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THEMATIC GROUPS

Conflict in the City: Contested Urban Spaces and Local Democracy

Details
Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
Category: Planning/Conflict
Published: 12 October 2015

 

Conflicts around urban development and planning issues represent an important dimension of urban politics. Issues of social cohesion and democratic representation are all the more relevant in times when cities are undergoing a severe economic crisis and when local politics tends to meet its challenges with “post-political” responses. The relevance of local conflicts as moments of political mobilization is particularly apparent as institutions and procedures of urban politics fall short of meeting the expectations of local communities. The case-studies from cities throughout the world explore the potential of planning conflicts to raise questions about urban democracy. 

They point at some of its key challenges: the multi-scalar nature of urban policies; the tension between “policing” and “politics”, between institutional control and popular resistance; the spatial dimension of protest and social mobilization; the limits to institutional practices of citizen participation and conflict resolution; the struggle for new democratic exercises and forms of citizenship. The volume is a contribution to rethinking conflicts in urban development and planning in a multidisciplinary perspective, raising questions about the role of planning theory and practice in turning conflict into a transformative resource for local policy.

Available at:

https://www.jovis.de/en/books/details/conflict-in-the-city.html    

Becoming Local Glasgow June 2015 SUMMARY

Details
Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Published: 31 August 2015

This is a summary of the group's meeting in Glasgow, which took place in JUne 2015 @ Scottish Cities Knowledge Centre, University of Glasgow under the title The Power of Places & The Places of Power. 
Becoming Local Glasgow Summary as Pdf

Becoming Local Vienna August 2014 SUMMARY

Details
Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Published: 30 August 2015

This is a summary of the group's meeting in Vienna, which took place on 29 August 2014 @ Vienna University of Technology under the title Planning, Design and Action for Shaping Inclusive Public Spaces.
Becoming Local Vienna Summary as Pdf

DiSP Article "AESOP THEMATIC GROUPS: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures" published

Details
Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Published: 04 August 2015

Public Spaces and Urban Cultures (PSUC) is a thematic group established under the umbrella of the Association of the European Schools of Planning (AESOP) as an initiative of Sabine Knierbein (Ass. Prof. - TU Vienna - Austria), Ceren Sezer (Architect and Urban planner - TU Delft, Urban 4 - the Netherlands) and Chiara Tornaghi (Reader - University of Leeds/ Coventry University - United Kingdom) in April 2010. The main aim of the group is to generate an international and an interdisciplinary exchange between the research and the practices on public spaces and urban cultures. By doing so, it aims to support research, planning, and a design agenda within and beyond the AESOP community.  In this paper, we present the members, the organisation, working themes, meetings, and the publications of the PSUC.

The PSUC invites practitioners, academics, governmental and non-governmental professionals, and further interest groups to join the Group’s activities in several ways: by hosting or participating in the Group’s annual meetings, workshops, conferences and roundtables; by initiating new research projects, publications or other types of work (e.g. participation in international expert commissions, consultancies, and as such; by becoming active innovators of academic curricula in urban studies and related fields on the issues of public spaces and urban cultures; and by being active in the online forums and discussions of the Group).

Currently, the PSUC consists of 45 members, who are both researchers and practitioners working with public spaces that are located mainly in Europe, but also in Canada, the United States, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Bangladesh.

14th meeting: Taking Stock of Complexity Sciences: Evidence of Progress in Urban Planning?

Details
Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
Category: Planning and Complexity
Published: 06 July 2015


The complexity sciences continue to influence debates, research, and practices in urban planning and governance. Urban systems, e.g. cities and urban regions, can be understood as complex systems, behaving non-linearly and co-evolving with other systems. By now, the number of studies in the realm of the planning and governance of the urban that use concepts and ideas from the complexity sciences has gone up significantly. Naturally, complexity’s increasing popularity also attracts criticism. An often voiced criticism, for instance, is that the applications of complexity in urban planning and governance are little more than semantic novelty.

The right response to such criticism is to examine it and to demonstrate that complexity does have utility in the urban planning for the 21st century. Does complexity science live up to its promises? Now that we have been using complexity in planning for quite a while, we ought to be able to answer that question. During this workshop we discussed in particular the following topics:

-   Research methods: what methods are applied in urban planning and governance research and practice? Why are these methods specific to studying complexity? We invite papers that showcase complexity-informed methods and applications.

-   Complexity-friendly governance arrangements: it is easy to claim that certain cooperation in e.g. a project constitutes an innovative governance arrangement. But is that the case? How persistent is that arrangement? And how innovative is the arrangement anyway, given the many institutional experiments carried out over the past decades? What have the complexity sciences really brought new to the field of planning and governance, if anything?

-   Translating complexity to practice: another popular claim is that the complexity sciences, rather than being an intellectual turn, help practitioners to improve their work. How does that work? Does it really produce better results? What is ‘better’? And compared to what does complexity science produce better results in urban planning and governance?

-   Information technology and planning: information technology has the promise to delve deeper into the complexities of planning by e.g. enabling popular participation or by visualizing possible consequences of decisions. To what extent are these methods informed by complexity sciences? And do they deliver?

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTED PAPERS

Day 1: Thursday, February 11th, 2016

Keynote Speech by Dr. Andreas Duit, Stockholm University, The Sense And Non- Sense Of Complexity Concepts: The Case Of Resilience

Track A: Research Methods

  • Domenico Camarda & Dario Esposito, Agent-Based Approach For A Complex 
Knowledge Management Framework In Urban Governance
  • Mary Ganis, A Small World Network Paradigm For Planning Urban Places For 
People: A Case Study Of South Bank, Brisbane, Australia, 1990-2012


Track B: Complexity-Friendly Governance Arrangements

  • Jack Meek, Constructing Resilience In Complex Metropolitan Systems – Metropolitan Water Management As Complex Adaptive System
  • Ward Rauws, Navigating Between Control And Spontaneity: An Adaptive Approach To Guiding Urban And Peri-Urban Development

Track C: Translating Complexity to Practice

  • Sonja Deppisch, Complexity Meets Local Planning Practice And Politics
  • Lauren Ugur, Between Fidelity And Adaptation. Reflections On The Complexity Of Achieving Broad-Based Integrated Violence Prevention In South Africa

Track D: Information Technology And Planning

  • Laurent Javaudin, Defining Smartness In The ‘Smart City’ Concept: A Complexity 
Perspective  
  • Dilek Unalan, Urban Governance And ITs From Coevolutionary Perspective 

  • Sharon Wohl & Sean Wittmeyer, The Smartphone As Urban Mediator And 
‘Sixth-Sense’: A New Platform For Recognizing And Acting Upon The Signals Of 
The City [Discussant: Kuusela/Partanen]
  • Sharon Zivkovic, Using A Software Tool Informed By Complexity Theory To Address Complex Wicked Problems 

 

Day 2: Friday, February 12th 2016

Track A: Research Methods

  • Robin Chang, ‘ANT’icipating Complexity In Temporary Use: Two Comparative 
Case Studies In Bremen And Seattle
  • Ewald de Bruijn & Lasse Gerrits, A Systematic Review And Taxonomy Of Urban 
Self-Organization



Keynote Speech by Mr. Beese, Technical Leader of the Planning Department Bamberg 



Track B: Complexity-Friendly Governance Arrangements

  • Paulo Silva, What Does Complexity Mean For Planning Institutions?  
  • Ingmar van Meerkerk & Jurian Edelenbos, Enabling Context For Boundary- 
Spanning Practices Within Complex Urban Governance Networks
  • Beitske Boonstra, The Art Of Creating Consistency: Planning Strategies In The Age Of Active Citizenship

Track C: Translating Complexity To Practice

  • Frits Verhees, Spatial Planning Practice Through A Complexity-Theoretical Lens: 
Results From Three Case Studies In The Netherlands  
  • Alan Mee & Mary Lee Rhodes, Classifying Complexity In Urban Design And 
Governance: The Case Of Ballymun
  • Kaisu Kuusela & Jenni Partanen, Plenty Of Planning, Scanty Guidance – The 
Case Of Tampere  

 
Track E: Spontaneous Settlements & Divergent Concepts  

  • Yara Manor-Rosner, Sayfan Borghini & Yodan Rofè, Stigmergy In Informal 
Communities, The Unrecognized Bedouin Villages In The Negev, Israel
  • Sharon Wohl, Research In Urbanism And Planning Stemming From CAS Theory: 
An Overview Of Divergent Concepts, Frameworks, And Trends

 

Wrapping Up & Synthesis of the Conference by Dr. Ward Rauws, Coordinator of the AESOP’s Thematic Group on Planning & Complexity

 

  1. Launch Meeting @AESOP Prague Congress 2015 !!!
  2. Call for Abstracts for a special issue in Built Environment: "Public Spaces and Urban Justice"
  3. Call for Abstracts: Becoming Local Porto
  4. Call for papers

Subcategories

Planning and Complexity Article Count:  30

New Technologies & Planning Article Count:  8

Planning, Law and Property rights Article Count:  9

Transboundary Planning and Governance Article Count:  13

Transportation planning and policy Article Count:  8

Ethics, Values and Planning Article Count:  21

Resilience and Risks Mitigation Strategies Article Count:  12

French and British planning studies Article Count:  1

Sustainable Food Planning Article Count:  9

Public Spaces and Urban Cultures Article Count:  99

Planning/Conflict Article Count:  18

Urban Futures Article Count:  3

Urban Transformation in Europe and China Article Count:  2

Regional Design Article Count:  5

Nordic Planning Article Count:  2

Planning Theories Article Count:  12

Global South & East Article Count:  9

Small Towns Article Count:  2

Rural Planning Article Count:  3

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