Town Renewal Research Articles

Co-creative place innovation in an arctic town

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to shed light on co-creative approaches for place innovation in an Arctic town, based on the relocation of Kiruna’s city center in northern Sweden. Three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna are investigated and compared: an R&D project about local perceptions and visions of attractive urban environments; an R&D project about norm-creative design principles for inclusive and attractive urban design; and an R&D project about cross-industrial synergies for city center attractiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe study’s research design encompasses a comparative and participatory approach. The comparative approach implies investigation and comparison of three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna. The participatory approach implies joint development of new knowledge by researchers and local actors. The data consists of participatory observations of workshops and qualitative interviews with local actors.FindingsThe study reveals that the studied processes have harnessed the city center relocation as an opportunity to make Kiruna more attractive to residents and visitors, by using the co-creative approaches of Living Lab, Now-Wow-How and Norm-creative design. These approaches have enabled experts and local actors to jointly identify excluding patterns and norms in the relocation process and to envision inclusive and attractive (re-)configurations and (re-)conceptualizations of the future Kiruna.Research limitations/implicationsThe results add to the academic strand of inclusive urban transformation, by providing insights into co-creative approaches for re-imagining an Arctic town in times of industrial and social change. New insights are provided regarding how the geographical, industrial and cultural identity of an Arctic town can be harnessed to envision new configuration, content and communication that is attractive and accessible for a diversity of residents and visitors.Practical implicationsThe results highlight the potential to harness Arctic and rural characteristics in the promotion of urban attractiveness and public well-being, especially when combined with co-creative identification and transformation of excluding norms and patterns.Originality/valueThe results provide new insights into how co-creative approaches may facilitate innovative and inclusive renewal of towns and cities in the Arctic and beyond.

Supporting the cultural offer in England’s towns

The role of culture in regeneration is well understood by policy makers and practitioners. In recent years, however, culture-led regeneration, along with other policies relating to place, has been challenged on the basis that cultural opportunity is not equally distributed and this has penalised certain types of places, restricting their potential to benefit from culture and its contribution to regeneration. This challenge has focused in particular on towns, as places seen as being ‘left behind’ by policy makers’ attention and excluded from the benefits of growth and regeneration. This paper explores policy opportunities and recent practice relating to culture in towns and identifies some challenges to be addressed if culture is to make a substantial contribution to the renewal of towns in England.

The chinesenization of American zoning in the 1980s: From Shanghai Hongqiao experiment to Wenzhou old town renewal

The most instrumental reform in Chinese urban planning system during the market reform in the 1980s is the introduction of so-called “regulatory detailed planning” (in Chinese pinyin, kong gui), an adaptive form of American zoning in Chinese cities. However, this episode of the reform hasn’t been closely examined from a historic and critical perspective so far. Based on archival research, mapping and interviews, this article traces the planning and development process of Shanghai Hongqiao New District and Wenzhou old town, and explores the original process of transplantation and localization of American zoning in Chinese cities. By comparing the planning and construction explorations of the two cities, we will argue that although it learned much from zoning techniques, especially the control indexes, the regulatory detailed planning is more to be a plat form for local government to negotiate with the foreign businessmen and other private sectors, rather than representing public intervention and regulation in the US, and served as a technical tool to materialize the development goals of Chinese cities.

Technology is Culture: Building a Transdisciplinary Team to Address Community Energy and Urban Revitalization Challenges

Traditional development models assume that countries of the Global South will undergo an economic trajectory roughly equivalent to that of the Global North. The reality of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels raises the prospect that a new model, founded on renewable and sustainable energy will have to be designed. At the same time, rural locations in North, face devastating economic consequences of an industrial model that has left them behind. Our international, transdisciplinary research team, working in Eastern and Southern Africa on sustainable biomass energy and in New Kensington, PA on rural small town renewal, seeks to understand the intersection of community preferences, technological innovation, gender relations and environmental sciences to develop socio/technological interventions. We flip the development model, bringing African expertise to bear on US-based problems and US-based insights to understand subculture specific cultural preferences in Kenya. This presentation outlines how we work together, the methods we use to engage in creative problem solving and the unique “kitchen laboratory” used on the Kenyan side to assess cooking energy needs.

Legal Problems on New Town Renewal

Legal Problems on New Town Renewal

From Mahalla to Xiaoqu

Owing to high rates of economic growth and increased urbanization efforts, China raised the country’s urbanisation rate to 50 per cent in 2012. ‘Old town renewal’—an important component of urbanisation—has significantly affected the lives of urban residents throughout China. This article focuses on urban transformations in the old city of Kashgar in southern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. While more and more Chinese scholars are concerned with how effectively to implement the project in the old town itself, only a few are concerned with the resettlement actions caused by the renewal. This paper focuses precisely on this and analyses the challenges related to relocation, changes in the old town community and adaptation strategies in new residential compounds.

そば殻バイオコークスの機械的特性とその燃焼特性に関する基礎研究

Bio-coke which is the solid fuel using the biomass wide and distributed was developed. I worked on the cooperation type study which combined regional development with renewable energy. Blowfish was being cultivated as a part of town renewal by Tokamachi city in Niigata prefecture which an advanced place and a possibility of the Bio-coke was considered as fuel substitution of the heating boiler which is being used for a water temperature adjustment of the water tank. The town is a specialty area by Hegi soba, Bio-coke is made from the buck wheat chaff which is the industrial waste occurring there and if it’s possible to change to heat energy by a heating boiler, it can achieve local production for local consumption by the renewable energy in the area. Mechanical properties and it’s combustion properties of the Bio-coke grain-size of buck wheat chaff of a raw material could make the formation temperature were checked and estimated to achieve practical use of the Bio-coke for which buckwheat chaff was utilized here.

Behavior Space Design and Expression by the Theories and Methods of Urban Design—The Yan Dao ancient town of design practice

In recent years, the ancient town of update and development has become a new hot spot, the study of old town renewal of concern is gradually warming. And again there are a lot of space in the middle of the old town renewal design and traditional style, space activities and use the contradiction between population, which becomes a problem urgently to be solved in design stage. The purpose of this study was to explore old town design space and behavior, traditional and modern conflict resolution methods, and to present the town development and design with a design concept. This paper' uses three theories of urban design (The relationship between figure and ground, Contact theory and Place theory) as a real-time monitoring, assessment, comparison of methods, to study Yan Dao Ancient Town, and the space for analysis. In the research, this paper based on the design theory of the three major city as a starting point, detailedly describes the different types in a certain area of difference in the behavior and the properties of space, and the ancient town of Hubei Shennongjia forest region salt path planning and design practice, the ancient town of updating the connotation of the historical context and space behavior of connection. The conclusion of this thesis put forward the method of that based on the space shape of ancient design method of its application in practice.

Application of Multipurpose Decision Making Problem with AHP and Rectilinear Norm in Old Town Renewal Proposals

In the process of urbanization, old town renewal is an unavoidable problem. The significance of old town renewal focuses on meliorating residents’ physical environment conditions, humane and social environment, and improving urban operation efficiency. Such problem affects not only the development of a certain district, but the benefits of future generations. For city managers, it is difficult to bring up a rational and highly efficient proposal such that related interest bodies would accept, and thus democracy science decision is required. This essay employs AHP to solve the problem of old town renewal proposal assessment, and brings forward the decision-making of multi-objective programming problem based on rectilinear norm allocation problem. Since there is no such paper that systematically and efficiently assess old town renewal proposal by using allocation problem, this paper tries to use this method to “fill out this blank”.

ASSIST in Govan – A Case of Accidental Conservation

ASSIST is an architectural practice with offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is one of the very few architectural cooperatives that have survived from the 1970s when it was created as a Research Unit of the Department of Architecture of University of Strathclyde, from which it left in 1983. Its origins are in the early days of the tenement improvement programme in Glasgow – indeed, it could be argued that without ASSIST the physical shape of Glasgow would be quite different today. This paper is a personal account, maybe somewhat biased, as under the supervision of then Senior Lecturer Jim Johnson (later to become a well loved and influential Director of the Old Town Renewal Trust in Edinburgh), the author developed an experimental action research project in 1970 investigating the possibility of voluntary improvement. The project was interested in public participation in planning and architecture, not in saving tenements.

Small town renewal

Smalltowners are not as ambivalent about their towns as community developers. This article emphasized the importance of engaging in community analysis — identifying priority problems and needs, and the degree of external penetration; profiling community social, economic, political and value systems while probing the purposes of (re)development. Four distinct orientations — categorical, comprehensive, integrative, and dialogical — are presented. Three orientations were used in an Appalachian town. No one development orientation is the best. Instead, much depends upon how willing; able and how much effort the participants put forth.

Statistical analysis of location determinants

INTRODUCTION In spite of the stagnation and general decline of the manufacturing sector in the industrialized countries, a considerable number of newly established or transferred plants can be registered. Indispensable adaptions of the industrial structure due to developing patterns of international trade on the one hand and the growing importance of town renewal programs on the other are factors causing the establishment of many new or the relocation of existing plants. New plants generally create additional employment in the region where they are established and thereby improve the income situation of its population. Therefore the study of this industrial mobility and its location decisions is not only interesting from a purely scientific view but also because of its importance as an actual and potential development factor in regional policy. Traditional studies of such location decisions have been mostly carried out either on the basis of rather small samples of case studies which do not allow reliable general interpretation, or by the analysis of the general shifts in regional industrial structures. Despite all insights obtained from such studies, one of their weaknesses lies in the fact that statistical analysis of the factors influencing location decisions has been restricted to rather general hypotheses. In fact, the results of these studies woved to be relatively irrelevant for the efficient shaping of development policy instruments. The most serious criticism of all those programs offering equal incentives to all kinds of industrial establishments that are ready to accept a new location in a program region is evident in the fact that these incentives influence the decisions only of a small fraction of the actual cases. For Western Germany, for instance, it can be shown that weak industries, like textiles, clothing, and shoes, which in any case had almost no choice but to install their new (or transfer their existing) plants into rural areas where relatively cheap labor was available, received the bulk of the investment incentives, For strong industries the same (relative) subsidies were of little interest, because those who could afford to pay for a better location clearly preferred the agglomeration centers? However, no reliable data was available to specify such different patterns of