Urban Ideas Research Articles

Towards an insurgent urbanism: collaborative counter-hegemonic practices of inhabiting and transforming the cities

This article proposes a debate anchored in a dialogue between concepts of insurgent planning and humane urbanism and the idea of a subaltern urbanism through the lens of a critical reflection on the role of city-building professionals. The paper explores the idea of an insurgent urbanism as a collaborative praxis of city design and development that arises from the protagonism of marginalised communities and the accumulative knowledge of social movements, activists and scholars. It focuses on three different learning dimensions based on the experience of teaching/research actions developed at a self-organised squat in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 2018 and 2022. Dialoguing with ideas of social learning, it shows that these practices have created a relevant exchange of different types of knowledge and have contributed to the development of other solutions that challenge the hegemonic and neoliberal city production and can therefore be seen as alternatives for the development of more egalitarian and imaginative futures that expand beyond the context of squats in Brazil.

Design culture for Sustainable urban artificial intelligence: Bruno Latour and the search for a different AI urbanism

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability by drawing upon some key concepts of Bruno Latour’s philosophy. The idea of a sustainable AI urbanism - often understood as the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism - is here critiqued through a reconstruction of the conceptual sources of these two urban paradigms. Some key ideas of smart and eco urbanism are indicated as incompatible and therefore the fusion of these two paradigms is assessed as an unstable basis for shaping sustainable AI urbanism. The concepts in question - modernity, science and nature – are subsequently redefined following Latour’s philosophical perspective, in an attempt to define a different theoretical basis for a sustainable AI urbanism in the Anthropocene. Finally, the principles of a design philosophy shaped by Latour are used to change the design culture that informs AI urbanism towards a more sustainable practice. This paper constructs and promotes a dialogue between the disciplines of philosophy and urban theory with urban design in the conviction that the principles produced by the former and the practices carried out by the latter must start a biunivocal relationship. The paper reveals that in order to change design culture in the field of AI urbanism, it is necessary to rethink some of the key ideas that inform the Western and modern worldview through novel philosophical reflections.

Mapping policy pathways: Urban referencing networks in public art policies

This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept of the ‘Urban Referencing Network’ as a representation of the references made by cities to one another in policy documents. The study employs public art policies, specifically the Percent for Art policy, to investigate the structure of inter-referencing within the urban referencing network. Using a corpus of policy documents from 26 Anglophone cities with over one million residents, we analyse 150 documents containing 2178 inter-references. Combining network measurements and regressions, we explore the emergence of central nodes and the mechanisms influencing their formation. The broader field of arts and cultural policies, with its extensive inter-urban connections and professional networks, provides fertile ground for studying urban referencing networks. By integrating literature on policy mobility and urban networks, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the circulation of urban ideas and the interplay between cities in policy-making processes. The results demonstrate that only a few cities, including New York, Chicago, London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Montreal, emerge as central nodes, attracting the other cities’ attention. Attributes of the referenced cities, like economic importance, iconicity and early adoption, determine to a great extent who are the most central nodes.

Political Optimization Algorithm with a Hybrid Deep Learning Assisted Malicious URL Detection Model

With the enhancement of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities have developed the idea of conventional urbanization. IoT networks permit distributed smart devices to collect and process data in smart city structures utilizing an open channel, the Internet. Accordingly, challenges like security, centralization, privacy (i.e., execution data poisoning and inference attacks), scalability, transparency, and verifiability restrict faster variations of smart cities. Detecting malicious URLs in an IoT environment is crucial to protect devices and the network from potential security threats. Malicious URL detection is an essential element of cybersecurity. It is established that malicious URL attacks mean large risks in smart cities, comprising financial damages, losses of personal identifications, online banking, losing data, and loss of user confidentiality in online businesses, namely e-commerce and employment of social media. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the proposal of a Political Optimization Algorithm by a Hybrid Deep Learning Assisted Malicious URL Detection and Classification for Cybersecurity (POAHDL-MDC) technique. The presented POAHDL-MDC technique identifies whether malicious URLs occur. To accomplish this, the POAHDL-MDC technique performs pre-processing to transform the data to a compatible format, and a Fast Text word embedding process is involved. For malicious URL recognition, a Hybrid Deep Learning (HDL) model integrates the features of stacked autoencoder (SAE) and bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM). Finally, POA is exploited for optimum hyperparameter tuning of the HDL technique. The simulation values of the POAHDL-MDC approach are tested on a Malicious URL database, and the outcome exhibits an improvement of the POAHDL-MDC technique with a maximal accuracy of 99.31%.

Sector Analysis of Islamic Capital Markets and Artificial Intelligence Functioning as Sharia Advisors

Artificial intelligence technologies will have a significant impact on a variety of career areas, including jobs in finance and law. The fact is that the Islamic capital market sector tends to use AI technology. There are now proposals to replace the role of sharia advisors with AI technology. The research conducted is legal research using qualitative methods. The legal historiographical approach was chosen to show the responsibility of the sharia board in realizing the concept of Islamic urbanism. The idea of Islamic urbanism is closely related to AI technology and the capital market as the main places for both of them to work in cities. This research has three objectives. It analyzes the role and function of artificial intelligence technology, Islamic capital markets, and the part of Sharia Advisors in the industry. Then the problem of using AI technology in the Islamic capital market is identified. Moreover, it offers a solution to using the proposed innovative technology. This paper argues that the ability of technology to replace the role of Islamic advisors in the Islamic capital market sector is limited. This is because AI technology, although advanced, can only deal with the physical world of cities but still needs to embody the concept of Islamic urbanism. At the same time cannot replace the role of sharia advisors.

TACTICAL URBANISM An approach to implement NMT-friendly neighborhoods in Indian cities

This research paper examines the idea of tactical urbanism. In order to create neighbourhoods that are welcoming to non-motorized transportation (NMT), Using brief, low-cost interventions, tactical urbanism seeks to improve the usability and pedestrian friendliness of urban areas. The importance of NMT in Indian cities, where there is a great need for environmentally friendly and reasonably priced transportation solutions, is highlighted at the outset of the article. The various difficulties of putting in place NMT infrastructure are then discussed, including the lack of finance and space. The study contends that by empowering communities to take control of the transformation process and uniting various stakeholders behind a single objective, tactical urbanism can be a successful response to these problems. It gives examples of tactical urbanism projects that have been effective in Indian cities, such as turning parking lots into pedestrian-friendly areas and constructing bike lanes using bollards and signage. In order to secure the sustainability and scalability of these programmes, the report also highlights the necessity of long-term planning and governmental support. Overall, this study emphasises tactical urbanism's potential as a strategy for developing NMT-friendly neighbourhoods in Indian cities. In order to make Indian cities more accessible, livable, and sustainable, it advocates for increased cooperation between communities, local government, and civil society organisations. Keywords: participative design, public safety, tactical urbanism, economic development, community participation, sustainability, and equity.

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

Magnifying the Terrace: David Saunders and the Cross Street Co-Operative Housing Development

ABSTRACT This paper traces the influence that pioneering Australian architectural historian David Saunders (1928–1986) exerted over the development of the University of Melbourne’s Cross Street Co-operative Housing Development in Carlton designed by Earle, Shaw & Partners (1970–1971). Cross Street is one of a number of public–private medium-density housing developments that were constructed on large sites resumed by the Housing Commission of Victoria after World War II. While the Housing Commission was demolishing large areas of inner Melbourne for tabula rasa high-rise modernist development, Saunders argued for the retention, adaptation, and acculturation of urban form, exemplified in the house he and architect wife Doreen designed for themselves in Parkville (1962). Saunders took an active role in commissioning Cross Street and his influence meant that it became the first large-scale urban project in Australia that consciously articulated an understanding of its historic environment. The project demonstrates many of his key urban ideas such as the importance of the nineteenth-century terrace form and shared pedestrianised spaces. This paper argues that the project presaged the so-called rediscovery of the city in Australia, emerged amidst the rise of local architectural history as a discipline, heritage activism, and an institution positioning itself for expansion.

История становления и развития идеи «зеленого» городского планирования в Дании во второй половине XX – начале XXI века

Importance. The historical preconditions for the formation of modern urban construction policy in Denmark, current trends and features of Danish urbanism, current legislative acts regulating the issues of urban planning are considered. Within the framework of historical preconditions analysis attention is paid to the architectural and urban construction ideas of the 20th century, which made the greatest contribution to the establishment and development of the Danish tradition of urban environment planning. Attention is paid to the activities of English sociologist Ebenezer Howard and Danish architect Peter Bredsdorff, whose ideas are reflected in modern urban planning documents. The main organizations that at the present stage promote the ideas of ecological and conscious urban construction both among the citizens of Denmark and among commercial companies operating in the country are considered. The purpose of the research is to identify the Danish urban construction tradition rather than general patterns and trends characteristic, for example, for the countries of Northern Europe. The research highlights the value of studying Danish urban construction policy as an effective method for identifying the most constructive solutions to both local (individual settlements) and global (within the borders of a country or region) environmental problems. Materials and Methods. In the process of research the principles of historicism and objectivity, as well as general and special methods of historical cognition are used. On the basis of data theoretical analysis an objective assessment of Danish urban construction tradition development in the period from the second half of 20th to the beginning of 21st century is given. Results and Discussion. The main events in urban construction, social and legislative spheres that influenced the establishment of modern ideas of urban planning are analyzed. The historical analysis of the main urban construction and urbanistic decisions that contributed to the formation of the Danish legislative framework in the field of urban construction is given. The analysis of activity of significant organizations responsible for urban environment sustainable and “green” planning ideas promotion is carried out. Conclusion. The ideas of sustainable planning in the 21st century fully take into account and realize the needs and tendencies of both social and ecological spheres, defined in the middle of the 20th century. It is concluded that in the system of urban construction the tendency to sustainable use of urban areas and promotion of the ideas of ecological urbanism among the population will continue to be observed. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the identification of significant legislative and social decisions and historical events that influencing the symbiosis of the natural environment and modern urban needs of Danish cities for more than half a century.

Assessment of the comfort of the urban environment

Despite the legislative support for global ideas of new urbanism, the current development model of Russian cities continues to adhere to the direction of high-rise micro­district construction and uncontrolled expansion at the boundaries, leading to the irrational use of land and placing a significant burden on transportation and engineering networks. The research involved the analysis and comparison of various models of urban development as well as methods for assessing the quality of the urban environment. As a result, key factors influencing the creation of a comfortable urban environment were identified, including infrastructure accessibility, environmental sustainability, social equity, and spatial functionality. Based on the obtained data and the experience of other countries, recommendations and solutions for the development of Russian cities were proposed, aimed at optimizing land use, creating more functional and harmonious spaces, and improving the quality of life for urban residents. The research holds practical significance for urban planners, architects, and all stakeholders striving to create a sustainable and comfortable urban environment in Russia.

Is ecology anti-urban? Urban ideas and imaginaries across one hundred years of ecological publications

This paper investigates urban imaginaries conveyed in publications in ecology over the past century. We examine some urban ecologists’ view that urban areas have been disregarded by ecology due to negative views on cities and urbanisation. Inspired by previous work on imaginaries in social and cultural geography and political ecology, and by textual data analysis methods, we adopted a methodological framework that applies both quantitative and qualitative methods in the analysis of a corpus of 960 articles (published 1922–2018) drawn from 10 long-standing international journals in ecology. Our hypothesis is that ecology has embraced an anti-urban imaginary that is manifested in urban invisibility as well as the recurrent expression of negative ideas about cities (constituting an ‘anti-urban bias’). Our results partially confirm this hypothesis. We show that until the 1970s only a few papers were published on cities. We identify nine main themes relating to cities around which ideas about cities have been constructed (threats, pests, refuges, fragmentation, gradients, pollution, homogenisation, planetary urbanisation, and planning) and show how these ideas have been mobilised in the articles since the 1920s. We discuss the way in which these evolving ideas reflect a move from an essentially anti-urban imaginary to a more complex and ambivalent one. This shift coincides with the rise of the idea of planetary urbanisation in ecological publications, increasing recommendations regarding urban planning, and more generally, growing conceptual debates on the ecological impact of cities.

MODEL MIASTA

The design and development of cities is the most complicated phenomenon in the domain of shaping space. It is the result of planned human activities related to land parcellation, building infrastructure, establishing safety rules, creating a friendly scale and aesthetics of public spaces. It is also the result of spontaneous processes that take place without strict control. It is influenced by economy, demography, environmental factors, as well as wars, conflicts, and competition between entities. In architecture, it is possible to build knowledge and competences by performing tests on a 1:1 scale. Although expensive and difficult, it sometimes brings the desired results and opens the perspective to new design techniques. In urban planning, the subject of creative activities is too complex to test final solutions. The time from design to implementation is too long to use your own experience even indirectly. The only way to test urban ideas in the conceptual phase is to create models. Both geometric and social features could be represented. The most perfect contemporary models attempt to comprise many processes of city functioning, including spontaneous activities conditioned by external and internal factors.

North American street design for the coronavirus pandemic: a typology of emerging interventions

ABSTRACT This paper examines street design as an emergency response for physical distancing in public space during the coronavirus pandemic. We assess how design ideas for streets were discussed and promoted through news media from February through October of 2020. This marks a temporary, though potentially paradigmatic, shift in how streets function. To what extent the pandemic will enable longer-term street interventions is unknown. However, the initial impacts of the pandemic on streets are noteworthy. From our nine-month 2020 media analysis, we highlight a typology of emerging coronavirus-driven street interventions and assess how urban design ideas were discussed as a pandemic response. This is a clear break in the conventional management of urban streets, and the long-term impacts will continue to unfold in the years ahead. This paper focuses on reviewing the emerging street interventions from 2020. This is a significant moment for urban design in conceptualizing streets as public space.

Soft City Sensing: A turn to computational humanities in data-driven urbanism

Data-driven urbanism is often entangled with the smart city and practiced in a way that prioritizes control over physical objects and downplays the human and political aspects of data. We label this approach ‘hard city sensing’ (HCS) and we argue that the rise of the ‘digital city’ offers the empirical foundation for more humanistic approaches. Driven by the ambition to untangle data-driven urbanism from HCS, this paper reviews two decades of scholarship that has used digital traces as an empirical ground for understanding urban phenomena. The review identifies four distinct ways of working with digital traces of which three pave the way for new ways of problematizing the city. Instead of abandoning the idea of data-driven urbanism, we propose the framework of 'soft city sensing' (SCS) as way to re-engage with it with inspiration from these pioneering works. However, this requires a willingness to revisit central epistemological commitments that currently serve as standards for how to “properly” do data projects. We therefore urge qualitative urban scholars to ponder the possibilities of furthering their urban interest by ‘thinking with algorithms’ while retaining their interpretative ambitions just as we identify a need for urban decion-makers to expand their criteria for what serves as valid data inputs to urban planning.

The Use of Scientific Programming Method under Visual Communication Design Concept in Urban Landscape Design

The purpose of this study is to provide more orderly and convenient urban planning ideas for the fast-paced life in the complex urban environment. The current sign design is analyzed according to the needs of urban residents for barrier-free sign design, and the sign design based on urban space color is established. An urban landscape visual communication optimization method is proposed based on hue saturation value (HSV) technology. The multiscale retinex (MSR) algorithm is used as a reference for simulation experiments. The experimental results show that the designed optimization method is significantly better than the traditional method in the expression effect of visual communication. First, the attention time of the sign design can be reduced by more than 3 seconds, which can effectively improve the lives of urban residents and tourists and improve their browsing efficiency. Next, 94% of the citizens believe that optimized urban signs are more prominent than traditional ones. Finally, the sign design optimization method proposed provides an image with a higher definition than the traditional sign design method. The proposed sign design and optimization scheme can effectively coordinate the relationship among urban landscape design, guided objects, and cities, help busy urban life, and provide new ideas for the development direction of visual communication design.

Civitas. Corpus. Virus

For many centuries, the European city developed towards territorial concentration. The city accumulated human resources, multiplied the population, while becoming not only a single architectural, but also a single biological body. Today, the global viral pandemic is testing the city for the sustainability of the very idea of urbanization. Its challenges expose the problems of culture and traditions of social coexistence, subjectivity and self-consciousness of the urban community in the most dramatic way.

Development of Krasnoyarsk planning structure

The planning structure of Krasnoyarsk was formed under the influence of various urban planning ideas and concepts. The current trends in the development of the city are analyzed based on the changed types of the economy and ideas about the urban environment. Open data bases make it possible to analyze the structure of the development, the distribution of employment objects, services, and the processes of their transformation. In the structure of Krasnoyarsk, the authors point out the sequence of the development of the urban landscape, morphotypes of the residential areas, fringe belts, and the typology of the lower tier of buildings.

Ccessing the Sustainable Potential of Urban Projects Towards Smart Cities in Japan and the Middle East

Today’s new perspectives on ‘smart’ cities are becoming increasingly different from the past when people thought about the idea of urbanism which was the central terminology for studying the changing urban environment. With the rapid development of cities, the definitions and functions of urbanization are shifting towards green-urban development and sustainable ‘smart’ innovations. These changes are because of globalization, goals of a green future, and inter-cooperation locally and globally. This paper examines the sustainable potential of urban projects towards ‘smart’ cities in Fukuoka, Japan, and Dubai, the Middle East, with the two different cases and follows discussion on the aspects of ‘smart’ and ‘greening’. This article incorporates a fourfold methodology. First, the conceptualization of ‘urbanism’ is explored by examining the previously researched accomplishments and terminologies about urban studies and smart cities. Secondly, the Japanese case study on the city of Fukuoka is analyzed by considering Fukuoka is a great example since it innovates and practices on the built environment with the thinking of sustainability and the geographic feature of Japan where it has been reported that Japan is in a high threat level of natural disasters. Thirdly, the Dubai case study is argued by criticizing how the urban projects serve and improve the city in the ‘smart’ and ‘greening’ way and paying attention to the real estate and man-made environment. Fourth, this paper is concluded with a discussion to extract the points of smart cities and sustainable development from the two cases. In summary, the applicability of the sustainable potential of urban projects in Fukuoka and Dubai may provide real-life examples for reviewing and studying. The future operations in urban development and the innovative constructions in smart cities would be case by case based on the individual circumstances of different cities worldwide to react and manage the influences and changes caused by an unpredictable climate.

Growing urban anxiety and eco-dystopia in Usha K. R.’s Monkey Man

Urban anxiety is the wretched condition people undergo due to urbanization, and they become apprehensive when thinking about a sustainable future. When a city becomes urban, some people are thrilled to explore the elevated opportunities it provides, while some fear the havoc of urbanization. The following research is based on Usha K.R.’s Monkey Man, which seeks to understand how Bangalore city witnessed a massive transformation due to urbanization from being a pensioner’s paradise to India’s renowned Silicon Valley and India’s giant IT hub. The objectives of this research are two-fold (i) to understand how urbanization makes people’s lives anxious, and (ii) to analyze how urbanization also causes environmental distress leading to eco-dystopia. Monkey Man has been the subject of urban studies, yet the notions of anxiety and dystopia are relevant today. It intends to remind the city dwellers that they can survive with minimal nature exposure but cannot live a wholesome life without it. The objectives of this research could be achieved by combining the idea of urbanization and eco-dystopia with ecocritical theory.

Redeeming the shopping center. Victor Gruen's ideal cellular metropolis and Louvain-la-Neuve

The ‘mall maker' Victor Gruen is well known as the architect who played a dominant role in the design and global proliferation of the shopping mall. While many recent publications already highlighted and re-evaluated the architectural importance of Gruen's shopping center, the urban ideal/utopian projects proposed by Gruen have not been considered in depth thus far. Gruen mixed his design principles for shopping centers with ecological interpretations, proposing the Cellular Metropolis as a new urban utopia. This paper aims to shed light on Gruen's urban ideas, from his critical idea of the ecological-commercial realm to the study of radical commercial hybridizations, which are still relevant lessons for the design of our socio-spatial contemporary condition. In particular, the article focuses on the case study of Louvain-la-Neuve to ground such ideas into a real site.