Integration of Culture in Public Spaces: Cultural District Sarajevo

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

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

IntroductionIn the process of urbanization, public space plays an increasingly important role in improving the livability and sustainability of cities. However, effectively understanding the preferences of different groups for public space and conducting reasonable planning integrated with environmental and infrastructure elements remains a challenge in urban planning. This is because traditional planning methods often fail to fully capture the detailed behavior of residents. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the empirical application of machine learning technology to public space planning along the Grand Canal in Shandong Province (China), analyze the behavior patterns and preferences of residents regarding different public spaces, and thereby provide support for data - driven public space planning.MethodsBased on survey data from 1008 respondents across 4 cities, this study employed machine learning methods such as K - means clustering, association rule mining, and correlation analysis to investigate the relationships between visitor behavior and the environmental characteristics of public spaces.ResultsThe application of these methods yielded several important results. Cluster analysis identified three distinct groups: young and middle - aged local residents with a preference for accessibility, middle - aged and elderly groups enthusiastic about cultural engagement, and diverse transportation users with mixed spatial preferences. Additionally, association rule mining uncovered strong correlations between location types and perceived attributes such as cleanliness and aesthetics. Moreover, correlation analysis indicated statistically significant positive correlations between aesthetics and cleanliness, as well as between safety and cleanliness.DiscussionThis research offers valuable data - driven insights for public space planning and management. It demonstrates that machine learning can effectively identify and quantify key factors influencing public space use. As a result, it provides more accurate policy recommendations for urban planners and ensures that public space planning better meets the needs of different groups. For urban planners, the findings can guide the optimization of facility layouts for specific groups. For instance, adding canal cultural display nodes for cultural engagement groups and improving barrier - free facilities for groups with high accessibility needs, thereby enhancing the inclusiveness and utilization efficiency of public spaces.

The concept of “public space” occasionally appears in legal documents of the State of Vietnam, especially in laws. On the contrary, in ordinary newspaper articles, “public space” is often mentioned under various terms including “public place”, “public location”, “public buildings”, etc. At the same time, public space falls in the scope of various aspects of interest, particularly urban public spaces. Thus, it is needed that the State's ideology and legal policies on public spaces are defined. Such challenge “suggests” that we analyze the currently available documents of previous researchers, searching in various regulatory documents of the State, as well as statistical documents and conducting in-depth interviews with urban planning experts to present an understanding of the State's ideology and legal policies on public spaces in Vietnam.
 Various documents and researches have shown that the current planning policies in Vietnam consider land planning as a “golden mold” because the priority of the State still lies in economic, commercial, security and defense goals. These are the decisive factors that dominate other residential services, which is different from the modern logic of integrated planning, that, in turn, is based on three main pillars: i) Population planning and changes in demand for “residential services” in the broadest sense of this phrase (housing services; transportation services; medical services; educational services; cultural services; media services; environment, security and defense activities,...); ii) Administrative land planning; and iii) Land planning for economic and commercial activities. As a result of the current, yet simple categorization of land used in annual statistical documents, in the future, public space will not only be difficult to expand but also be narrowed in correlation with the growing population density, especially in urban areas. Meanwhile, the planning of public spaces of the previous periods still leaves us with lessons of the integrated and complex model to meet people's needs. The comparison of two French logic of integrated planning and the “socio-economic” spatial planning logic, taking economic and commercial in Anglo-Saxon-style as the central element also contributes to unravel the “ideology and policies of the planning of public spaces” of the state of Vietnam, although scientifically, the boundary between these two planning logic has now almost been blurred.
 Keywords:
 Public space planning; legal documents on public space planning; traffic space; spiritual space; entertainment and entertainment space; integrated logic; People's needs.

Integrating the Community in Urban Design and Planning of Public Spaces: A Review in Malaysian Cities

Greenhouse gases emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels are worsening air quality and affecting the climate system. While climate change impacts on meteorological variables affects air quality by altering the concentration and distribution of pollutants, air pollution significantly influences the climate, leading to negative impacts on human health. Due to the combination of high temperatures, air pollution, and high population density, cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. The planning and design of public spaces aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation can result in multiple co-benefits for human health, while reducing social inequalities. To address the major research gaps in the communication between health and planning experts, and the lack of capacity among public sectors and policy makers, it is necessary to promote capacity building and knowledge sharing between the planning and health sectors. The purpose of this article is to develop preliminary recommendations for a process that allows a comprehensive assessment of the interlinkages between climate and health, social, environmental, and economic vulnerabilities, and the quality of the urban spaces, to support local governments, policymakers, and education institutions in making informed decisions for public spaces. The methods applied were a literature review and interviews with experts.

Public space has critical importance for the city and society because it forms a sense of community. The debate on the end of public space, which is ongoing as the privatization in the city rises, moves on to a new phase with the Covid-19 outbreak. Since the perception of public spaces will be a determinant factor in the future of the city, the question arises: How the perception and usage of the public, virtual public and pseudo-public spaces (particularly shopping malls) have been affected by the recent Covid-19 pandemic? The aim of this study is to examine the changing perception and usage of public and pseudo-public spaces during the Covid-19 outbreak in Istanbul, Turkey. Within this scope, an online survey was conducted with 337 participants living in Istanbul between the dates of 1–5 June 2020. With this survey, the change in perceptions and usage of these spaces based on personal, residential and district characteristics were investigated. The findings of the study revealed statistically significant differences between the perceptions and usage of public spaces and pseudo-public spaces before and after the Covid-19 outbreak in terms of personal, residential and district characteristics. According to survey results, there would be a significant decrease in the frequency of possible visits to public places. The outbreak reduces interest in virtual spaces as a leisure activity, but it also increases the interest in virtual spaces as a shopping and meeting/chat platform. In addition, it was determined that the demand for shopping centres and virtual platforms as both before-after-the-outbreak leisure activities decreased significantly as the amount of green space per capita increases. Besides, the diminishing reputations of pseudo-public spaces and the increasing importance of virtual public spaces may be observed from the survey results. The longer the outbreak, the greater its impact on the design and planning of public spaces and pseudo-public spaces. Rather than planning huge and crowded spaces such as big squares and huge malls, there is likely a shift toward planning a large number of small-scale public spaces within walking distance.

PurposeSince the 1980s, planning public spaces for leisure walking is largely linked with economic and cultural objectives. Parallel to this tendency and the priorities of local authorities on barker public space projects, inhabitant’s associations, that grow up after the 2000s, propose new ways of visiting the city through collective walks. Drawing on the example of the Atenistas group, and based on the discourses of its founders, its presence on social media and the narratives of participants, the purpose of this paper is to question the emergence and function of new forms of urban walking that joggle between tourism, social exchange and act of citizenship.Design/methodology/approachThe case study is based on personal semi-directive interviews with organisers and participants at “Atenistas Open Walks”. It is also based on interviews that have been held with architects and urban planners within technical services of the municipality of Athens as also as within private sector’s structures.FindingsFirst insights from the study question pedestrianisation as a dominant urban planning tool towards animated street life and performant local economy. Contrary to the traditional top-down approach in Athens’s public space planning which uses pedestrianisation or land management to re-invest on the city centre, Atenistas Open Walks reveal the existence of alternatives ways of a re-engagement with city values and history. People search to explore the city by themselves and re-trace their proper itineraries (and ways of seeing the city) by outpassing official discourses on the decline, the success, the dangerousness or the beautifulness of certain neighbourhoods. Consequently, walkers constantly nourish their will to better understand the city. Public space experience outpasses morphological or functional issues. The act of walking with others in the city willing to explore places and to exchange on this experience, confront people with different narratives and trajectories and can momently be a strong factor of social cohesion and activation of public space with significant impacts on local economy. Walking collectively can emerge, in this way, as a counter model of public space planning capable of revitalise not only touristic activity, but also citizenship.Originality/valueThe study questions dominant discourses that link urban liveability and touristic attractiveness of urban centres with recreational events and streets’ pedestrianisation projects.

Public spaces are considered one of the fundamental elements in the urban context to promote leisure and recreation for urban dwellers. Public spaces contain variations within each other from the physical appearance, activities, and to usage factors. Private sector involvement for public space provision was increased in the recent past where public space ownership and access controls were shifted from solely public to private. This was criticized as privatization of public space and lead to debates on the decline of publicness and privacy of space. In this context, this research studied the public space from the user perception by considering publicly owned and operated versus privately owned and operated public spaces within Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is also explored the balance between ownership and access controls to determine the user preference in terms of the publicness features. User defined public space features were identified using 35 semi-structured interviews and 119 online questionnaire surveys. Qualitative analytic tools were used to evaluate the results including Content analysis and Space-shaper models with the support of NVivo software. The results revealed that publicly owned spaces were preferred by the users due to easy access and freedom for activities while privately owned spaces were preferred due to better infrastructure, safety, and security within. Also, it is identified that urban public space offered users the freedom to experience based on the levels of ownership and access controls. Finally, people preferred ownership by public over private sector as anecdotal evidence and values dominated in the public space attributes. This study provides key insights for planners to consider in the public space planning and the importance of private sector involvement and balance in the provision of optimal urban spaces in cities.

Context: The privatisation of public space has been triggered by a thematic and aesthetic approach planning, increasing control over urban inhabitant’s activities, commercialisation for economic interests, and the presence of virtual space. Globalisation and neoliberalism play a vital role in encouraging the privatisation and homogenisation of the public space concept. This privatisation has eroded the publicness values ​​of public space, which is aligned with previous studies in developed countries (Western Europe and the USA). Studies examining this phenomenon in developing countries, especially in Indonesia, are limited and tend to use Western perspectives as a basis for analytical approaches. Meanwhile, every society has specific local values ​​that cannot be generalised, which has the potential to create a different perspective.Objective: This study aims to understand the privatisation of public space and its implications for people in the context of Indonesia cities. In addition to fill research gaps for the developing countries, this study is also beneficial as a reference for all stakeholders in producing a contextual public space.Method: The study uses a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data is collected through in-depth interviews with respondents from various backgrounds who experience and interact directly with public spaces. Interviews with parties representing developers, planners, users, experts, observers, and researchers related to public space provide balanced and accurate information. Reviews of historical documents, journalistic reports, scientific studies, and government documents are carried out to complete the primary data. The cities of Surabaya and Bandung were chosen as study locations because they are currently considered successful in public space planning. As metropolitan cities that interact directly with global trends, both display similar images to other world cities. It is interesting to examine whether privatisation also takes place there, what the impact is to the community, and how the community reacts to it.Results: Indonesian cities also experience the privatisation of public space as other cities in developed countries, however, the Indonesian society responded relatively different from existing theories. Local values have played a substantial role in shaping people perspective. People who hold religious and local ethical values produce permissive responses to control in the public space. People who are familiar with the flexibility of communal space to accommodate various activities, including economic activities, make commercial activities in public places as an attraction. Political transformation plays a vital role in introducing formal public space as a social space. The issue of privatisation has not been able to dampen public attention to attractive formal urban open places. However, criticism of the non-contextual concept of public space began to sound. The dominance of the authorities and investors in the production process has commodified public space for the elite benefit.Conclusion: Each society has local wisdom that is unique from the others and is very instrumental in shaping the way people think. Therefore, planning for public space needs a more contextual concept, not just following global trends. Political reform must be realised through a more participatory planning process to accommodate the aspirations of urban inhabitants.

Future cities will have to confront limited urban spaces and resources, undertake the preservation or conservation of sense of place, and continuously improve the existing urban environment. Accordingly, urban void spaces are likely to become key strategic places for ‘Green Urban Development’. Urban voids are spaces that are useless, underused, abandoned, or in-between spaces among public and private realms. This research looks into urban voids that can be found especially within the residential environment in Seoul, as a chance for sustainable urban design. Dispersed urban voids have been generated due to various reasons, such as intrinsic to policy and planning system, changing economic, social and functional aspect and further on. The study briefly evaluates the existing built environment especially the quality of urban spatial structure and public spaces in the residential area, which is made up of individual buildings. Existing urban voids are extracted, identified and then classified into three major categories- plot, block, and street condition. A crucial aspect would be showing how these urban voids could be used or reused in terms of ‘green urban development’, which should consider not only the importance of preservation, but also balancing with new developments. Conventional low-level technology which involves planting and greening and environmental high technology which includes fuel cell, electric car station, rainwater storage and so on can be potentially applied and integrated into these urban voids. Consequently this research paper will suggest that each improvement measure should be considered as a piecemeal ‘act’ of an integrated urban regeneration and transformation of a whole city with adequate development guidelines.

Re- imagining public space: the vicissitudes of Japan’s privately owned public spaces

This article presents a study based on the urban structure of the city of Erechim-RS. Furthermore, it seeks to understand the relations between the public form of the city and its free spaces, making it possible to verify if those spaces are characterized as urban voids. Concerning the objectives of the work, the methodology is based on a morphological analysis with survey and mapping of data in addition to the development of the syntactic analysis of the urban network by the Spatial Syntax Theory method to superimpose this information and understand the current city conformation. The research is justified by the fact that public open spaces in the city are not configured as a planned system and the fact that some appear to be underused. It exposes the essential concepts for the development of work such as urban morphology and spatial syntax, public empty spaces, and their appropriation, contemporary city and urban voids. The study points out that public open spaces are mainly located in some neighborhoods in the central area, which is an area with greater integration, and a considerable part of the neighborhoods are unassisted from such spaces. Due to the current situation, some of these spaces are characterized as urban voids.