Small Town Planning Research Articles

Contested planning efforts for the revitalization of small town centres in Finland

Many Finnish small towns have developed revitalization plans for town centres to counter the problems of decline, rebrand the town, and compete for residents and businesses. Accompanied by municipal branding efforts, infrastructure projects provide small towns with an improved appearance. These projects are often designed by national planning firms and consultants and materialised by private investors, yet it remains unclear if the changes suit the needs and socio-spatial peculiarities of the places they are intended for. This article sheds light onto downtown revitalization efforts by case studies in six shrinking Finnish small towns which have moved beyond the draft planning phase in their downtown revitalisation projects. The research is based on a mixed-methods approach, and pairs assemblage conceptualization with the concepts of small town planning and place-making. The relational approach enables us to show the challenges for shrinking small towns to materialise well-intentioned revitalization plans and place-based solutions in a complex place assemblage with conflicting pressure from big commercial actors, consultants, reluctant investors, limited local economies and demographics in decline.

Exploring a new method to identify hidden danger space in the post-pandemic period: Taking Beian city in China as a case

COVID-19 has become a major public health emergency in the world, which seriously affects the normal operation of cities. Epidemic prevention and control is not only needed in big cities, but also in small and medium-sized cities. In view of this, the paper takes Beian city, China as the research area. This study establishes a street network model through spatial syntax, and predicts the crossing potential and arrival potential of its street network. This will play a reference role for traffic flow control in Beian city. The article uses emerging data. Through GIS spatial analysis method, we identify the hidden danger space of city. Therefore, this summarizes the places where people are easy to gather and some problems of the current situation of the city. The results show that: (1) Beian bridge and Wuyuer street have a good traffic potential. The intersection of Longjiang Road and Beidahuang street and the intersection of Tianyuan North Road and Baocheng road have good accessibility. (2) The intersection of Ping’an Street and Shanghai road is a potential hidden danger space of the city, and the focus of epidemic prevention and control. (3) The coverage rate of urban community medical services to residential land is 58.61%, and the existing medical infrastructure is insufficient. Under public health emergencies, the paper will argue a new development ideas for health and safety small town planning by visualizing the hidden danger space of the city.

Modelling and Forecast of Future Growth for Shandong’s Small Industrial Towns: A Scenario-Based Interactive Approach

The industrial small-town development process in Shandong is influenced by the urban agglomeration strategy and the regional collaborative production, thereby resulting in a challenge of growth boundary planning. How to build a growth forecast decision support system to help small industrial towns maintain sustainable development with limited trial and error costs is an essential topic in the current research of small town-related fields. Empirical analysis reveals that the growth factors of small towns differ from the factors of cities due to the other-organization planning management system and self-organization construction activities that coexist in small towns. Besides, due to the size of small towns, the impact of policy changes in small towns is more significant than in cities. Furthermore, as part of the regional production chain, small industrial towns are most vulnerable to uncertain external disturbances. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate different development scenarios according to possible disturbances and output corresponding development forecasts. The research aims to build a decision-making support system for Shandong’s small-town planning based on an urban modeling approach using geographic information technology and scenario planning. Considering the mutually driving effects of the objective environment and subjective policies of Shandong’s industrial towns, as well as the corresponding dynamic mechanisms and comparing the theoretical basis and limitations of the different modeling approaches, this essay constructs a model system based on a mathematical model and a system dynamics model. It is also an interactive model accompanied by applicable rules and factors so that initial information and relevant development goals can be inputted into the model system to simulate the influence of different policies and identify the small industrial town growth scenarios.

Migration, emerging multiculturalism and planning in rural and small town Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Rural and small town New Zealand is undergoing significant demographic and economic transitions. Steady out-migration, economic change and population aging since the 1980s/1990s catalysed the ‘zombie town’ discourse. This parallels the rise of rural multiculturalism as a new multi-ethnic demographic makeup is distinctly visible due to diversification of immigration policies responding to regional labour and skills shortages, amenity migrations, and counterurbanisation. While having the potential to restore regional economic and cultural vibrancy, these changes lead to issues related to integration challenges for migrants as well as tensions in host communities regarding diminishing rural amenities, lifestyles, and exhaustion of the limited rural infrastructure base. Some of these dynamics have gained new momentum due to COVID-19-induced disruptions, e.g. border closure. These are occurring at the same time as broader economic, environmental and planning policy shifts disrupt rural realities and opportunities. This commentary presents initial evidence from a larger study and discusses emerging discourses related to regional New Zealand in five thematic areas – demographic disruptions and new mobilities, emerging small town realities beyond economic migration, impacts of COVID-19, economic development, and the changing governance and planning landscape. In particular we highlight the need to recognise the emerging rural multiculturalism in small town planning and development, which received little attention in the past due to planning’s historical ‘large city’ bias and other local constraints.

Extracting Land Use Change Patterns of Rural Town Settlements with Sequence Alignment Method

Understanding land use change patterns of rural town settlements (RTSs) is crucial for rural and small-town planning; however, few studies have explored pattern mining approaches to RTS trajectory analysis. In this study, we adopted a novel method by building sequence alignment method (SAM) to detect representative trajectory clusters of land use change of 1158 RTSs in seven waves from 1980 to 2015 in Guangdong, China. The results suggest that there are 10 clusters of RTSs with varying trajectories of land use change, implying their differences in the development processes and underlying socioeconomic, demographical, and institutional factors. A spatial distribution map of RTSs shows that stable cultivated ecological and stable ecologically dominant RTSs are distributed in the northern, eastern, and western parts of Guangdong, whereas stable rural construction and stable mixed construction RTSs are mostly located around the provincial boundary. Notably, 73% of the RTSs that have undergone changes in land use types are located in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), including urbanized and agricultural upgraded RTSs. The analysis presented here summarizes the driving forces of the spatial evolution of RTSs, including the location, landforms, industries, and policy factors. This study provides dynamic policy implications to understand longitudinal and sequential spatial restructuring and regional coordinated development in the fast-growing PRD area.

Placelessness of urban design and industrial branding in small town planning

ABSTRACT The paper analyses placemaking in a small Finnish single-industry town through two architectural projects: the municipality’s downtown rejuvenation plan and the new visitor centre of a transnational corporation. It deploys Relph’s concept of placelessness interpreting it relationally with the concept of assemblage, and analyses how the two projects resonate with the place’s material and expressive elements. They represent high-quality architecture but embody placelessness: the visitor centre is physically detached from the town, and the downtown plan neglects industrial heritage. This is a missed opportunity for attractive place-making, and shows an urge for novel public-private collaboration in small town urban design.

Working with reverberations: new ways for small towns

ABSTRACT Typically, metropolitan governance literature and practice has lacked focus on the ways that processes of urbanisation affect rural areas or small towns. As urbanisation is increasingly recognised as a process that reverberates across peri-urban and rural regions, the entwined and interdependent nature of governance across scales becomes evident. This interaction is recognised in the 2017 iteration of Plan Melbourne’s directions relating to peri-urban and regional areas. This illustrates the need for planning to respond to opportunities and challenges arising from interactions between small towns and metropolitan governance. This article investigates these gaps in two ways: Firstly, by introducing the idea of reverberations to describe the effects of external factors like metropolitan governance exert on lived experience in small towns. Secondly, we use reflective practice to explore how working with those reverberations has shaped the development of a place-based ecological model for small-town planning. Informed by the work of practitioners and scholars such as Randolph Hester, David Seamon and Patsy Healey, the place-based ecological model innovates by bringing a phenomenological and relational sensibility to planning, fostering place-based assets to allow for responses to reverberations, and address existing gaps in planning practice. The article then suggests future directions for the evolution of small-town planning and governance frameworks.

Aménagement des petites villes et imprégnation locale des grands projets ferroviaires en France

Les chantiers ferroviaires intermétropolitains interrogent les territoires organisés autour des petites villes notamment car la grande vitesse est généralement associée au renforcement des effets d’agglomération. Pour autant, celle-ci ne supprime pas le rôle d’intermédiation des villes de rang inférieur. Ces chantiers posent, comme par effet de miroir, la question du devenir de leur modèle de centralité dans un contexte de promotion de la connectivité territoriale. Loin d’uniquement accentuer les effets de captation métropolitaine, la mise en place d’un réseau ferroviaire modernisé peut incarner pour de nombreuses villes petites et moyennes une opportunité majeure dans l’élaboration de leur projet de territoire, notamment dans un contexte de reconversion urbaine et industrielle. L’article ambitionne de mettre en regard deux processus d’appropriation locale et de contractualisation de projets de modernisation ferroviaire : le contrat de territoire des pays de Maurienne autour du projet et du chantier du tunnel Euralpin Lyon-Turin et de la Démarche grand chantier d’une part, et le projet Bretagne à Grande vitesse (BGV) autour de l’ouverture de la LGV Ouest-Bretagne d'autre part.

PENGELOLAAN KOTA-KOTA KECIL DI JAWA TENGAH: STUDI KASUS PADA EMPAT KOTA KECIL DI WILAYAH JOGLOSEMAR

Small cities and towns in Indonesia have experienced a significant development during the period of 2000-2010. However, the development of small cities and towns has not been in line with the way the urban areas are governed and managed. There is a tendency that the governments pay a little attention to the governance of smaller urban areas, especially those which do not municipal status or the urban areas which is part of regency administrative boundary. This research analyzes the governance and planning of small towns in Central Java taken four small towns in Joglosemar region (Yogyakarta-Surakarta-Semarang). The research applied some qualitative methods combining document analysis, interview and regulation analysis. It is found that there is a significant gap between the urban development and its planning and governance. Urban development policies seem to be lacking in providing guidelines to drive the development of the small towns so that they can perform their functions within their respective regional urban system as well as solve their internal problems. The governance has mostly relied on the role of local government despite continuing lack of institutional capacity in managing urban development.

Challenges of climate change impacts on urban water quality management and planning in coastal towns of Bangladesh

The Bangladesh coastal zone is the lowest lying zone in the world where 36 million people are living within 1 metre elevation from high tide level. The coastal ecosystem is supporting more than 15% of the total population of the country, is under varying degrees of environmental threats due to anthropogenic and climate change impacts. The clean coastal urban drinking water supply is now a crucial problem in the coastal Bangladesh; where almost 11 million people live in the coastal urban areas. The shortage of upstream fresh water supply, the global warming and climate impacts are the new threats for urban water supply management and planning of 136 towns. Almost 34 towns are severely affected by saline water intrusion. Therefore, climate awareness and applied research should be initiated to change the attitude of the people. The objective of this paper is to understand the impacts of climate change on urban water supply as well as management and planning of small towns in the coastal region of Bangladesh.

The Study of Small Town Planning Based on S.E.T. Model-The West District of Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province, China as an Example

The disadvantage of imbalance while using a single mode for the development of urban is becoming highlighted [1]. In order to solve this problem, eight cities and towns published in China have used the S.E.T. mode(Service-Ecology-Transit -Oriented Development) planning. In this paper, the S.E.T. mode was used in the planning of the West District of Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province, China, and by the analysis of the land use, the spatial structure and the function structure, we made an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of the S.E.T., and verified its feasibility and scope of application. And it would be significant to small town planning, the non-agricultural population of which is less than 200,000 in China, in the future.

The Strategic Research on Green Space System Planning of Small Towns in Cold Region

Small towns in cold region own special ecological environment. Aiming at their particular climate characteristics, the green space system planning of small towns in cold region was studied. Through analyzing the problems of the green space system planning of small towns in cold region, the study proposes five levels planning strategy, including developing the regional integrated green space system planning of small towns in cold region, building the stable green network structure of town, improving quantity and quality of green space of small towns in cold region, strengthening winter landscape construction of small towns in cold region, and inheriting ice and snow culture of small towns in cold region, in order to promote the sustainable development of green space system planning of small towns in cold region.

First Exploration of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Planning of Small Towns

Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Practice in small towns shows that Comprehensive and in-depth disaster prevention and mitigation behavior is an important way to reduce disaster losses, At the same time, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of small towns is to ensure the steady development of agriculture, to meet the objective requirements of social reproduction and human survival needs. Because of this, Disaster prevention and reduction of small towns will become the only way for the sustainable development of society. This article is intended to improve Disaster Prevention and Mitigation System of small towns by new planning ideas.

Study on Chinese Small Town Design Theory and Practice Explore

It is new important task that urban design theory leads into small town planning. However there are less practice cases in domestic field. Lack of small town planning is mainly as follows: weak of town unique characteristic, little urban space form design, lack of Building group design. So this paper introduces urban design in the town planning field, gradually put forward small town design principle, its type, its different design stage, and its main design content with Chinese characteristics. According to explore urban design, the paper presents results extends the method to divide town design: regional town design, the general town design & detailed town design. Furthermore the article advance the key problem of studying town design theory and have a case application of Hang Zhou city Long Gang downtown design.

Exploration about the Stratagem of Sustainable Development of Small Town Planning in China

Small town is a basic and important part in Chinese town system. Sustainable development of small town is significant content of the work to modernize economy. Yet due to improper micromanagement, the current construction of small towns in China is in serious disorder. And this is imposing restraints on sustainable social and economic development. This paper arguments the strategic problems about the sustainable development of small town from several aspects such as historical meaning, actuality, arrangement and structure and so on.

Research on Solutions to Small Town Planning and Construction in Inner Mongolia

There are many problems existing in small town planning in Inner Mongolia. After analyzing the causes of these problems, some solutions to them are put forward, such as, strengthen the control of the planning and work out the perfect town planning system, carry out the strategy of sustainable development, keep personality of the town and highlight town features, speed up the construction of key town and drive the rapid development of small towns, etc.

Discussion on the Water Supply Engineering Planning of Small Towns in Southern China

With the example of the water supply engineering planning of small towns in southern china, the effects of town water consumption forecast, water resource selection, water site choice, pipe network planning on the present engineering planning of water supply were investigated. The analyses show that the water consumption forecast should adopt many kinds of methods to check each other, and finally determine a proper value. To ensure water yield of source water reliable and water quality to meet the requirements are the first principle of the water resource selection. The location of water plant should be determined according to the characteristics of the water source and the hydrological and hydrogeological conditions, in accordance with the relevant requirements specification. The basic requirements of the pipe network layout are as follows: the security of water quality; the reliability of the water volume and water pressure; the operation reliability and the least investment. As a part of the overall planning, the water supply engineering planning should proceed from reality to deal with the relationship of the recent construction and long-term development in order to push small towns economy to a rapid growth.

A Research on the Planning Strategy of Eco-Demonstration Zones in High Altitude Areas — a Case Study of Tanggula Town

The unruled development of construction land, along with the disordered planning and deteriorating living environment, etc. has long been prevalent in those small towns in the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau. This paper, thus, conducts some on-the-spot investigations and analyses of Tanggula town. The paper departs from the disparities between the current conditions of Tanggula town and the standards of eco- demonstration zone, proposing some strategies in the aspects of development direction, land use layout, facility layout, architecture and the town's features, aiming to exert positive influence upon the planning of small towns in plateaux.

Cultural Town: Small Town Planning and Construction Based on Mongolian and Yuan Culture

Mongolian and Yuan culture is the culture system which is interactive with original nomadic culture and ZhongYuan farming culture forming, whose elements, symbols and connotation is used effectively in planning and construction of small towns is reflected in the display with a town image and the key point of a town charm objectively. It is necessary to analysis the relation with the Mongolian and Yuan cultural elements and small towns as an opportunity to plan and construct the small towns of Mongolian and Yuan culture. This is the latest annotation to cultural town, and it is the language and way to express of the characteristics in small towns.

Comparison of Two Methods on Population Prediction in Small Town Planning

Accurate population prediction has fundamental importance in small town planning. In this paper, two empirical prediction models, integrated growth rate and regression analysis, have been developed with demographic data of 2000-2005 in Gaotang county, Shandong province. The two models were then applied to predict the population in 2008, and their results were compared with the actual population, respectively, to evaluate the modeling accuracy. The results showed that both methods were capable of providing accurate population prediction; however, the accuracy of the integrated growth rate was a little higher than that of regression analysis in terms of their differences from the actual population in 2008.