Tag Archives: urban planning

Sustainable Stockholm, Europe’s greenest city

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Metzger, Jonathan and Olsson Amy Rader eds. (2014) Sustainable Stockholm: exploring urban sustainability in Europe’s greenest city. Routledge, 2014. 248 p.

Sustainable Stockholm provides a historical overview of Stockholm’s environmental development, and also discusses a number of cross-disciplinary themes presenting the urban sustainability work behind Stockholm’s unique position, and importantly the question of how well Stockholm’s practices can be exported and transposed to other places and contexts.

By using the case of Stockholm as the pivot of discussions, Sustainable Stockholm investigates the core issues of sustainable urban environmental development and planning, in all their entanglements. The book shows how intersecting fields such as urban planning and architecture, traffic planning, land-use regulation, building, waste management, regional development, water management, infrastructure engineering—together and in combination—have contributed to making Stockholm Europe’s “greenest” city.

View inside the book

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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Urban vitality in Dutch and Chinese new towns

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Zhou, J. (2013) Urban vitality in Dutch and Chinese new towns : a comparative study between Almere and Tongzhou. Ph. D. dissertation, Delft University of Technology, Delft.

Building new towns seems to be a rational approach that releases pressure from overly burdened large cities. This strategy was developed in Western Europe in the middle of twentieth century. Since the 1990s, the European new town model has been widely implemented in China. However, the author questions the feasibility of the large-scale, hasty new town developments. The study of worldwide new town experiences, especially European and Chinese cases, demonstrates that many new towns in fact have difficulty in achieving a real sense of urban quality and vitality. So far, few research projects have been conducted to evaluate and develop solutions for this problem.

‘Urban vitality in Dutch and Chinese new towns’ identifies the spatial and non-spatial factors and conditions that facilitate the development of urban vitality in new towns. It is aimed to reveal the impacts of spatial design, urban planning and governance approaches on the degree and patterns of local urban life of new towns in China and in the Netherlands, based on a comparative study of two cases: Almere in the north wing of the Randstad region in the Netherlands and Tongzhou in the metropolitan region of Beijing in China. The study does not intend to tackle the economic and sociological concepts in themselves, but to focus on the interrelationships between space and society.

Download full-text thesis on the TU Delft institutional repository

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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Participatory processes in urban planning projects in China

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Kern, Abigaïl-Laure1  and Bolay, Jean-Claude2 (2013). Participatory processes in urban planning projects in China: the example of Caoyang Village, Shanghai. In Silvia Hostettler and Eileen Hazboun (Ed.) Technologies for sustainable development : a way to reduce poverty? (pp.209-223). Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00639-0_18

In order to provide the first elements of a participatory process initiated and led by Chinese authorities, this paper will look at the citizen’s involvement in an urban planning project in China and discuss possible avenues to sustain the process in a specific local context over the long-term. Since the end of the 1980s, most community participation projects in China have been implemented in rural environments. This participatory process was carried out in Shanghai’s historically and culturally symbolic Caoyang Workers’ Village, without the external influence of international bodies. Even if some constraints have emerged in the participation of citizens during the pre-project phase, this participatory process seems to have fostered local governance to make significant breakthroughs. It was also the opportunity to reflect upon the minimum conditions to ensure the sustainability of this type of practice in Chinese urban planning projects by adopting the vision of an adapted participatory process.
  1. Doctoral Program in Architecture and Science of the City, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
  2. Cooperation and Development Centre, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

 

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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CNRS video podcasts on urban planning

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urba_generique

This collection of video podcasts was started on July 4, 2013 and for the following 6 weeks two new episodes are uploaded each week, to stream or download. The CNRS produces these videos to offer viewers a chance to find out about current research conducted in the field of urban planning in France. This new series of podcast videos is intended for a wide public and focuses on three themes: history and sociological method; materials, energy and networks; and the city of tomorrow.

Watch there first podcast and go to the website to watch there other videos.

Created by Sophie Bensadoun, Marie Chevais, Hervé Colombani, Christophe Gombert and Luc Ronat, produced by CNRS Images (2013, 12 x 7 min)

 

Aurélia Martin

Chargée de communications et des médias pour l'UMR Chine Corée Japon (CNRS)

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Understanding urban hyperdevelopment in contemporary China

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Driven by complex economic and political conditions, the explosive growth of China’s cities has dramatic implications for urban planning, urban form, economic development, the environment, state-society relations, and China’s role in the world. At this conference, invited scholars from the United States and around the world will examine the sources, processes, and consequences of urban development in China.

Topics for presentations and discussion may include: • Control over land, property development, and rents • Decision-making processes related to urban planning • Infrastructure investments and transportation • Environmental consequences • Impact on architectural design and urban form • Community mobilization related to planning decisions • Consumption patterns and impact of urbanization on economic growth • Legal and socioeconomic status of migrant workers • Emergence of China’s global cities • Changing local government institutions

Invited speakers will give presentations as part of several thematic panels, and significant opportunity for questions and discussion will be built into the schedule. There will also be student participation, for which students will prepare in a graduate class on contemporary Chinese urban development.

Location

  • University at Buffalo, State University of New York, South Campus, Crosby hall

Date

  • April 19, 2013

Time

  • 5:30 p.m.

Cost

  • Free

Sponsor

  • Co-sponsorsed by the Confucius Institute and Asian Studies

Web site

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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12th Asian urbanization conference

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 Urban dynamics, environment and health are three major interlinked areas in the fields of urban studies, urban geography, and urban planning, with all three strongly connected to social well-being. The interconnections of various elements of these three areas have great bearing on the life quality of people in space and time. The sequential arrangement of these three themes in this conference is an expression of priority action of the process of change in spatial, environmental and human context along with time.

Papers outside of these themes but pertaining to Asian urbanization and Asian cities may also be submitted.

Location

  • Dept. of Geography, Banares Hindu University, Varanasi, U.P., India

Date

  • 28-30 December 2013

Organization

  • Asian Urban Research Assocation (AURA)

Website

Contact

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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High density and living comfort // China – Austria 2013

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The extent of building activities in China is fascinating. The demand for living space in the big cities has led to an unprecedented high-rise building boom.

This building boom and the further densification of cities involves new and complex challenges not only for urban planning departments, mobility and for the infrastructural supply chain management, but also for architecture.

According to statistics, Chinese metropolis regions (more than 85 conurbations with more than five million inhabitants each) can expect an annual increase of one million people per year. In this context, a steep rise of the cities’ total energy demand is also to be expected.

Even today, the major part of the energy demand of urban settlement areas is due to the operation of buildings, especially to the segment of cooling buildings.

The symposium, which is organized by the IAT and the Confucius Institute Graz, will offer international architects, experts and building developers a platform that includes lectures, debates and workshops.
Specialists from all over the world have been invited to examine these issues in depth.

Location

  • Graz University of Technology, Austria

Date

  • 21-22 March 2013

Contact

 

 

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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