A Model for Measuring the Sustainability Level of Historic Urban Quarters

The main aim of this paper is to propose a model for measuring the sustainability level of historic urban quarters and to indicate an appropriate strategy for their revitalization. Based on this aim, this study first presents the theoretical review on the concept of “revitalization”, and its relationship with sustainability; next, it introduces the characteristics, role, selection process and scaling method of sustainability indicators, which are essential for measuring the level of sustainability. The paper then, as the main contribution of this paper, proposes the model for measuring the level of sustainability in historic urban quarters and determines some proposals to achieve revitalized and sustainable historic urban quarters. Depending on the proposed model, there is a direct relationship between type and the level of obsolescence (revitalization) and the level of sustainability in the physical, economic and social structures of a particular area. Therefore, when the level of sustainability is high in any one of these three structures, it means that the level of obsolescence is low in the same structures of an historic urban quarter. The result of this paper leads us to say that, the level of sustainability is a new (additional) input in the strategic planning process of revitalization and sustainable urban revitalization of historic urban quarters. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief summary on the general arguments of the paper.     

Searching for a Balance Between Community Needs and Conservation Policies in Historic Neighbourhoods of Istanbul

Despite the recent rising interest in sustainability and community-related issues among urban regeneration policy-makers, it is still questionable how far the recent regeneration efforts in historic housing areas achieve a balance between the community needs and conservation policies. To answer this question, this article explores the interplay between conservation, community needs and sustainability in the context of Turkey, focusing on Istanbul. It premises on the assumption that finding the balance between the needs, aspirations and concerns of local communities and the conservation of the built environments will lead to more equitable and sustainable solutions to the problems Istanbul historic quarters are facing. The article explains the interrelation between sustainability, community needs and conservation, investigates whether these notions have been integrated into the urban conservation policy agenda of Turkey or not and then examines the assumption above by focusing on the recent regeneration story of Fener and Balat (F&B), a declining neighbourhood in the historic peninsula of Istanbul. Debating on the strengths and weaknesses of the recent conservation-led regeneration programme, the article gives clues for future regeneration initiatives to achieve a sustainable balance between the conservation and community needs policies in historic neighbourhoods of Istanbul.     

Communities in Catchments: Implications for Natural Resource Management

Economic and social considerations in natural resource management include the need for community participation and a greater appreciation of social and economic processes in understanding environmental problems. It is anticipated that new frameworks will guide these inclusions and redirect planning and management activities to achieve environmental sustainability. This paper examines issues of participation and the nature of ‘community’ through an analysis of relevant natural resource management policy documents and a case study of a public drinking water supply catchment in Western Australia. The findings indicate that if NRM strategies are to be successful, then a much wider and more inclusive view of community is needed, one that fully captures the different stakeholder groups beyond farmers, such as town residents, indigenous people, and those involved in other land uses. We need strategies that can accommodate differences within and between communities.     

Quo vadis,Delhi? Urban heritage and gender: towards a sustainable urban future

Historic architectural heritage is important to sustainable urban planning policy, particularly in cities that have heritage sites and/or themselves have ancient archaeological value. Delhi is one of the oldest living cities in the world. However, the vision of its planning policy is limited to valuing heritage for itself and for its economic value instead of also exploring the ways in the city’s heritage might contribute to the social organisation and utilisation of the urban public space. Particularly, like most national policy documents on heritage, it ignores the heritage/gender nexus, which has implications for the identity and status of women in Delhi, community development and ecological preservation. But twenty women practioners and scholars of development in Delhi referred to heritage as a challenge as well as opportunity for gender and urban sustainability when asked for their perspectives on the most important sustainability issues in the city. I argue that Delhi’s urban planning strategies must acknowledge the gender/heritage nexus to enable holistic and gender-inclusive urban development for the present and future generations of its citizens, which is an important thrust of the sustainability agenda.     

城市社区体系结构可获性评价的原理研究

从人本主义的角度出发,以提升城市生活空间质量为目的,运用城市生活空间质量观的理念分析了城市社区体系结构的公正性和客观可获性的内涵。构建了城市社区体系结构可获性评价的模式,即阶层化居舍剥夺指数评价模式和阶层化社会区剥夺指数模式。阐述了基于"城市资源的配置是均等的"这一假设,结合城市社区体系结构可获性评价要素,提出了城市社区体系结构可获性评价的操作模式,以期构建完整的城市社区体系结构,提升城市社会空间的阶层可获性。     

A Framework for Sustainable Heritage Management: A Study of UK Industrial Heritage Sites

In 2002, the World Heritage Committee declared heritage to be ‘an instrument for the sustainable development of all societies’. The term ‘sustainable development’, however, is inscribed with a complex economic, environmental and social agenda that challenges contemporary World Heritage management practice. This paper draws on a content analysis of six industrial UK World Heritage Site management plans. The analysis focuses on the extent that each plan integrates four key sustainability dimensions. Findings indicate that the planning frameworks and collaboration processes in operation at each site ensure conservation of the historical physical fabric but limit the development of a sustainable local cultural economy. A sustainable heritage management framework is presented based on the adoption of a long‐term strategic orientation and extensive local community participation in decision making. The framework is relevant to other complex heritage sites such as historic towns and cultural landscapes.     

Third-world development: urbanizing for the future

This article reviews some issues reflected in the 1996 UN Habitat II agenda and recent research on urbanization. The themes of the 1996 Habitat conference were urban development, urban poverty, and governance, civil society, and social capital. It is expected that over 50% of total world population will live in cities in the year 2000. Cities are viewed both as engines of economic growth and centers of severe economic, environmental, and social problems. There is some disagreement about whether cities are rational economic structures or what the World Bank's urban agenda is and its relationship with macroeconomic policy. Discussions of global urban issues are criticized for their neglect of issues of equity and poverty, cultural diversity, and identity and representation. Habitat II also stressed urban sustainability. There is growing recognition that urban management involves more than the "Brown Agenda" of environmental and physical aspects of urban growth. Recent studies identify how politics and power affect people's access to basic urban services. Urban economic activity can also contribute to environmental problems. Urban growth affects the provision of health services. Although there is not a consensus on the role of cities in expanding economic and social development and the best management practices, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that urban processes are varied throughout the developing world. The links between urban and rural areas differentiate cities and expose the need to understand the role of intermediate urban areas surrounding and between larger cities. Poverty has become increasingly urbanized, but the extent of poverty is unknown. Habitat II was an unprecedented effort to engage nongovernment groups, local government staff, trade unions, and the private sector and to emphasize community participation. Networks of trust and reciprocity are key to solving poverty, inequality, and disempowerment problems.     

Social sustainability of urban regeneration led by industrial land redevelopment in Taiwan

Abandoned industrial sites, usually contaminated by hazardous substances, create social injustice in the surrounding communities. Redevelopment of industrial land has brought prospects of sustainable development to the communities that live in and around them. This research is to identify the critical factors facilitating urban regeneration and particularly social sustainability in Kaohsiung, an industrial city of Taiwan which experienced deindustrialization in recent decades, resulting in several abandoned industrial sites and decay of the adjacent urban communities. Two different industrial land redevelopment projects were examined; (1) Jhongdou Wetland Park, which focuses on environmental sustainability, and (2) Pier-2 Art Centre, which focuses on economic sustainability. Measured by the social sustainability indicators developed by the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development and through findings from a questionnaire survey of community members, this study found that the redevelopment project of the Pier-2 Art Centre has a higher level of social sustainability than the Jhongdou Wetland Park, performing better in six out of nine themes. Critical dimensions resulting in the better performance in social sustainability of the Pier-2 Art Centre included rental affordability, heritage conservation, community image, cultural activity, community association, public space, local organization and higher accessibility to facility.     

改革开放以来我国政府职能转变的逻辑进路

改革开放30年来,我国社会发生了翻天覆地的变化,这其中既有经济、社会的变革,也有国家政治体制的变革,尤其是政府的行政管理体制由改革前的管制型政府向今天的服务型政府转变。而且,在这一发展过程中,政府行政管理职能也经历了一个不断转变的过程。本文在研究有关历史文献的基础上,对这个时期以来我国政府职能转变的历史进程作了初步的梳理,揭示了我国政府职能的转变由经济职能的调整开始破题,随着国家经济实力的增强和社会的发展变化,在不断完善政府经济职能的基础上,经历了社会管理职能、公共服务职能和民主建设职能不断凸显的逻辑进程。     

Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms?

Community engagement and citizen participation have long been important themes in liberal democratic theory, although managerial versions of liberal democracy have typically been dominant. In the past two decades, however, many countries have seen a shift away from a managerial or top-down approach, towards a revitalised emphasis on building institutional bridges between governmental leaders and citizenry, often termed ‘community engagement’. This paper outlines some of the main explanations for this shift, including international trends in governance and political economy; the availability of improved communications technologies; the need to share responsibility for resolving complex issues; and the local politics of managing social, economic and environmental projects. Some critical perspectives are also raised, suggesting a degree of scepticism about the intentions of government and implying serious limits on the potential influence of the citizenry and community groups. Important distinctions are drawn between policy arenas, in relation to the different dynamics and opportunities in different policy fields. The importance of building effective capacity for citizens and all non-government organisations (NGOs) to participate is emphasised. Typologies of community engagement are outlined, and linked to ideas about social capital.     

社区居民参与城市会展业发展的社会交换关系研究——以广州琶洲村村民为例

广州的琶洲地区是广州会展业的代表符号,琶洲村是会展业促进城市化发展的典型城中村。本文以琶洲村村民为例,从社区居民的经济影响感知视角解析会展业发展过程中居民的社会交换关系。研究显示:①城市会展业成为社区重要的社会交换关系变量,社区经济对会展业的依赖性增强。②在会展业发展过程中,外来者的进入打破了原来社区交换关系的均衡与稳定,社区参与交换关系的网络呈多元化特征;社区居民之间的内部交换关系发生了变化,正经历竞争与分化的阶段。③社区居民不满足现有的外部交换关系,表现出对更高层次交换关系的热切期盼。     

The autonomous world reversed: comparing liberal policy and autonomy in the performing arts

Comparative studies of cultural policy commonly emphasize the way in which states treat the autonomy of the arts. Such studies often claim that liberal states promote autonomy, while social democratic states promote more external, instrumental values, such as solidarity, universalism and equality. This article challenges this conception by claiming that in actual cultural policy-making it is in fact the other way around. Based on a comparative study of theater policy in England, Norway and the Netherlands, I find that the focus on artistic autonomy is surprisingly absent in the liberal state of England, compared to what it is in the social democratic state of Norway. Conversely, English theaters are more obliged to work for, and with, the citizens and the community than theaters in Norway are. In the Netherlands, where recent development in general policy has headed in a liberal direction, artistic autonomy actually appears to be increasingly challenged.     

临潼城市生态保护初探

历史城市一般都具有自然生态与传统文化同生共荣的特征。研究历史城市的生态保护,对于城市未来的良性发展,具有十分重要的意义。
陕西临潼骊山山色秀美,华清宫温泉载誉中外。城市因帝王行宫而发展,山、水、城独具特色,生态环境良好。在城市化快速发展过程中,临潼城区蔓延式扩张和内部空间的整合,对城市内部生态系统造成改变与破坏;景区在发展旅游过程中,面临生态环境质量下降的问题。本文立足于定性分析,通过对临潼城市生态问题分析,提出落实"景城分治"的基本策略,以及遗址区生态保护应当注意的问题。     

Prospects for the Rural‐Urban Fringe in Australia: Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide

Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural‐urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post‐World War II efforts to plan the rural‐urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy‐makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi‐faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy‐makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.     

Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large–Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy

This paper summarizes the theoretical insights drawn from a study of thirteen large–scale urban development projects (UDPs) in twelve European Union countries. The project focused on the way in which globalization and liberalization articulate with the emergence of new forms of governance, on the formation of a new scalar gestalt of governing and on the relationship between large–scale urban development and political, social and economic power relations in the city. Among the most important conclusions, we found that: ?Large–scale UDPs have increasingly been used as a vehicle to establish exceptionality measures in planning and policy procedures. This is part of a neoliberal “New Urban Policy” approach and its selective “middle — and upper–class” democracy. It is associated with new forms of “governing” urban interventions, characterized by less democratic and more elite–driven priorities. ?Local democratic participation mechanisms are not respected or are applied in a very “formalist” way, resulting in a new choreography of elite power. However, grassroots movements occasionally manage to turn the course of events in favor of local participation and of modest social returns for deprived social groups. ?The UDPs are poorly integrated at best into the wider urban process and planning system. As a consequence, their impact on a city as a whole and on the areas where the projects are located remains ambiguous. ?Most UDPs accentuate socioeconomic polarization through the working of real–estate markets (price rises and displacement of social or low–income housing), changes in the priorities of public budgets that are increasingly redirected from social objectives to investments in the built environment and the restructuring of the labor market. ?The UDPs reflect and embody a series of processes that are associated with changing spatial scales of governance; these changes, in turn, reflect a shifting geometry of power in the governing of urbanization.     

Assessing community participation in local economic development — lessons for the new urban policy

Urban policy in Britain has long been characterised by circumscribed and fluctuating institutional structures of community involvement. From the Community Development Programmes of the early 1970s to the assertive neo-liberalism of the 1980s and back to the partnership based politics of the 1990s, community involvement in the construction and delivery of urban policy has been a critical theme. The new administration, with its emphasis on the ‘stakeholder’ society seems set to continue the trends of the 1990s by promoting the concept of partnership as something of a panacea for the difficulties and exclusionary politics that have dogged urban policy programmes. Consequently, a vital area of study into the next century concerns the form that local democratic structures will take and the relative levels and distribution of risk and reward that regeneration schemes create for different sections of local communities.Drawing on material from Cardiff, this paper examines the construction of local political relations in the new urban governance and addresses the issue of community involvement in the politics of local economic regeneration. In particular, it focuses on a small business association which emerged in the wake of the major regeneration programmes being undertaken by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation (CBDC), a powerful quango established by central government in the late 1980s. The study demonstrates how the association, which consisted of local businesses, tried to influence the local regeneration programmes and how its ‘pro-growth’ stance was actively used by the CBDC to legitimate its own policies in the face of wider criticisms from local residential groups. The paper looks at the difficulties of constructing local community participation and concludes that voluntarist, top-down partnership structures in existing policy may only serve to legitimate and implement policy decisions taken by powerful non locally-accountable regeneration agencies.     

城市社区的社区资源公正配置研究

随着我国和谐社区建设的开展,如何在社区建设中体现公平公正理念成为我国社区研究和实践的核心问题。本文梳理了近年来国内外对社区资源概念、研究内容、分析方法等相关研究,在对第三条道路思潮的社会公正理念进行分析的基础上建立了空间公正理念下城市社区体系与生活场所体系的社区资源配置原理,并对社区资源公正配置的衡量指标作了初步探讨。     

场所叙事及其对于城市文化特色与认同性建构探索——以上海滨水历史地段更新为例

论文综述了国内外关于场所的相关理论研究,提出了一种城市文化特色塑造的基础性的新方法"场所叙事"。论文阐述了相关的定义与内容,探索了城市文化特色与其认同性建构的场所叙事策略与路径。相比传统基于物质形象塑造模式,场所叙事更倾向于将场所中隐含的非物质的社会文化信息展现到物质空间之中,来凸显城市亚文化;同时,场所叙事提供了一种跨学科的框架来建构文化认同,培育场所与人之间的和谐关系。此外,论文对上海滨水历史街区"老码头"更新进行考查,从场所叙事角度,来诠释与验证其策略在历史街区重构中的适用性。本文的贡献在于为当下中国城镇化进程中塑造城市地域文化特色提供了新思路。     

Evaluating the governance of structural funds programmes: The case of community economic development in South Yorkshire

Methods for evaluating regional and urban policies have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. However, this paper argues that the evaluation of Structural Funds programmes has systematically underplayed the effect of governance on both programme design and implementation. This paper uses the role of voluntary and community sector organizations in promoting community economic development initiatives within the European Union's Structural Funds programmes in South Yorkshire as a case study. An argument is made for extending evaluation methods, especially theory-based evaluation, through using multi-level governance as a “theory of change”. A key finding is that to explain how programmes work, evaluators need to consider formal partnership and management arrangements, their traditional focus, but also wider governance structures and the importance of informal policy networks. Such a focus allows for a consideration of issues such as resource mobilization and power.