The Reinvention of Modernity: Gianugo Polesello and the Gruppo Architettura

Governance and Planning of Mega-City Regions

For some time now, the field of urban studies has been attempting to figure the urban whilst cognisant of the fact that the city exists as a highly problematic category of analysis. In this virtual special issue, we draw together some examples of what we call urban concepts under stress; concepts which appear to be reaching the limits of their capacity to render knowable a world characterised by the death of the city and the ascent of multi-scalar de-territorialisations and re-territorialisations. We organise the papers selected for inclusion into three bundles dealing respectively with complex urban systems, the hinterland problematic and governing cities in the age of flows. The phenomenon of urban concepts under stress stems from the existence of a gap between existing cartographies, visualisations and lexicons of the urban and 21st century spatial conditions and territorialities. Given that this disarticulation will surely increase as this century unfolds, a pressing question presents itself: what is to be done with the field of urban studies after the age of the city? In this introduction, we argue that there exist at least six ways of responding to the present conceptual difficulties, each implying a different future for urban studies. We place under particular scrutiny voices which argue that nothing less than a scholarly tabula rasa will suffice. Our conclusion is that the phenomenon of concepts under stress provides an opportunity to think afresh about what to do with the field of urban studies and that it is premature to foreclose discussion about possible futures at this point.

In the context of increasing division and segregation in cities across the world, along with pressing concerns around austerity, environmental degradation, homelessness, violence, and refugees, this book pursues a multidisciplinary approach to spatial justice in the city. Spatial justice has been central to urban theorists in various ways. Intimately connected to social justice, it is a term implicated in relations of power which concern the spatial distribution of resources, rights and materials. Arguably there can be no notion of social justice that is not spatial. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos has argued that spatial justice is the struggle of various bodies – human, natural, non-organic, technological – to occupy a certain space at a certain time. As such, urban planning and policy interventions are always, to some extent at least, about spatial justice. And, as cities become ever more unequal, it is crucial that urbanists address questions of spatial justice in the city. To this end, this book considers these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Crossing law, sociology, history, cultural studies, and geography, the book’s overarching concern with how to think spatial justice in the city brings a fresh perspective to issues that have concerned urbanists for several decades. The inclusion of empirical work in London brings the political, social, and cultural aspects of spatial justice to life. The book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of urban studies, sociology, geography, planning, space law, and cultural studies.

Much of the literature about global cities and the world cities network focuses on New York, Tokyo, London, and the other alpha power capitals of the world. But what about ordinary cities? In this selection from Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (2006), urban geographer Jennifer Robinson addresses this question, beginning with the proposition that “all cities are best understood as ‘ordinary’. Rather than categorizing and labelling cities as Western, Third World, developed, developing, world or global,” she asks that “we think about a world of ordinary cities, which are all dynamic and diverse … arenas for social and economic life.” Robinson calls into question many of the assumptions of global cities/world cities theory and lays the basis for a powerful critique of the way that theory disregards both much of the urban world, especially in the Global South, and much of the global cities themselves, especially their poorly educated, low-income populations trapped in dead-end service-sector jobs. Her critique of the global cities literature focuses on the way important global cities are categorized as uniquely special and placed in a hierarchical order that essentially disappears all the other cities of the world that are not leading players in the new global economy. She also criticizes the “developmentalism” of globalist theory, the arguably imperialistic idea that ordinary cities should aspire to becoming global by adopting Western urban values. Robinson also argues that, because of globalism, the field of urban studies has focused on global cities in a way that leaves most cities of the world literally “off the map.” What Robinson wants to develop is “a post-colonial urban studies eager to bring different kinds of cities together in thinking about contemporary urban experiences.” Only in this way can we establish “the basis for a post-colonial urban theory that refuses to privilege the experiences of some cities over those of others.”

China is currently carrying out the reform of territorial spatial planning. With the method of literature review, this paper gives a brief introduction to the development course of spatial planning in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Japan. After that, the four stages of China’s spatial planning development and the main contents of the current territorial spatial planning are introduced in detail. Then this paper explores the important factors affecting the development of spatial planning and the coping strategies of various countries through international comparison and discusses the enlightenments of the coping strategies of other countries to China. The study indicates that Chinese spatial planning has gone through the multi-planning stage, which comprises major functional zone planning, regional planning, territorial planning, urban and rural planning, and eco-environmental protection planning. Additionally, under the influence of multiple factors such as spatial resources, social factors, international events, environmental crises, and urban problems, China has formed the territorial spatial planning system with ecological civilization as its core concept and high-level governance, high-quality development, and high-quality life as its main planning objectives.

Cities of the Arab World: Theory, Investigation, and Critique Salah D. Hassan (bio) On February 14 and 15, 2019, scholars came together on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, MI, to discuss “Cities of the Arab World,” at a conference organized by Najib Hourani under the auspices of the Global Urban Studies Program in collaboration with the Muslim Studies Program, the Department of Anthropology, the College of Social Science, and in partnership with the University of Michigan’s Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Ann Arbor, MI. Papers presented in the course of the two-day interdisciplinary conference emphasized “Theory, Investigation, and Critique” in connection with urban studies of the Arab world. Over the two days, panelists presented their original research to a full house in the conference room at the MSU Union building. Rachel Croson, Dean of the College of Social Sciences at Michigan State University welcomed the participants and attendants, underlining the importance of the event for the university, the College, and the Global Urban Studies Programs. Igor Z. Vojnovic, Interim Director of Global Urban Studies further accentuated the uniqueness of the conference, one of the first major events organized by the program, whose staff served as the fulcrum for a rich partnership with several academic units at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. In his welcoming address, Najib Hourani, associate professor of anthropology and global urban studies, and the principal organizer of the conference, conveyed the importance of pushing the boundaries of research [End Page 135] in urban studies and Middle Eastern studies by bringing the two fields together in more complex and challenging ways. He noted the growth in the field of urban studies, which has only recently begun to take up the specific character of Arab cities, whose histories and 21st century transformations remain on the periphery of mainstream scholarship on cities. According to Hourani: “despite the revival and growth of Urban and Middle East/Muslim studies, these two interdisciplinary fields rarely speak to each other, even as the study of Arab cities in particular, has taken off over the last decade. Indeed, the theoretical works and debates that drive urban studies remain beholden to European and North American experiences, and so rarely engage or learn from Arab cities, their histories or contemporary dynamics. For example, while the literature engaging neoliberal urbanism has exploded in the last decade and a half, Arab cities (the occasional reference to Dubai, notwithstanding) are absent from the major collections that theorize the concept. At the same time, research on Arab cities is only now beginning to engage and redirect dominant strains of urban theory. How might in-depth study of Arab cities enrich urban theory? How might theoretically-driven explorations further enrich our understandings of Arab cities, in all of their complexity and diversity?” Hourani’s opening remarks provided the necessary frame for understanding the importance of this timely conference. Day One (February 14, 2019): Cities of the Arab World Panel I “Projecting Cities” included papers that addressed uniquely complicated developments in Gulf cities. Eva Kassens-Noor (Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI) presented research on “Mega-event Planning in the Arab World: A Case Study of Dubai’s 2020 World Exposition,” highlighting the struggle over ownership of the city during the event, and examining how mega-event legacies are understood. Her investigation looks at political, economic, and cultural influences shaping the 2020 World Exposition in Dubai and examines how developments related to the Expo are having an impact on Dubai’s urban planning. She concludes that the neoliberal tendencies associated with mega-events have significantly transformed Dubai’s urban and socio-cultural landscape, eroding further Arab urban culture in the Gulf. Gökçe Günel (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ) provided a snapshot of the extensive original research on Masdar City that she has done for her recently published book Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Duke University Press, 2019). The paper summarized the main points of the book, underlining the political-economy of the utopian project of Masdar City. Günel’s research exposes the contradictory and often opportunistic features of the...

In Spain, one of the origins of territorial imbalances stems from the historical weakness of territorial planning legislation compared to purely urban planning, highlighting the shortcomings of a model that has not enjoyed an adequate comprehensive territorial approach, either in practice or in regulations. Territorial and urban planning powers are ceded to the 17 Spanish regions, but they are influenced by sectoral elements, which are the exclusive jurisdiction of the state if they affect more than one Autonomous Community, as is the case of the maritime-terrestrial public domain, the hydraulic public domain, or the planning of major infrastructure. This further complicates the issue of territorial planning, compounded by the fact that the consolidation of its legislative framework was fraught with numerous difficulties, requiring almost two decades, and, as previously mentioned, was not achieved equally across the regions. Currently, the approach to drafting legislation does not adapt to new demands, socioeconomic changes, or national or European proposals. It would be necessary for legislative proposals regarding territorial and urban planning to keep pace with social evolution, streamlining approval and management processes and providing real solutions to the many problems they entail. The fact that each Autonomous Community has different legislations, with different names and planning instruments, makes it difficult to achieve complete territorial cohesion and balanced development in Spain as a whole, since challenges that require this scale to achieve a comprehensive view: environmental, social, and cultural aspects, are not addressed. Territories should be resilient to natural or health disasters, while also being safe, accessible, and energy-efficient. To achieve this, planning instruments must guarantee these minimum standards. Specifically, the areas most sensitive to this situation are those located on regional borders, as is the case between Andalusia and Extremadura, which will be discussed. The research will reveal that the territory and its structural elements do not understand administrative boundaries, but are continuous. Ultimately, on both sides of the dividing line, there are two ways of managing and protecting these areas, which creates a conflict where they meet as internal borders. Therefore, the research is framed within a differentiated territorial-administrative context, both regional and provincial, which leads to unequal efforts when it comes to developing territorial and heritage protection policies, among others. The subject of this paper will be to understand the legislative framework regarding the Land Law, the Territorial Planning Law — and their regional and subregional plans — in order to analyze the existing discrepancies between the legislative framework of the two regions, Extremadura and Andalusia, and to identify their vulnerabilities in the border area in order to address the situation through some improvement proposals.

Building Resilience Through Territorial Planning: The Experience of Province of Potenza

中國文化大學建築及都市設計學系創系主任盧毓駿教授，奠定系所朝向建築兼具都市規劃的發展方針；也規劃設計中國文化大學、交通大學等諸多館樓，以及科學教育館等多棟著名建築。時值1960-1970年代「中華文化復興運動」，盧教授的古典中式建築外觀，包覆著西方現代建築設計手法，成為當代建築之典範，更為中國文化大學塑造典雅的特色校園。本文運用生平歷史事件及著作文獻，採用文獻回顧法，歸納出盧教授建築及都市規劃之思潮源流、建築設計思維。綜理盧毓駿教授的論述與作品，可歸納：以天人合一的中國傳統思想為基礎，從都市幾何規劃逐步發展到有機論述；來自CIAM及柯比意（Le Corbusier）的設計思想概念；強調在地特色與基地調查的重要，在都市設計思維中尤其重視防災救災避難等防空規劃功能。其建築及都市規劃設計思維，逐步實現在中國文化大學與交通大學新竹博愛校區的校園規劃。Professor Lu Yujun, the founding director of the Department of architecture and urban design of Chinese Culture University, laid the development policy of the Department towards architecture and urban planning. He also designed many buildings such as Science Education Center, Chinese Culture University, and Chiao Tung University. During the 'Chinese culture renaissance movement' in the 1960s-1970s, Professor Lu adopted the appearance of classical Chinese architecture and covered with western modern architectural design techniques, becoming a model of contemporary architecture and shaping an elegant characteristic campus for Chinese Culture University. This paper summarizes the ideological source and architectural design thinking of Professor Lu's architecture and urban planning by using his life, historical events and literature review. The comprehensive discussion of Professor Lu Yujun can be summarized as follows: Based on Chinese traditional thought, it has gradually developed from urban geometric planning to organic discussion; Design ideas and concepts from CIAM and Le Corbusier; Emphasize the importance of local characteristics and base investigation, and pay special attention to air defense planning functions such as disaster prevention. His architectural and urban planning and design thinking is realized in his works.

The Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning algorithms have had a significant impact in overcoming the concept of a smart city, as evidenced by the latest scientific research. That trajectory is shifting from smart ontology to deep learning algorithms. The work integrates theoretical and practical knowledge of AI cohabitation with the city and how it changes it, but also a reversible process. AI recomposition is also considered, drawing on a number of urban disciplines and case studies. Through a comparative analysis of a series of case studies in cities where different methods of mutual constitutive relations have been applied, a synthesis of conclusions and a series of criteria and recommendations is reached. The chosen methodology is based on the thesis that every local context is unique, and AI system must be developed in a way that is adapted and corresponds to the specific local context. The research reveals the various impacts of AI on society, education, infrastructure, urban planning and sustainable development. The so-called new postsmart path for cities is confirmed through empirical examples and represents a new era and paradigm of future urban life. The urbanism of artificial intelligence was analyzed and the results may be useful in some future research due to the very interdisciplinary nature of the topic both in the fields of urban studies and architecture, as well as from the point of view of studies of scientific and technological development, education, sociology, culture and politics

Urbanization is crucially important for people to improve the quality of life. Thus, it is of importance to study the evolution of hot topics to explore the functions of cities for meeting the increasing demands of people. In this paper, we explored the semantic analysis of hot topics and trends in urban studies from the literature, which provides a research direction for future studies. Based on articles collected from the Science Citation Index Expanded and Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science databases from 2000 to 2016, we found that the number of urban studies increased in stability during that time. Followed by England and China, USA was the largest contributor for studies in this field. Based on the keywords and abstracts of these articles, we extracted the topics of the study using a clustering method and topic model, and calculated the hot values of the topics. Finally, we obtained 15 hot topics in the field of urban studies, among which “city”, “school”, “regional economic”, and “estate” were the hottest topics that indicated the focus of the research study. An anomaly detection method was used to analyze the change trend of topics’ hot values, and we found that the hot value of these topics overall were on the rise, especially “urban education” and “urban planning” increased significantly, which indicated that they attracted an increasing amount of scholars’ attention, but the hot value of “health” and “Gis” decreased significantly recently, which suggested that research interest in these two topics is decreasing.

Urban studies are an important part of the practice-oriented approach in town-planning education. Digital technologies are based on the processing of big data generated by the urban environment are of particular value if we are talking about the development of smart and sustainable cities. The article pays the attention to the use of the eye-tracker tool for solving applied urban problems in the framework of research work of students. The use of the eye-tracker is proposed as in instrument of urban research that allow to receive and evaluate large amount of information on the example of the research work of students on the survey of city streets of Berlin. The tasks was to fix the distribution of the pedestrian's gaze when they are walking along busy city streets, to assess the degree of attraction of the gaze by various elements of the urban environment and to obtain patterns of perception by the pedestrian of the spatial planning structure of the city street. The research project was attended by undergraduate students, whose goal was to practically get acquainted with this tool, master's students, whose goal was to identify and explore single factors, as well as a graduate student in urban planning, whose task is to form a scientific and methodological basis for the organization of spatial planning solutions of the urban environment. In such way we provide the relationship between the different levels of urban planning education, and in this chain, at each of the levels of study, students acquire specific skills and knowledge and abilities in the field of urban studies. Also, the study was conducted in the framework of an international project between Russia and Germany for joint urban research, which allows students to expand their experience and horizons in the perception of various urban practices. The article presents a methodological approach to the organization of inter-level interaction within the system of graduate education, as well as the results of the research project. The presented topic is a contribution to the digital development of smart education in accordance with the modern trends of digitalization of education and will ensure the quality and competitiveness of graduate education on the world stage.

The present reading of ‘The Right to the City’—one of the most discussed and quoted writings in the field of urban studies—has a limited scope, focusing on two main concepts and issues: ‘city’ and ‘urban planning’, the fundamental objects and fields of research and action of planners. With the aim of extrapolating a ‘planning lesson’ from a classical text, this paper offers a critical discussion of the meaning of the city as a mediation, and therefore an analysis of L.’s idea of an ‘intermediate domain’ to which the city belongs, in between what in Gramscian terms could be called ‘structure’ and ‘agency’. The paper also tries to highlight the implications that this peculiar position of the city may have for urban planning.KeywordsThe right to the cityUrban planningUrban studiesCityUrban renewalLefevbreGramsci

Tracking technologies and urban analysis

Urban landscape as a spatial representation of land rent: A quantitative analysis