Built Environment
The spatial attributes of different space-sharing practices, and the associated economics, policies, governance, and organisations for sharing; The impacts of space-sharing practices on urban spaces; The new socio-spatial relations produced by space-sharing practices.

Space-Sharing Practices in the City

About this issue

Issue number

Summary

As the editors explain in their introduction, the papers in this issue can be divided into two parts. The first part (three articles) provides a conceptual foundation for understanding space-sharing practice in the city, while the six papers of the second part are empirical studies of emerging space-sharing practices, each investigating a specific form of sharing space and/or type of shared space.

YE ZHANG and JEFFREY KOK HUI CHAN
13 Feb 2020

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Built Environment

Meet the editors

About this issue

Issue number
Volume 45 – Number 4

Summary

The ten papers in the issue cover three continents and seven countries representing a true diversity of settings. Each paper offers new insights into how commuting journeys vary across space and how this is influenced by spatial development and economic, technological and cultural change. All the papers give consideration to how commuting is changing in the setting examined, whether explicitly by analysing longitudinal data or implicitly by interpreting their results in relation to historical developments.

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Kiron Chatterjee is Associate Professor in Travel Behaviour at the Centre for Transport & Society at UWE Bristol. His research seeks to understand the way in which people travel, how this is influenced by the transport system and society and the impacts of transport on people’s lives. This research is aimed at anticipating future mobility trends and designing transport systems and services that meet the needs of different members of the population.

 

Ben Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Transport Planning and Engineering at the Centre for Transport & Society at UWE Bristol. His research interests centre on travel behavior, with a specific focus on the application of longitudinal research methods to explore how and why behaviors change over the course of people’s lives.

Built Environment

Editorial: Changing Patterns of Commuting

About this issue

Issue number
Volume 45 – Number 4

Summary

The ten papers in the issue cover three continents and seven countries representing a true diversity of settings. Each paper offers new insights into how commuting journeys vary across space and how this is influenced by spatial development and economic, technological and cultural change. All the papers give consideration to how commuting is changing in the setting examined, whether explicitly by analysing longitudinal data or implicitly by interpreting their results in relation to historical developments.

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Cities across the globe are reinventing themselves, driven by a variety of forces (Lyons et al., 2018). At the same time, technological change is dramatically altering the nature of employment and transport systems are on the cusp of radical change with the potential for wider adoption of new mobility services and autonomous vehicles. As city landscapes, working practices and transport systems change, so does the nature of the commute – traditionally a regularly repeated journey between a fixed home and work (or educational) location, but increasingly a more ‘slippery’ phenomenon (Le Vine et al., 2017). 

Commuting has always been an important focus of transport and land-use policies in urban areas. During the morning and evening ‘rush hours’, transport networks are under pressure with peak period traffic having multiple negative impacts on the functioning of cities and on the quality of urban environments (Eddington, 2006). Commuting has also been shown to affect the physical and mental health of workers (Chatterjee et al., 2019). Studies of commuting are carried out across different disciplines which makes it difficult to get an overall appreciation of the topic. In this issue of Built Environment, we aim to bring together a variety of perspectives and assessments of the state of commuting in different parts of the world and how it is evolving. 

In particular, we reached out to academics across the globe for contributions on the following three themes:

 

◆ The changing nature of the commute, particularly in relation to changing city landscapes, working practices and transport systems;

◆ Spatial variation and inequalities in commuting practices; and

◆ The commute experience and how this is affected by urban form and transport systems.

 

The ten papers in the issue cover three continents and seven countries representing a true diversity of settings. Each paper offers new insights on how commuting journeys vary across space and how this is influenced by spatial development and economic, technological and cultural change. All the papers give consideration to how commuting is changing in the setting examined, whether explicitly by analysing longitudinal data or implicitly by interpreting their results in relation to historical developments. 

Two papers look at how distribution of economic activity influences commuting patterns. Schleith et al. (2019) compare commuting distances across metropolitan areas in the United States and calculate ‘Excess Commuting’ measures (representing the difference between the theoretical minimum total commuting distance in a settlement and the observed commuting distance). The Excess Commuting measures are used to identify three categories of urban form amongst the fifty-three metropolitan areas: (i) sprawling; (ii) polycentric and (iii) monocentric. It is then shown that polycentric urban forms are associated with shorter commuting distances. This finding is echoed in Nielsen’s (2019) study of the effect on commuting distances of the emergence of ‘subcentres’ in the Copenhagen urban region. Living close to a subcentre with a minimum of 10,000 jobs is found to be associated with shorter commute and daily travel distances, and a higher probability of using public transport/walking/cycling. Nielsen points out, however, that proximity to the dominant regional subcentre (with over 300,000 jobs) has a stronger effect on commute behaviour than proximity to subcentres. 

Two papers look at the how the quality of employment available influences commuting. Coombes (2019) examines why average commuting distances in industrial towns in the north-west of England are shorter than the national average. He discovers that commute distances in the North-West ‘are less divergent from the national average than are the longer distances commuted in and near London’. The longer average commute distances around London are explained by the availability of higher income jobs available in the city, which compensate for longer commutes, while the shorter average commute distances in the North-West are explained by the absence of more attractive jobs in neighbouring settlements than are available locally. Hence the distribution of commute distances in a region is shown to be governed by labour market geography rather than individuals in different regions making different employment decisions. 

Sharma (2019) looks at the extent to which workers in India are moving across rural and urban boundaries to access work and how this is affected by labour market conditions. He shows that daily commuting from rural to urban areas is particularly prevalent in the Delhi National Capital Region and that both rural-to-urban and urban-to-rural are common in urbanized, industrialized regions of the country. He shows that rural to urban commuting is driven by underemployment in rural areas and the potential to gain higher wages by commuting from rural to urban areas. He suggests ‘commuting by workers acts as an important bridge between rural and urban areas, without significantly adding a burden on cities in terms of housing, access to public services and ensuring balanced growth in rural economy with backward and forward linkages’. 

Three papers look at variations in commuting behaviour within a global city region and how this is evolving. Jain and Hecht (2019) look at commuting patterns in the Delhi National Capital Region and examine how distances travelled and modes used vary for residents living in different parts of the region. They show the highest proportion of private motorized transport use occurs for residents on the fringe of the core city area, where multinational offices and international factories have located, while non-motorized transport use is highest within the city core and in rural peripheral areas of the region. They show longer distance commuting is more prevalent in rural parts of the region and predominantly undertaken by public transport. 

Zheng et al. (2019) examine the impact of urban sprawl in Beijing on the commuting behaviours of different social groups. They confirm ‘the decoupling of home and work locations’ in Beijing following the abolishment of the ‘work unit’ (danwei) planning system (through which workers were deliberately housed close to workplaces). They find that a poor ‘urban adversity group’ is clustered in parts of the city that were formerly rural villages, have much higher levels of self-containment and are more reliant on walking and cycling. By contrast, a ‘suburban comfort’ group of younger, wealthier residents have longer commutes with greater reliance on public transit and car. 

Maciejewska et al. (2019) concentrate on the changing pattern of commuting within the New York Metropolitan region with a focus on working single mothers, although their results are relevant to all workers. They find single mothers have been suburbanizing over time and can no longer be considered to be predominantly located in inner city areas. They also find that single mothers use public transport more than married mothers and, like the rest of the population of New York, have moved away from car commuting to public transport commuting. They conclude therefore that transit provision is vital in the suburbs to provide single mothers with reasonable access to job opportunities.

The paper by Blumenberg and King (2019) looks at the general trend in commuting distances across all Metropolitan areas of the United States between 2001 and 2017. They look at how this has differed by income and find that commute distances have increased over time for both low-income and high-income workers, but more so for low-income workers and more for those living in low-density areas. Their analysis leads them to conclude that the increasing commute distances of low-income workers over time are primarily explained by a higher proportion of them living in the suburbs, rather than the commute distances of low-income workers increasing over time.

The two remaining papers examine how commuting practices are changing as the nature of employment changes. Ravalet and Rérat (2019) look at teleworking trends in Switzerland and find an increase in teleworking from 21 per cent of workers in 2010 to 24 per cent of workers in 2015. Most teleworkers only occasionally work away from their main office with three-quarters doing this on less than three in ten occasions. They show that teleworking is associated with greater education, higher income jobs and flexibility of working hours and that teleworking is emerging over time more strongly for particular population groups (men and the over thirties). They also reveal that ‘teleworkers live further from their place of work than’ non-teleworkers and that teleworkers travelled further overall than non-teleworkers over the course of a working week (as a consequence of living further from work and undertaking additional non-work trips on teleworking days). They suggest therefore that teleworking ‘may consequently decrease the propensity for residential relocation and increase tolerance for long distance commuting’. 

Plyushteva (2019) offers a new angle for looking at the commute by exploring how choices over commuting options and experiences of the commute are influenced by co-workers. She looks at this in Sofia, Bulgaria, which has seen rapid suburban development since the collapse of state socialism in 1989, including the emergence of a burgeoning tourist sector in the historic centre and business and technology parks at fringe locations of the city. From her qualitative research with office workers and shift workers in the tourism and hospitality sector she is able to show how workers manage challenging commutes. She found options available to workers could be highly dependent on provisions made by managers and that travelling together with co-workers could be both a source of comfort or unease. 

Important findings emerge from the papers in this issue on a number of interesting cross-cutting themes of which we highlight one – inequalities – before we conclude with key messages from the issue. Coombes (2019) finds that more limited commuting distances in the north-west of England are not, necessarily, a consequence of limited transport infrastructure or a reluctance to commute further to work but are driven more by lack of better paying jobs in the region. He states ‘… any suggestion that people in the Pennine region should “choose” to commute further as a means to increase labour productivity in their city regions, ignores economic realities’.

In contrast, Sharma (2019) shows that commuting from rural into urban areas enables underemployed rural workers in India to find better rewarded work. However, Jain and Hecht (2019) find illiteracy, minority group status and lack of basic household amenities are associated with shorter commutes amongst rural workers in the Delhi National Capital Region which highlights inability to pay for transportation as a barrier to seeking better paid jobs. 

The contrasting commuting groups identified by Zheng et al. (2019) make it apparent there are disparities in employment opportunities within the suburbs of Beijing. The urban adversity group have short commutes (often working locally to their homes) and rely more heavily on walking and cycling. The suburban comfort group have longer and more complex commutes with greater reliance on the metro and car. The high levels of self-containment of work travel among the urban adversity group living in informal housing in urban villages can be seen as contributing to their relatively poor economic position but with ‘the irony … that the most sustainable commute was found in these informal developments’. 

Blumenberg and King (2019) conclude that the continued suburbanization of the U.S. urban population has led to longer commutes for more workers, including low-income workers, minority ethnic groups and those without cars. For these groups this is likely to be particularly tough to bear and it is suggested policy responses are needed to alleviate the risk of poverty. They suggest ‘Policies to address this issue should focus on transportation but, as the broader literature suggests, will require efforts to address discrimination in both residential location and employment’. Maciejewska et al. (2019) highlight the concern that reliance on transit amongst working mothers (especially single mothers) in New York is problematic given poor provision in many areas of the city and this may inhibit job opportunities. They conclude the findings ‘underscore the vulnerability of minority single mothers, especially Black and Hispanic women, in a polarizing New York urban region’. On a similar theme, Plyushteva (2019) highlights the difficulties of organizing commutes in the changing employment landscape in Sofia where workplaces are not easy to reach by traditional public transport due to their location relative to homes and the times workers are required to work.

Ravalet and Rérat (2019) show that teleworking is increasing over time in Switzerland but is selectively available to workers in better paid sectors. Those that can telework not only benefit from flexibility in their working arrangements but also a wider job search area and greater opportunity to manage home and work demands. However, they show teleworking is not likely to contribute to any reduction in overall mobility given that the fewer commute journeys of teleworkers are offset by longer commute distances. 

Across the papers, a common message is that high-quality public transport, whether in the form of traditional rail/metro systems or modern rapid transit, can play a vital role in enabling workers living in suburban, fringe and rural periphery areas to access jobs in urban centres. However, this needs to be deployed more widely than it is currently to spread opportunities to a wider section of the population. This applies as much to long-established urban regions (such as New York) as it does in fast growing urban regions (such as Beijing, Delhi or Sofia). For example, Jain and Hecht (2019) note for Delhi that ‘The frequent long trips to work in rural areas as well as the high use of two-wheelers in the region run contrary to transportation and regional policies aimed at increasing the use of public transport and reducing commuting distances’ and suggest major reforms of transport policies to prioritize public transport. The papers that look at polycentricity (Schleith et al. (2019) and Nielsen (2019)) show that second-order urban centres decrease commuting distances but are associated with the challenge of being more difficult to serve by traditional public transport. 

We finish with three concluding messages from the collection of papers in this issue. First, the papers confirm the important influence of spatial development and labour market structure for commuting, implying a need for integrated land-use, economic and transport policies to influence how people access employment. Second we know that different social groups are spatially clustered and have different opportunities and constraints when it comes to travelling to appropriate jobs which match their skills. The commuting requirements of different social groups need recognition in policies concerned with access to jobs, housing and the transport connections between them. Third, we know that commuting practices are evolving as a response to socio-technical trends and in response to the changing nature of cities. Consideration needs to be given to these changing practices as well as to more traditional matters of the location of jobs, homes and transport services. 

 

REFERENCES

 

  • Blumenberg, E. and King, H. (2019) Low-income eorkers, residential location, and the changing commute in the United States. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 563–581.
  • Chatterjee, K., Chng, S., Clark, B., Davis, A., De Vos, J., Ettema, D., Handy, S., Martin, A. and Reardon, L. (2019) Commuting and wellbeing: a critical overview of the literature with implications for policy and future research. Transport Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2019.1649317.
  • Coombes, M (2019) Commuting contrasts in post-industrial England: mobility in the world’s first urban industrial city regions. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 476–492.
  • Eddington, R. (2006) The Eddington Transport Study. Main Report: Transport’s Role in Sustaining the UK’s Productivity and Competitiveness. Norwich: HMSO.
  • Government Office for Science (2019) Future of Mobility: A Time of Unprecedented Change in the Transport System. London: Government Office for Science. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-of-mobility.
  • Jain, M. and Hecht, R. (2019) Spatial assessment of commuting patterns in India’s National Capital Region. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 507–522.
  • Le Vine, S., Polak, J. and Humphrey, A. (2017) Commuting trends in England 1988–2015. London: Department for Transport.
  • Lyons, G., Mokhtarian, P., Dijst, M. and Böcker, L. (2018) The dynamics of urban metabolism in the face of digitalization and changing lifestyles: understanding and influencing our cities. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 132, pp. 246–257.
  • Maciejewska, M., McLafferty. S. and Preston, V. (2019) Women’s changing commutes: the work trips of single mothers in the New York region, 2000–2010. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 544–562.
  • Nielsen, T.A.S. (2019) The role of subcentres for commuting and non-work travel distances and modes in the Copenhagen Metropolitan Region. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 462–475.
  • Plyushteva, A. (2019) Commutes and co-workers: complicating individual journeys through workplace relations. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 603–620.  
  • Ravalet, E. and Rérat, P. (2019) Teleworking: decreasing mobility or increasing tolerance of commuting distances? Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 582–602.
  • Schleith, D. Widener, M.J., Kim, C. and Horner, M.W. (2019) Categorizing urban form for the largest metro regions in the U.S. using the excessive commuting framework. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 450–461.
  • Sharma, A. (2019) Commuting between rural and urban areas: evidence from India. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 493–506.
  • Zheng, W., Wong, C. and Qiao, M. (2019) Socio-spatial variations in commuting patterns in suburban Beijing. Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 523–543.
Built Environment
The changing nature of the commute, Inequalities in commuting practices, Urban form and transport systems and the commuting experience

Changing Patterns of Commuting

About this issue

Issue number

Summary

The ten papers in the issue cover three continents and seven countries representing a true diversity of settings. Each paper offers new insights into how commuting journeys vary across space and how this is influenced by spatial development and economic, technological and cultural change. All the papers give consideration to how commuting is changing in the setting examined, whether explicitly by analysing longitudinal data or implicitly by interpreting their results in relation to historical developments.

Kiron Chatterjee and Ben Clark
10 Dec 2019

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Planning, History & Environment
city planning, sustainability, Urban Governance

Planning Singapore: The Experimental City

Two hundred years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established the modern settlement of Singapore with the intent of seeing it become ‘a great commercial emporium and fulcrum’. 

Stephen Hamnett and Belinda Yuen
23 Jul 2019

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Two hundred years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established the modern settlement of Singapore with the intent of seeing it become ‘a great commercial emporium and fulcrum’. But by the time independence was achieved in 1965, the city faced daunting problems of housing shortage, slums and high unemployment. Since then, Singapore has become one of the richest countries on earth, providing, in Sir Peter Hall’s words, ‘perhaps the most extraordinary case of economic development in the history of the world’. The story of Singapore’s remarkable achievements in the first half century after its independence is now widely known. 
 
In Planning Singapore: The Experimental City, Stephen Hamnett and Belinda Yuen have brought together a set of chapters on Singapore’s planning achievements, aspirations and challenges, which are united in their focus on what might happen next in the planning of the island-state. Chapters range over Singapore’s planning system, innovation and future economy, housing, biodiversity, water and waste, climate change, transport, and the potential transferability of Singapore’s planning knowledge. A key question is whether the planning approaches, which have served Singapore so well until now, will suffice to meet the emerging challenges of a changing global economy, demographic shifts, new technologies and the existential threat of climate change. Singapore as a global city is becoming more unequal and more diverse. This has the potential to weaken the social compact which has largely existed since independence and to undermine the social resilience undoubtedly needed to cope with the shocks and disruptions of the twenty-first century. The book concludes, however, that Singapore is better-placed than most to respond to the challenges which it will certainly face thanks to its outstanding systems of planning and implementation, a proven capacity to experiment and a highly-developed ability to adapt quickly, purposefully and pragmatically to changing circumstances.
 
 
Stephen Hamnett is Emeritus Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of South Australia and a Commissioner of the Environment, Resources and Development Court of South Australia.
 
Belinda Yuen is Professorial Research Fellow and Research Director at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Singapore University of Technology and Design.
 

Contents

  • Foreword
    Chan Heng Kee
  • Acknowledgements
  • The Contributors
  • Chapter 1 Planning Singapore: Challenges and Choices 
    Stephen Hamnett and Belinda Yuen
  • Chapter 2 Re-examining Singapore’s Urban Planning and Governance Framework
    Tan Shin Bin and Donald Low
  • Chapter 3 Singapore’s Economic Development: The Dilemma of Managing Success
    John Powers
  • Chapter 4 More than just a roof over one’s head: Lifestyle Diversity and Dynamics in Singapore Public Housing
    Tan Ern Ser and Paveena Seah
  • Chapter 5 Nature in the City
    Lena Chan
  • Chapter 6 Recycling Water and Waste in Singapore
    Corinne Ong, Lyle Fearnley, Quek Ri An and Chia Siow Boon
  • Chapter 7 The Challenge of Climate Change for Singapore
    Peter Newman
  • Chapter 8 Singapore’s Changing Relationship with Cars
    Paul Barter
  • Chapter 9 Singapore’s Integrated Transit-Oriented Planning and Land Value Capture: A Model for Others?
    John Good
  • Chapter 10 Planning the Experimental City
    Belinda Yuen and Stephen Hamnett
 
Planning, History & Environment
planning history, American Governance

No Little Plans: How Government Built America’s Wealth and Infrastructure

Is planning for America anathema to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness?

Ian Wray
23 Jul 2019

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Is planning for America anathema to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Is it true, as ideologues like Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand have claimed, that planning leads to dictatorship, that the state is wholly destructive, and that prosperity is owed entirely to the workings of a free market? To answer these questions Ian Wray’s book goes in search of an America shaped by government, plans and bureaucrats, not by businesses, bankers and shareholders. He demonstrates that government plans did not damage American wealth. On the contrary, they built it, and in the most profound ways.
 
In three parts, the book is an intellectual roller coaster. Part I takes the reader downhill, examining the rise and fall of rational planning, and looks at the converging bands of planning critics, led on the right by the Chicago School of Economics, on the left by the rise of conservation and the ‘counterculture’, and two brilliantly iconoclastic writers – Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson. 
 
In Part II, eight case studies take us from the trans-continental railroads through the national parks, the Federal dams and hydropower schemes, the wartime arsenal of democracy, to the postwar interstate highways, planning for New York, the moon shot and the creation of the internet. These are stories of immense government achievement.
 
Part III looks at what might lie ahead, reflecting on a huge irony: the ideology which underpins the economic and political rise of Asia (by which America now feels so threatened) echoes the pragmatic plans and actions which once secured America’s rise to globalism.
 
 
Ian Wray is Visiting Professor in Civic Design and Heseltine Institute Fellow at the University of Liverpool. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Vice Chair of World Heritage UK. He was Chief Planner, Northwest Development Agency, 2000–2010. He has written for the Architects’ Journal and Management Today and is the author of Great British Plans: Who Made Them and How They Worked.

Contents

  • Introduction 
  • PART I: AMERICAN RETREAT
    • The Crucible of ‘68
      The Rise and Fall of Rational Planning in America
    • The Fraying of America
      Symptoms, Causes and Consequences of National Fragmentation
  • PART II: AMERICAN ADVANCE
    • The Great and Shining Roads
      Planning and Building the American Railroads 
    • The Worthless Lands 
      Creating the World’s First National Parks
    • Deals and Dams 
      Hydroelectric Power and Water for a Continent
    • Engines and Octanes
      America’s Second World War Arsenal 
    • On the Road 
      Engineering the Interstate Highways
    • No Little Plans 
      Power Brokers, Business Elites, and the Making of New York
    • The Moon and the Computer 
      Apollo 11 and the Shaping of the American Economy
    • Frontiers of the Mind
      How Government Created the Internet
  • PART III: AMERICAN DILEMMA
    • The Road from Serfdom
      Conclusions, Implications, and Outlook
Built Environment

Meet the editor

About this issue

Issue number
Volume 45 – Number 2

Summary

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Lucy Natarajan is one of Built Environment’s editors and a Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her research interests centre on the interface between communities and urban policy-making. She has previously conducted research on public policy for the UK government and on international planning issues for the RTPI/Commonwealth Association of Planners.
 
Built Environment

Editorial: Realizing Participation - People, Plans & Places 2

About this issue

Issue number
Volume 45 – Number 2

Summary

This is the second part of a double issue (45.1 & 45.2) of Built Environment on ‘People, Plans & Places’, marking 50 years since the publication of Arnstein’s eponymous ladder of power (Arnstein, 1969).

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This is the second part of a double issue (45.1 & 45.2) of Built Environment on ‘People, Plans & Places’, marking 50 years since the publication of Arnstein’s eponymous ladder of power (Arnstein, 1969). As discussed in the issue, it is also around a half century since the Skeffington Report (Brownill and Inch, 2019) and Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons (Ciaffi, this issue). The issue draws together contributions from authors working in diverse governance contexts across the globe, all concerned with participation of the public in planning and place-making.
 
While the first issue, entitled ‘Outlooks on Participating’, was more focused on current perspectives on the theory and practice of participation, the second looks to the future. This issue, entitled ‘Realizing Participation’, examines how to deliver on the promise of empowerment. It reasserts the critical value of public participation in democracy (Bouche-Florin, 2019), and underscores the need to get beyond current orthodoxies and one-dimensional approaches to engagement. 
 
The research presented here offers lessons on how to open up planning and place-making, looking across a range of participatory techniques. Some articles examine newer forms of participation, such as engagement through crowd funding, administrative ‘pacts’ and interactive digital displays; others review the potential of more established tools, including engagement with spatial strategy-making, facilitated design charrettes, and neighbourhood plans. 
 
Taken as a collection, these contributions argue for agility in future planning and place-making. The research demonstrates how citizen involvement can help improve urban and rural development, because it is a rich source of agency, energy and knowledge about environments. But it also suggests adaptations are needed for this, including more reflective engagement practices, creative state-citizen partnerships, supportive pedagogy, and new ways of thinking about place.
 
Frediani and Cociña’s study broadens thinking about participation by reframing it as planning. They offer a synthesis of empirical insights from citizen engagement work across the ‘global south’ and demonstrate that such activities are in themselves making and reforming cities. These instances of participation have clearly helped to deal with the limits of planning and empowered some communities. More importantly they offer a new mode of planning, where original forms of knowledge and responsive practices are brought to bear.
 
Ciaffi’s work also re-evaluates how participation might be seen, and offers a ‘new top rung’ for Arnstein’s ladder. Her article presents data on an innovative form of partnership, which has recently burgeoned in Italy with thousands of ‘pacts of collaboration’ for collective ownership and management of common goods. These initiatives are modelled on the Bologna regulations, and demonstrate how creative use of regulations to support connections between citizen and state can help to breathe life into public interest projects.
 
Talen’s review article, drawing on a wealth of work mainly focused on North America, tackles head on the inevitable tension between tangible plans and open processes. She argues for an approach that can integrate both aspects. Looking back on neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood planning, she unpacks the narratives of ‘authenticity’ associated with New Urbanism and demonstrates the need for new thinking in the search for socially beneficial place-making. 
 
Husam and Cooper consider the role of facilitators in community-based, design-led interventions, more commonly known in the UK and US as charrettes. Their extensive review of the literature demonstrates high expectations of facilitators alongside strong critiques of poor practice. They pull together the implications for ‘facilitation standards’ and argue for a better articulation of how these might be achieved. In response they offer an agenda for research that could lead to a guide for enablers of participatory urban design.
 
Baltazar et al. present the case of Ituita, an interactive media cascade employed in the Brazilian municipality of Congonhas. Their study engages with the potential for socio-spatial transformation, where democratic voices and relationships are built through citizen participation in urban change. They review the uses of technology and the learning structures behind it, asking how devices might in future stimulate deeper forms of citizenship and the additional pedagogy that would be required.
 
In my paper in this issue, I review the socio-spatial learning that takes place in public dialogue, and demonstrate the ways that notions of scale are constructed and politicized. The study of spatial planning dialogues across more rural parts of the English Midlands demonstrates fluid and expanding scales in rationalities around ‘shared interest’. This challenges the idea of ‘authenticity’ in rigid and small scales of place-making, and calls for more flexibility in how publics are engaged in strategic decision-making.
 
Gullino et al. examine the patterns of relationships between civic activism and government agency in civic crowdfunding campaigns. Drawing on a London case study they demonstrate the shifting nature of the interface between civic and statutory actors. Their reflections on changes over time highlight the fragility of projects where initial enthusiasm is sorely tested. These insights prove critical in understanding how to support active citizenship for the long term.

REFERENCES

  • Arnstein, S. (1969) A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), pp. 216–224.
  • Bouche-Florin, L.-E. (2019) Charter of Participatory Democracy: a call for action towards a balanced democratic system. Built Environment, 45(1), pp. 112–119.
  • Brownill, S. and Inch, A. (2019) Framing people and planning: 50 years of debate. Built Environment, 45(1), pp. 7–25.
  • Hardin, R. (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, pp. 1243–1248.
  • Skeffington (1969) People and Planning: Report of the Skeffington Committee on Public Participation in Planning. London: HMSO.
 
Built Environment

Meet the editors

About this issue

Issue number
Volume 44 – Number 4

Summary

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Griet Steel is an Assistant Professor in International Development Studies at the Department of Human Geography and Planning, Utrecht University. She has been involved in several international research projects addressing the interplay between technology, land and mobility and the broader challenges of sustainable urban development in the Global South. She has extensive field experience in several Latin American and African countries on urban transformations, informal entrepreneurship and land governance.

 

Femke van Noorloos is Assistant Professor of International Development Studies (IDS, Human Geography & Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University). Her research focuses on urban development in Africa and Latin America; particularly on land issues in (sub)urban settings, citizen initiatives and urban governance, and private sector investment in urban development, also in relation to transnational mobilities.

 

Kei Otsuki is a development sociologist. Her research centres on sustainable making of human settlements on investment frontiers in Latin America and Africa. Her key publications include: Transformative Sustainable Development (2016); and a number of articles on displacement, infrastructure and environmental and land governance in Brazil and Mozambique; and climate change adaptation interventions and community resilience in Ghana.

Built Environment
African urbanism, urban land grabs, city master planning

Urban Land Grabs in Africa?

About this issue

Issue number

Summary

Africa is rapidly urbanizing. New dynamics of investments and mobilities ensure expansive urbanization, transforming the continent’s urban land and built environment. These effects also impact future prospects for sustainable living conditions for African urban dwellers. This issue of Built Environment has collected articles that observe these effects, in order to explore whether these are indeed leading to ‘urban land grabs’, which take place in new forms of commodification and speculation of land and properties.

Griet Steel, Femke van Noorloos, Kei Otsuki
21 Feb 2019

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Contents

 

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