Urban Consolidation Research Articles

¿Y el título para cuándo? El proceso de regularización del barrio Virgen Misionera

Resumen Este artículo presenta resultados preliminares de un trabajo de investigación en curso sobre políticas habitacionales y urbanas en San Carlos de Bariloche. Reconstruye el proceso de regularización del barrio popular de origen informal Virgen Misionera. Los habitantes están arraigados en el lugar y el barrio está completamente consolidado, pero todavía persisten problemas y conflictos vinculados a la titularidad de las tierras con los propietarios originales y emergen conflictos vinculados a la consolidación del barrio. En un contexto donde los precios de los terrenos se dispararon en los últimos quince años, el artículo reflexiona sobre los límites de las estrategias de regularización utilizadas en nuestro país y plantea la necesidad de reformular el contenido y el alcance del derecho de propiedad.

The creative suburb: A study in creative reflective practice

As long as population growth continues, policies for urban consolidation closer to city centres fail, and there is land available, Australians will continue to build in new Greenfield suburbs. However, the 50-year legacy of the homogeneous one-size-fits-all approach to suburbia beyond the sticks and sometimes hours away from where one can find a job, is proving unsustainable, the commute alone a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. The ‘creative suburb’ was inspired by the possibility to create new, innovative and entrepreneurial suburbs, places which are more self-sufficient and self-contained than the ‘product’ perpetuated down under even today. The ‘creative suburb’ draws on significant primary research with suburban home-based creative industries workers, vernacular architecture, and town planning in the Toowoomba region, in the state of Queensland, Australia, as inspiration for a series of new building and urban designs available for innovators operating in new suburban greenfield situations in Queensland and possibly further a field. This paper considers the role ‘creative reflective practice’ played in the process of developing the building and urban designs presented in a book and showcased in a building as creative outputs of this practice-led and property development industry embedded inquiry.

Under-supply of schooling in the gentrified and regenerated inner city

Governments and planners in the Global North are increasingly faced with the challenge of providing services for growing numbers of families in the inner city. Rather than quitting the city, couples are staying to raise children in gentrified, working class housing or in new medium and high density developments built pursuant to policies of urban consolidation and renewal. Difficulties have arisen when parents discover that inner city schools do not meet their expectations either in terms of quality or quantity. Problems with quantity are a consequence of government failing to anticipate the presence of families in new high density developments, particularly marked in Australia where apartments have never been considered appropriate housing for families. This article explores the actual and projected presence of children in inner Sydney and the pressure this has placed on school places. The government's ability to anticipate school demand is complicated by neoliberal education policies of rationalisation and ‘school choice’, which have reduced the number of inner city schools and created unpredictable movement of families between schools. Parent lobby groups have now forced the government to plan new schools, which is proving a complicated and expensive exercise in the high density, high value urban core. The conclusion of the research is that inner urban redevelopment must include sufficient public space and infrastructure not only for schools in the immediate future, but also for adaptive reuse for other, perhaps equally unanticipated, needs in the longer-term.

Shaping urban consolidation debates: Social representations in Brisbane newspaper media

Recent international trends towards urban consolidation, intended to reduce outward urban sprawl by concentrating growth within existing neighbourhoods, can cause contention in cities. Understanding how the mass media represents urban consolidation can lead to more informed and democratic planning practices. This paper employs Social Representations Theory to identify and understand representations of urban consolidation in newspaper media. The theory recognises that the media is a key purveyor of public discourse and can reflect, shape or suppress ideas circulating in society. This novel approach has not previously been applied to understanding social representations of urban consolidation strategies in the mass media. The rapidly growing and changing city of Brisbane, Australia, is utilised as a case study. Brisbane is situated in South East Queensland, the fastest growing region in Australia, and is governed by regional and local planning policies that strongly support increased densities in existing urban areas. Findings from a quantitative textual analysis of 449 articles published in Brisbane newspapers between 2007 and 2014 reveal key clusters and classes of co-occurring words that represent dominant social representations apparent in the newspaper corpus. The paper provides two key conclusions. The first is that social representations occurring in mass media represent an important source of information about ‘common sense’ understandings and evaluations of urban consolidation debates. The second is that urban consolidation is represented as a multifaceted issue, including interrelated themes of housing, sustainable population growth, investment strategies and the interplay between politics and planning.

Hands-on Testing of Last Mile Concepts

Since 1995 the freight transport performance within Europe has increased annually by 1.2% and is expected to grow further over the coming decades. Being the sources and sinks of transport activities, Europe's cities are strongly affected by the resulting undesirable effects of transportation. This applies in particular to North West Europe (NWE), one of the most urban regions in Europe. NWE therefore stands in urgent need of solutions for efficient urban freight logistics.Focusing on the last mile of freight deliveries the INTERREG IVB NWE project LaMiLo (Last Mile Logistics) addressed this issue. The project promoted Urban Consolidation Centres (UCCs) as they allow and encourage transport consolidation as well as modal shift. Decoupling the last mile at the city borders, large vehicles are used for bundled, long haul transports outside the city whilst sustainable transport means are used inside.In the knowledge that UCC attempts with huge government subsidies have been made several times before but rarely succeeded, the core of the LaMiLo project was to enable environment for UCC operations that accomplish a sustainable last mile and can as well be transformed in successful business models. Thereto, UCC concepts were operationalised and implemented in a number of pilots in metropolitan areas and cities all around NWE:•Paris: A UCC was field-tested to which freight was brought by truck and afterwards delivered by cargo bikes.•Netherlands: Central hubs were put into operation to streamline the home delivery of parcels. Thereto, a Freight Circle service was launched in the cities of Nijmegen and Maastricht which used e-bikes and enabled customer-specific delivery times.•London: A UCC was set up to bundle goods for the public sector which were destined for the boroughs of Camden and its partners Enfield and Waltham.•Brussels: A UCC was launched at the Port of Brussels offering warehouse services and deliveries to retailers in the city.The key results gained from the studies primarily include the demonstration of UCCs as possible last mile solutions. Beyond their economic performance, their environmental effects as well as their social impacts were evaluated. Exemplary results include that all the pilots contributed towards emission reduction and total distance travelled through city centres and residential areas. Gained best practice and lessons learnt about the examined UCC concepts were discussed and shared at transnational level to encourage relating solutions for further cities.

Designing New Models for Energy Efficiency in Urban Freight Transport for Smart Cities and its Application to the Spanish Case

Considering that the transport sector is responsible for 30% of the CO2 emissions in the EU, reaching up to 40% in urban areas, the efforts for technological improvements and innovation in transportation have been increasing during the last few decades. It is evident that urban freight distribution requires innovative solutions that are capable of improving the efficiency of transport whilst promoting innovative use of renewable energy, thus reducing energy consumption and associated GHG emissions while adopting and not stifling economic development. In this context, six Mediterranean cities (Barcelona, Bologna, Piraeus, Rijeka and Valencia)) collaborated with the purpose of contributing to the improvement of energy efficiency on urban freight transport as part of the SMILE Project (2015) (SMart green Innovative urban Logistics Models for Energy efficient mediterranean cities project), funded by the MED Programme. The SMILE project aims to improve the energy efficiency of Mediterranean cities through the promotion of innovative ‘green’ and cost effective solutions for urban freight logistics, addressing the target of green and smart urban development. This paper shows the results of the live test of smart city urban logistics solutions in the cities of Barcelona and Valencia that consisted of combining the use of electric tricycles and Transhipment terminals (or Urban Consolidation Centres) for the last-mile delivery of parcels and small shipments. A thoughtful analysis of the quantitative outcomes of the pilot test in both cities are presented from different perspectives: economical, operational, energy efficiency, environmental and social.

Understanding Financial Viability of Urban Consolidation Centres: Regent Street (London), Bristol/Bath & Nijmegen

The concept of an urban consolidation centre (UCC) has been extensively researched. Despite the potential positive environmental and social impact, the main obstacle remains the lack of a sustainable business model. The goal of this paper is to understand how to organize UCC viability as a concept providing environmental and social benefits while at the same time providing a sustainable business model (social and logistical value propositions of multi-beneficial relations between the involved stakeholders). A research framework will be designed to analyse and evaluate financial viable UCCs. The framework consists of four main stream components, namely: organizational integration, revenue streams, key-resource provisioning and buyer-supplier relation. These four types of relations result in the so called ORKB-framework to analyse the created added value. The research framework is applied and evaluated for the following urban consolidation centres: Regent Street in London, Bristol/Bath, and BinnenStadService in Nijmegen. With the development of the framework we want to reveal some of the uniqueness for each specific situation in order to address the UCC-environment more effectively when the dynamics regarding value creation and the needs of the involved stakeholders are better understood.

Evaluate the Viability of Urban Consolidation Centre with Regards to Urban Morphology

City logistics is a difficult topic for public decision makers who often lack relevant information and knowledge to make their decisions. Among all available solutions, Urban Consolidation Centre is an appreciated one. Indeed, it is supposed to reduce pollution, trucks’ congestion and to improve the livelihood of city centre. Nevertheless, it is far from obvious that UCC are efficient and viable. The aim of this study is to provide answers to two questions: can an UCC be viable? Does the shape of a city affect the profitability of an UCC? We present a preliminary work based on a comparison between three morphologies to give some clues.

Simulating Logistic Innovation in a Growing Urban Environment

A modelling framework to simulate Urban Goods Movements (UGMs) is presented. It is based on two models designed to estimate the road space consumption of Inter-Establishment Movements (IEMs) and End Consumer Movements (ECMs). Two kinds of evolution of the environment are considered: the long term evolution and the seasonal fluctuation of the economic activity. We then present how a scenario involving an Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC) can be modelled. First, we evaluate which movements are potentially transferable to the UCC. Then, we define a catchment area. Finally, we evaluate the efficiency of the UCC by referring to continuous approximation methods.

Is there Life After Subsidy for an Urban Consolidation Centre? An Investigation of the Total Costs and Benefits of a Privately-initiated Concept

The concept of an urban consolidation centre (UCC) has been extensively studied. Despite the potential positive environmental and social impact, the main obstacle remains the lack of a sustainable business model. Therefore UCCs are often heavily subsidised and tend to disappear as soon as the subsidies stop. This paper reports on a social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) of an operational UCC in the Belgian city of Antwerp. The SCBA is based on real data and volumes. It concerns a private initiative that is not dependent upon subsidies and is located in an area with considerable problems (e.g., average delays of 28%). Results show that the consolidated deliveries are beneficial for society. Based on current volumes during the start-up period it is, however, not financially viable. The business volume lies considerably higher. This study shows that there is potential to reach a break-even turnover. Outcomes are linked to the transferability of the concept to other urban areas.

Under-supply of schooling in the gentrified and regenerated inner city

Governments and planners in the Global North are increasingly faced with the challenge of providing services for growing numbers of families in the inner city. Rather than quitting the city, couples are staying to raise children in gentrified, working class housing or in new medium and high density developments built pursuant to policies of urban consolidation and renewal. Difficulties have arisen when parents discover that inner city schools do not meet their expectations either in terms of quality or quantity. Problems with quantity are a consequence of government failing to anticipate the presence of families in new high density developments, particularly marked in Australia where apartments have never been considered appropriate housing for families. This article explores the actual and projected presence of children in inner Sydney and the pressure this has placed on school places. The government's ability to anticipate school demand is complicated by neoliberal education policies of rationalisation and ‘school choice’, which have reduced the number of inner city schools and created unpredictable movement of families between schools. Parent lobby groups have now forced the government to plan new schools, which is proving a complicated and expensive exercise in the high density, high value urban core. The conclusion of the research is that inner urban redevelopment must include sufficient public space and infrastructure not only for schools in the immediate future, but also for adaptive reuse for other, perhaps equally unanticipated, needs in the longer-term.

Strategic Scenarios for Sustainable Urban Distribution in the Brussels-capital Region Using Urban Consolidation Centres

This paper describes a methodology that was used in order to establish strategic scenarios for city distribution of goods in the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) using Urban Consolidation Centres (UCCs). Recently, UCCs received a lot of attention as a solution to decrease the environmental impact of urban freight transport in the Brussels-Capital Region. However, despite the growing interest from both public and private actors, many questions regarding their practical implementation remain. In fact, there are a large number of uncertainties with regards to the implementation of the consolidation scenarios, such as the number, location and size of the UCC(s), the vehicle fleet, the regulatory and market framework or the operational agreements. This leads to a large number of possible scenarios. In this paper, authors describe a scenario-planning methodology that was applied in order to select a limited number of scenario themes. Authors present several quantitative models that were used to evaluate possible scenarios and select the most relevant ones.

Enabling Carrier Collaboration via Order Sharing Double Auction: A Singapore Urban Logistics Perspective

A recent exploratory study on the collaborative urban logistics in Singapore suggests that cost reduction and privacy preservation are two main drivers that would motivate the participation of carriers in consolidating their last mile deliveries. With Singapore's mild restrictions on the vehicle types or the time windows for the last-mile delivery, we believe that with proper technology in place, an Urban Consolidation Center like the Tenjin Joint Distribution System in Fukuoka Japan may be implemented to achieve cost reduction with some degree of privacy preservation. Participating carriers keep their respective private orders and have the option to get their remaining shareable orders consolidated with those from the other carriers’ fleet. To this end, we propose in this paper a double auction mechanism that enables such consolidation with an objective to maximize the total cost savings attained by all participating carriers. Our experimental results on 5 zones of delivery in Singapore CBD demonstrate that the proposed double auction is able to bring about reductions in the number of inter-zone travels, thereby producing cost savings to the participating carriers.

An Evaluation of Urban Consolidation Centers Through Continuous Analysis with Non-equal Market Share Companies

This paper analyzes the logistic cost savings caused by the implementation of Urban Consolidation Centers (UCC) in a dense area of a city. In these urban terminals, freight flows from interurban carriers are consolidated and transferred to a neutral last-mile carrier to perform final deliveries. This operation would reduce both last-mile fleet size and average distance cost. Our UCC modeling approach is focused on continuous analytic models for the general case of carriers with different market shares. Savings are highly sensitive to the design of the system: the increment of capacity in interurban vehicles and the proximity of the UCC terminal to the area in relation to current distribution centers. An exhaustive collection of possible market shares distributions are discussed. Results show that market shares distribution does not affect cost savings significantly. The analysis of the proposed model also highlights the trade-off between savings in the system and a minimum market share per company when the consolidation center is established.

호주의 밀도상향정책이 저렴주거 확대에 미친 영향- 5개 대도시권의 주거이동패턴과 임대료를 중심으로

호주의 밀도상향정책이 저렴주거 확대에 미친 영향- 5개 대도시권의 주거이동패턴과 임대료를 중심으로

South Africa's new urban agenda: Transformation or compensation?

One of the dilemmas at the heart of the new urban agenda globally is whether population growth should be accommodated by extensive or intensive urban development. Both approaches have gained support in South Africa in recent years, albeit in different parts of government. The paper provides a critical and constructive assessment of what lies behind these contrasting agendas. It considers the positive and negative features of mega-projects and urban consolidation, with an emphasis on their implications for urban efficiency and social justice. It concludes by stressing the need to reconcile these policies in order to avoid wasteful duplication and damage.

Towards better recognising ‘community’ in multi-owned property law and living

Purpose – This paper aims to advance best practice by gaining insights into key multi-owned property (MOP) issues challenging policymakers and communities. Ontario (Canada) and Victoria (Australia) are internationally recognised for best practice in MOP living and law. Yet, both jurisdictions struggle with the emerging urbanism related to condominium MOP. Design/methodology/approach – Different ways of recognising community in MOP urbanism will be examined against public policy and political theory perspectives promoting social sustainability. A rich mixed-data and content analysis method is relied upon which synthesises three pillars of MOP community governance: harmonious high-rise living; residential-neighbourhood interface; and metropolitan community engagement. The article cross-examines Canadian policy and law reform documents and Australian dispute case law from the state of Victoria to explore and showcase critical MOP management, residential and policy issues. Findings – A theory-building typology formally recognises “community” as an affective performance across MOP governance contexts: cosmopolitan, civic-citizen and neighbourly. These ideal types differentiate community affects in and beyond (case) law and land-use planning: from determining alternative dispute resolution remedies; addressing neighbourhood and metropolitan NIMBY-ism in urban consolidation to bridging the critical policy and civic gap between the limits and aims of socially sustainable MOP vertical-tenured community affects. Research limitations/implications – Strong cross-jurisdictional MOP community lessons exist, as other cities follow best practice in legal and governance structures to effect change at the frontiers of twenty-first century urbanism. Originality/value – Past studies emphasise classifying dispute issues, single-issue concerns or historical and life cycle evaluations. This theory-building article advances why and how community must be better understood holistically across community contexts to inform cutting-edge governance practices.

Barriers to urban freight policy implementation: The case of urban consolidation center in Oslo

As a measure for more environmentally friendly and efficient urban freight, the Norwegian capital Oslo sought to implement a UCC demonstration in the city center. However, the process of establishing UCC as a demonstration measure within the set time frame was ultimately stopped without success. By using the experiences from this process, the paper provides a more solid basis for renewed efforts at implementation in the future. With basis in implementation theory, the study identifies key barriers to implementation of UCC. Findings indicate that the barriers are primarily related to financial concerns and stakeholder acceptability. However, institutional, practical and legal barriers are also of significance. Strategies to overcome the identified barriers are suggested, most importantly the need for establishing a credible and sound business model. The study makes use of perspectives from political science regarding implementation theory in order to facilitate urban freight policy. As such, it represents a novel scholarly approach in the field of urban freight research. The evaluation framework can be useful for similar studies to come and for policymakers in the design and implementation of new policy measures for urban freight.

The influence of microclimate on architectural projects: a bioclimatic analysis of the single-family detached house in Spain’s Mediterranean climate

As a departure from the standard bioclimatic models for architectural design which are based on regional climatic conditions, this study argues for the need to adapt architecture to the local microclimate in order to achieve maximum energy efficiency with regard to indoor thermal conditioning for the benefit of the occupants. Taking a commonly accepted, conventional bioclimatic housing model as a starting point, this study analyses the effect of passive systems of energy usage (based on orientation, shape and materials) in the transfer of heat across all facades between the microclimatic conditions outside the house and the interior of the house, thereby affecting internal comfort conditions. An optimised bioclimatic model which achieves a greater reduction in energy consumption has been established through the manipulation of these elements. The study, which uses the typology of the single-family house, was carried out in the municipality of Estepona, taken as a model city with respect to the process of urban consolidation within the Mediterranean enclave in the south of Spain. The analysis demonstrates that the optimised housing model significantly improves the daily thermal performance of the house as well as heating and cooling loads. Therefore, the adaptation of architecture to microclimatic conditions may be used as a basic strategy in the design and construction of more efficient housing.

Reliability of water supply from stormwater harvesting and managed aquifer recharge with a brackish aquifer in an urbanising catchment and changing climate

Recent research shows stormwater harvesting with Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) and complementary treatment can deliver safe potable water supplies. To address supply reliability the “WaterCress” hydrological model was used iteratively to simulate runoff, recharge and recovery for different rainfall, catchment and aquifer conditions, and operational scenarios based on the Parafield scheme in Salisbury, South Australia. Using historical rainfall and current catchment and operating conditions, annual demand equating to 12.8% of catchment rainfall could be met with 99.5% volumetric reliability. Using projected rainfalls from a high emission climate scenario resulted in a smaller harvestable volume decline than the increase expected from urban consolidation. Freshwater storage depletion in the brackish aquifer was expected to reduce the supply by 10% with 99.5% reliability compared with zero depletion. This simple generic modelling approach was useful for estimating reliability of stormwater MAR systems to assist planning and design and provide a basis for investor confidence.