Large-scale Urban Development Research Articles

Complementary assistance: multilateral exchanges between the Soviet Union, China and Eastern European countries in Cold War Mongolia

ABSTRACT During the Cold War, large-scale urban development projects were launched in Mongolia with technical assistance from various socialist countries – China, East Germany (the GDR), Poland, Czechoslovakia and, above all, the Soviet Union. Looking at the involvement of these dissimilar countries to Mongolia, this article challenges simplistic narratives about bilateral East-South exchanges, and frames socialist development assistance as multilateral, asymmetric and complementary. It argues that some of the iconic projects of socialist development in Mongolia could hardly be called products of any one donor’s aid programme, and instead required the cooperation of various providers, collaborating on multiple, interconnected fronts. Such multilateral assistance was marked by highly hierarchical racialised divisions of labour, and created strong interdependencies between various countries involved in Mongolia.

From art object to rubble

This article investigates the impact of the valuation of demolition materials on its ultimate destination in the city of Brussels between 1860 and 1940 via an analysis of municipal policy on demolition. It examines the process of revaluation and devaluation in buildings, shifting the focus from large-scale urban developments to individual elements and materials. The study entails an analysis of the rules embedded in the building regulations and specifications for demolition projects, as well as records, reports and correspondence illustrating the enforcement of these rules. A brief outline of the legal and administrative framework is followed by a discussion of the criteria used in categorizing and evaluating demolition materials.
 In the period under consideration the Brussels city council, in common with many European municipal governments, embraced large-scale demolition operations as a radical solution to the challenges facing city centres. The stable policy during the period 1860-1940 exhibited various valuation processes across comparable demolition projects. The Brussels authorities pursued a stratified policy, integrating the different categories of demolition materials according to their nature and value. These categories comprised (1) treasures, artworks, objects related to numismatics and natural history, and all other objects of any value, (2) materials and objects, and (3) rubble, soil and waste.
 The city prioritized artworks and objects of artistic or historical value, over which it retained ownership, and invested in the preservation, exhibition and reuse of such materials. Other demolition materials were sold to the demolition contractors, meaning that the city government had little direct influence over their ultimate destination. Nevertheless, the building inspector estimated the financial value of the various materials and objects prior to organizing a public sale of these materials. The limited interest in rubble and waste evident in the administrative documents did not necessarily point to an absence of policy, but rather to the relation between various categories of demolition materials. By drawing attention to their financial value, the public sale of such materials not only generated financial returns for the city, but also indirectly influenced the reuse of these materials and so also the proportion of rubble and building waste.
 As such, the study serves to clarify the dynamics between revaluation and devaluation of demolition materials. This new perspective on demolition materials illustrates their role in policymaking with respect to large-scale urban transformation projects. It contributes to a broader understanding of the importance of the reuse of demolition materials in the period between 1860 and 1940, and sheds light on the relation between urban development, heritage preservation, reuse and waste management.

Applicability of Q-methodology in public engagement practice for large urban park development – Case of Seoul Yongsan Park

This study explores the applicability of Q-methodology as an evaluative tool in urban park development projects, assessing its effectiveness for public engagement practices and uncovering nuanced perspectives often overlooked in conventional large-scale programs. While Q-methodology is renowned for its quantitative analysis of qualitative data, its potential as a qualitative method remains underexplored. Combining Q-methodology with 1:1 interviews, utilizing Q-sort sets as guides, allows participants in the Yongsan Park Development Project (YPDP) to articulate detailed interpretations of their positions. Analyzing 20 participants' perspectives revealed five distinct factor groups, emphasizing preferences for a ‘park with a unique identity,’ ‘pastoral landscape park,’ ‘cultural activities park,’ ‘economically efficacious park,’ and “a ‘public’ park.” Notably, a majority favored a park with a unique identity, aligning with previous public engagement outcomes. Unprecedentedly, the study identifies heightened interest in the project's economic effectiveness, vital for YPDP's future viability. The findings underscore Q-methodology's efficacy in evaluating past public engagement outcomes, offering a valuable tool for navigating evolving contexts in long-term, large-scale urban park development. The study advocates for governmental engagement practices to experiment with diverse methodologies and participant scopes to enhance understanding of public needs and perspectives.

Large-scale urban road corridors development and urban sprawl in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana

This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ Uncontrolled urban expansion is a characteristic feature of many cities of the global South. In this paper, we focus on how urban road infrastructure investments largely financed through bilateral and multilateral loans and grants inadvertently drive urban sprawl within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), Ghana. To do this qualitatively, we critically review the 1991 GAMA Strategic Plan along with other related documents and expert interviews. Based on the findings, we argue that GAMA’s growth trajectory runs counter to its spatial plans progressively instituted to achieve integrated urban land use management and resilience. Consequently, this has resulted in mere expansion of road corridors without consideration for policy recommendations regarding traffic management, land use planning, housing densification and infilling measures. We conclude that initiatives for urban planning and its sustainability in the global South, specifically for Accra, need to reflect on the implications of the infrastructure turn, especially the contributory factor of road corridors expansion to urban sprawl.

Integrating Minimum Spanning Tree and MILP in Urban Planning: A Novel Algorithmic Perspective

This paper presents a novel eight-step iterative algorithm for optimizing the layout of a neighborhood, focusing on the efficient allocation of houses to strategically placed facilities, herein referred to as ’points of interest’. The methodology integrates a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) approach with a heuristic algorithm to address a variant of the facility location problem combined with network design considerations. The algorithm begins by defining a set of geographic coordinates to represent houses within a predefined area. It then identifies key points of interest, forming the basis for subsequent connectivity and allocation analyses. The methodology’s core involves applying the Greedy algorithm to assign houses to the nearest points of interest, subject to capacity constraints. The method is followed by computing a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) among these points to ensure efficient overall connectivity. The proposed algorithm’s iterative design is a key attribute. The most promising result of this approach is its ability to minimize the distance between houses and points of interest while optimizing the network’s total length. This dual optimization ensures a balanced distribution of houses and an efficient layout, making it particularly suitable for urban planning and infrastructure development. The paper’s findings demonstrate the algorithm’s effectiveness in creating a practical and efficient neighborhood layout, highlighting its potential application in large-scale urban planning and development projects.

Failure Process of High-Loess-Filled-Slopes (HLFSs) during Precipitation under Different Mitigation Measures

The problems of gully and soil erosion caused by large-scale urban construction and agricultural development in China have become more and more serious in recent years. In an effort to solve this problem, a series of gully stabilization and highland protection projects have been carried out on the Loess Plateau, and this has resulted in a large number of high-loess-filled-slopes (HLFSs). Although these filled slopes uses several different mitigation measures, the HLFSs have been eroded and destroyed under the action of water. In order to study the influence of different mitigation measures on the stability of HLFSs and their failure process, this paper uses a flume test of the effects of various mitigation measures on this failure process. The results show that: (1) the failure processes of slopes with different mitigation measures are obviously different. Slope deformation u with a declining gradient mitigation mainly occurs on the surface of the slope body, and although slope erosion is quite serious, the slope does not fail as a whole. Slopes with a stepwise drainage channel mitigation show little erosion, but material can easily slide along the horizontal drainage channels. (2) The slope deformation process is correlated with changes in pore-water pressure. When local instability occurs, there is always a pre-process of continuously rising pore-water pressure. When a failure occurs, the pore-water pressure of the soil at each position of the slope body suddenly fluctuates under instantaneous excitation. (3) The response of soil pore pressure and the development characteristics of tension cracks affect the deformation of the slopes, which is also the cause of the differences slope instability caused by different mitigation measures. These research results provide reference for the protection of HLFS engineering projects from heavy rains.

Evaluating large-language-model chatbots to engage communities in large-scale design projects

Abstract Recent advances in machine learning have enabled computers to converse with humans meaningfully. In this study, we propose using this technology to facilitate design conversations in large-scale urban development projects by creating chatbot systems that can automate and streamline information exchange between stakeholders and designers. To this end, we developed and evaluated a proof-of-concept chatbot system that can perform design conversations on a specific construction project and convert those conversations into a list of requirements. Next, in an experiment with 56 participants, we compared the chatbot system to a regular online survey, focusing on user satisfaction and the quality and quantity of collected information. The results revealed that, with regard to user satisfaction, the participants preferred the chatbot experience to a regular survey. However, we found that chatbot conversations produced more data than the survey, with a similar rate of novel ideas but fewer themes. Our findings provide robust evidence that chatbots can be effectively used for design discussions in large-scale design projects and offer a user-friendly experience that can help to engage people in the design process. Based on this evidence, by providing a space for meaningful conversations between stakeholders and expanding the reach of design projects, the use of chatbot systems in interactive design systems can potentially improve design processes and their outcomes.

Green and Smart Urban Development: A Comparative Studies Between Cities of Romania, Canada and Denmark

Abstract Due to the fact that the planet’s resources are limited and human exploitation has led to unprecedented environmental pollution, sustainability has become a concept of great importance in recent years, especially in the context of very rapid and large-scale urban development. The green city is a form of sustainable city focused mainly on the creation of green spaces, which helps, among other things, to reduce pollution, to combat climate change and to create a more favorable environment for people. Green infrastructure is the main element that characterizes this type of sustainable city, the dynamics of the use of the term in specialized studies showing an upward trend. Interest in the notion of green city has seen a major increase in the last 8 years, highlighting the need to create a more nature-friendly way of urban development. The country that stands out regarding its contribution in terms of studies carried out on the theme of green city is China, while Romania is one of the countries where this subject is very little researched. A cluster analysis of cities in Romania, Denmark and Canada provides a valuable perspective, namely that Romanian cities are the most polluted and have very few green spaces per capita, suggesting the existence of problems with government policies to transform the cities into ones that respect the environment more.

A Sustainability-driven Integrated model of strategic management for coastal urban projects

ABSTRACT Amidst today’s climate change-related environmental risks, both new and experienced investors may face uncertainty and lack of direction when preparing for investments, particularly in large-scale urban development projects. Therefore, guidance in construction investment, especially during the planning stage, becomes crucial to enhance the likelihood of success in coastal urban development projects and promote sustainable development. This study offers a valuable tool that integrates quantitative approaches like the “Balanced Scorecard” (BSC), “Analytical Network Process” (ANP), fuzzy theory, and “Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory” (DEMATEL) to create a strategic performance management framework focused on sustainable development. The model emphasizes the significance of investing in human resources, IT systems, and enterprise culture to foster business growth and development in urban coastal projects. Additionally, the study underscores the importance of internal control over project time, technology, quality, legal compliance, and resources, which serve as the driving forces behind operational processes. Furthermore, effective and flexible management of financial, social, and environmental activities is vital to ensure enterprise success while adhering to environmental, health, and safety requirements.

Governance Discourses and Image Management Strategies in Large-Scale Urban Development Projects—How a Shifting Context and Actor Relations Influence Planning

Governance processes and image management strategies in large-scale urban development projects are exposed to a range of contextual and internal actor-network-related influences. These relations are complex and, due the long realization time of these projects, cannot be entirely anticipated by management strategies. This research investigates how organizations manage these complexities and uncertainties, what strategies they employ, and how these strategies adapt over time. The research analyzes the empirical case of the Amsterdam Zuidas development through a series of interviews conducted with key stakeholder group representatives and an extensive study of the development visions at different milestones of the development. The study relates these findings to the theoretical framework of Henry Mintzberg on strategy formation and finds that large-scale urban development projects need to employ overlapping strategies and engage in adaptive learning to balance development ambitions with the internal and external influences affecting the strategies.

Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union by Christina E. Crawford

Reviewed by: Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union by Christina E. Crawford Iva Glisic (bio) Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union By Christina E. Crawford. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. xv + 385. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union sought to catch up with (and overtake) its economic rivals by undergoing a process of accelerated industrialization—an ambitious venture that quickly transformed the entire country into a mega construction site. With Spatial Revolution, Christina E. Crawford examines the relationship between this "hyperindustrialization drive" and the emergence of a distinctly socialist approach to architecture and urban design (p. 1). Focusing on major projects in "geographically peripheral" but economically significant Soviet [End Page 589] industrial centers (p. 2), Crawford positions these sites as critical "experimental enclaves" and argues that on-the-ground experience at these remote locations—rather than directives from above—were critical in articulating the socialist spatial practice (p. 9). At the heart of Spatial Revolution is a key question faced by early Soviet architects, planners, and administrators: How should the spatial relationship between an industry and its workers be optimized? To both foreground the centrality of this question and demonstrate the myriad ways in which it was answered, Spatial Revolution is organized around a series of case studies. The book opens with a compelling narrative on Soviet Azerbaijan's oil-rich capital, Baku, and the development of its general plan between 1924 and 1927, through which Soviet officials sought to reshape the city into a modern petro-hub. Subsequent chapters trace a pair of critical episodes in early Soviet planning: the 1929 design competition for the city of Magnitogorsk—planned as the centerpiece of the steel industry—and the simultaneous construction of a tractor factory and housing for its workers in Kharkiv between 1930 and 1932. Crawford makes good use of these case studies, which provide the foundation for an analysis that rhythmically shifts between large-scale urban developments, architectural solutions for industrial buildings, and individual housing units. Throughout these episodes, Crawford introduces contemporary debates on socialist versus capitalist urban layouts and explores various design solutions that have sought to reflect a collectivist ethos. This approach provides valuable insight into the evolution of Soviet spatial models, including the famous garden settlements and urban superblocks. Crawford is also interested in socialist modes of production, and her analysis offers a new understanding of Soviet approaches to improvement, innovation, and architectural standardization. Readers interested in industrial and cultural diplomacy will also find a wealth of engaging material concerning the influence of English garden cities, Weimar housing projects, and technologies developed for American oilfields on Soviet projects. Spatial Revolution intervenes in current academic debates in two important ways. First, it challenges the tendency to frame spatial projects from the early Soviet era as merely theoretical—perhaps innovative, yet often unrealized—which has in turn led to their persistent characterization as failures. By foregrounding a series of completed projects and recognizing the scope of what was accomplished amid the challenging economic circumstances of this period, Crawford complements recent efforts to correct the misperception of early Soviet creative ventures as having been largely unsuccessful. Second, by demonstrating the influence of Soviet avant-gardists on the development of these construction sites—from workers' housing projects in Baku to factory buildings and social infrastructure in Kharkiv—the study offers further evidence that the impact of avant-garde practices in the Soviet Union was broader and longer lasting than has traditionally been assumed. [End Page 590] Where Crawford departs from recent literature (including Kachurin's Making Modernism Soviet, 2013, and Utopian Reality, edited by Lodder, Kokkori, and Mileeva, 2013) is in treating ideology and pragmatism as mutually exclusive. The lack of systematic engagement with the notion of ideology lends a sense of tension to Crawford's discussion, especially in instances when the absence of an explicit mention of ideology is taken as evidence of its secondary or marginal place within these projects. Crawford's insistence on drawing a hard line of separation between theory and practice in her analysis is also problematic. Statements to the effect that "it was no longer the time for theories, manifestoes...

The development of a road network flood risk detection model using optimised ensemble learning

Floods are natural phenomena that invade different parts of the globe annually, leaving severe adverse effects on the natural landscape, particularly in areas where humans practice large-scale urban development activities. Inadequate corporate strategic stormwater management or maintenance plans make the issue even worse. Therefore, efforts have been consolidated to confront flood hazards by incorporating precautious and proactive strategies toward better forecasting and preventing flood disasters or even mitigating the damage if it occurs. Further, there is inadequacy in incorporating computational intelligence techniques to detect flood susceptibility in road networks. This paper proposes a data-driven flood risk areas detection model incorporating various ensemble and generic machine learning techniques as well as autoML tools. A systematic and iterative approach is followed to examine different solutions to tackle the data balancing problem, including oversampling and undersampling techniques. Also, hyperparameter optimisation is undertaken using both grid search and genetic algorithms, and the models’ performance using each designated strategy is reported and assessed. The empirical results from the experiments indicate that the optimised ensembled Extremely Randomized Trees classifier proves an ability to perform well on the given dataset with an averaged ROC AUC value of 90% and outperforms several state-of-the-art generic, ensembled, and autoML classifiers in all evaluation measures. The proposed framework could be possibly generalised to other road networks in similar topographical and geological regional areas.

Exploring the rationalization, functional integration and socio-spatial implications of Zimbabwe’s New Capital City (NCC)

ABSTRACT The development of new master-planned cities is a popular approach to decongest major metropolitan areas in different African countries, including Zimbabwe. This paper is an exploratory analysis of Zimbabwe’s New Capital City (NCC), being created roughly 20 kilometers outside Harare. Specifically, the paper analyzes the design of the NCC, the principles underpinning its production, the different rationalities used by policymakers for its legitimation, as well as the socioeconomic and spatial implications. Based on review of secondary literature, plans, and interviews with city planners and other professionals, the paper finds that the creation of Zimbabwe’s NCC represents urban boosterism, an active promotion of a city through development of large-scale urban development schemes and creating a new image for the city. The production of the new city is also underpinned by neoliberal motivations and imported ideas of urban planning which disregard the local planning urban context, where poverty and informality are prevalent. The creation of new master-planned cities must therefore strive to address these contemporary urban challenges rather than exacerbating them. The paper contributes to scholarly debate on the production of new master-planned cities in Africa and the Global South more broadly.

Spatio-temporal modeling of parcel-level land-use changes using machine learning methods

Spatio-temporal modeling of parcel-level land development dynamics is essential to maintain sustainable urban growth. Modeling parcel-level urban development controlling contemporaneous and historical conditions involve computational challenges since data sizes grow quickly beyond the capabilities of conventional statistical-based spatial models. Machine Learning (ML) methods provide computationally feasible methods for large-scale data sets. This paper introduces new ML applications using advanced algorithms and GPU parallel processing to model large-scale urban land developments. Special attention is given to accelerating the construction of spatial weight matrices and training ML models. Specifically, artificial neural networks and random forests are applied to the state of Florida’s land-use data, which contains nearly 9 million parcels, to predict parcels with changes in their land use based on historical and neighborhood data. The adaptive Hashing algorithm coupled with GPU parallel processing accelerates the average processing time for identifying the fixed number of nearest neighbors used for accounting spatial autocorrelation, by almost 16,000 times. Also, ML model training times are shortened by 49–547 times using GPU. Further, our best ML model achieves approximately 92% accuracy while outperforming some competing methods, including logistic regression. Such a high prediction accuracy helps policymakers adjust budget allocations to meet local land-use change projections.

Syndicated leadership in urban development projects: the case of the River City Gothenburg project

Large-scale urban development projects are complex economic and politically shaped activities, and such projects have oftentimes proved to be more costly and demanding more time to complete than is frequently being stipulated from the outset. Based on these conditions, urban development projects demand effective cross-organizational collaborations to optimize the use of available expertise, the capacity to process data and information, and to optimize public interests (being monitored by democratically elected entities in democratic societies). Based on a study of a major urban development project in Gothenburg, Sweden, this article introduces the concept of syndicated leadership, derived from the concept of syndicated investment in the venture capital industry. Syndicated leadership is based on the centralization of decision-making authority and resource allocation to a team of leaders, each representing (in the case examined) a private corporation, a municipality corporation, or a municipality agency having specific responsibilities in the shared urban development project, but also being dependent on the capacity to coordinate and align project activities. As the case indicates, syndicated leadership demands new expertise and communicative capacities and political skills, but when implemented effectively, it holds the promise of avoiding costly and embarrassing urban development project failures as it makes better use of the expertise of the participant organizations and better accommodate public interests.

Urban Resilience: A Study of Leftover Spaces and Play in Dense City Fabric

Cities worldwide are urgently moving towards a more resilient and sustainable future. On this quest, national, regional, and local governments apply a combination of socio-spatial tools that regenerate and transform the city’s leftover spaces. There is an abundance of community gardens, cultural centers, and large-scale urban developments that, through programmed activities, reactivate underused spaces. The bearers of this process are professionals and individuals who have become aware of their actions in the contemporary urban landscape. This paper highlights possible design strategies that domesticate leftover spaces of diverse scales by injecting creative and playful programs, using Tokyo as a paradigmatic case study. More so than other global metropolises, the city represents a living laboratory for experimentation due to its compactness and the variety of urban patterns. Its leftover spaces demonstrate how play positively affects everyday life in public spaces, and how it enables extraordinary uses. A combination of ethnographic observations and spatial analysis is applied as a trans-disciplinary method. This approach allows an understanding of how people use playfulness to transform, appropriate, and utilize leftover spaces, which serves as guidance for urban planners and designers.

Mainstreaming climate adaptation into urban development projects in the Netherlands: private sector drivers and municipal policy instruments

ABSTRACT Improving the climate resilience of urban areas critically depends on the integration of climate adaptation measures, i.e. mainstreaming, into regular construction practices. As research has largely focused on public sector adaptation, the mainstreaming of adaptation into private sector projects remains poorly understood. The aims of this study are twofold. First, we examine what drives private developers and investors to mainstream adaptation into large-scale urban development projects. Second, we explore what policy instruments municipalities can employ to stimulate private sector mainstreaming. Our theoretical lens combines insights from the literature on mainstreaming, sustainable building drivers and policy instruments. These concepts are used to guide our analysis of four urban development projects and an interview study in the Netherlands, a densely populated delta country which is rather vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Our results show that private developers and investors seldom explicitly include adaptation measures into their development projects. An important impediment is the perceived absence of direct monetary benefits. If adaptation measures are implemented, they are often realized as a side-effect of creating a high-quality living environment or because private actors expect other professional benefits, such as corporate image enhancement or development of know-how. To stimulate private sector mainstreaming, Dutch municipalities already use a mix of policy instruments that might be a source of inspiration for other countries. Yet, especially the way in which enforcement and incentives are applied is not always effective. Key policy insights Despite the private sector’s growing awareness about the need for and importance of climate change adaptation in the Netherlands, adaptation is still seldom explicitly included in large-scale urban development projects. Municipalities should invest in policy instruments that target consumers. Communication, education and incentives can be used to raise consumer awareness and consequently demand for climate-adaptive properties. Municipalities should collaborate with the private sector to develop clear, uniform and feasible adaptation requirements. Municipalities should actively participate in urban development projects, i.e. co-developing with the private sector. This way, private sector drivers and policy instruments can strengthen each other to pave the way for future-proof and climate-resilient urban environments.

The potential for sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) in a regional urbanization project

With global urban populations expected to reach 5 billion by 2030, large-scale urban development is required to support and sustain this growing populous. At the same time, city planners are facing the pressures of climatic changes, which forecast more intense rainfall events, further exacerbating the existing challenge of surface water flooding in urban locations. Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) are one proposed solution to help alleviate such problems, yet much still remains to be known about their operation, performance and potential benefit provision beyond the neighborhood scale, or within a mixed-form development. Using a case study of the Cambridge to Oxford Arc (a region of England earmarked for extensive urbanization), development patterns of different extents and spatial layout were modeled. The Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) was then used to simulate surface water runoff conditions in these developments during a 1-in-10-year rainfall event. Whilst denser scenarios typically led to greater peak runoff rates and total runoff volumes, this was not always the case under some SuDS designs as the denser scenarios provided the opportunity for more SuDS provision. The proportion of different surface cover types had a strong influence of runoff volumes and rates (due to the different impermeable surface areas and SuDS provision), and since the different housing typologies offered different proportions under each development scenario, there was no single typology that showed the lowest or highest runoff volume across all scenarios. The findings of this study highlight the importance in a planning context of considering multiple typologies and their footprints of different surfaces to maximize the potential of the development design in achieving the development's goals.

Level of Understanding and Attitude of Primary School Pupils’ towards Food Security Through Sustainable Garden Implementation

In recent years, many countries have faced challenges balancing food production and the increasing needs of the rapidly growing population and large-scale urban development. This situation reflects the importance of food security in overcoming food shortages. Food security allows every citizen to acquire the same amount of nutritious food to survive and lead a healthy life. The concept of sustainable gardens is the best way to improve food access and increase food resources to ensure food security. This study examines primary school pupils’ level of understanding and attitude towards food security through the implementation of sustainable gardens. In this study, pupils’ understanding of food security means they understand that it entails access to the same physical, social, and economic resources and adopting a healthy and active lifestyle. In terms of attitude, sustainable gardening activities can help pupils provide feedback openly and influence them to adapt these practices to their social environment. This study aims to measure pupils’ level of understanding and attitude. The quantitative component of this study was conducted in nine selected national schools and involved three hundred and thirty-five respondents. The findings of this study demonstrate the pupils’ level of understanding and attitude towards food security through the implementation of sustainable gardens. It was found that the primary school pupils showed a high level of understanding and positive attitude. This study’s findings can guide education stakeholders toward the next step in sustainable practices. The study results suggest the need to conduct further studies to examine the development of pupils’ understanding and attitude towards implementing sustainable gardens to address food security issues. This study allows all parties to curb food security threats by implementing sustainable gardens.

Tyumen Embankment: Urban Hubris as a Trigger for the Transformation of Urban Identity

The article discusses the problem of place affecting urban identity formation. The granite-lined embankment of the Tura River becomes a factor in reassembling urban identity and forming new urban sensuousness for the residents of Tyumen. The identity of Tyumen has long oscillated between the provinciality of the “village capital” and the nomadism of the “hub city”, serving as a transit point to service the oil and gas industry. Nowadays, city residents perceive the embankment not only as a sign of Tyumen’s integration into a modern urban context, but also as a metaphor for the escape from the boggy swamp of uncertainty to the terra firma of solid granite. The technological characteristics of the four-tier embankment (its height and length) mark it as an outstanding engineering structure. The visual excessiveness of the embankment, framing the banks of a small river, makes it a source of pride for the citizens. To clarify the process of urban identity formation, the authors introduce the term “urban hubris”. There are multiple connotations of the hubris concept, ranging from “pride” to “transgression of one’s own destiny”. In this article, urban hubris refers not only to specific traits of people initiating megaprojects but to transgressive change in urban identity. This change can be triggered by fundamentally new strategies in city design or, as in this case, by a large-scale urban development project, conveying new city images, creating new public spaces, changing citizens’ daily practices, and, ultimately, transforming their urban identity.