Urban Renewal Policies Research Articles

Urban Renewal Policy Evaluation in Local City by Multi-agent Approach

Urban Renewal Policy Evaluation in Local City by Multi-agent Approach

I grandi eventi: un osservatorio privilegiato sulla ricon?gurazione degli spazi. Il caso di Zaragoza 2008

The paper Mega-events: a privileged observatory on the reconfiguration of spaces, landscapes and identities in the contemporary city. The case of Zaragoza 2008 proposes an analysis of urban restoration processes in contemporary European cities, through the case study of Zaragoza. Zaragoza represents a useful case study in order to point out how contemporary cities face the economic and social transition, from the traditional industrial model to the contemporary response to global urban challenges. The case of Zaragoza synthesizes the main strategies adopted by local administrations in reshaping cities, adopting urban renewal programs and policies. The transformation of Zaragoza started at the end of the eighties with the approval of the new Masterplan (Plan General de Ordenacion Urbana). After that, in 1998, a commission composed by local administrators and stakeholders, adopted a Strategic plan, which promoted the regeneration and the local development of the city until 2015. In 2004 Zaragoza obtained the nomination as host city for the International Expo of 2008. The challenge of the Expo gave a new impulse to all the programmed projects, spread in all the neighborhoods, which converged towards the scheduled event of 2008. The core of the research presented in this paper concerns the analysis of the policies, the strategies and practices promoted by the city of Zaragoza for the Expo 2008 and their consequences in reshaping and reorganizing the city after the conclusion of the event.

A Comparison between Synthetic Space Analysis and Intangible Heritage Investigation in Urban Conservation

The conservation of intangible heritage in historical regions has recently become a progressively important topic in the international level. Till recently, in the protection process of historical cities, the concentration has been on the tangible cultural heritage, built environment and historical buildings in old districts; while safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage has been generally neglected. This paper aims at highlighting the significant role of the intangible heritage in the urban renewal policies of old historical districts. It undertakes the conservation and urban renewal activities of Mosul Old City (MOC) as a case study, and it explains that there are broad distinctions in various aspects between space structural analysis and intangible elements investigation, which designates that the intangible elements do not correlate to material or synthetic items within the urban fabric in the same high grade that is associated with the inhabitants memory of the historical area. It emphasizes the importance of the preservation of intangible heritage besides the tangible one in the urban renewal policies.

铁西区城市改造过程中建筑景观的演变规律

探索城市改造过程中景观的变化规律对城市景观变化的预测有重要的指导意义。以沈阳市铁西区1997、2002、2005、2008年建筑物三维信息为基础数据。按照建筑物使用性质将其分为居住、工业、商业、教育与医疗、其他建筑5类,按照建筑物的高度将其分为平房、低层、多层、中高层、高层和超高层6类。采用转移矩阵法分析了不同时段建筑类型的更替规律。并将探索性空间数据分析法应用于建筑改造空间分布特征的研究。结果显示: 1997到2002年,居住建筑是建筑改造的主体。2002年后,工业建筑成为建筑改造的主体。1997到2008年,不同高度类型的建筑更替顺序为:平房→低层建筑→多层建筑。新增建筑先以低层为主,后以中高层,逐渐以高层为主。建筑改造在空间上并不是随机分布的,而是存在显著的空间正相关关系。在局部空间范围内,建筑改造呈现成片集中改造的现象。;To explore the variation law of architectural landscape is important for forecasting the variation in urban landscape in the process of urban renewal. It was mainly studied the evolution law of architectural landscape and spatial distribution features of building transformation in the Tiexi District, Shenyang, China, during the urban renewal process in this paper.<br> In this article, the three-dimensional information of buildings in the Tiexi District was extracted from aerial photos (1997) and QuickBird imageries (2002, 2005 and 2008) based on ArcGIS, Erdas and Barista software. We divided the buildings into five types as Residential building, Industrial building, Commercial building, Educational and Medical building, and Others according to the usage properties, and six types as Bungalow, Low-rise building, Muti-story building, Mid-tall story building, High-rise building, and Super-high building according to the height, combining our research purpose with the principle of landscape classification. The conversion-in contribution rate, conversion-out contribution rate and retention ratio were used as the indexes of the transfer matrix method analysis to detect the change characteristics of architectural landscape types and their position and function. We divided the research area into 457 blocks of 0.3km×0.3km, and caculated the transformation area ratio of buildings in each block. Both the global spatial autocorrelation Moran's I indicating overall clustering that exists in a dataset and the local spatial autocorrelation (LISA) cluster map dentifying ‘interesting’ locations and assessing the extent of spatial heterogeneity of the exploratory spatial data analysis were used to study the spacial distribution pattern of building transformation.<br> The results showed that the main transformation of architecture landscape types was between the Not buildings and buildings (Residential building, Industrial building and Commercial building; Bungalow, Low-rise building and Multi-story building) from 1997 to 2008. There was significant difference existed in the transformation of building types and the spatial distribution in different time intervals.Residential buildings were the leading actor of architecture transformation from 1997 to 2002, while Industrial buildings were after 2002. The buildings were replaced firstly the Bungalow, secondly the Low-rise building, then the Muti-story building, and the newly increased buildings were firstly the Low-rise building, secondly the Mid-tall story building, then the High-rise building from 1997 to 2008. The Moran's I of global spatial autocorrelation indicated that the building transformation was not distributing randomly but with prominent positive relation in space. The cluster map of local spatial autocorrelation presented concentrated building transformation in the local spatial scope. The position of the centralized transformation changed constantly over time. The implementation of urban renewal policies and transformation of regional function were the main factors for variation in architecture landscape pattern in the Tiexi District from 1997 to 2008.

Gender issues in urban indigenous communities in Nigeria: evidence from Port Harcourt

Urban indigenous people‟s way of life and their socioeconomic conditions have not attracted much attention in urban community studies despite the fact that they constitute an important segment of the urban population. Similarly, the manners in which urban indigenous women are subordinated to men in the patriarchal family structure and the attendant urban economic relations fostered by men deserve to be examined. This paper therefore attempts to examine gender issues in five indigenous communities in Port Harcourt. The communities are: Abuloma, Oroazi, Rumuadaolu, Elekahia and Ogbuna-abali. The key questions explored in the study are: how are urban indigenous women been marginalized in the process of urban growth and what urban role had been feminized? Focus Group Discussion (FDG) was used to elicit information from the women in these communities. The study revealed that the integration of indigenous communities into urban growth center redefine women agricultural role and created a new economic relation in which women constitute a large segment of people in the informal sector. The study also revealed that government urban renewal policy in the indigenous communities has not been gender sensitive. Based on these findings it is recommended that gender sensitive approach be adopted in urban planning.

Femininity As a City Marketing Strategy

Rotterdam organised the festival ‘La City’ as an entrepreneurial strategy to upgrade the city’s class position, using femininity as a tool. ‘La City’ was an attempt to introduce a new economy in Rotterdam: one that is service-based and post-industrial. Rotterdam is a former industrial city and is now trying to establish a new economy and a new spatial organisation. In this article, ‘La City’ campaign material, texts on the character of the city and interviews in local newspapers with policy-makers are analysed in the context of the urban renewal and gentrification policies of Rotterdam. This research shows how the city uses femininity as a marketing strategy to ‘cleanse’ Rotterdam of its working-class mythology as well as construing a hegemonic gender identity capable of excluding lower-class groups. Rotterdam, according to its own texts, is after bourgeois, feminine inhabitants that ‘lounge’ in ‘cocktail bars’ to replace the ‘rough’ men who worked in the harbour. ‘La City’ is one of many strategies to establish genderfication: the production of space for not only more affluent users (as gentrification is often defined), but also for specific gender notions. Genderfication is also established by practices of ‘mixing’ urban neighbourhoods and building homes for middle-class families.

Wasted Whiteness: The Racial Politics of the Stoner Film

Wasted Whiteness: The Racial Politics of the Stoner Film

Towards Sustainable Urban Renewal in the Netherlands

Cities and the neighbourhoods within are dynamic and change continuously. Vital neighbourhoods can cope with changing circumstances like outdated use, changing household compositions, consumer preferences and fashions, political turnovers, global trends and economic cycles. Sustainable areas are vital and flexible to changes. Sustainable urban renewal results in sustainable areas. However, what is sustainable urban renewal, and why is quite a lot of renewal policy, as history shows, not very sustainable? European urban renewal policy can be divided into three separate periods, in which different ideas prevailed. This article shows these three periods on four points of view, the contents, the process, the area and a time-focus, and elaborates these on one particular country, the Netherlands.

Transformaciones, conflictos e identidades en el Centro Histórico de Salvador de Bahia

Shortly after its designation as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985, the historic centre of Salvador de Bahia, and more specifically Pelourinho, started to undergo significant changes which were oriented to the consolidation of this Brazilian city as an important tourist destination in South America. The outcome of the regeneration policies that have been implemented to this end has elicited conflicting reactions among the stakeholders in the process and the results have become points of reference for other cities which have identified the potential for tourism in their central historic areas, as in Salvador. This paper analyses the various urban renewal policies that local and regional authorities have implemented in the historic centre of Salvador since the late nineteenth century. In doing so we wish to highlight the successive ‘reinventions’ and transformations of the area, which in general have responded to the interests of the power groups that initiated them. In addition, the paper focuses on some of the conflicts which arose during the process, as well as the challenges that remain in order to turn Pelourinho into a lively, multifunctional space.

Mind the Gap? The Persistence of Pathological Discourses in Urban Regeneration Policy

Urban regeneration policy has historically framed policy problems using a discourse that pathologizes areas and spatial communities. Since 2001 in England and 2002 in Scotland, a structural change in policy has occurred where city‐wide partnerships are now meant to overcome structural spatial inequalities, countering pathological explanations. This paper uses historical and discourse analysis to evaluate one of the major community regeneration strategies developed by the Scottish Executive in 2002: Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap. It seeks to ask whether structural change in policy was paralleled by discursive change; what discursive path dependence is evidenced? The text is placed in the historic context of UK urban renewal policies dating back to the launch of the Urban Programme in 1968, and particularly the policy discourse created by the influential Conservative government policy of 1988 – New Life for Urban Scotland – and the wider discourses of poverty and neighbourhood renewal policy created by Labour governments since 1997. The close textual analysis of the text shows that Better Communities in Scotland continues to pathologize spatial communities. Although this suggests a degree of historical path dependency, the historic breadth of the analysis also problematizes simple historical determinism.

Is it, or is not? The conceptualisation of gentrification and displacement and its political implications in the case of Berlin‐Prenzlauer Berg

Building on Peter Marcuse’s definition of displacement, this paper examines Berlin’s urban renewal policy since the 1990s and studies how different definitions of displacement support different policy alternatives. It argues that the conceptualisation of displacement is not merely an academic exercise, but has enormous political implications. We show how theoretical differences in the definition of displacement have been taken up by policy‐makers and used as justification for the withdrawal from ‘welfarist’ politics of market intervention to be replaced by advisory services to individual tenants. We argue that social scientists are partly responsible for this change and call for more critical intervention of scholars into public debates and a clearer specification of policy alternatives.

Regime Building, Institution Building: Urban Renewal Policy in Chicago, 1946–1962

ABSTRACT:Urban regime analysis emphasizes the role of coalition building in creating a capacity to govern in cities. Through a case study of urban renewal policy in postwar Chicago, this article considers the role played by political institutions. Conceptualizing this historical period as one of regime building, I show how existing political institutions were out of sync with the city’s new governing agenda of urban renewal and redevelopment following World War II. Creating a capacity to govern in urban renewal policy required both coalition building and a fundamental reworking of formal governing institutions.

Mapping decline: St. Louis and the fate of the American city

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables Preface Introduction. Our House: Twentieth Century at 4635 North Market Street Local Politics, Local Power: Governing Greater St. Louis, 1940-2000 The Steel Ring: Race and Realty in Greater St. Louis Patchwork Metropolis: Municipal Zoning in Greater St. Louis Fighting Blight: Urban Renewal Policies and Programs, 1945-2000 City of Blight: Limits of Urban Renewal in Greater St. Louis Conclusion. Our House Revisited: Twenty-First Century at 4635 North Market Street Notes Index

The Question of Scale in Housing-Led Regeneration: Tied to the Neighbourhood?

Despite recognition of the fluid, interconnected nature of urban drivers and outcomes operating across a variety of spatial scales, the use of area-based initiatives in urban regeneration and renewal policy continues to fix space in order to identify scope, determine legitimacy, and clarify accountability. Even if multiple scales are acknowledged in policy discourse and strategy, actual boundaries defining a policy's geography of interest have typically focused on the neighbourhood. The emergence of citywide or subregional regeneration initiatives, such as England's Housing Market Renewal pathfinder programme and Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, have been accompanied by different considerations as to how space is negotiated and enrolled both in strategic and in delivery terms. Using these ‘market shaping’ initiatives as a basis for discussion, I seek to add to debates regarding the tensions tied up in fixing space from the practical perspective of programme implementation. While a partial defence of boundary setting is offered, the influence and impact of scale arising from the delimitation of space are seen as crucial factors in determining how complex initiatives sustain their rationale and deliver in practice. Exploring the challenges created by the disjuncture between the spaces of strategic thinking and the impact of those policies as experienced on the ground, the paper concludes by offering some perspectives as to why the neighbourhood retains a pervasive hold within regeneration policy as the point of mediation between the local and global.

システム思考型モデルを用いたまちづくり政策の定量的評価

システム思考型モデルを用いたまちづくり政策の定量的評価

Gentrification—Gentle or Traumatic? Urban Renewal Policies and Socioeconomic Transformations in Copenhagen

This article contrasts the intentions and outcomes of the publicly instigated and supported urban renewal of Copenhagen's Inner Vesterbro district. Apart from physically upgrading the decaying buildings, the municipality's aim was to include the inhabitants in the urban renewal process and, seemingly, to prevent the dislocation of people from the neighbourhood. However, due to ambiguous policies, the workings of the property market and the lack of sufficient deflecting mechanisms, middle-class inhabitants are now replacing the high concentration of socioeconomically vulnerable people that characterised Vesterbro before the urban renewal. This process may appear `gentle', but it is nonetheless an example of how state and market interact to produce gentrification with `traumatic' consequences for individuals and the city as a socially just space.

Integrated urban renewal in The Netherlands: a critical appraisal

Urban renewal policies in The Netherlands already have a long history, which is characterised by varying attention for either smaller-scale (neighbourhood) or larger-scale (city) issues, and for either physical, social or economic questions. These variations run parallel with more general discourses on urban dynamics and perceptions of processes in (urban) society at large. In this paper the recent history of urban renewal policies will be briefly sketched, including their main orientations. Recent Big Citie Policies, currently in the third generation, will receive special attention and the actual policy discourse will be critically evaluated and confronted with some essential empirical findings. In this process, the Dutch policy on integrated urban renewal shows clear parallels with the experience in other Western European countries, demonstrating that a Western European paradigm of urban policies is in the making: integrated, area-based, with involvement of both public and market partners and residents. Nevertheless, the Dutch case is more outspoken than the approaches in other Western European countries, by paying more attention to the issue of social cohesion or integration and to the promotion of social mix as a solution for a lack of social cohesion in neighbourhoods. At the same time it is clear that this new paradigm of urban policies shows the characteristics of a discourse that is not based on research and on empirical facts, but that develops its own momentum from shared beliefs regarding the nature of urban problems and the appropriate policy responses. This new paradigm needs reconsideration.

Evaluation of Urban Renewal Policy with City Model based on Artificial Society

The urban renewal policies to activate city centre are proposed in many local cities. In the study, the city model based on artificial society is developed concerning with travel behaviour and commercial activity. The model may describe theindirect impact of urban renewal policy. As autonomous agents are defined as citizens and commercial shops, the artificial society to demonstrate time series change of urban area can be created In particular, the urban renewal policies are introduced as population centralization, promotion of public transport to the virtual city with rapid motorization. These policies connect with the concept of compact city. The process is observed that the local impact of renewal policy is spread to the global city. As the evaluation is proposed considering the complexinteraction between the urban activities, the emergence corresponding to the autonomous urban renewal can be observed.

Spatial Disparities and Housing Market Deregulation in the Randstad Region

Since 1989, Dutch housing policy has been changing to allow more scope for market forces. This article will evaluate the spatial disparities related to these policy changes in the development of the housing market in the Randstad region of the Netherlands. The evaluation is placed in an international perspective by drawing a comparison between the Randstad and the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. The comparison focuses on three specific aspects: suburbanization, spatial disparity in the distribution of household income, and spatial differentiation in the value of property. The results show that since the more market-oriented housing policy came into force, the Randstad has witnessed faster suburbanization and — to a certain extent — a greater disparity in property value in urban and suburban areas than the San Francisco Bay Area, though the gaps in household income are narrower in the Randstad than in the Bay Area. The comparison draws attention to the policy implications of problems that are likely to be caused by suburbanization and property value segregation in the Randstad and presents a number of policy recommendations. Spatial policy, urban renewal policy, and tax and income policy can play a significant role in mitigating the spatial impacts of housing market deregulation on the Randstad.

Did Racists Create the Suburban Nation?

Since the 1992 elections, when suburbanites outnumbered all other voters for the first time, historians have viewed suburbanization with a sense of alarm. Metropolitan-area historians have built with great ardor upon a foundation of earlier work, especially that of Kenneth Jackson.' Using the latest geographical techniques with great resourcefulness, these historians have deepened Jackson's troubling picture of a distinctive post-World War II American sprawl. Above all, they have reinforced two of Jackson's observations: postwar America's suburban migration was divisive; it was also surprisingly unnatural and unspontaneous. These historians have made clear that America's booming economy and population, left to natural impulses, might well have herniated up rather than out. The Interstate Highway Trust Fund and mortgage guarantees by the Federal Housing Adminstration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) were only the most obvious subsidies that induced Americans to own more cars and houses than market forces could have done. The unfairness of suburbanization is now obvious. The FHA's guidelines were explicitly racist. Local zoning laws enforced-and often created-class distinctions. Private lenders choked off the improvement of black neighborhoods with redlining and poured extra capital into white ones. Realtors' code of ethics required them to steer black and white homebuyers apart. New ghettoes were created by public housing and urban renewal policies. Recent historians, led by Thomas Sugrue, have emphasized even more than Jackson the desperate plight of those left -or rather pushed-behind. They have emphasized that the pushing was often violent.2 Where Jackson explored many additional causes and