Trajectories of Conflict and Peace: Jerusalem and Belfast Since 1994

Scott A. Bollens

26 Jan 2018

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This book is about the trajectories of urban conflict and peace in the politically polarized cities of Jerusalem and Belfast since 1994 – how sometimes there has been hopeful change while at other times debilitating stasis and regression. Based on extensive research, fieldwork, and interviews, Scott Bollens shows how seeking peace in these cities is shaped by the interaction of city-based actors and national elites, and that it is not just a political process, but a social and spatial one that takes place problematically over an extended period. He intertwines academic precision with ethnography and personal narrative to illuminate the complex political and emotional kaleidoscopes of these polarized cities. With hostility and competition among groups defined by ethnic, religious, and nationalistic identity on the increase across the world, this timely investigation contributes to our understanding of today’s fractured cities and nations.

Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1 National and Urban Co-Production of Conflict and Peace
• Chapter 2 Jerusalem I: Urban Spatial Changes amid Political Impasse
• Chapter 3 Jerusalem II: Interlocking Trajectories of National Politics and Urban Dynamics
• Chapter 4 Jerusalem III: The Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Israeli Hegemonic Territoriality
• Chapter 5 Belfast I: Building Peace in a Post-Violent Conflict City
• Chapter 6 Belfast II: Peacebuilding as Process: Disrupted Trajectories and Urban Outcomes
• Chapter 7 Belfast III: The Competing Demands of Political Stability and Urban Peacebuilding
• Chapter 8 Conflict and Peace: Political and Spatial Trajectories
• Interviews

Planning Metropolitan Australia

Stephen Hamnett, Robert Freestone

02 Oct 2017

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Australia has long been a highly (sub)urbanized nation, but the major distinctive feature of its contemporary settlement pattern is that the great majority of Australians live in a small number of large metropolitan areas focused on the state capital cities. The development and application of effective urban policy at a regional scale is a significant global challenge given the complexities of urban space and governance. Building on the editors’ previous collection The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (2000), this new book examines the recent history of metropolitan planning in Australia since the beginning of the twenty-first century. After a historical prelude, the book is structured around a series of six case studies of metropolitan Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, the fast-growing metropolitan region of South-East Queensland centred on Brisbane, and the national capital of Canberra. These essays are contributed by some of Australia’s leading urbanists. Set against a dynamic background of economic change, restructured land uses, a more diverse population, and growing spatial and social inequality, the book identifies a broad planning consensus around the notion of making Australian cities more contained, compact and resilient. But it also observes a continuing gulf between the simplified aims of metropolitan strategies and our growing understanding of the complex functioning of the varied communities in which most people live. This book reflects on the raft of planning challenges presented at the metropolitan scale, looks at what the future of Australian cities might be, and speculates about the prospects of more effective metropolitan planning arrangements.

Stephen Hamnett is Emeritus Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and a Commissioner of the Environment, Resources and Development Court of South Australia.

Robert Freestone is Professor of Planning in the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Contents

• Chapter 1 A Metropolitan Perspective
  Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone
• Chapter 2 Beginnings: The Evolution of Metropolitan Planning to the Late Twentieth Century
  Robert Freestone and Christine Garnaut
• Chapter 3 Melbourne: Growing Pains for the Liveable City
  Robin Goodman
• Chapter 4 Sydney: Growth, Globalization and Governance
  Raymond Bunker, Robert Freestone and Bill Randolph 
• Chapter 5 Adelaide: Tough Times in the City of Light
  Stephen Hamnett and Jon Kellett
• Chapter 6 Perth: From ‘Large Provincial to ‘Globalizing City’
  Paul J. Maginn and Neil Foley
• Chapter 7 South East Queensland: Change and Continuity in Planning
  Paul Burton
• Chapter 8 Canberra: ‘Normalization’ or ‘the Pride of Time’?
  Karl Friedhelm Fischer and James Weirick
• Chapter 9 The Metropolitan Condition
  Brendan Gleeson

Planning for Equitable Urban and Regional Food Systems

Food has captured the imagination of planning and design professions and disciplines across the globe as evidenced by the growing body of food-related scholarship (Moragues-Faus and Morgan, 2015; Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 1999, 2000), practices, pedagogies (Whittaker et al., 2017), and policies (Hodgson, 2012; Neuner et al., 2011). How does this burgeoning work on planning and design of food systems tackle issues of equity, inclusion, and justice? Who frames the problems? Whose voices are leading, amplifying, and engaging in planning and designing solutions? Drawing on Sen (2009), we suggest that equity and justice must be understood and judged in the light of the actual experiences of the lives of people – their wellbeing and freedom. We contend that planners’ and designers’ engagement with the food system must propel cities and regions towards conditions where the marginalized lead fuller, richer lives, not only as beneficiaries of a better food system but as those who articulate its problems and define its solutions. How does and can planning and design enhance the freedom and wellbeing of marginalized actors in the food system – low-income residents, people of colour, small-holder farmers, and refugees – the very people the alternative food movements purport to serve? That is the question of concern in this special issue.

Scholarship on city and regional food systems over the last two decades has documented the negative impacts of malfunctioning food systems, such as persistence of food insecurity, spatial disparities in access to food retail (Raja et al., 2008), increase in diet-related disease, and environmental degradation due to excessive use of fossil fuel based inputs (Canton Campbell, 2004; Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 1999, 2000). Scholars and activists called on planners to use their talents to address problems in the food system (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000), and in the last two decades planners have responded to this call. Local and regional governments in the Global North – particularly in the USA, United Kingdom, and Canada – as well as in the Global South – particularly Brazil, South Africa, and Argentina –have adopted and implemented plans and policies to strengthen city and regional food systems. Data from the US-based Growing Food Connections project suggest that more than 200 food-related plans and policies have been adopted by local and regional governments in the United States alone (growingfoodconnections.org). Globally, about 148 cities with nearly 470 million inhabitants have signed on to the 2015 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international declaration in support of sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe, and diverse (milanurbanfoodpolicypact.org). Further, the New Urban Agenda, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador in 2016, makes multiple references to the importance of promoting food security, and explicitly endorses the use of food systems planning in one of its principles (UN-Habitat, 2016). In short, food is no longer a stranger to the planning agenda (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000).

City and Regional Food Systems (CRFS) enable food to flow from source to plate across cities and regions, drawing on material, cultural, and political actors, networks, and resources. The system and flow depend on inter-linked food-related practices including the growing, processing, distribution, and acquisition, preparation, and consumption of food, and management of food-related waste, all of which unfold spatially across the built environment. Well-functioning CRFS are often portrayed as enhancing food security, and having the ancillary benefits of promoting economic, social, health, and overall well-being in communities. Yet, thoughtful critique by food justice scholars notes that food systems are steeped in institutional racism, alternatives to fix them fail to interrogate the role of race and class, and that efforts to rebuild urban and regional food systems must look beyond food itself (Alkon and Agyeman, 2011; Passidomo, 2013).

Mainstream planning and design practice is sidestepping normative and empirical questions about equity and inclusion in urban and regional food systems – a central concern of the articles in this issue. We note three major oversights in planning practice. First, efforts to strengthen food systems through planning and design rarely confront historical trajectories, disruptions, and tensions within a community’s food system. In the United States, for example, contemporary planning discussions about ‘fixing’ the food system rarely acknowledge the role of failed public policy and planning in marginalizing black communities within food systems (Reynolds, 2002). For example, from 1920 to 2007 the number of farm acres owned by black farmers in the US declined precipitously by 80 per cent while acreage owned by white farmers increased slightly by about 4 per cent (Tyler and Moore, 2013), in part due to failed public policy. Yet the predominant contemporary narrative about food systems and black communities revolves around their poor diets or other individual behaviours – and planning solutions focus on bringing food to black communities. A national shift in narrative has turned black communities from being producers of food to those who must be fed. Contemporary efforts and solutions to plan and design urban and regional food systems must interrogate the historic basis for both articulation of problems and solutions.

Second, although plans and designs for urban and regional food systems invoke the needs of marginalized populations their voices are often absent in mainstream planning and design processes, as illustrated in several articles in this special issue. As a result, planners overlook the articulation of problems and solutions proposed by marginalized communities. Finally, as noted earlier, planners and designers approach city and regional food systems largely as a space within which planners and designers can affect change, but less as a lever for broader social and economic transformation and equity. For example, food-aware planners concern themselves with plans and designs to bring good, local food to a neighbourhood such as through establishing a supermarket, but rarely with strategies to use the food system as a vehicle for income generation, a far more important and pressing concern in low-income neighbourhoods. At its worst, CRFS undermine the goals of equity and inclusion by becoming vehicles for an exclusive form of green gentrification that masquerades as progressive localism (Morgan and Santo, 2017). Without deployment of CRFS as a lever for equity, broader social benefits are unlikely to be achieved. This special issue is concerned with equity as a central, not ancillary, concern of city and regional food systems planning and design.

This special issue fills a gap in the literature by documenting how the growing engagement of the planning and design disciplines subverts, reinforces, or exacerbates inequities and injustices within territorially framed food systems. Authors from across the Global North and South explore the role of planning and design in communities’ food systems, while explicitly considering the imbalances in equity, justice, and power. In so doing, they draw our attention to city and regional food systems as a space and a lever for equity and justice.

The first paper by Clark et al. lays groundwork for thinking about the capacity of local governments to create, implement, and sustain inclusive food system planning processes. Through examination of Growing Food Connections, a 5-year participatory research, education, and outreach project designed to strengthen food systems for underserved residents and farmers in communities throughout the United States, as well as a survey of political and planning theories, the authors argue that without a commitment to confront and unpack deeper systemic challenges in food planning processes, such as historic and cultural divides, racial disparities, and poverty, leaders are likely to replicate or reinforce inequities in community food systems. Drawing on qualitative empirical work from across the United States, the authors propose a theoretical framework of policy readiness for local governments to develop inclusive planning processes.

As alluded to earlier, local governments across the globe are involved in a wide variety of efforts to strengthen food systems to facilitate food access and healthy eating in their communities. Using an equity lens, a set of papers by Brinkley et al., Bohm, and Meenar challenges popular policy responses in the United States to reducing food insecurity, such as by building supermarkets and promoting urban agriculture. While such policy interventions have been praised for numerous benefits, the authors ask whether benefits are, in fact, accruing to underserved communities.

Brinkley et al. note growing public health concerns from the media, academics, policy-makers, and activists over healthy eating. The authors demonstrate the limitations of focusing on so-called ‘food deserts’ as a problem and establishing supermarkets as a solution to the health disparities found in communities of colour in the United States. Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors demonstrate that diet-related health outcomes are most strongly associated with income and race. The authors suggest new avenues for supporting the provisioning of food centred around existing community-based practices such as farm-to-market and self-provisioning.

The next two papers interrogate the potential of urban agriculture to provide benefits for residents lacking access to fresh, healthy foods. Bohm examines the extent to which urban agriculture in and on buildings (UAB) lives up to its potential as a strategy for promoting food access. Bohm assesses the extent to which UAB project sites are located in low-income communities and communities of colour that face barriers to food access. The author’s qualitative evaluation of nineteen UAB projects across North America suggests that UAB projects are not necessarily located in communities with high food insecurity. Meenar examines the links between urban agriculture (UA) projects and the food security conditions of their surrounding areas in the city of Philadelphia, USA. Meenar uses geographic information systems (GIS) analysis and statistical tests to explore access to UA in neighbourhoods with high food insecurity. Results suggest that there is a spatial mismatch between the siting of UA projects and location of neighbourhoods with prevalence of food insecurity, and that the most unstable or temporary UA projects are located in neighbourhoods with the least food security.

Burga and Stoscheck investigate how language focused on food justice and equity is integrated into local government plans through a content analysis of the Minnesota Food Access Planning Guide in the state of Minnesota, United States. The authors illustrate how policy recommendations and strategies can include but also exclude, co-opt, replace, and erase food justice and equity terms in the guise of progressive planning policies. Specifically, the authors find that issues of equity are framed through a narrow focus on health outcomes rather than critical race and class analysis. The analysis also reveals how food justice and equity may be complicated concepts to operationalize in planning and design practice.

Planning for urban and regional food systems leaves out important voices. In particular, the field fails to consider family farmers (in the Global South) and refugees (in the Global North), two groups that are confronting challenges within the food system and yet are left out of food planning and policy processes. The future of small-scale family farming remains uncertain in many communities across both the Global North and South despite a focus on food systems localization. Vasile and Duncan use a case study of Porto Alegre, Brazil to interrogate the ways in which structural inequalities limit family farmers’ participation in food governance. The authors find that top-down Brazilian regulation for organic food, and the policies and provision of technical assistance, are not designed to fit the local context nor the needs and circumstances of farmers. The authors caution that systematization of local food practices – such as through standards and regulations – may threaten the autonomy of farmers and dampen innovation in the food system. The authors offer guidance for inclusive engagement processes to enable city and regional food systems planning to reduce structural inequalities. Judelsohn et al. examine the ways in which refugees from Burma (Myanmar) experience a new food environment in Buffalo, New York, and the ways in which planning and public policy responds to the new arrivals in largely ‘food blind’ ways. While some studies in public health have focused on the challenges faced by refugees in navigating new food environments upon resettlement, there is a large gap in the planning literature. Drawing on qualitative interviews with refugee households, the authors articulate a set of ideas for the future that seek to redress this literature gap, but concentrate on practical applications for local government action.

Large-scale food systems transformation in the face of rapid urbanization and globalization is creating new challenges, the full impacts of which are yet unknown. The papers by Battersby (South Africa) and Soma (Indonesia) examine food system transformations in the food supply chain in the Global South where rapid urbanization is creating unintended consequences in the food retail and food waste management sectors, respectively. Both papers call for a purposeful re-examination of local government engagement in the food system. Battersby uses a case study of the changing food distribution system in Cape Town, South Africa to evaluate the role of local government planning in shaping community food systems throughout African cities. Although local government has no formal mandate to address the food system and is not engaging in food systems planning, Battersby argues that it is nonetheless playing a profound role in reshaping the food system through non-food policies focused on urban development objectives. Battersby urges local governments in Cape Town and other African cities to engage in food systems planning to understand the food security challenges and opportunities in their communities in accordance with the New Urban Agenda.

Similarly, Soma observes the recent transformation of food retail in the Global South as well as the missed opportunity for local government planners to address simultaneously food systems issues and urban development priorities. Soma draws on interviews with key food systems stakeholders in Bogor, Indonesia to investigate the role of urbanization and urban development policies in transforming food consumption and the management of food packaging waste. Land once used for food production by low-income residents in the city has been lost to urban development, with negative impacts for residents’ food security. Furthermore, the new food acquisition and consumption practices of higher-income residents, fuelled by rapid development of supermarkets in urban areas, is creating challenges for lower-income residents in the form of increased food waste in their neighbourhoods. The author observes that the negative environmental impacts of food waste and its associated packaging are ‘distanced’ from those who are privileged, and brought nearer to those who are marginalized within the food system. Soma identifies avenues for local government planners to intervene in the community food system to overcome challenges around food waste and reduce broader inequities exacerbated by urban development.

The special issue concludes with a paper by Nunes who offers the possibility of a pragmatist ethics in city-regional food systems planning. Specifically, Nunes explores urban food enterprises (UFEs), socially innovative business practices that seek alternative, local responses to conventional food systems, as practical applications of theoretical concepts of social and economic justice in city-regional food systems planning. Similar to other papers in the issue, Nunes asks for a critical evaluation of what ‘doing food justice’ looks like and raises fundamental questions about the relationships between concepts of equity and justice and organizational policies and practices. f

Collectively, the papers in the special issue raise questions about the nature of planners and designers’ engagement in city and regional food systems, and the ways in which such engagement impacts inclusion, equity, and justice. These questions are especially important as municipalities across the world embrace planning for urban and regional food systems such as through the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. Authors in this issue highlight voices that are excluded in formal planning processes and also the inequities exacerbated through urban and regional food systems planning. Furthermore, authors critique plans and designs that incorporate rhetoric around food justice but fail to provide actionable strategies that consider historical context, local identities, race and class inequities, and other issues of structural and systemic marginalization. The authors raise clear, promising, practical ideas for the future of both food systems planning scholarship and practice that draw on unique perspectives and ideas of a broad range of food systems stakeholders in diverse settings around the globe.  It is now up to the professions and disciplines that shape cities and regions to listen.

References

• Alkon, A.H. and Agyeman, J. (2011) Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Caton Campbell, M. (2004) Building a common table: the role for planning in community food systems. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 23(4), pp. 341–355.
• Hodgson, K. (2012) Planning for Food Access and Community-Based Food Systems: A National Scan and Evaluation of Local Comprehensive and Sustainability Plans. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association.
• Moragues-Faus, A. and Morgan, K. (2015) Reframing the foodscape: the emergent world of urban food policy. Environment and Planning A, 47(7), pp. 1558–1573.
• Morgan, K. and Santo, R. (2017) The Rise of Municipal Food Movements. Unpublished working paper.
• Neuner, K., Kelly, S. and Raja, S. (2011) Planning to Eat: Innovative Local Government Plans and Policies to Build Healthy Food Systems Planning in the United States. Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Policy Brief 39. Buffalo, NY: Food Systems and Healthy Communities Lab, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Available at: http://cccfoodpolicy.org/sites/default/files/resources/planning_to_eat_s....
• Passidomo, C. (2013) Going ‘beyond food’: confronting structures of injustice in food systems research and praxis. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, 3(4), pp. 89–93.
• Pothukuchi, K. and Kaufman, J.L. (1999) Placing the food system on the urban agenda: the role of municipal institutions in food systems planning. Agriculture and Human Values, 16(2), pp. 122–124.
• Pothukuchi, K. and Kaufman, J.L. (2000) The food system – a stranger to the planning field. Journal of the American Planning Association, 66(2), pp. 213–224.
• Raja, S., Ma, C. and Yadav, P. (2008) Beyond food deserts: measuring and mapping racial disparities in neighbourhood food environments. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 27(4), pp. 469–482.
• Reynolds, B.J. (2002). Black Farmers in America, 1865–2000: The Pursuit of Independent Farming and the Role of Cooperatives (Vol. RBS Research Report 194). Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture Rural Business/Cooperative Service.
• Sen, A. (2009) The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Tyler, S.S. and Moore, E.A. (2013) Plight of black farmers in the context of USDA farm loan programs: a research agenda for the future. Professional Agricultural Workers Journal, 1(1). Available at: http://tuspubs.tuskegee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=pawj.
• UN-Habitat (2016) New Urban Agenda. Available at: http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/New-Urban-Agenda-GA-Adopted-68th-....
• Whittaker, J., Raja, S., Clark, J. and SanGiovanni, S. (2017) Planning for food systems: community-university partnerships for food-systems transformation. Metropolitan Universities, 28(1). Available at: https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/muj/article/viewFile/21471/20710.

Acknowledgements

This Special Issue is inspired by the work of Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome Kaufman whose landmark article ‘The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field’ in the Journal of the American Planning Association (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000) catalyzed a conversation on food in the field of planning across continents. Articles in this special issue were selected following an open, global competitive call for manuscripts. The number of submissions far exceeded the editors’ expectations. We are especially delighted to recognize the excellent work of early career scholars in this special issue. The editors thank the anonymous reviewers who took the time to review submissions for the issue, as well as colleagues at the UB Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab and the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo for their support. This special issue was made possible with the support of a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) of the United States Department of Agriculture grant no 2012-68004-19894 and the University at Buffalo Community for Global Health Equity (UB CGHE). 

Planning for Equitable Urban and Regional Food Systems

About this issue

Issue number

Summary

How does and can planning and design enhance the freedom and wellbeing of marginalized actors in the food system – low-income residents, people of colour, small-holder farmers, and refugees – the very people the alternative food movements purport to serve?

Enjoli Hall, Kevin Morgan, Samina Raja

02 Oct 2017

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Contents

• Planning for Equitable Urban and Regional Food Systems
  Samina Raja, Kevin Morgan and Enjoli Hall
• Fail to Include, Plan to Exclude: Reflections on Local Governments’ Readiness for Building Equitable Community Food Systems
• Jill K. Clark, Julia Freedgood, Aiden Irish, Kimberley Hodgson and Samina Raja
• Culturing Food Deserts: Recognizing the Power of Community-Based Solutions
  Catherine Brinkley, Subhashni Raj and Megan Horst
• Urban Agriculture In and On Buildings in North America: The Unfulfilled Potential to Benefit Marginalized Communities
  Martha Bohm
• Assessing the Spatial Connection between Urban Agriculture and Equity
  Mahbubur R. Meenar
• Does the Minnesota Food Access Planning Guide Address Food Justice and Equity? A Content Analysis of Policy Language
  H. Fernando Burga and Claire Stoscheck 
• ‘We want to be part of the broader project’ Family Farmers and Local Food Governance in Porto Alegre, Brazil
  Maria Vasile and Jessica Duncan
• Planning the City of Good (and New) Neighbours: Refugees’ Experiences of the Food Environment in Buffalo, New York
  Alexandra Judelsohn, Heather Orom, Isok Kim, Aye Bay Na Sa, Hijab Khan, Rosie DeVito, Roberto O. Diaz Del Carpio and Samina Raja
• Food System Transformation in the Absence of Food System Planning: The Case of Supermarket and Shopping Mall Retail Expansion in Cape Town, South Africa 
  Jane Battersby
• Wasted Infrastructures: Urbanization, Distancing and Food Waste in Bogor, Indonesia
  Tammara Soma
• Rethinking Justice in City-Regional Food Systems Planning
  Richard Nunes
• Publication Review

Meet the editors

Samina Raja is a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and the Principal Investigator of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Her research, teaching, and civic engagement focus on the use of planning and policy to promote health and food equity.

Kevin Morgan is the Professor of Governance and Development in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, where he is also the Dean of Engagement. He was one of the founders of the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Group and the founding chair of the Bristol Food Policy Council. He is the co-author of The School Food Revolution.

Enjoli Hall is an Associate Planner at the University at Buffalo Regional Institute. She previously worked as a Research Assistant in the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

Editorial: Public Space and Urban Justice

Over the last decade, public space has received increasing attention and debate in urban research, policy and public debate as a facilitator of urban justice. The 2008 economic crisis underlined these debates, which questioned the role of economic competitiveness as a global socio-economic model shaping the cities along with profit-oriented developments. They addressed the distribution of income inequalities (Buitelaar et al., 2016) as one of the central issues to be challenged in contemporary and future urban planning.

In urban literature, increasing inequalities are closely associated with the decline of a welfare state model (Musterd and Ostendorf, 1998) and a rise in the neo-liberal approach to urban development to achieve economic success and international competition (Gleeson and Low, 2000; Jackson, 2009; Cardama, 2015; Sager, 2011; Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2012). This requires marketing strategies to promote the city into a ‘growth machine’ (Sassen, 2005; Fainstein, 2010; Harvey, 2013). It also serves to legitimatize costly interventions in prestige developments such as stadia, inner-city historical areas, waterfronts, business hubs for finance and high-tech industries, and neighbourhoods for creative industries (Zukin, 1995; Hall and Hubbard 1996; Graham and Marvin, 2001). This implies that in order to support the city’s economic prosperity and global competiveness, investments are not evenly distributed but concentrated in some selected areas of a city, and created what is called ‘splintering urbanism’ (Graham and Marvin, 2001). Some of the evident consequences of these laissez-faire developments on public spaces are, among others, the escalation of control on public space by privately owned public space (POPS), shrinkage and limitation of public space to perform as a civic place as well as place for protest.

In order to challenge these conditions of injustice, some action at the global level has been taken at least at a declarative level. The 2016 UN Habitat Conference, HABITAT III, adopted what it called The New Urban Agenda, which focused on public space as a promoter of sustainable cities that facilitate ‘inclusive, connected, safe and accessible’ cities, which are key aspects of urban justice (UN Habitat, 2016). Good public space is seen as a crucial element to achieving good quality of life for people of all walks of life as it supports the local economy, contributes to a sense of community, encourages interaction across social, cultural and economic boundaries, but also increases mobility and contributes to better health and wellbeing (Andersson, 2016). Accordingly, the just city can be achieved by offering equal opportunities to a city’s inhabitants for self-development and enjoyment of a good quality of life (Griffin, 2015).

However some studies showed that despite the reduction of urban inequalities has been a continuous topic on the global political agendas since 1945 (Andersson, 2016; Gupta et al., 2015), the inequalities between and within the states, regions and cities keep growing (Sassen, 2005; Leigh, 2017; Chakravorty, 1996; Saunders et al., 2016). This is also clearly addressed in public debates. For example, the British newspaper The Guardian’s web blog ‘Cities’ presented a series of articles, relating to the ‘unjust’ conditions in the cities in relation to public space through the themes of privatization, exclusion of social groups, lack of accessibility and distribution of amenities (Hatherley, 2016; Garrett, 2015; Engelen et al., 2014, Ayala and Fallshaw, 2017). These articles present examples from a wide geographical area including cities from Europe, Americas, Asia, Middle East, Australia and Africa, and show that the issues related to urban justice and public space are not limited to just some parts of the world; rather they are a global phenomenon.

All these illustrate that in academic, governmental and public arenas there is increasing interest in public space as a facilitator of urban justice and that urban justice is not an abstract concept, but has practical implications. This increasing interest requires attention and practical approaches able to link public space to urban justice must be considered. Therefore, the question is what are the ways of studying public space to promote urban justice in the city? Our intention in this special issue of Built Environment is to bring contributors and case studies together to explore and ground this question.
We approach public space as a concrete, physical space that is accessible to everyone in real space and time, and not as a virtual, immaterial category. Streets, markets, parks, playgrounds and many other spaces attract people from various gender, income, age, cultural groups, who are not necessarily familiar with each other (Sennett, 1970; Sandercock, 2003; Iveson, 2006). By offering opportunities for strangers to be in same place at the same time, public space performs as site of sociability, in the sense of spontaneous social interaction, through simple greetings, or just seeing and being seen, or social gatherings and commercial exchanges (Jacobs, 1961; Sennett, 1971; Watson, 2006). All these forms of interaction and exchange are at the core of vibrant public life of the city and can be observed and experienced the most in public spaces.
These various qualities of public space closely associate with some aspects of the just city: diversity, equity and democracy (Fainstein, 2010; Griffin, 2015).

Public Space and Diversity

Diversity aspects of the just city relate to the capacity to welcome and embrace a variety of people with differing cultural views and practices, as well as land uses. This view dates back to the antiquity as Aristotle famously stated, ‘The city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring the city into existence’ (Aristotle, cited in Sennett, 1970, p. 13) and was widely embraced by the early contributors to urban theory (Simmel, 1976; Park, 1915; Wirth, 1938) as well as scholars of urban justice, political science and urban design. Some address the need to recognize group diversity without homogenizing and marginalizing tendencies, as a fundamental aspect of civility – in other words, conditions in which different groups can show respect to each other and learn how to live together (Young, 1990; Fainstein, 2010; Low, 2008). Others approach diversity in terms of variations in land uses and programmes, which attract different user groups and foster vitality in public life (Talen, 2006; Montgomery 1998). Diversity is used as a conceptual tool to measure the outcomes of urban plans, policies and interventions as just or unjust by looking at whether projects dislocate certain urban groups, or whether zoning plans are inclusive for diverse user groups (Steil and Connolly, 2017; Fainstein, 2010; Honneth and Fraser, 2001; Fincher and Iveson, 2008).

Public space provides the means to observe and study the effects of urban interventions on diversity both in terms of group differences and land uses (Low et al., 2005; Montgomery 1998). It enables the study of changes in activities, user types and behavioural patterns in the urban environment. For example, the effects of social mixing policies, which suggest mixing households through introducing new types of housing for higher income groups, often affects a neighbourhood’s diversity through gentrification. In such processes, public space reflects a city’s capacity to embrace social and economic differences, e.g. between people of different income, age, faith or ethnic backgrounds. A lived experience of such diversity in public space not only makes diversity part of everyday life but also celebrates opportunity, equality and justice for all. If properly managed it contributes to the acceptance of diversity in the built environment and highlights the need to consider it in decision-making processes (Zarate, 2015; Griffin, 2015). By enabling citizens as well as visitors to encounter not just what they want to encounter, it reinforces coexistence in the urban environment. Thus public space not only acts as a connector of different neighbourhoods in the socially and economically segregated ‘dual’ contemporary city (Fainstein, 2013; Low, 2013), but also as an indicator of the lived diversity of the city. In addition, Lazear (2000) introduces economic aspects to the concept of the diverse city and public space by claiming that the productivity is higher in urban environments that hold diversity in their public space, as they are capable of new ways of thinking.

Public Space and Equity

The second feature of the just city, equity, suggests a fair allocation of wealth, resources, benefits and opportunities among the citizens. This approach draws on and extends the ancient Athenian city-state as a distributor of power and resources, and has influenced ideas about justice in Western societies, where justice is strongly associated with the legal system, regulated by the law through political, economic and social institutions (Rawl, 1971; Harvey, 1973; Fainstein, 2000; Soja, 2010). In context of urban planning, equity is directly related to the distribution of housing, urban amenities and environmental sources such as clean water, air and urban greenery.

When it comes to the public spaces, equity implies the provision and regulations of public space, as well as their access regardless the social and economic profile of the population (Low and Iveson, 2016). This raises questions about the distribution and accessibility of public space. For example, in Western Europe, the provision of public space is well regulated, but increasing land prices and processes of gentrification have influenced the use of public space by certain groups, excluding some. In Asian and Middle Eastern cases, where expensive residential towers in exclusive enclaves are constructed and gated communities created, the accessibility of public space for general population is notably decreased. Such developments are to be found around the globe and not only create fragmented city areas, but for the excluded parts of population decrease confidence in right to ownership, inclusion and belonging to the public spaces ‘because of the frequent reminders expressed by those who presume to judge and challenge those rights’ (Griffin, 2015, p. 8). Segregation of urban territories also causes environmental hazard (Graham and Marvin, 2001; Harvey 2013).

Another rising issue is the differentiation of users of public space in terms of their mean of transport. Even if in the Western world there is a strong movement towards sustainable mobility, the continued motorization of the urban population disadvantages non-motorized users who are often of disadvantaged social status (Cowie et al., 2016). To address these complex issues, different policies and interventions have been introduced aiming to mitigate the inequity (such as urban renewal policies, housing policies and urban design interventions); often these have safeguarding and development of public space as one of their core measures.

Public Space and Democracy

The democracy element of the just city refers to representation and public participation in the urban planning process which are often regarded as measures of how inclusive and democratic this process is (Mitchell, 2003; Isin, 2000; Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991; Rudd, 2009). In scholarly work there seems to be a wide consensus on advantageous effects of participatory urbanism for a more just city. However there is an ongoing discussion on definitions and attributes of truly participatory processes as well as approaches to get citizens effectively involved in decision-making (Kaza, 2006; Denters and Klok, 2010; Moore and Elliott, 2015; Parnell, 2016). These discussions are very relevant to the design and management of urban public open spaces as truly common grounds for urban life (Madanipour, 2010). By definition these are contested places, appropriated by different groups. The various interests, needs, expectations and contestations that come together in these spaces need to be equilibrated in the participatory process. Unless this process is inclusive, the more influential groups’ interests will prevail which marginalizes others and effectively limits their right to the city.

Public spaces offer conditions to study practices of representation in terms of political participation and claims to use public spaces. One of the measures is the level of individuals’ and groups’ incentives in the co-design of public spaces (Kaza, 2006). This is not conditioned only by the planning system procedures and the ability of authority to be an attentive listener (Moore and Elliott, 2015), but also by people’s motivations to participate based on their personal costs and benefits. The other indicator is the level to which public spaces act as places of protest or spaces to initiate change in the established socio-economic and political systems (Juris, 2012; Rosenstone, 2016; Uitermark et al., 2012). In either case, the level of participation can be an indicator of inequality – the lower the level of participation, the higher the degree of political inequality and the more serious the problems of representativeness (Rosenstone and Hansen, 1993). On the other hand. the inflation of grassroots practices in public space design can be an indication of an (un) just city as that may indicate the unfulfilled needs of certain user groups (Pares et al., 2012).

Some studies suggest that indicators such as gender, educational and income levels, occupation, ethnicity, living arrangements and belonging to certain types of groups are the key factors that distinguish people who participate from those who remain uninvolved (Xu, 2007; Rubin and Rubin, 2001; Steggert, 1975). Further, the physical design and aesthetics of public space are a measure of its level of democracy, as it influences who will feel invited to use public space and who not. Therefore design of public space should be a product collaboration of users with designers, in which designer leads the process (Schupbach, 2015).

The relations between public space and the features of the just city show us that public space may offer just/unjust consequences for the ability of urban policies and practice to combat the conditions of injustice from three perspectives: diversity, equity and democracy. The papers in this special issue reflect on these three perspectives, based on examples from cities, which vary in size, and their historical and contextual backgrounds.

The Ankara paper presents in a historic perspective in the case of Gençlik Parkı, a central public park in Ankara, Turkey. The park was initially used as an inclusive public space, reflecting a modern vision of the newly established Turkish Republic. This vision changed slightly especially after the 1980s, along with the neo-liberal policies. In this context, conditions of injustice became visible in the park, for example through uneven patterns of accessibility to urban amenities, the sale of urban green areas to private developers, or giving additional development rights to political allies. By describing the typical development phases of the park within a wider socio-economic historic framework, the paper problematizes the nature of urban development and modernization, and how they can lead to a less just urban form.
The next paper investigates, from the perspective of urban justice, urban transformation processes within street amenities in immigrant neighbourhoods in Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. It approaches the issue through the visibility of immigrant amenities – such as shops, restaurants, and places of worship – with distinctive cultural signs and practices, that are recognizable in public space. Cultural visibility provides empirical evidence for the role of these immigrant street amenities in stimulating public life and the changes of their role in the context of neighbourhood transformation. The study highlights the decline of visible Turkish amenities in the neighbourhood undergoing urban development processes that promote gentrification. This contradicts the policy objectives aimed at enhancing immigrant integration and relates to the diversity and democracy aspects of urban justice.

The case of Ljubljana, Slovenia, which follows, shows how planning for urban walkability can contribute to the equity aspect of the just city. Urban walkability is interpreted as a capacity of the built environment related to the design of public space and the distribution of the land uses. It focuses on two development phases of the city: the socialist framework and the contemporary neo-liberal socio-economic framework. It argues that planning for walkability must not be used as an exclusivity measure from which only privileged parts of the city or only a certain group of citizens can benefit; rather it should be equally distributed across the urban territory.

The next paper, whose focus is the Columbian city of Medellín addresses the issue of a city authority’s interventions in public space. Recent governments have invested massively in a design-led physical upgrading of the city’s public space with the goal of increasing both spatial justice and the city’s competitiveness, tackling both inner-city areas and peripheral informal settlements. Through a multi-method qualitative approach, the paper focuses on the case of one informal settlement. It questions whether the current programme’s focus on image creation and international competitiveness has detrimental effects on the empowerment of the settlement’s residents. The findings of the study show that there is a conflict between equity and empowerment measures in the various stages of the participatory process, which raises issues relating to the equity and democracy aspects of the just city.

The dominance of real estate development on the individual initiatives, which claim to use public space, is addressed next in the Lebanese case of Beirut. The research is based on a study of one farmers’ market and emphasizes exchange value over use value of public space. It focuses two periods of the market, in 2007 and 2016, and explores how and to what extent such a market is able to generate spontaneous social interactions and exchanges between different groups. The study concludes that, despite the unstable political and social context, the market is able to act as a place of sociability, which is key for the diversity of the just city.

The final paper adds another important perspective by addressing the issue of the (under)representation of children in making urban planning decisions that affect public space in Auckland, New Zealand. In broader terms it challenges the formal protection of the rights of specific user groups to be part of meaningful participation, as it argues that these rights are rarely processed in practice. The paper focuses on the processes and outcomes of the Auckland Council’s children’s participation event for the redevelopment of an inner-city square. Based on the findings, the research discusses the prospects for the children’s effective participation becoming a part of city making processes, which is crucially related to the equity and democracy aspects of the just city.

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Acknowledgements

This special issue has its origins in a conference entitled ‘Becoming Local Bucharest’ held at Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania in 2014. The conference brought together a group of scholars to explore and compare the relations between different features of public space and the just city. This conference evolved out of the activities of the Thematic Group ‘Public Spaces and Urban Cultures’ established under the AESOP (The Association of European Schools of Planning). We would like to express our gratitude to Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism and we owe special thanks to Gabriel Pascuriu and Celia Ghyka for hosting this event. Finally, our appreciation is to all the authors in this issue for their commitment to the project, their responsiveness to requests for revisions from us and from reviewers.

Meet the editors

Matej Nikšič is an architect and urban planner specialized in urban public space and urban regeneration in relation to participation and mobility issues. He works as a researcher at the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia. Currently he leads Slovenian part of the EU Human Cities project and teaches at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana.

Ceren Sezer, an architect and urban planner, works as a Guest Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Urbanism of Delft University of Technology. Her research interests focus on public space, street markets, urban renewal and immigrant neighbourhoods. She is a co-founder of an international research and design network ‘Public Spaces and Urban Cultures’ established under the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP).

Public Space and Urban Justice

About this issue

Issue number

Summary

In academic, government and public arenas there is increasing interest in public space as a facilitator of urban justice.

Matej Nikšič and Ceren Sezer

10 Jul 2017

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Contents

• Public Space and Urban Justice
  Matej Nikšič and Ceren Sezer
• The Capitalist Political Economy and Transformation of Public Spaces: The Case of Gençlik Parkı in Ankara
  A. Burak Buyukcivelek
• Cultural Visibility and Urban Justice in Immigrant Neighbourhoods of Amsterdam
  Ceren Sezer and Ana Maria Fernandez Maldonado
• Is a Walkable Place a Just Place? The Case of Ljubljana
  Matej Nikšič
• Equity and Empowerment in Medellín’s Informal Settlements
  Eva Schwab
• Reading the Dynamics of Contemporary Urban Spaces in a Turbulent Era: A Case from Beirut
  Christine Mady
• Children are Citizens Too: Consulting with Children on the Redevelopment of a Central City Square in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand
  Penelope Carroll, Karen Witten and Claire Stewart
• Publication Reviews

Meet the editor

Tali Hatuka, an architect and urban planner, is the Head of the Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design, in the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. Hatuka works primarily on planning and urban design issues, focusing on the relationships between urban development, city design and conflicts in contemporary cities. 

Editorial: Industrial Urbanism: Exploring the City-Production Dynamic

Since the Industrial Revolution, cities and industry have evolved together; towns and metropolitan regions have grown around factories and expanding industries. Despite this shared past, however, popular notions of manufacturing tend to highlight its negative aspects: pollution, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of labour caused by growing industry, on the one hand, and – almost paradoxically – on the other, the blight, abandonment, and ‘shrinkage’ resulting from the more recent decline of manufacturing in cities in the developed world. In recent years, with the digitization of manufacturing, technological developments and environmental challenges, there is a growing recognition of the need to re-examine the interface between manufacturing and cities (Berger and Sharp, 2013; Helper et al., 2012; Leigh and Hoelzel, 2012).

Supporters of such a re-examination, warn of self-destruction in countries that promote post-industrial policy. Relocating plants to countries where labour is less expensive, as a means of reducing production costs is not a viable strategy for the long term, and severing the connection between production and development impairs the ability to innovate in source countries (De Backer et al., 2015; Manyika et al., 2012; Pisano and Shih, 2009). This trend is also backed by research which, after neglecting the subject for a period, is investing resources in it, and especially in the topic of the relationship between manufacturing and regional development. Most studies emphasize different aspects of manufacturing of critical significance to the local economy, a paradigm that also receives support from political leaders who seek to rethink the geography of manufacturing as a path that might be used to promote job opportunities.

The premise of this issue is that manufacturing, whether advanced or traditional, is much more than an economic challenge. It should be viewed as a complex socio-political project that includes four related dimensions:

1. Economy: the increasing global competition for investments and projects between cities and regions;
2. Society: unemployment as a side effect of globalization and the transfer of production to developing countries;
3. Planning: demographic growth along with a trend toward rapid urbanization; and
4. Environment: changes in consumption and the cost of energy in the transportation of goods.

Accordingly, industrial urbanism suggests that economists’ quantitative abstract framework be extended into a concrete comparative, multi-level analysis that includes the physical environment and addresses the future possible relationships between cities and industry and between current urban planning practices and the places that are being designed for and dedicated to the production of goods. More specifically, this issue focuses on the spatial implications and physical manifestation of contemporary manufacturing in the city, addressing the following:

• What are the contemporary relationships between city and industry?
• Should contemporary manufacturing be subjected to the same rules and zoning regulations as its predecessors?
• What physical planning and design strategies should cities pursue to retain, attract, and increase manufacturing activity?
• What is to be done with vacant factories, neglected industrial sites?

These questions point to the limitations of the current planning and architectural paradigm in addressing manufacturing, and the need to conceptualize new planning strategies that would respond to and help cities adapt to current trends in manufacturing. Spatial adaptation to manufacturing is required at the regional, city and local scales, in both existing and new settings, taking into account, not merely the physicality of space, but also its social and political characteristics.

This issue opens with a paper, ‘Industrial Urbanism: Typologies, Concepts and Prospects’, by Tali Hatuka and Eran Ben-Joseph, which provides an historical and typological mapping of the evolving dynamics between city and industry. Exploring some of the key models of industrial cities, it shows how they have had an enormous impact on the landscape of cities, contributing to the development of three prominent spatial prototypes of city–industry relationships: the integrated, adjacent and autonomous. The integrated prototype implies a fusion or close proximity between residential and industrial uses; the adjacent prototype implies planned segregation between the industrial and residential areas of the city through zoning; the autonomous prototype refers to standalone industrial/business parks or large factories working autonomously from both spatial and managerial perspectives. The paper maps the key features of prototypes and suggests that in the face of emerging technologies, planners must sharpen the tools for industrial environment planning. It is argued, that a holistic view of city and industry is likely to produce a new understanding of the relationship between working and living.

The following set of papers addresses the need for planning and policy-makers to adapt to the current profile of manufacturing. Advanced manufacturing technologies are seen as an opportunity that changes the cost equation of manufacturing methods, and, importantly, as an integral element in the innovation of new products, processes and services. As Elizabeth Reynolds says in her paper ‘Innovation and Production: Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, Trends and Implications for US Cities and Regions’, ‘These technologies are central to the development of new, more complex products and processes, often “hybrid” products that combine hardware with software’. Her paper provides a wide overview of the trends in advanced manufacturing and their spatial implications. Exploring these trends by looking at manufacturing in US cities and metropolitan areas, Reynolds argues that, globally, countries and regions are investing heavily in advanced manufacturing technologies because of their important link to innovation and economic development. However, the implications of these trends for urban manufacturing are mixed and uneven. Mapping the opportunities and challenges for urban manufacturing, as well as gaps in our knowledge about investments in manufacturing, she proposes an approach for thinking about urban manufacturing that blurs geographic boundaries and looks more closely at the manufacturing innovation ecosystem as a whole and how land-use strategies might support this system.

Land-use and planning regulations are indeed one of the main obstacles barring a response to current manufacturing trends. Addressing the limits of zoning and the separation of the residential environment from manufacturing in cities, Timothy Love, in his paper, ‘A New Model of Hybrid Building as a Catalyst for the Redevelopment of Urban Industrial Districts’, suggests that mixed-use industrial zoning is one approach for preserving districts in North American cities with a growing shortage of industrial and ‘back-of-house’ real estate. Mixed-use industrial development cross-subsidizes the construction of new industrial spaces with non-industrial and higher-value uses on upper floors. It supports a process of densification that results in hybrid buildings that may improve the walkability of industrial areas, thus promoting alternative transportation modes and neighbourhood retail. The paper frames the specific urban design and architectural issues raised by a mixed-use industrial building prototype and mixed-use industrial districts.

The limits of zoning practices are also addressed in ‘Zoning and its Discontents: Integrating Old Industrial Parks with the City’ by Dan Price, who presents the urban renewal of an industrial park in Kfar Saba, a town north of Tel Aviv in Israel. The paper describes the challenges in strategically regenerating an industrial park within the existing planning milieu. The project, a test case for diverse strategies involving architectural design, policy proposals and management reform, exposes the challenges in implementing ‘hybridism’. Price argues that zoning regulations from the 1960s onwards have left a legacy of single-use domains within the cities of Israel. Thus, old industrial parks present a particularly acute challenge and, also, an opportunity for town planners to address issues of social justice, economic resilience and environmental sustainability while avoiding the trap of ‘industrial gentrification’. Nina Rappaport further examines these ideas and, particularly, the concept of hybridity in her paper, ‘Hybrid Factory | Hybrid City’. Rappaport argues that factories can now be built as hybrid buildings in mixed-use neighbourhoods because industry is smaller, cleaner, and quieter. Exploring these ideas at the city scale, she adopts a normative approach and proposes that a new hybridity – both spatially and economically – might lead to more productive and vital cities.

The question of adaptation refers not merely to the evolution of manufacturing in the twenty-first century, but also to numerous abandoned heavy industrial sites worldwide. Though a strategy of reuse is becoming more common, implementation often presents economic and spatial challenges. The paper, ‘Historic Heavy Industrial Sites: Obstacles and Opportunities’, by Sunny Menozzi, maps the obstacles and opportunities in the conservation and adaptive reuse of steelworks and other heavy industrial complexes. Menozzi asks what should communities take into account before choosing to move forward with conservation and reuse. Using cases from the United States, Mexico, Germany, Luxembourg, and Italy, she concludes that communities should pursue conservation and reuse when they are seeking a civic benefit, and when it is sufficiently important to justify a substantial long-term investment in a project that may never be commercially viable.

The dilemma posed by Menozzi is richly portrayed in the case of Engenho Central de Piracicaba, Brazil. In the paper, ‘The Place of the Industrial Past: The Adaptive Reuse of the Industrial Heritage in the Engenho Central de Piracicaba, Brazil’, Gabriela Campagnol tells the history of the site’s preservation in the context of the political and urban history of the city. Since the 1980s, the site has been the subject of political controversy and stewardship debates, resulting in several adaptive reuse projects by renowned Brazilian architects, such as Oscar Niemeyer (1980), Carlos Bratke (1994), Fanucci and Ferraz/Brasil Arquitetura (2004) and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006). Although, as she argues, adaptive reuse has emerged as a common way to ensure the preservation of underused industrial buildings and landscapes, it should be seen as a political project.

In responding to the growing need, first, to develop new planning strategies that address current and anticipate future trends in manufacturing and, second, to reassess the reuse strategies of historical factories, it is also important to acknowledge the dominant presence of the industrial park in metropolitan regions. The autonomous, standalone industrial/business park, which hosts large factories that are disconnected, spatially and managerially from the city, has had a dominant presence in the landscape of the metropolitan region and is the leading model in developing, contemporary industrial areas. In her paper, ‘The Autonomous Industrial Park: A Global Model with Local Variations’, Roni Bar assesses the spatial features of industrial parks. She analyses industrial parks, which are often in peripheral or suburban locations, in the context of the process of decentralization and agglomeration, associated with the rise of global economies and neoliberal ideologies. Highlighting the spatial effects of industrial parks through cases from Israel, she acknowledges the varied manifestations of the industrial park and discusses the possible opportunities its spatial evolution and adaptation offers.

The issue ends with some thoughts and ideas on the future of industrial urbanism. The epilogue, ‘Facing Forward: Trends and Challenges in the Development of Industry in Cities’, written by Tali Hatuka, Eran Ben-Joseph and Sunny Menozzi, outlines some of the developments and trends in the relationship between cities and industry, as were discussed in a symposium entitled Industrial Urbanism, which was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in October 2014. The paper focuses on the three interlinked dimensions of manufacturing that might have a major impact on city planning – proximity, localism, and planning regulations – and recommends their critical assessment to address the needs of industrial urbanism in the future.

A final point – manufacturing is also about people, their work, and their daily life. Instead of supporting single-use industrial parks and standalone factories, industrial urbanism encourages the convergence of users and activities to create vibrant economic clusters. Industrial urbanism could reintroduce human-centred design to manufacturing facilities. These ideas require further research and study. Further research could analyse the changes in contemporary manufacturing sectors and the ways that they may influence future urban development, including the residential fabric and infrastructure. In addition, researchers could propose a new spatial model that re-establishes the connection between cities and industry, a prototype that meets the needs of the twenty-first century by promoting technological interfaces and advancing environmental concerns.

Manufacturing must be viewed with fresh eyes, while recognizing that it is central to sustaining thriving cities, to realize the potential of industrial urbanism. Doing so will be a major task for designers, planners, and policy-makers in the years ahead, but it is one that is sure to bear fruit and lead to better place-making.

At the end of the day, people spend most of their day in their work environment. And though we tend to discuss work and the industry as a means to achieve particular goals, seeing it as the source of all productivity, property or wealth, work, for most of us, profoundly contributes to our identity – who we are, our way of life, and what we are able to achieve in our lifetimes.

References

• Berger, S., Sharp, P.A. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Task Force on Innovation and Production (2013) A Preview of the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy Report. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: http://web.mit.edu/pie/news/PIE_Preview.pdf.
• De Backer, K., Desnoyers-James, I. and Moussiegt, L. (2015) Manufacturing or Services: That is (not) the Question: The Role of Manufacturing and Services in OECD Economies. OECD Science, Technology, and Industry Policy Papers, No. 19. Available at: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/manufacturing-or-services-that-is-not-the-question_5js64ks09dmn-en?crawler=true.
• Helper, S., Krueger, T. and Wial, H. (2012) Locating American Manufacturing: Trends in the Geography of Production. Washington DC: The Brookings Institute. Available at: http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2012/05/09-locating-american-manufacturing-wial.
• Leigh, N.G. and Hoelzel, N.Z. (2012) Smart growth’s blind side. Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(1), pp. 78–89. DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2011.645274.
• Manyika, J., Sinclair, J., Dobbs, R. et al. (2012) Manufacturing the Future: The Next Era of Global Growth and Innovation. McKinsey Global Initiative and McKinsey Operations Practice, p. 2. Available at: www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/the-future-of-manufacturing.
• Pisano, G.P. and Shih, W.C. (2009) Restoring American competitiveness. Harvard Business Review, August/July. Available at: https://hbr.org/2009/07/restoring-american-competitiveness/ar/1.

Acknowledgements

Over the past 5 years, I have been working with Professor Eran Ben-Joseph (the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT) on the spatial and planning features of industrial areas worldwide. Our collaborative project titled Industrial Urbanism (http://industrialurbanism.com) was exhibited at the MIT Museum in September 2014. Some of the key questions and analytical findings of this project have been used as the foundation for this issue. Recently, with Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, I have started a new study (commissioned by Ashdod City, a prominent industrial and a port city) aimed at analyzing and developing a strategic plan for Ashdod’s various industrial areas, based on the findings of this research project.