy, it poses challenges for the built environment in supporting older adults' lives. Driven by the growing importance of social ecological and gerontological theories on how the environments significantly influence older adultsโ health, mobility, and...
Participatory urban planning has emerged as an essential approach to addressing urban decline and fostering sustainable development. This study examines South Koreaโs Majeon Urban Regeneration Special Program, implemented in Majeon Village, Geumsan County, as a case study to assess the effectiveness and limitations of participatory planning in the Korean context. By analyzing planning and...
The increasing frequency and severity of climate-related disasters highlight the urgent need for inclusive and adaptive governance that prioritizes local engagement. Traditional top-down climate strategies often fail to address community-specific needs, leading to ineffective disaster preparedness and long-term adaptation (Ziervogel et al., 2017). Grassroots climate initiatives frequently...
Portraited as the โlast mileโ and โbasic unitโ of social governance in Chinese official discourses, the neighbourhood has recently gained unprecedented importance in Chinese cities. Active neighbourhood participation and multi-actor collaboration become the new norms of neighbourhood governance, characterised by the emergence of multiple new forms of governance led by different stakeholders....
In the light of social movements that started in the 1960s, individuals began to demand equality and democratic processes. With discussions on the individual's relationship with the city, participation was included in urban studies, especially in the second half of the 20th century. As the 21st century came, it is passing as an age of crises because of consecutive crises ranging from...
As cities worldwide face growing social challenges such as socioeconomic segregation or climate injustices, engaging citizens in urban planning and development is considered increasingly important. Involving local communities not only leads to better understandings of local needs and potentially more effective plans, meaningful citizen-planner dialogues might also to help to foster trust and...
This paper explores arising tensions and contradictions in participatory planning against the backdrop of strategic spatial planning and other overlapping nested planning paradigms (Albrechts, 2013). This is significant as the field of planning has shifted from traditional land-use planning to area-based, actor-driven and process-oriented planning (Albrechts, 2013). The aforementioned tensions...
China's urbanization is transitioning from rapid development to high-quality development, with community renewal in old urban areas being a key component. However, due to the dispersed property rights and complex interests in old communities, the difficulty of community renewal has increased. New governance models are urgently needed to alleviate the contradictions and conflicts that arise.
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Several European countries are progressively redefining the terms of the social pact with their citizens and reconfiguring governance arrangements according to the idea of a smaller welfare state and more self-responsible citizens, some of whom themselves claim a more active role. These two-way pushes can be mutually reinforcing and have led to new opportunities and spaces for collaborative...
Public space is a symbol of democracy. For this reason, it is important to seek democratic methods in the design of public spaces. In this study โPublic Participationโ essentially means allowing people to be involved in the planning and development of the city, shaping their urban environment, and having the opportunity to be involved in anything and everything that is happening in that space...
In this context of systemic crises and the advance of neoliberal logic, citizen participation has become a central theme in urban agendas and political discourse (European Union, 2023; United Nations, 2015, 2017). However, its centrality reflects a tension: on the one hand, the instrumentalisation of participation as a tool for appeasement and legitimation of decisions shaped by market-driven...
This paper examines the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) within the shifting landscape of Englandโs urban governance amid political and economic upheavals. Focusing on the interplay between 'urban crises' and 'local practices', the study investigates how CSOs navigate challenges posed by neoliberal policies, austerity measures, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on qualitative data...
London has been going through a population growth since the 1980s. This population growth has been paired with a neoliberal planning approach, in which city-making relies heavily on private-sector developers, and in which public authorities follow a private development logic. Since the beginning of the 21st century, local authorities have viewed social housing estates as places for...
In Norway, there are currently more than 130 operational culture houses, so-called โkulturhusโ. Historically, these have served a range of purposes, providing important infrastructure for cultural activities and other community services. The early 2000s marked a proliferation in the demand to plan and construct new culture houses across the country, fueled by a conviction that tailor-made...
This study examines the governance dynamics of community-based street greening initiatives in Greater Sydney, Australia, focusing on the interactions between local governments and citizens in transforming public spaces into small-scale gardens. These urban gardening efforts, occurring in nature strips, verges, and footpaths, are often informal, community-driven projects that require innovative...
Temporary urbanism in planning and governance processes has been the subject of extensive research in recent years. While temporary uses have always existed in our cities, short-term eventsโsuch as temporary construction and space usageโhave increased in frequency. This phenomenon has become known as temporary urbanism (Madanipour, 2017). These practices have shifted from marginal informality...
In the context of Chinaโs rapid economic growth and industrial restructuring, enterprises in midwestern development zones are under considerable operational pressure. Following the influx of a large migrant population, these zones have witnessed increasingly diverse consumer and recreational demands. Consequently, certain industrial sites have been spontaneously converted by property owners to...
The contribution presents partial findings from the work carried out by the authors within the ongoing PRIN (Research Project of Significant National Interest) PNRR project โBioregional planning tools to co-design life places. Empowering local communities to manage and protect natural resourcesโ, in particular with regard to the denotation of experiences of territorial governance that extend...
This paper traces the changing role and conceptualisation of social infrastructure in Brusselsโ urban planning tradition, paying particular attention to the interactions and power dynamics between the planners, policymakers, and citizens involved. We will examine whether and how these actors have thought about social infrastructure as a category and included it in plans, as well as what the...
Author: Maximilian Schneider M.Ed., RPTU Kaiserslautern
Abstract:
Patterns and processes of resilience and vulnerability are playing out in a complex setting of political, socioeconomical and cultural aspects, sett on differing time scales and spaces (Gothram and Campanella, 2011). Large-sclae traumas or crises like Hurricaine Katrina or unprecedented flooding of river valleys like the...
This paper examines the evolving relationship between urban and rural territories under Turkeyโs centralized governance model, focusing specifically on the case of Ayvalฤฑk and the implications of the 2012 Metropolitan Law (Law No. 6360). This legislation, which extended the jurisdiction of metropolitan municipalities to encompass rural areas, has significantly altered the socio-spatial...
Since the onset of the 21st century, China's rural revitalization has been predominantly driven by governmental initiatives and fiscal investments, resulting in substantial enhancements to rural living environments and infrastructure development. However, post-construction phases reveal persistent challenges in long-term operations and maintenance, posing sustainability concerns when relying...
Rural development, aimed at reducing the disparities between urban and rural areas, remains a significant global challenge under climate change, land conflicts, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. UN-Habitat has proposed enhancing urban-rural linkages as a means to address this issue. In China, rural revitalization has been promoted as a national strategy through enhancing the flow...
To cope with the multiple contemporary crises (climate, social, economic), cities have eagerly searched for governance approaches which enable an inclusive socio-ecological transformation of their built environment, economies and societies. In the scholarly and policy debate about that issue, peri-urban areas, which are certainly part of the European urban landscape, have been widely...
Since the 1950s, Chinaโs rural areas have provided abundant cheap land, labour, and agricultural products to fuel urbanization and industrialization. To sustain this role, the state established institutional arrangements that marginalized rural areas in administrative, fiscal, and land development rights, alongside an unequal welfare distribution structure between urban and rural residents...
