Bridging policy and practice: overcoming implementation barriers in catchment-based stormwater planning for Auckland's greenfield developments

Infrastructure development is critical to the success of economic growth policies. Remote sensing and GIS tools have an important role to play in the development of various urban infrastructures. Due to the rapid growth of urban population and urbanization, it is necessary to find out the site's suitability for sustainable urban development. The main aim of the study is to study the growth and trend of urbanization, as well as to find out the suitable sites for further urban development in northern Punjab, along the river Jhelum, Pakistan. The study illustrates the use of geographic information system (GIS) and Remote Sensing based techniques i.e. Human Natural Environment Index (HNEI) applied with a foundation of Relief Degree of Land Surface (RDLS), Temperature Humidity Index (THI), Water Resource Index (WRI), and Land Cover Index (LCI) for selection of the suitable site for urban settlements along river Jhelum, Pakistan. For this purpose, Toposheet and Landsat satellite data were used to generate various thematic layers using ArcGIS software. The results were generated in form of five categories i.e., highly suitable, moderately suitable, relatively low suitable, low suitable, and non-suitable. The final results indicated that district Sargodha is most suitable for long-term sustainable urban settlements favored by relief, climate, water availability, land cover scenario, and flood hazard-free area. Eventually, a site suitability map is prepared for further urban development. The present study allows the local people as well as urban planners for the appropriate plans of land use planning in sustainable urban development.

This paper argues for a political economic approach to understanding climate change adaptation and development planning in an urban context. Based on field research conducted in Surat, India, across a period of two years, I illustrate how climate adaptation is rooted in preexisting and contextually specific urban political relationships that can be traced through the city's developmental history. Through assessing Surat's experience with recent industrialization, episodes of natural disasters, to more recent engagement with the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, I highlight how adaptation planning, as well as how adaptation is integrated into urban development planning, occurs through processes of prioritizing adaptation against development needs and implementing options that are cocreated among public and civic actors. This case empirically shows how adaptation is mainstreamed into urban development planning, illustrates the trade-offs associated with how different urban actors plan and implement adaptation in the context of rapid industrialization, and assesses how internationally funded adaptation programs are operationalized in the context of local social and political realities.

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Central to this research lays the concept of private sector-led urban development projects (Heurkens, 2010). Such projects involve project developers taking a leading role and local authorities adopting a facilitating role, in managing the development of an urban area, based on a clear public-private role division. Such a development strategy is quite common in Anglo-Saxon urban development practices, but is less known in Continental European practices. Nonetheless, since the beginning of the millennium such a development strategy also occurred in the Netherlands in the form of ‘concessions’. However, remarkably little empirical knowledge is available about how public and private actors collaborate on and manage private sector-led urban development projects. Moreover, it remains unclear what the effects of such projects are. This dissertation provides an understanding of the various characteristics of private sector-led urban development projects by conducting empirical case study research in the institutional contexts of the Netherlands and the UK. The research provides an answer to the following research question: What can we learn from private sector-led urban development projects in the Netherlands and UK in terms of the collaborative and managerial roles of public and private actors, and the effects of their (inter)actions? Indications for a market-oriented Dutch urban development practice Urban development practice in the Netherlands has been subject to changes pointing towards more private sector involvement in the built environment in the past decades. Although the current economic recession might indicate otherwise, there are several motives that indicate a continuation of private sector involvement and a private leadership role in Dutch urban development projects in the future. First, a shift towards more market-oriented development practice is the result of an evolutionary process of increased ‘neoliberalization’ and the adoption of Anglo-Saxon principles in Dutch society. Despite its Rhineland roots with a focus on welfare provision, in the Netherlands several neoliberal principles (privatization, decentralization, deregulation) have been adopted by government and incorporated in the management of organizations (Bakker et al., 2005). Hence, market institutionalization on the one hand, and rising civic emancipation on the other, in current Western societies prevents a return towards hierarchical governance. Second, the result of such changes is the emergence of a market-oriented type of planning practice based on the concept of ‘development planning’. Public-Private Partnerships and the ‘forward integration’ of market parties (De Zeeuw, 2007) enforce the role of market actors. In historical perspective, Boelens et al. (2006) argue that Dutch spatial planning always has been characterized by public-private collaborations in which governments facilitated private and civic entrepreneurship. Therefore, post-war public-led spatial planning with necessary government intervention was a ‘temporary hiccup’, an exception to the rule. Third, the European Commission expresses concerns about the hybrid role of public actors in Dutch institutionalized PPP joint ventures. EU legislation opts for formal public-private role divisions in realizing urban projects based on Anglo-Saxon law that comply with the legislative tendering principles of competition, transparency, equality, and public legitimacy. Fourth, experiences with joint ventures in the Netherlands are less positive as often is advocated. Such institutionalized public-private entities have seldom generated the assumed added value, caused by misconceptions about the objectives of both partners grounded in incompatible value systems. This results in contra-productive levels of distrust, time-consuming partnership formations, lack of transparency, and compromising decision-making processes (Teisman & Klijn, 2002), providing a need for other forms of collaboration. Finally, current financial retrenchments in the public sector and debates about the possible abundance of Dutch active land development policies point towards a lean and mean government that moves away from risk-bearing participation and investment in urban projects and leaves this to the market. Importantly, Van der Krabben (2011b) argues that the Dutch active public land development policies can be considered as an international exception, and advocates for facilitating land development policies. In this light, it becomes highly relevant to study private sector-led urban development as a future Dutch urban development strategy. Integrative urban management approach This research is rooted in the research school of Urban Area Development within the Department of Real Estate and Housing at the Faculty of Architecture (Delft University of Technology). It is a relatively young academic domain which views urban development most profoundly as a complex management assignment (Bruil et al., 2004; Franzen et al., 2011). This academic school uses an integrative perspective with a strong practice-orientation and carries out solution-oriented design research. Here, the integration involves bridging various actor interests, spatial functions, spatial scales, academic domains, knowledge and skills, development goals, and links process with content aspects. Such a perspective does justice to complex societal processes. Therefore it provides a fruitful ground for studying urban development aimed at developing conceptual knowledge and product for science and practice. Such integrative perspective and practice-orientation forms the basis of this research and has been applied in the following manner. In order to create an understanding of the roles of public and private actors in private sector-led urban development, this research takes a management perspective based on an integrative management approach. This involves viewing management more broadly as ‘any type of direct influencing’ urban development projects, and therefore aims at bridging often separated management theories (Osborne, 2000a). Hence, an integrative management approach assists in both understanding urban development practices and projects and constructing useful conceptual tools for practitioners and academics. Integrative approaches attempt to combine a number of different elements into a more holistic management approach (Black & Porter, 2000). Importantly, it does not view the management of projects in isolation but in its entire complexity and dynamics. Therefore, our management approach combines two integrative management theories; the open systems theory (De Leeuw, 2002) and contingency theory. The former provides opportunities to study the management of a project in a structured manner. The latter emphasizes that there is no universally effective way of managing and recognizes the importance of contextual circumstances. Hence, an integrative management approach favors incorporating theories from multiple academic domains such as political science, economics, law, business administration, and organizational and management concepts. Hence, it moves away from the classical academic division between planning theory and property theory, and organization and management theories. It positions itself in between such academic domains, and aims at bridging theoretical viewpoints by following the concept of planning ánd markets (Alexander, 2001) rather than concepts such as ‘planning versus markets’, public versus private sector, and organization versus management. Also, such an integrative view values the complexity and dynamics of empirical urban development practices. More specifically, this research studies urban development projects as object, as urban areas are the focus point of spatial intervention and public-private interaction (Daamen, 2010), and thus collaboration and management. Here, public planning processes and private development processes merge with each other. Thus, our research continues to build upon the importance of studying and reflecting on empirical practices and projects (e.g. Healey, 2006). In addition to these authors, this research does so by using meaningful integrative concepts that reflect empirical realities of urban projects. Thereby, this research serves to bridge management sciences with management practices (Van Aken, 2004; Mintzberg, 2010) through iterative processes of reflecting on science and practice. Moreover, the integrative management approach applied in this research assists in filling an academic gap, namely the lack of management knowledge about public-private interaction in urban development projects. Despite the vast amount of literature on the governance of planning practices (e.g. DiGaetano & Strom, 2003), and Public-Private Partnerships (e.g. Osborne, 2000b), remarkable little knowledge exists about what shifting public-private relationships mean for day-to-day management by public and private actors in development projects. Hence, here we follow the main argument made by public administration scholar Klijn (2008) who claims that it is such direct actor influence that brings about the most significant change to the built environment. An integrative urban management model (see Figure 2.3) based on the open systems approach has been constructed which forms a conceptual representation of empirical private sectorled urban development projects. This model serves as an analytical tool to comprehend the complexity of managing such projects. In this research, several theoretical insights about publicprivate relations and roles are used to understand different contextual and organizational factors that affect the management of private sector-led urban development projects. Hence, a project context exists

The Smart City concept is often debated in academic, corporate, and institutional spheres, highlighting its conceptual model variations and technological interests. Many cities have decided to implement the Smart City concept as another development strategy with the vision of growth and efficiency enhancement. Such strategy refers to an extra instrument, in many cases, for bridging technological-based solutions with urban development. However, a social aspect is increasingly considered as the missing piece in the Smart City concept. This paper examines the presence of socio-economic aspects in the Smart City conceptual model and the difference by its practical implementation, searching specifically for cultural heritage. The paper uses case studies to investigate the models of cultural heritage integration in different existing Smart strategies of the historical cities and cities significant for their cultural heritage. Case studies aim to provide an oververview of Smart strategies and Smart technologies, that support cultural heritage as one of the main aspects of its development and address its global challenges. The paper provides a critical view of Smart strategies based on technological innovations in historical cities, where the aspect of cultural heritage as an identity creator was neglected. The research addresses the overall position of the Smart City strategy in the strategic planning framework. It draws attention to coherence with other development strategies searching for cultural heritage objectives, in the case study of Nitra. The paper concludes with recommendations for positioning Smart City's strategy in strategic planning frameworks.

Aims: China is the largest energy consumer and producer in the world. Energy is crucial for the enduring and healthy development of China. Promoting urbanization has been regarded as a strategic measure for China to release the potential of domestic demand against the background of enduring international financial crisis. Usually, urban areas are more energy intensive than rural ones. Therefore, it's very meaningful to understand the relationship between energy and urbanization. The main aim of the paper is to study the relationship between energy and urban developments based on the analysis of China's energy and urban development, and provide a clear picture of the impacts of urbanization on energy development, which contributes to forming a base for further study of urban and energy relevant policies. Scope: The paper presents a thorough analysis of China's energy development and urbanization. Then it conducts a systematic and in-depth study of the impacts of urbanization on energy development quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally, some helpful recommendations are provided for the coordinated development of China's energy industry and urbanization. Core findings: (1) Urban development will bring about interregional impacts on energy flow pattern. The new pattern is likely to be described as remaining stable in the eastern region, speeding up in the central and gradually increasing in the western. (2) Urban development will promote to form new intraregional energy systems. The city will be the most energy-intensive in the new system. The layout of the urban industrial system will be a “U-shape” in terms of energy intensity. The urban industrial system can be divided into three parts, namely, the core zone including the city itself, suburb zones and exurban zones. The core zone is the most energy intensive among the three. The exurban zones are more intensive than the suburb zones. (3) Urban development will increase energy consumption. In the period of 2015∼2020, the incremental energy consumption effected by urban development will be 664 million tce; in the period of 2021∼2030, that will be 774 million tce. (4) Urban development will influence energy mix thanks to people's awareness of environmental and eco-system protection, and implementing such technologies as smart grid, UHV transmission and so on. Also, urban development will increase electricity consumption. Conclusions: Urbanization and energy development are two strategically important issues. By 2030, hundreds of millions of people will transfer from village to city. Many new cities and city clusters will emerge, which will give rise to the transfer of industry and influence the development of energy. China's urban development both provides a precious opportunity and constitutes an immense challenge for its energy development. Firstly, the plan for urban development and that for energy development should be coordinated in terms of infrastructure layout, energy mix, energy supply and distribution, etc. Secondly, give full play to smart grid in such aspects as integrating renewables, promoting energy conservation, leading to consumption habits and meeting the demand of divers and multilateral services, accommodating electric vehicles and so on. Thirdly, adhere to such principles as advocating environmental and eco-system protection, developing in a way of being driven by innovation, and taking urban and rural situations into account accordingly. Fourthly, combine the transformation of its energy production and consumption with the development of urbanization, more organically, systematically and efficiently.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in African Cities

Proposing an adapted visibility analysis methodology for the building height codes of the Shiraz development plan

Creating a Nursing Strategic Planning Framework Based on Evidence

The modern vision of the problems of studying the city presupposes its holistic, interdisciplinary perception, understanding of the city in deep retrospect as an organism that forms vital structures and traditions. The latter cannot be mastered without a new understanding of the fundamental foundations of urban development, which are reflected in the works of famous scientists from all over the world and Ukraine in the period of the most rapid growth in urbanization. The main task of the paper is a critical analysis and historiographical review of the most important urban studies and fundamental ideas. The selection of historical stages and significant schools in terms of quality of life of the population in modern geourbanistics is made. Based on a comparative and historical review of the most important urban studies in XIX–XXI centuries, it is concluded that at the present stage new approaches to the study and planning of urban development, as well as to solving the problems of forming a healthy urban ecology, which explain the development of urban space from the standpoint of quality of life. Without pretending to make a complete and detailed review of the current state of urban research, the authors of the paper set themselves the goal of tracing the evolution of geourban studies at different levels and under different conditions, as well as of outlining the areas of highest importance for the future development of geourbanistics in our country today. It is established that modern geourbanistics lacks empirical knowledge about the development of specific cities in accordance with their internal logic and in the context of modern realities. Due to the specific practices of each place, there are local ways of forming the quality of life of the population, the latter becomes unique together with the cities in which it is formed and reproduced. This idea has not yet been systematically developed in Ukrainian geourbanistics, but it should be done. Thanks to it, it is possible to combine different levels and different directions in understanding sustainable development and cities as its main agents.

Water sensitive urban developments are designed with integrated urban water management concepts and water sensitive urban design measures. The initiatives that may be included are the substitution of imported drinking water with alternative sources using a fit-for-purpose approach and structural and non-structural measures for the source control of stormwater. A water sensitive approach to urban development can help in achieving sustainability objectives by minimising disturbance to ecological and hydrological processes, and also relieve stress on conventional water systems. Water sensitive urban developments remain novel in comparison with conventional approaches, so the understanding and knowledge of the systems in regards to their planning; design; implementation; operation and maintenance; health impacts and environmental impacts is still developing and thus the mainstream uptake of these approaches faces many challenges. A study has been conducted to understand these challenges through a detailed literature review, investigating a large number of local greenfield and infill developments, and conducting extensive consultation with water professionals. This research has identified the social, economic, political, institutional and technological challenges faced in implementing water sensitive urban design in greenfield and infill developments. The research found in particular that there is the need for long-term monitoring studies of water sensitive urban developments. This monitoring is important to validate the performance of novel approaches implemented and improve associated guidelines, standards, and regulatory and governance frameworks, which can lead to mainstream acceptance of water sensitive urban development approaches. The dissemination of this research will help generate awareness among water professionals, water utilities, developers, planners and regulators of the research challenges to be addressed in order to achieve more mainstream acceptance of water sensitive approaches to urban development. This study is based on existing water sensitive urban developments in Australia, however, the methodology adopted in investigating impediments to the uptake of these developments can be applied globally. It is hoped that insights from this study will benefit water professionals in other countries where there is also a move towards water sensitive urban development.

Problem statement: The interventional plans are one of the most influential policies which affected the socio-economic and physical fabric of the old parts of the Iranian cities. While the foundation of old areas of many cities are based on the socio-historical values which has unique compatibility with the cultural background, the new urban development plans notably comprehensive and detailed, have not been integrated to such values. Approach: This study investigated the impact of urban development plans on the historic structure of Sanandaj city in Kurdistan province by using a descriptive-analytical method. Results: The results revealed several different and negative consequences, which included disintegration of the neighborhood organization, erosion of old urban fabric and the decline of identity and attachment to the traditional environment. Conclusion: The prevailed interventional policy imposed a modern circulation network into the old sites which now is criticized as copy of Hussmannian style. The internal parts of the city have experienced physical transition along with urban sprawl during the last 40 years which led to disintegration of social and spatial fabric of the city.

This study focuses on the potential of accessible open and green areas (OGAs) to serve as gathering spaces and temporary shelters during emergency response to disasters such as flood, earthquake, storm, terrorism, battle, etc. Specifically, the city of Lefkoşa in Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is studied in this context. A systematically constructed approach is employed, starting with the identification of the Dense Urban Core (DUC) within an 800 m access zone of OGAs and with a population density of more than 260 ha based on the Lefkoşa Urban Development Plan (LUDP). The study then determines the OGA requirements for gathering and temporary shelters during and after disasters, based on the floor area ratio, maximum building footprint ratio and projected population density given by LUDP. As a result of the study, the OGA requirements within the scope of the DUC were calculated to be minimum of 92 ha for gathering places, and minimum of 687 ha for temporary shelters. In this context, the city's disaster resilience index of the city is determined respectively to be 0.46 and 0.10. It is expected that this study will contribute to the integration of urban OGA development plans with disaster management efforts.