Large-Scale Urban Developments and the Future of Cities: Possible Checks and Balances

Efrat Eizenberg

doi:10.17645/up.v4i4.2643

Abstract

Urban planning deploys large-scale urban development as a preferred strategy in many places around the world. Such an approach to development transforms the urban form, generates new socio-spatial urban relations, and changes planning principles, decision-making and urban power dynamics. This editorial introduces large scale urban development as the current urban policy, discusses possible checks and balances and presents the thematic issue on "Large Urban Development and the Future of Cities."

Highlights

Issue This editorial is part of the issue “Large Urban Developments and the Future of Cities” edited by Efrat Eizenberg (Technion— Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)
Relying on complex infrastructure and innovative design tools, large urban developments (LUDs) are often promoted as part of general densification plans, and as the way to address both housing demands and environmental concerns
In order for urban planning to dutifully reinvent the necessary adjustment and balances, questions should be asked about whom these developments are for, who are the excluded, and what kinds of socio-spatial relations they generate. This thematic issue on LUDs and the future of cities attempts to address these questions and demarcate the challenges they present. The purpose of such an endeavor is to expose the failures embedded in large-scale urban development as a dominant urban policy approach, and to single out the points at which local context, local needs and preexisting frameworks find their way into the process of development and redirect it, or have the potential to redirect it, away from a purely profit-driven end towards a more integrative understanding of various needs

Summary

Introduction

Advanced as the new urban policy (Gualini & Majoor, 2007; Swyngedouw et al, 2002), LUDs have, been critically perceived as the embodiment of the domination of neoliberal market forces over urban development. The purpose of such an endeavor is to expose the failures embedded in large-scale urban development as a dominant urban policy approach, and to single out the points at which local context, local needs and preexisting frameworks find their way into the process of development and redirect it, or have the potential to redirect it, away from a purely profit-driven end towards a more integrative understanding of various needs.

Results

Conclusion