‘A NEW SEASON FOR PLANNING’: URBAN GARDENING AS INFORMAL PLANNING IN ROME

This article investigates the relationship between urban gardening and planning by building upon the results of field research on gardening initiatives in the city of Rome, Italy. The work is aimed at suggesting that, while often associated in geography and planning literature with urban informality practices (e.g. accidental city or self‐made urbanism), urban gardening actually presents the character of a distinctive form of people's interaction with urban space, here defined as “informal planning”. This includes practices that are intentionally put forward by local dwellers with the intention of urban space planning and organizing public life in the absence of legal definition, guidance and funds provided by public authorities or the private sector. Urban gardening cases in Rome exemplify the emergence of informal planning and show how, by questioning the counterplanning tradition that understands urban gardening as an antagonist spatial practice opposing institutional planning, informal planning can open up collaborative possibilities. A new mode of interaction between citizens' agency and the formal planning initiatives of local administration can lead to creative solutions to address some of the problems associated with the neoliberal transformation of the city space, most notably the decrease in public space and its deterioration.     

Cultural icons and urban development in Asia: Economic imperative,national identity,and global city status

Global cities are characterized by the multiplicity of flows that they are implicated in – flows of people, goods, services, ideas, and images. Yet, global cities do not derive their status only on the basis that they are networked nodes. They also require particular forms of cultural capital. Cities with global aspirations have thus increasingly recognized the need to accumulate cultural capital, for which one means is to create new urban spaces, in particular, new cultural urban spaces (e.g. grand theatres, museums, libraries). These often monumental structures are intended to support a vibrant cultural life, in order to attract and sustain global human and economic flows. In this paper, I examine the efforts by Shanghai's, Singapore's and Hong Kong's governments to develop cultural icons as part of the strategy to help their cities gain global city status, and in the process, constructing shared national and city identities. I illustrate how such efforts are not universally interpreted in the manner intended, with city populations sometimes protesting, sometimes simply oblivious. At the same time, I argue that such strategies to achieve global city status are sometimes at odds with projects of nationhood.     

VIEWPOINTS

This paper reviews plans for a new building programme for Amsterdam, a growing city in the Netherlands. This plan ignores children's needs and 'devoires' responsibility to the boroughs. This is alarming as the boroughs are not addressing threats to the quality of children's neighbourhood lives. It is argued that this neglect will undermine Amsterdam's reputation as a child friendly city by design. There is an urgent need to make children's presence more visible, to set minimum space standards and to involve children in the planning process.     

Planning in the Zürich Region

This examination of the planning structure within the Canton of Zürich has indicated that many of the problems, such as adequate public transportation, the provision of land for industry, and the preservation of land for recreational use overlap existing political boundaries. The solutions, to be effective, must be carried out in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion among the city, the regional, and the cantonal planning groups. Much is being done at all levels to ensure that the future growth of Zürich and its surrounding region will take place in an orderly, aesthetically satisfying fashion. Certainly many serious problems remain to be solved. Nevertheless, the development of Zürich from a Roman settlement to one of the world's most important industrial, financial, commercial, and cultural centres has been accomplished with a minimum of destruction to the city's beautiful site. The preservation of the natural environment is a blessing for the city's inhabitants, having economic     

Urban planning in Russia: towards the market

The article discusses the recent transformation of the Russian system of urban planning from the socialist system to a market one. The focus is on new problems of the Russian planning system, the relationship between the new and old systems, and the role of the bureaucracy and participation. A case study of the city of Moscow develops the subject at a metropolitan level. It is argued that Russian planning in transition has been planning in crisis and it is only now becoming an effective and pluralistic social institution. The recent revival of planning has been much dependent on Russia's regions; a diversification of planning systems throughout the country is expected.     

Relationship Between Green Areas and Urban Conservation in Historical Areas and Its Reflections: Case of Diyarbakir City,Turkey

City planning is essential for providing physical environment for better community life and for providing green areas, while conserving historical heritage is an important achievement in city planning, particularly for historical cities such as Diyarbakir city. The focus of this paper is to outline how increasing the ratio of green area in the city centre of Diyarbakir, Turkey, with a land-use betterment model exemplified sustainable urbanism. We observed an applied urban design project that included both opening up free space to the public and increasing the amount of available green area. The project addressed an area adjacent to the Diyarbakir city walls, which are important not only for their history but also as reflections of the urbanization process of Diyarbak?r from prehistoric time to the twenty-first century. We have noticed that changes in the design area provided understanding of the city planning by public and supplied more green areas for children and women. Thus, the city became more desirable and more sustainable.     

两性对城市广场设计要素的关注差异研究——基于女性主义视角

传统的城市广场规划设计,多注重服务半径、设计理念等内容,对其服务范围内的人口特征缺乏有效研究,如性别、年龄、家庭结构等,造成广场活力下降。在南京市秦淮、白下两区的随机调查结果显示,在广场大小、广场内部道路设计、治安管理、卫生维护等设计要素上,两性对其的关注程度基本无差异,而在特殊设施、私密空间设计、绿化美学效果等方面,两性间的关注差异明显。基于女性主义思想,这一差异的产生缘于两性在家庭内部分工、空间认知、生活体验、审美、历史角色上的差异。     

The Rise of the Creative City: Culture and Creativity in Copenhagen

Culture and creativity as drivers of development are established features of the urban policy agenda. This article examines the interplay of culture, creativity and city planning using the example of Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark presents an interesting example because whilst it has a tradition for linking culture with urban economic boosterism, recent research has suggested a social emphasis in its more contemporary urban cultural policies. The paper argues that the arrival of creativity upon the urban agenda has abruptly altered this policy context. Both culture and creativity have become central to attempts to stimulate the cultural and creative industries and to promote the city at an international level, attracting investment and the “Creative Class”. In tracing this development, the article discusses potential changes to the planning system designed to facilitate Copenhagen's transformation to a creative city and points to the potential impacts of these.     

Negotiating spatial identities: mobile perspectives on street life in uganda

Previous geographical research with street children has principally focused on their micro-geographies in the city. This paper draws on nomadic and episodic processes of homeless mobility, to explore street children's geographies from a wider social, spatial and temporal perspective. By examining street life in Kampala, Uganda as a continued negotiation of public/private and street/non-street locations, the fluid nature of street children's identity is illustrated. Over time, movement between spaces, such as divergent city niches, institutions, homes and other towns, is often subject to power relations operating in street/non-street spaces with each requiring conformity to a different set of values and behaviours. The paper demonstrates how this results in children's street identity changing as they move through the street life path.     

Les Révolutions françaises. Les phénomènes révolutionnaires en France du moyenâgeànos jours

In this article, I examine friendship as a subject of political theory rather than as a social practice relevant to political life. As suggested by Francesco d'Altobianco Alberti in the poem recited at the first certame coronario, two ideas of political friendship existed side by side in Medicean Florence. They appeared in full in Palmieri's Vita civile and in Platina's De optimo cive. As I will show, the Ciceronian language of friendship is used in these works to resolve two key problems of Renaissance political thought: the need for political unity and the just way of appointing the governing elite. Palmieri placed friendship in the political sphere of concord: he was a republican imperialist who believed that civic friendship protected the political unity of the city, without which Florence would not have been able to expand. Platina, on the other hand, situated friendship in the political sphere of counsel: his concern was to support the selection of the most virtuous and knowledgeable citizens, worthy of access to public office. While Palmieri looked back to the city's medieval past, Platina cast light on the politics of friendship that allowed the Medici to stay in power.     

WRITING THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM

In this essay I reflect on Knox Peden's Spinoza contra Phenomenology, a history of French rationalist Spinozism in the mid‐twentieth century. The book marks an important intervention in modern French and European intellectual history, depicting the importance of Baruch Spinoza's thought in the negotiation of and resistance to the phenomenology that captivated much of twentieth‐century French intellectual life. With philosophical and historical sophistication, Peden tells the story of several relatively overlooked thinkers while also providing substantially new contexts and interpretations of the well‐known Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze. While accounting for Peden's major accomplishment, my aim is also to situate his work among a number of recent works in the history of Spinozism in order to reflect on the specific methodological questions that pertain to the widely varying appropriations of Spinoza's thought since the seventeenth century. In particular, I reflect on Peden's claim that Spinoza's thought cannot provide an actionable politics, a claim that runs counter to nearly two centuries of leftist forms of Spinozism. I offer a short account of some of the ways that theorists have mobilized Spinoza's thought for political purposes, redefining “action” itself in Spinozist terms. I then conclude by reflecting on the dimensions of Spinoza's thought (and recent interpretations of it) that make it possible for such significantly different claims about its political potential to be credible.     

The Making of an Australian ‘Airport City’

Globally, the changing nature of airports, and particularly the juxtaposition of general commercial land uses alongside aviation functions, is captured in the concept of the ‘airport city’. In Australia, commercialisation has impacted nearly all privatised capital city and general aviation airports. Essendon Airport's contested transformation from a run‐down general aviation facility into an emergent business and retail hub in Melbourne's north‐western suburbs serves as an instructive case study of the evolution of the airport city as a new suburban typology. Drawing in part on in‐depth interviews with key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment process, this paper examines the conflicting forces that have driven commercialisation since the late 1990s, the spatial outcomes and the wider planning issues arising.     

Romanian Spatial Planning System: Post-Communist Dynamics of Change and Europeanization Processes

This paper addresses the post-communist history of Romania's spatial planning system with the two-fold aim of describing its evolution and identifying the role played by the EU in this process. Taking as a starting point the contradiction between the formal goals of Romanian spatial planning and the actual spatial development patterns, the paper proposes a contextualized analysis of the system's changes. It complements the focus on the formal technical dimension with a look at the broader socio-political context, driving forces and path dependencies. It identifies five episodes within this time frame and argues that they were catalysed by factors outside the immediate technical dimension of spatial planning, such as the changes in the Romanian political scene, the dynamics in the governance and planning culture, the evolution of the economy, the actual development patterns and most notably, by the process of Europeanization. While often the role of the EU is taken for granted as a general positive force for Romania, the paper makes instead the distinction between the use of Europeanization as a rhetorical external driving force and the real changes brought about by the process.     

FOUCAULT'S ‘HALL OF MIRRORS’: AN INVESTIGATION INTO GEO‐EPISTEMOLOGY

In this article we aim to single out a part of Foucault's trihedrals of spatialization – discourses and practices, that is, technologies of power that have their spatialized frames. In order to analyse them we use the concept of a trihedral, not a triangle, because we noticed that several lines can be drawn from any angle and can form new spaces. In such a manner we are able to see their multiplication, separation and parallelisms. Using the trihedrals of spatialization we detect in Foucault's work, besides the demands for a certain (spatialized) ontology, the existence of no less significant geo‐epistemology as knowledge and discourses that are formed in spaces and as the space formed through knowledge/power/discourses. We face a polyvalent character of the angles of the trihedrals and try to avoid the labyrinth into which their multiplication pulls us. The article pays special attention to Foucault's elementary trihedral, life–work–language, in which man came to life as a being who works, speaks and reproduces in a new shape – as population. In this trihedral the angles/concepts are only seemingly separated: they overlap, mix, collide and intertwine in a game that cannot end. That is why this is only a snapshot of the many trihedrals; a possible aggregate of combinations, yet in no case coherent and homogenous. In that sense this article is not an attempt to systematize Foucault's thought but to identify one of the many possible models/matrices for understanding the meaning of his spatial turn and his analysis of power.     

Coloured Cabinets: A Reflection on Material Culture as a Marker of Coloured Identity in Cloetesville,South Africa

In coloured neighbourhoods of the Western Cape in South Africa, there are objects in people's homes that live in a unique historical and cultural moment. This article reports on an examination, in the neighbourhood of Cloetesville, Stellenbosch, of how these objects inside residents’ homes tell a story of a creolised people and the locations in which they are situated. In the case of Cloetesville, as in many neighbourhoods that arose from a history of forced removals, many people experience various social and economic problems. Coloured people's identities are commonly thought to rest in these problems. This article, however, seeks to suggest an alternative way of exploring coloured identity through looking at objects in households and broader living environments. Thus, I hope to provide insight into different yet distinct experiences by contributing new perspectives through looking at nostalgic and ordentlike (respectable) sentiments of belonging. Specifically cabinets in living rooms are conceptualised as repositories of such sentiments in the home, and how the objects residing in the home have the power/ability to symbolically ground their owners in the neighbourhood of Cloetesville.     

Greece: the persistence of political terrorism

Greece has one of the most sustained problems of political terrorism anywhere in the world. From the mid‐1970s to the present, the country's political and socioeconomic institutions have been confronted by systematic terrorist violence mainly at the hands of revolutionary guerrilla groups. The long story of Greek terrorism was thought to have ended in the summer of 2002 with the collapse of the country's premier terrorist group and one of Europe's longest‐running gangs, the notorious Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N). 17N's dismantling and imprisonment, rather than demoralizing and emasculating the country's armed struggle movement, led instead to the emergence of new urban guerrilla groups and an increase and intensification of revolutionary violence. In consequence, the article places Greek extremist violence in a broader political and cultural perspective and explains why it has become a permanent fixture of national public life.     

The Urban Injustices of New Labour's “New Urban Renewal”: The Case of the Aylesbury Estate in London

This paper discusses the urban injustices of New Labour's “new urban renewal”, that is the state‐led gentrification of British council estates, undertaken through the guise of mixed communities policy, on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, London, one of the largest council estates in Europe. In this particular case of post‐political planning I show how the tenant support for the regeneration programme was manipulated and misrepresented and how choices were closed down for them, leaving them ultimately with a “false choice” between a regeneration they did not want or the further decline of their estate. I look at what the estate residents thought/think about the whole process and how they have resisted, and are resisting, the gentrification of their estate. I show revanchist and post‐political practices, but ultimately I refuse to succumb to these dystopian narratives, very attractive as they are, for conflict/dissent has not been completely smothered and resistance to gentrification in and around the Aylesbury is alive and well. I argue that we urgently need to re‐establish the city as the driver of democratic politics with an emancipatory agenda, rather than one that ratifies the status quo or gets mired in a dystopic post‐justice city.     

CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN THE CONSTRUCTIVE GEOGRAPHY OF LARGE CITIES

The increasing impact of urbanization on the natural environment and physical constraints on city planning in the various natural zones of the USSR call for a program of research that would bring to bear the tools of the various geographical disciplines on the problem and might give rise to a distinctive geography of city planning. Geomorphology might be concerned with a variety of caving and slumping processes typical of large cities; climatology with the impact of cities on the microclimate of an area; hydrology with watertable changes and water-management problems, and biogeography with the distinctive plant and animal life of large cities and urban agglomerations. More complex, integrated research in both physical and economic geography would deal with the choice of suitable sites for new cities, particularly in extreme types of environment; with predictive aspects of the impact of urbanization, and the functional structure of cities. A number of cities and parts of cities with different layouts and different environmental settings should be designated as experimental study areas for geographical research of a more systematic character.     

Inappropriate object: Warsaw and the Stalin‐era Palace of Culture after the Smolensk disaster (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article is about the shifting relationship between the city of Warsaw and the Palace of Culture and Science – a gigantic Stalinist skyscraper which dominates the city centre – in the aftermath of the 10 April 2010 plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 others (mostly very senior military and political figures) in the woods outside Smolensk in western Russia. The crash's victims had been on their way to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of a massacre in the Katyń forest, near Smolensk, during which thousands of Polish army officers were shot on the orders of Stalin. Despite its status as Warsaw's most obvious material relic of Russia's historical domination over Poland, the Palace of Culture has in the last two decades been gradually reappropriated into the city's own landscape and everyday life. In fact, since the fall of communism, the Palace has eclipsed the city's traditional emblems and monuments to become regarded as the most identifiable marker, or ‘symbol’, of the contemporary city. Further, the Palace has consolidated the tangible and powerful impact it exerts on the city's architecture and urban layout, on its political, bureaucratic, ‘cultural’, commercial and educational life, and on the bodies and minds of its citizens. The very word ‘palace’ is normally understood in Warsaw to refer to the Palace of Culture. For a time after Smolensk, however, the word acquired a new association with the Presidential Palace, where crowds gathered to lay flowers, light candles and stand vigil. The markedly muted presence in Warsaw of the Palace of Culture during the mourning period after Smolensk demonstrated that the happy interaction between post‐socialist Warsaw and the rehabilitated Palace does not extend into every domain. The topography of mourning in Warsaw in the days after 10 April seemed to highlight the abject dimension of the Palace's uncanny presence in the city. This article explores why, how and for how long the Palace withdrew and was withdrawn from the life of the Warsaw after Smolensk.