Run-down Areas Research Articles

Social sustainability in urban renewal: An assessment of community aspirations

The lack of a proper building care culture has led to seri‐ ous problems of urban decay in most developed cities, threatening community health and safety. To arrest urban decay, redevelopment is a commonly adopted approach for regenerating rundown areas. Redevelopment often re‐ sults in negative outcomes such as disturbances to existing social networks and burgeoning construction and demo‐ lition waste. On the other hand, building rehabilitation is a more socially and environmentally friendly alternative to redevelopment, but its success depends much on resi‐ dents’ active participation. With a view towards a sustain‐ able strategy for urban renewal, it is necessary to balance the interests of different stakeholders regarding the choice between these two mainstream approaches to renewal. Although economic and physical issues are important decision‐making considerations, this study explores the aspirations and preferences of local residents in relation to the two options through a structured survey. The find‐ ings are conducive to the development of a balanced and socially sustainable strategy of urban renewal.

Delivering London 2012: geotechnical enabling works

Selecting the Stratford site for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games provided an opportunity to regenerate a rundown area of historical industrial development and dereliction, as well as remediate the significant levels of contamination that had accumulated over a century and a half. The Olympic Delivery Authority established the enabling works project to clear the site and create the development platform on which the Olympic Park would be founded and to remediate the effects of contamination. This paper covers the geotechnical and geo-environmental aspects of the work, including site investigation, demolition and site clearance, bulk earthworks, soil remediation and groundwater treatment.

Current Strategies and Socio-Economic Implications of Urban Regeneration in Hungary

In the last decade decision-makers on state, regional and local levels in Hungary gradually recognized the inevitability of urban regeneration and the opportunities the latter offers for architecture, economy and society. During the socialist era state investments focused on the forced construction of high-rise estates and inner city areas have been neglected. As a consequence of these processes urban regeneration started later in the Eastern European countries and these run-down areas could be characterised by disadvantaged positions on the new capitalist housing market. Twenty years after the change of regime stakeholders taking part in the urban regeneration process in Hungary slowly realise that problems of the built, natural and social environments overlap. Due to the change of mind first integrated urban development programmes appeared. Through these projects focusing on the rehabilitation of built and natural environments of cities experts already try to generate also socio-economic impacts. The article highlights current trends and characteristic features of urban regeneration in Hungary together with short introduction of strategies on national, regional and local levels. Main socio-economic impacts of rehabilitation processes closely related to the quality of life will also be presented through the results of empirical researches carried out in Budapest and the major Hungarian cities.

Residential satisfaction in a context of urban exclusion

This article studies residential satisfaction among the inhabitants (immigrants and Spanish-born) of El Puche, a neighbourhood immersed in a process of exclusion located on the outskirts of the city of Almeria. For this purpose, a survey was administered to compile objective and subjective attributes of the residential environment, variables relating to residential mobility and the interviewee's sociodemographic profile. The results of the factor analysis performed show that the three components that define the residential environment—neighbourhood, house and neighbours—provide indices of residential quality. In the second stage, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was conducted to identify the predictors of overall residential satisfaction and the relative importance of each one. More specifically, in El Puche, the variables ‘rundown area’, ‘conflictive inter-ethnic relationships’, ‘isolated location’, ‘low quality construction’, ‘shops’ and ‘crime’ provide the best explanation of residential dissatisfaction.

Viewpoint: Young people and the built environment: can they shape our cities?

It is widely recognised that child-friendly and youth-friendly urban design is central to building sustainable communities. Yet, no matter how strong this argument is, current advice on how to achieve this objective is articulated from adult perspectives, taking the approach that 'the professionals know best'. This Viewpoint argues that children and young people have the right and the ability to contribute to planning and urban design processes and that they can engage creatively in delivering sustainable communities. Young people: their built environment and advances in understanding learning and teaching Today there is widespread concern about the content and methods of teaching of young people. The seminal work developed by UNICEF, for example, since the early 1990s, puts forward recommendations about the need to recognise the developmental needs and strengthen the rights of children and teenagers living in cities. The recent UNICEF report (2006) on the status of children has clearly established that issues such as poverty and inequalities which children experience within their neighbourhoods and cities lead to the significant exclusion of these groups from participation in the decision-making processes to help shape the world we inhabit. All too often we see young people as a threat because they do not always conform to our ideas of what they should or should not be doing in public spaces. On the other hand, young students claim that the professionals have failed them because they do not take into consideration their needs and desires. A number of pedagogic and academic experts and built environment professionals argue that children and young adults have the ability to understand complex relationships, including complex relationships across different subject areas such as biology, geography, history and art (Bransford et al., 1999; Spencer et al., 1989). They argue that people's views and experiences, normally studied in relation to particular places, are fundamental to the development of 'self ' and one's own identity. Spencer and colleagues (1989 and 2006) and Dudek (2005), for instance, consider that education plays an important role in determining how children and teenagers can, or cannot, face the social, political, cultural and urban problems which they experience in their lives. This view suggests that through a basic understanding of the principles of learning, children and teenagers can be helped to become self-sustaining life-long learners, able to make important decisions which will enrich their lives and the lives of other social groups. Hart (1997) studied children's experiences of places in terms of their place knowledge, place values and feelings and place use. Further research on learning and transfer of knowledge (Lewis et al., 2004) indicates that 'situational' and place-based learning encourages a reflective process of learning, whereby students can synthesise knowledge and skills acquired in both classroom and situational learning. This observation is particularly useful when it comes to using IT-based technology and skills, a medium that young people also use for their personal or peer group entertainment. It is argued here that through virtual visualisations and other methods young people and students can put into practice complex urban design principles and ideas. To demonstrate how this could be achieved an example of working with young people in the field of the built environment is explained below. The Rootscape project The Joint Centre for Urban Design (JCUD) at Oxford Brookes University, together with Oxford Youthworks and Mayim, ran an UrbanBuzz project called Rootscape, funded by HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England). The Rootscape project was designed to enable children and young people (aged 12-16) to experience and understand urban design, to work with built environment professionals in creating visions of how to improve rundown areas of Oxford and to empower them to make decisions about the neighbourhoods in which they live. …

Reportage: una lettura frontale. Milano tra i Navigli Grande e Pavese e viale Cassala

- To read means to assume an active viewpoint with regard to what exists and it is a fundamental stage in any approach to modifying or conserving things and therefore in planning them. A focused reading of a geographical area becomes a means of bringing out its important features. Three different types of reading can be assumed today which we will identify with the paradigms of collage, reportage and déjŕ-vu. The first is a zenithal reading through an all inclusive ‘bird's eye view' which interprets the land and its community with a scientific and geographical eye. This reading draws on the cartographical interpretations and codifications of geography and returns a visual collage which comprises the geographical area. A frontal reading places a person at the centre of the spatial interpretation in a one-to-one relationship with the text and it shows us the interpretative figure of reportage. The context can be read ‘over time' by setting oneself in relation to the past, to the existing present and to the future implying the concepts of change and permanence: what this viewpoint returns is the figure of déjŕ-vu. Water is a very important feature of the area, both historically and today. Historically the built-up fabric of the district developed originally from the Darsena along the banks of the two canals. This fragmentary dispersion is underlined by the existence of rundown areas and the lack of a heart, a centre for the area.

Les nouveaux métiers de la ville. Pouvoirs publics et recherche urbaine

Gilles Jeannot, Barry Goodchild, Paul Hickman New professions in urban planning Public authorities and urban research National policy on revitalising rundown areas has encouraged the emergence of new forms of professional activity, in France and in Great Britain alike. University research has been called upon to study these new practices in similar ways in the two countries. Nonetheless, the institution ? ! procedures implemented are quite different : contracting and a few cases of professional training for public servants in France, the development of public/private sector partnerships in Great Britain and the definition of professional standards for new jobs, dealt with as nothing out of the ordinary by the job market. On both sides of the Channel, the emphasis is on the multidisciplinary, seen as the ability to innovate in France, and as the ability to multitask in the United Kingdom.

“Souvenirs de Berlin-Est”: History, Photos, and Form in Texts by Daniela Dahn, Irina Liebmann, and Sophie Calle

"Souvenirs de Berlin-Est":History, Photos, and Form in Texts by Daniela Dahn, Irina Liebmann, and Sophie Calle Lyn Marven (bio) Berlin's history has been rewritten as frequently as its landscape. Since the restitution of Berlin as capital of unified Germany, the city has undergone substantial changes to its form that are informed by a view of its history and that also, in turn, construct that history. This article considers three publications that represent the visible and absent traces of history in East Berlin and that raise questions about how history is written and about its relationship to literary narrative and to memory. Daniela Dahn's Prenzlauer Berg-Tour (2001) and Irina Liebmann's Stille Mitte von Berlin: Eine Recherche rund um den Hackeschen Markt (2002) are portraits of districts of East Berlin that engage with the presence of the past in the contemporary city. The texts are documentary essays accompanied by photographs that have a dual perspective of both before and after German unification. Dahn's uses the essays and photographs from her 1987 GDR publication of the same name, appended with an afterword and new photos from 2001. Liebmann's essay is based on original research and photos from the early 1980s, but was written only in late 2001. The texts move between official accounts, statistics, and documented history and individual, personal, oral stories. French artist Sophie Calle's project Die Entfernung, first exhibited in 1996 and published in 1997 in a dual language edition as The Detachment (later published in French as Souvenirs de Berlin-Est), depicts the removal of GDR symbols and statues from East Berlin following the Wende. Calle's project draws on photos as well as interviews. While the art work consists of more than just the publication, it nonetheless offers interesting comparisons with the form of Dahn's and Liebmann's work. Contemporary political concerns such as the social and cultural effects of German reunification, the legacy of the GDR, and the changed perspective in the West after September 11 are reflected in the areas and aspects of East Berlin that the three authors investigate. Dahn looks at Prenzlauer Berg, originally a working class district and now the focus of an alternative artistic scene. Liebmann conducted her research around Hackescher Markt in Mitte, a former Jewish quarter. Rather than visiting a geographical area, Calle's text revisits symbolic sites of the historical East Berlin, a defunct half-city that exists now only in memory and has been erased from the buildings and space of the city. All three deal with marginal or marginalized areas whose history neither did nor does now belong to the more tendential narratives of the city and nationhood either in the GDR or in unified Germany. [End Page 220] While Calle's project arises from explicit, ideologically driven changes in Berlin, Liebmann's and Dahn's texts also testify in their way to a similar – and also, if implicitly, political – development. Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg underwent much regeneration in the 1990s and are now part of the tourist scene: "Jeder Besucher kennt den Hackeschen Markt oder die Oranienburger Straße mit den Cafés, Geschäften, Galerien, Theatern" (Stille Mitte 5), writes Liebmann, and Dahn comments, "Inzwischen ist der einstige Geheimtip weltweit vergesellschaftet. Reisende, die Berlin verlassen, ohne zuvor am Kollwitzplatz zum Abend gegessen zu haben, setzen sich dem Vorwurf aus, gar nicht da gewesen zu sein" (Prenzlauer Berg 203). The districts are typical of shifts in the character of the city since unification, raising the question of how to preserve what is historically significant while also regenerating run-down areas. The authors imply that the process threatens to obliterate, overwrite, dehumanize, or reify the past, and their texts counter this tendency. Dahn's protocols allow people of the district to speak, and the photos in her text likewise show primarily people. Liebmann's research reveals the ideological silencing of narratives that did not fit in and uncovers this history, which has left traces in or on the buildings of the area. Her photos emphasize houses and streets. The texts and images in Calle's publication consider public spaces and monuments in their personal dimension: individuals' memories are...

The Elements and Prevalence of Fear

In this paper, factor analysis and regression models are used to examine fear of crime and to determine the relationship between fear and age. Data from the British Crime Survey demonstrate that fear is reducible to only two crime contexts: fear of personal loss (FoPL) and fear of personal harm (FoPH). Distinctively different inverted u-shaped relationships were observed for both FoPL and FoPH, with maximum fear at 45 years of age and 23 years of age, respectively. Generic correlates with both FoPH and FoPL included perceived health, neighbourhood litter and previous victimization. FoPH-specific correlates were household income, environmental graffiti and property damage. The only FoPL-specific correlate was living in a run-down area.

Assessing the Effect of Area Based Initiatives on Local Area Outcomes: Some Thoughts Based on the National Evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget in England

During the past 25 years, there has been an extensive use of Area Based Initiatives (ABIs) to regenerate run-down areas in many countries. However, despite their increased popularity, evidence on their success in helping to turn around depressed areas remains elusive. The evidence base has been constrained by inadequate understanding of the theory of change behind the policy intervention, insufficient development of evaluation theory and method and a lack of information about the impact of the interventions on the key outcomes that they are designed to affect. This article seeks to address the third of these limitations-namely, a focus on the impact of ABIs on key outcomes that reflect the quality of life of the people who live in depressed areas. However, it also considers issues relating to the other two key factors. The article illustrates how the impacts of ABIs on key outcomes might be assessed by drawing upon recent findings that have emerged from an evaluation of one of the largest ABI programmes that has been deployed in England, that of the Single Regeneration Budget.

The ambiguity of urban renewal in France: Between continuity and rupture

The term urban renewal was introduced in France in the Loi solidarite et renouvellement urbains (Loi SRU) of December 13th, 2000. Until then, terms like renovation, reconstruction, recycling or refurbishment were used to indicate similar phenomena. Is the introduction of a new term only an innovation in vocabulary, or does it imply new orientations, conceptions and practices? It appears that ever since its introduction in 2000, the notion of urban renewal has been subject to variations in its meaning and in its implementation. A double regime of urban renewal exists. On the one hand, there are the operations officially labelled as urban renewal, which benefit from central state subsidies. These operations aim at a social urban development, and almost exclusively concern the so-called quartiers sensibles, large high-rise housing estates in the banlieus. On the other hand, there are more market-driven, locally initiated and realised operations of regeneration of derelict and run-down areas of the city.

The environmental planning and management approach towards the development and management of the Osun natural spring project, Ibadan, Nigeria

There is a general shortage of potable water in Nigeria, partly through the lack of natural provision and partly because of rapid urban growth that has largely been unplanned. The paper describes the recent redevelopment of a public water facility in a run-down area of Ibadan which is part of the Sustainable Ibadan Project. Despite funding from national and international bodies, the development is strongly based at community level. The local inhabitants feel they have control over their own water supply through their representatives on the various planning and managing committees. This aims to reduce vandalism and to increase pride and involvement in the community. The project is a pilot for other projects around Ibadan, some of which have begun and others are being planned. This paper describes the administrative structures and management principles that have been employed. It forcefully advocates community-based planning and management which respects both the environment and the water-users, and involves a major “bottom-up” element.

Asian Newcomers in Shinjuku and Ikebukuro Areas, 1988–1998: Reflections on a Decade of Research

Tokyo's inner city areas, the home of migrants from Japan's countryside until the 1960s, started to accept Asian immigrants, mainly from East Asia, in the late 1980s. The arrival and settlement of these newcomers have transformed these rundown areas into multiethnic communities. Based on 10 years of research in these communities, the author argues that the inner city areas have generated “hybrid communities,” characterized by “subtle distancing and territoriality.” Among others, this reality challenges the validity of such categories as “Asian immigrants,” and “foreigners” and “Japanese.”

Promoting tourism in US cities

Urban tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon but is now being embraced by most US cities, which are using substantial funds to compete for visitors, creating elaborate new infrastructures in the process. This article provides an analytical overview of the steps a variety of US cities are taking — such as developing a new brand image, refurbishing run-down areas, touting for conference business, building shopping malls and creating ‘carousal’ zones — to promote tourism. The author also examines how far these strategies translate into economic and social success.

Lead poisoning in dogs.

Abstract Extract Lead poisoning in dogs is insidious in onset, difficult to diagnose, and frequently overlooked. It is more prevalent in the older and more run-down areas in cities, where deteriorating paint, old lead plumbing, and untidy yards present many opportunities for dogs to acquire toxic amounts. My own practice is situated in one of the older areas of Christchurch and, over the 11 years covered by this paper, I have confirmed 107 cases of lead poisoning.

Preservation for profit: Restorations come alive

Businessmen are turning old, rundown areas into immensely profitable centers of office buildings, shops and restaurants in cities throughout the country; major examples are San Francisco and Denver.

Manual on Urban Planning - Chapter V: Industrial Land Planning

Because of lack of overall planning in the past, a hodge-podge situation, with run-down industrial, commercial, and residential areas intermingled, has resulted in many cities. The objective of industrial land planning is to provide suitable space and facilities for industry and to integrate industry into the community in such a manner that it will thrive and be economically advantageous to the community, with a minimum of adverse effects. Two aspects of industrial land planning are presented: (1) The urban planner responsible for ascertaining amounts, kinds, and locations of industrial land in the general plan; and (2) the industrial land planner responsible for selection and formulation of a plan for a specific site for a manufacturing plant. It is emphasized that the principles, objectives, methods, and standards described herein apply to both aspects.