Professor Sir Peter Hall: Role Model
About this issue
Summary
This issue of Built Environment, written by students and colleagues, celebrates the life and work of Peter Hall.
This issue of Built Environment, written by students and colleagues, celebrates the life and work of Peter Hall. The fourteen contributors cover the entire span of his career from the moment he joined LSE in 1965 through to the intense research activity of his last summer months in 2014. It’s extraordinary to be reminded of the scope of his life-work, the variety of roles he modelled for successive generations of students and colleagues, and the ramifications of his legacy. The papers may be accessed here.
Contents
-
Professor Sir Peter Hall: Role Model
Michael Hebbert -
Building Bridges between Economic Geography and Regional Planning: Office Location in London and the South East in the 1960s
John Goddard -
Housing, Planning and Peter Hall: Unfinished Business
Peter Williams -
Sir Peter Hall: A Humane, Urban Polymath
Ray Wyatt -
Elastic Peter
Amy Glasmeier -
Peter Hall Tours the Gunbelt (and Other Side Trips to the Legacies of Ebenezar Howard)
Sabina Deitrick and Scott Campbell -
Peter Hall and the Western Urban and Regional Collective at the University of California, Berkeley
Marc A. Weiss and Erica Schoenberger -
Sir Peter Hall: From Kondratieff Waves to the Soul of the Delta
Yuko Aoyama -
A Relationship of Ideas
Nick Green -
Von Thünen Revisited
Basak Demires Ozkul -
Peter Hall: Inspirer of Railways and Regions
Chia-Lin Chen -
Peter Hall: The Man Who Flew to Australia and Back [Almost] the Following Day
Ann Rudkin
Footnote: The cover Built Environment, Volume 41, number 1 shows Edward Hopper’s Approaching a City, 1946
Oil on canvas, 27 1/8 x 36 in.; 68.8975 x 91.44 cm
Acquired 1947, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s–2000s
In this book Arturo Almandoz places the major episodes of Latin America’s twentieth and early twenty-first century urban history within the changing relationship between industrialization and urbanization, modernization and development. This relationship began in the early twentieth century, when industrialization and urbanization became significant in the region, and ends at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when new tensions between liberal globalization and populist nationalism challenge development in the subcontinent, much of which is still poverty stricken.
Latin America’s twentieth-century modernization and development are closely related to nineteenth-century ideals of progress and civilization, and for this reason Almandoz opens with a brief review of that legacy for the different countries that are the focus of his book – Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela – but with references to others.
He then explores the regional distortions, which resulted from the interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and how the imbalance between urbanization and the productive system helps to explain why ‘take-off’ was not followed by the ‘drive to maturity’ in Latin American countries. He suggests that the close yet troublesome relationship with the United States, the recurrence of dictatorships and autocratic regimes, and Marxist influences in many domains, are all factors that explain Latin America’s stagnation and underdevelopment up to the so-called ‘lost decade’ of 1980s.
He shows how Latin America’s fate changed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, when neoliberal programmes, political compromise and constitutional reform dismantled the traditional model of the corporate state and centralized planning. He reveals how economic growth and social improvements have been attained by politically left-wing yet economically open-market countries while others have resumed populism and state intervention. All these trends make up the complex scenario for the new century – especially when considered against the background of vibrant metropolises that are the main actors in the book.
Contents
- Prologue
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
-
1 Introduction
Industrialization and Urbanization, Modernization and Development
On Urban Cultural History and Latin America’s Overviews
Approach and Structure of the Book -
2 Nineteenth-Century Antecedents
Postcolonial Changes
Civilization and Barbarism
European Godfathers
Conservatives and Liberals, Oligarchies and Bourgeoisies
From Postcolonial to Bourgeois Cities -
3 From Arielismo to World War I
Overshadowed by the Colossus
Arielismo, Modernism and Belle Époque
From Dictatorial Pax to Democracy
The Centenary’s Urban Agenda -
4 Good Neighbourhood, Masificación and Urbanism
From Caliban to Prospero
Towards Welfare States, Corporatism and Citizenship
Mass Metropolises
Between Vanguards and Social Sciences
Urban Reforms and the Emergence of Urbanismo -
5 Developmentalism, Modernism and Planning
Industrialization, Urbanization and Development
Fifty Years in Five
Asynchronies in Urbanization and Modernization
From Academicism to Functional Modernism
Between Urbanismo and Planning, City and Region -
6 Between Cold War and Third World
Revolution and Alliance in the Backyard
AFP, Coup and Communism
Guerrillas, Anti-Imperialism and Revolution
From Vecindades to Shantytowns
Central Planning and Regional Development -
7 Dismantling a Model
From the Oil Crisis to the Lost Decade
Between New Right and Neoliberalism
National Packages and Prescriptions
The Completion of Urbanization: From Demography to Globalization -
8 New Century and Old Demons
Post-Liberalism and Neo-Populism
Incomplete Reforms
Poverty Alleviation and Fragmented Metropolises
Trends of the 2000s -
Appendices
Initials and Acronyms
Dramatis Personae
Table 1 Urban and rural population of Latin American countries, 1955–2010 in thousands
Table 2 Urbanization, growth and level of transition, 1950–2010
Table 3 Human Development Index (HDI), 2011
Urban Violence
About this issue
Summary
This issue, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, explores the theme of Urban Violence and the different forms it can take, whether it be physical acts of struggle or contestation and other disorderly activities, or the constrictions that the design of urban spaces can intentionally enforce or even unintentionally create.
Cities have always been sites of struggle, contestation and violence. Indeed contemporary urban planning has in many instances been used as a tool to contain, minimize and combat such disorderly activities. Recent political events, which have taken place in urban squares and plazas, have drawn on the symbolic strength of these urban centres. While mostly peaceful, such sites have sometimes become places where violent confrontations take place. Yet this would be only one form of violence. Other cities, due to deep societal divisions, have a polarized and bifurcated urban space. Lines – real or imagined – are drawn to demarcate, create boundaries, and separate conflicting groups.
Urban violence as a construct clearly has political overtones. But the term can also accommodate other meanings seeking to draw attention to social injustices and inequality, for example. In such instances graffiti is used both to indict societal practices and to lay claim to existing spaces. It may refer to wilful destruction of heritage sites, displacement of residents, and securitization of urban spaces. Trouble spots are occupied by police forces asserting their presence; the ubiquity of security cameras acts as a constant reminder of the continuous presence of an all-seeing authority. Such acts reverberate in urban settings, impacting people’s lives, and may contribute to increased alienation.
In this issue of Built Environment papers were invited that reflected on this theme. Empirical research that draws on observations of existing sites was particularly welcome. Theoretical contributions, which would elaborate and expand on the definition of urban violence were also encouraged. The overall aim was to suggest the myriad ways in which the term can be conceptualized and the impact this has on urban space. Eight papers were selected either for their theoretical depth, empirical rigor or the unique way in which they have conceptualized the term in response to the call for papers (sometimes they addressed all three). The papers were written by a diverse group, hailing from a variety of backgrounds including anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, architects, psychiatrists and public health professionals. All share similar concerns about urban violence but their focus understandably differed. The differences were primarily in how violence was defined and the extent to which it was enabled/facilitated by the built environment. Architects, for example, had a clear focus on the built environment and the morphology of cities whereas psychiatrists focused on place attachment. Yet most importantly this diversity illustrates the extent to which the issue of urban violence draws concerns that transcend disciplinary boundaries, pointing to the importance of collaboration, and sharing insights to provide meaningful solutions to one of the most critical concerns of contemporary urbanism.
The majority of papers have focused to some degree or another on planning and architecture as a tool of violence and shied away from the more conventional approach of violence through the agency of city residents (crime, graffiti). Yet there are differences. Overall papers can be classified into three distinct groups. The notion of ‘urbicide’, i.e. the urban as an arena of warfare is dealt with by two papers (Leïla Vignal and Mirjana Ristic). Three papers tackle the issue of urban planning and violence directly (Khaled Al Awadi, Yves Pedrazzini et al., and Diane Davis). My own paper combines both urban planning as a tool of violence, the agency of crowds and how the urban facilitates and enables violence. The issue concludes with an empirical study that looks at the role of architecture in combating urban violence (Lourdes Rodriguez et al.). The first paper is largely theoretical, challenging our understanding of the term and provides a personal narrative (Moises Lino e Silva).
The papers are distinguished by a broad geographical range which includes South America (Lino e Silva, Davis), the Middle East (Awadi, Elsheshtawy, Vignal), Africa (Pedrazzini et al.), Europe (Ristic) and North America (Rodriguez et al.) demonstrating the universality of urban violence and how it manifests itself in different contexts. The paper by Moises Lino e Silva starts the issue focusing on South America. He uses the Brazilian favella of Rocinha as a site for exploring the concept of violence, arguing that how the construct is employed by scholars contradicts residents’ understanding. Violence in this conceptualization is performed through language. To illustrate this point he narrates a violent episode involving the invasion of the Special Police Force in Rio bringing closer the concept of violence as it impacts the everyday.
Urban warfare is explored in two papers. Leïla Vignal describes the Syrian civil war. She looks at how cities are sites of urban violence and engages in a meticulous documentation of acts perpetuated by the Syrian regime – particularly its wholesale destruction of neighbourhoods. Her analysis of aerial maps showing the impact of bombing is particularly revealing. She also shows how planning regulations are used as an excuse to raze areas held by opposition forces. Violence, Leïla argues, is not a consequence of war but a strategy. Mirjana Ristic looks at another form of urban warfare, not in the sense of wholesale destruction but as a way to instil fear and terror. Her focus is on Sarajevo during the devastating Bosnian War; specifically, the sniping of civilians in public space and how that has impacted everyday life and practices. She draws attention to the intersection of spatial violence, urban networks and spatial mobility. Infrastructure is used in this case as a tool of terror. Moreover she shows how the city’s specific geography and topography enabled specific acts of violence (sniping) transforming the entire city into a Foucaultian panopticon. Specific tactics by city residents coping with this onslaught are discussed and form a fascinating component of her narrative.
The next set of papers explore the relation between urban planning, particularly urban renewal, on city form and how that could be conceptualized as a form of violence. Khaled Al-Awadi tackles the city of Dubai, known for its spectacular cityscape and its tabula rasa, i.e. non-contextual approach to urban development. The case study is the neighbourhood of Satwa built in the 1970s and now undergoing urban renewal. He demonstrates how this process can result in uprooting residents’ lives because of displacement. His depiction is anchored by a strong visual analysis as well as interviews with Satwa’s inhabitants, giving voice to their plight. Arguably such a vision of urban renewal relies on a neo-liberal approach to urban planning, a common theme uniting all three papers in this thread.
Diane Davis looks at the origins of such thinking and how the informal is construed and conceptualized as a temporary stop on the way to modernity. Her analysis is anchored in Latin America providing a historical overview of modernist planning, which she argues established conditions that made violence more likely. Indeed, as Diane notes, existing power structures prevented implementation of progressive, i.e. inclusive planning, ideas through the location of housing projects for the poor at the periphery of cities. She draws on a plethora of examples to illustrate this point. Davis concludes by arguing that such an approach eventually caused fragmentation, exclusion, and is closely tied to neo-liberal urbanization policies.
Yves Pedrazzini, Stéphanie Vincent Geslin and Alexandra Thorer elaborate on this issue further by introducing the term ‘violence of urbanization’. Of particular interest is the locale of their case study, urban Africa. Similar to the preceding two papers they move away from violent acts perpetuated by city residents. Instead the emphasis is on how planning policies enable violence and can be considered as a violent act against the city. Their focus is on Addis Ababa and their cases involve the role of infrastructure and transportation projects: a study of street intersection, demolition of neighbourhoods and erasure of memory through destruction. Modernity here is used as an excuse to attack the ‘traditional’ city, force resettlement and impose incompatible lifestyles. Spatial violence, the authors argue, is thus an outcome of capitalism (or neo-liberal urbanization policies).
My paper conceptualizes urban violence through both the agency of crowds and urban planning. The city enables and facilitates a certain form of violence (demonstrations, arson), which is then used as a pretext to reconfigure the urban planning paradigm to usher in a new political and social system: a form of urban rupture. My case centres on the city of Cairo, taking a historical approach by looking at the violent events of 1952 whereby the city’s downtown area was devastated by a fire. I discuss the specific urban character of the area, how it contributed to this act and the new planning approach following the fire, which aimed at ushering in a new society that has been supposedly liberated from the shackles of the past.
Lastly, Lourdes Rodriguez, Arlene Peguero, Arelis De La O, Howard Joseph, Robert E. Fullilove, and Mindy Thompson Fullilove, take a slightly different approach in examining urban violence. Theirs is based on place attachment and the extent to which community organizations and changes in the physical structure of the built environment can create an atmosphere that lessens the occurrence of violent events (graffiti, drug use, accumulation of trash). Through a carefully constructed study that involves a comparison of two blocks in a New York City neighbourhood, carried out over an extended period, they observed the impact of the construction of the headquarters for a youth organization. Yet they poignantly highlight an inadvertent effect of such positive change: gentrification. Given the improvement in the overall environment long-time residents were at risk of being displaced due to increasing rent.
Urban violence can come in myriad forms and can be understood in different ways, as all these papers have illustrated. Our very understanding of the term depends on how it is employed and formulated among scholars; how regimes use the city as a strategic site for destruction and the spreading of terror; how urban planning as a discipline is complicit in furthering violent acts that displace, relocate and erase memory and history; how history contributes to the founding myths of oppressive regimes. Yet there can be a ray of hope. Individuals and organizations have the capacity to mitigate the negative effect of urbanism, but without an effective change in policy such efforts are short-lived and may indeed contribute to further extending the cycle of violence directed at cities.
Meet the editor
About this issue
Summary
This issue, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, explores the theme of Urban Violence and the different forms it can take, whether it be physical acts of struggle or contestation and other disorderly activities, or the constrictions that the design of urban spaces can intentionally enforce or even unintentionally create.
Yasser Elsheshtawy is Associate Professor of Architecture at United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, where in addition to teaching he also runs the Urban Research Lab. His scholarship focuses on urbanization in developing societies, informal urbanism, urban history and environment-behavior studies, with a particular focus on Middle Eastern cities. He authored a series of books and publications including “Dubai: Behind an urban spectacle.” His blog dubaization.com has been hailed by The Guardian as one of the best city blogs in the world.
Urban Violence
About this issue
Summary
This issue, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, explores the theme of Urban Violence and the different forms it can take, whether it be physical acts of struggle or contestation and other disorderly activities, or the constrictions that the design of urban spaces can intentionally enforce or even unintentionally create.
This issue explores the myriad of forms that ‘urban violence’ can take, from social injustices to wilful destruction of heritage sites, from displacement of people from their homes to urban warfare. The contributors here are from very varied backgrounds – anthropology, sociology, geography, architecture, psychiatry and public health – and their papers encompass a broad geographical range; a diversity that illustrates the extent to which urban violence transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries.
Contents
-
Urban Violence
Yasser Elsheshtawy -
The Violence of Structural Violence: Ethical Commitments and an Exceptional Day in a Brazilian Favela
Moises Lino E Silva -
Destruction in Progress: Revolution, Repression and War in Syria (2011 Onwards)
Leïla Vignal -
‘Sniper Alley’: The Politics of Urban Violence in the Besieged Sarajevo
Mirjana Ristic -
Urban Redevelopment Trauma: The Story of a Dubai Neighbourhood
Khaled Alawadi -
Modernist Planning and the Foundations of Urban Violence in Latin America
Diane E. Davis -
Violence of Urbanization, Poor Neighbourhoods and Large-Scale Projects: Lessons from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Yves Pedrazzini, Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin and Alexandra Thorer -
Urban Transformations: The Great Cairo Fire and the Founding of a Modern Capital, 1952–1970
Yasser Elsheshtawy -
Acts of Neighbouring: Socially-Engaged Urban Investment and Youth Violence Prevention
Lourdes J. Rodgrïguez, Arlene Peguero, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Arelis De La O, Howard Joseph and Robert E. Fullilove - Publication Review
The Making of Hong Kong
With its island origins, skyscraper skyline and world city status, Hong Kong is often likened to New York. However the comparison soon falters with the realization that Hong Kong’s skyscrapers are only the more visible aspect of a far more complex urban condition. A steep and contorted terrain has ensured that built-up areas are compact, rich in spatial experience, rarely far from hills and water; and connected by an array of public transport that is second to none.
The three authors of The Making of Hong Kong see value in these conditions – a metropolis with a small urban footprint, 90 per cent use of public transport for vehicular journeys, and proximity to nature. Though the compact city is a model that is frequently advocated by urban thinkers, it is one rarely encountered. Here, the evolution of Hong Kong’s intense urbanism is traced from the region’s pre-colonial walled settlements and colonial shop-houses to the contemporary vertical and volumetric metropolis of towers, podia-and-towers, decks, bridges, escalators and other components of multi-level city living. On a site bedevilled by an acute shortage of flat land, Hong Kong is portrayed as the ‘accidental pioneer of a new kind of urbanism’ that commands the thoughtful attention of a wider world.
Barrie Shelton is Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Justyna Karakiewicz is Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Thomas Kvan is Professor and Dean in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Contents
- 1. A State of IntenCity
- 2. Precedents
- 3. Long, Low and Intense: From Possession Point to World War II
- 4. Massing and Rising: The Post-War Decades
- 5. Vertical and Volumetric: Post 1980
- 6. Podium and Tower
- 7. Emerging Volumetric: Components
- 8. Conclusion: Vertical and Volumetric
- Addendum: Advancing the Volumetric on Old District and New Territory Sites
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The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs
Here for the first time is a thoroughly interdisciplinary and international examination of Jane Jacobs’s legacy. Divided into four parts: I. Jacobs, Urban Philosopher; II. Jacobs, Urban Economist; III. Jacobs, Urban Sociologist; and IV. Jacobs, Urban Designer, the book evaluates the impact of Jacobs’s writings and activism on the city, the professions dedicated to city-building and, more generally, on human thought. Together, the editors and contributors highlight the notion that Jacobs’s influence goes beyond planning to philosophy, economics, sociology and design. They set out to answer such questions as: What explains Jacobs’s lasting appeal and is it justified? Where was she right and where was she wrong? What were the most important themes she addressed? And, although Jacobs was best known for her work on cities, is it correct to say that she was a much broader thinker, a philosopher, and that the key to her lasting legacy is precisely her exceptional breadth of thought?
Contents
- 1 Jane Jacobs, Urban Visionary Sonia Hirt
-
Part I: Jane Jacobs, Urban Philosopher
2 The Right and the Good in Jane Jacobs’s Urbanism Paul Kidder
3 The ‘Sidewalk Ballet’ in the Work of Henri Lefebvre and Benjamin Fraser Manuel Delgado Ruiz
4 Jane Jacobs, Modernity and Knowledge Sonia Hirt
5 Jane Jacobs and Citizen Participation James Stockard -
Part II: Jane Jacobs, Urban Economist
6 Economic Development from a Jacobsian Perspective Sanford Ikeda
7 What Would Jane Jacobs See in the Global City? Place and Social Practices Saskia Sassen -
Part III: Jane Jacobs, Urban Sociologist
8 Infrastructure, Social Injustice, and the City: Parsing the Wisdom of Jane Jacobs Marie-Alice L’Heureux
9 Jane Jacobs, Jim Crow and the Madness of Borders Mindy Thompson Fullilove -
Part IV: Jane Jacobs, Urban Designer
10 Jane Jacobs and the Diversity Ideal Emily Talen
11 Diversity and Mixed Use: Lessons from Medieval China Jing Xie
12 Jane Jacobs’s Relevance in Beirut Ibrahim Maarouf and Hassan Abdel-Salam
13 Jane Jacobs and Diversity of Use of Public Open Spaces in Thailand Kan Nathiwutthikun
14 Revisiting Jane Jacobs’s ‘Eyes on the Street’ for the Twenty-First Century: Evidence from Environmental Criminology Paul Cozens and David Hillier
15 Jane Jacobs and the Theory of Placemaking in Debates of Sustainable UrbanismAnirban Adhya
16 Making the Familiar Strange: Understanding Design Practice as Cultural Practice B.D. Wortham-Galvin
17 Jane Jacobs and Designing Cities as Organized Complexity Jonathan Barnett
Sociable Cities: The 21st-Century Reinvention of the Garden City
Sir Peter Hall (1932–2014) was internationally renowned for his studies on all aspects of cities and regions. He was Bartlett Professor of Planning and Regeneration at University College London and President of both the Town and Country Planning Association and the Regional Studies Association, and he produced over fifty books during his academic career which began in 1957.
Peter Hall and Colin Ward wrote Sociable Cities to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ebenezer Howard’s To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1998 – an event they then marked the magnificent annotated facsimile edition of Howard’s original, long lost and very scarce, in 2003. In this revised edition of Sociable Cities, sadly now without Colin Ward, Peter Hall writes: ‘the sixteen years separating the two editions of this book seem almost like geological time. Revisiting the 1998 edition is like going back deep into ancient history’. The glad confident morning following Tony Blair’s election has been followed by political disillusionment, the fiscal crash, widespread austerity and a marked anti-planning stance on the part of the Coalition government.
But – closely following the argument of Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism (Routledge 2014), to which this book is designed as a companion – Hall argues that the central message is now even stronger: we need more planning, not less. And this planning needs to be driven by broad, high-level strategic visions – national, regional – of the kind of country we want to see.
Above all, Hall shows in the concluding chapters, Britain’s escalating housing crisis can be resolved only by a massive programme of planned decentralization from London, at least equal in scale to the great Abercrombie plan seventy years ago. He sets out a picture of great new city clusters at the periphery of South East England, sustainably self-sufficient in their daily patterns of living and working, but linked to the capital by new high-speed rail services.
This is a book that every planner, and every serious student of policy-making, will want to read. Published at a time when the political parties are preparing their policy manifestos, it is designed to make a major contribution to a national debate.
Peter Hall has produced a timely update of his book with the late Colin Ward. With Government minds turning once again to the potential of Garden Cities and Garden Suburbs, it draws on his unparalleled experience as a strategic Ministerial adviser, academic, polemicist and planning historian to set out how that potential might be maximised. And he lays down a challenge to communities and individuals understandably worried by the scale of the housing development that is coming: learn from the past, join in a coherent programme, or you risk being swamped by a tide of the very sprawl that you most fear.
Martin Crookston, Strategic Planning Consultant
Authors
Sir Peter Hall is Bartlett Professor of Planning and Regeneration at University College London and President of both the Town and Country Planning Association and the Regional Studies Association. He has produced over fifty books since the start of his academic career in 1957. He is internationally renowned for his studies on all aspects of cities and regions.
Colin Ward (1924–2010), often referred to as Britain’s most famous anarchist, wrote nearly thirty books on subjects that ranged from allotments, architecture, town planning and self-build housing, to children’s play, education, water distribution and anarchist theory.
Content
-
Part One. The First Century
1. Howard’s Beginning
2. Garden City: Ideal and Reality
3. From Garden Cities to New Town
4. Garden Cities Across the Channel -
Part Two: Land, Life and Liberty
5. Plotlands: The Unauthorized Version
6. Land Settlement: The Failed Alternative
7. Do-It-Yourself New Towns
8. Not Counting the Nimbys -
Part Three: The Coming Century
9. Then and Now
10. The Quest for Sustainability
11. Sustainable Social Cities of Tomorrow
12. Making It Happen
Also includes bibliography, index, illustrations and maps
June 2014 – 280 pages
Hardback 0978-0-415-73673-2 – £110.00
Paperback 0978-0-415-73674-9 – £34.99
Meet the editor
About this issue
Summary
This issue is dedicated to ‘Delta urbanism’, addressing the need to find special approaches and solutions for spatial planning and urban design in delta regions. The series of recent floods in urbanized delta areas shows the need for a fundamental reconsideration of urban development in delta, coastal and river plain areas.
Han Meyer is Professor of Theory and Methods of Urban Design at the Delft University of Technology. He has published a number of books dealing with the fundamentals of urbanism, the present state-of-the-art of Dutch Urbanism and on the transformation of port-cities. His present research focuses on ‘Delta-urbanism’, considering the possibility of an integrated approach of urban planning and design, hydraulic engineering and port development in delta areas.
Delta-Urbanism: New Challenges for Planning and Design in Urbanized Deltas
About this issue
Summary
This issue is dedicated to ‘Delta urbanism’, addressing the need to find special approaches and solutions for spatial planning and urban design in delta regions. The series of recent floods in urbanized delta areas shows the need for a fundamental reconsideration of urban development in delta, coastal and river plain areas.
This issue of Built Environment is dedicated to ‘Delta urbanism’, addressing the need to find special approaches and solutions for spatial planning and urban design in delta regions. The series of recent floods in urbanized delta areas (New Orleans 2005, Japan 2011, Bangkok 2011, New York 2012, etc.) shows the need for a fundamental reconsideration of urban development in delta, coastal and river plain areas. However, with ‘delta urbanism’ we do not mean that we should focus only on the effects of climate change and on the question of improving flood defence systems.
Deltas and coastal areas are the most urbanized and urbanizing areas worldwide; some of the world’s largest metropolises are in delta areas. Climate change, resulting in sea-level rises, larger peak discharges of rivers and increasing intensity of rainstorms will certainly have a major impact on these metropolitan areas. But climate change is not something which started recently, and it is not the only change which takes place in the urbanized world. A previous issue of Built Environment focused attention on climate change as a ‘new determinant of spatial planning’ (Priemus and Rietveld, 2009). This present issue will focus on the relations of this new determinant with other developments in urbanized deltas and tries to identify new challenges for spatial planning and urban design.
The recent and current attention to climate change and the possible impact on urbanized areas coincides with fundamental changes in urbanization and land-use patterns generally. In short, we will discuss the most important of these changes.
Land-Use Changes
Today delta regions cross the world are confronted with substantial land-use changes. A first change, related to globalization and technological progress, concerns the ports and port-related industries, which became a dominating factor in the economic and spatial development of many delta areas. Modern port and transport logistics created the need to reconsider the position and construction of these ports. De Langen (2003) and Wang et al. (2007) showed the importance of the rise of regional seaport-clusters. Until recently, many large deltas each had several seaports, which used to compete with each other. Modernization and globalization of supply chains resulted in these ports developing regional coordination and collaboration of such activities as transhipment, storage, processing and distribution of goods. The development of these new regional seaport clusters not only addresses the need for new specializations in the different ports but also the need for new interconnecting infrastructures among the ports of a regional cluster. A recent study of the Flemish-Dutch Delta (Vanelslander et al., 2011) emphasizes that the port of the future will be a continuously innovating port, dependent on and collaborating with advanced knowledge institutions. In order to be attractive to the knowledge economy, authorities in deltas should pay attention to the quality of the natural environment. The presence of interesting natural environments with wetlands and beaches and with facilities for swimming, sailing, fishing, tracking and biking, is an important trump card of regional port clusters for the future.
The processes of modernization and reorganization of ports are accompanied by new urban developments in former port and dockland areas. A great deal of academic research has been devoted to this development over the last twenty-five years or so (for instance Hoyle et al., 1988; Meyer, 1999; Desfor et al., 2011). It has become clear that the urbanization of waterfronts leads not only to an extension of the urban territory, but also to changes in the spatial and functional structures of the cities. The new waterfront developments play an important role in branding strategies designed to change the dominant image of the industrial port city to a post-industrial creative and knowledge city.
A third change regards the energy-transition, which is (or can be) related directly with the previous two mentioned changes. Many large ports are hubs of transport, processing and distribution of fossil fuels. A real energy transition might have serious consequences for the role and position of these ports. Delta regions might change their role from distribution centres of fossil fuels to production centres of new types of energy, using the natural dynamics of the delta: wind, sun, tidal energy and currents.
The fourth change concerns food production, both agriculture and fishing. The alluvial soils of delta areas are the most fertile of the world, and the delta waters are the nurseries of many species of fish and shellfish. Considered in the perspective of the world food problem, delta areas can and should play a crucial role. In the processes of spatial development in such areas, agriculture and fishing seem to be competing with urbanization, industrialization and even with nature conservation. It is important to find new approaches to agriculture in deltas, which can be combined with repair of estuarine nature. Research-experiments in this field are encouraging (Stuyt et al., 2006).
Building with Nature
Since the 1960s, environmentalists, nature organizations and landscape architects like Ian McHarg (1969) have emphasized the unique and precious, but also vulnerable qualities of deltas and estuaries in the worldwide ecosystems of rivers and oceans. The study by Costanza et al. (1997) of the economic value of ecosystems is scientific confirmation of the importance of deltas and estuaries. Meanwhile, organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, America’s Wetlands and the Wetland Foundation are considered important players in many deltas worldwide. The need to protect the biodiversity and especially the species which are dependent from the specific delta conditions (land-water gradients, salt-fresh water gradients) is not the only reason for paying attention to the natural environment. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, deltas, especially in the Western world, became victims of serious erosion and decay, caused by transformation of these natural systems into man-made, engineered systems. Human interventions in the river and delta systems, such as damming and channelization, caused a substantial decrease in the transport of sediment by the rivers to the deltas. Moreover, drainage resulted in land subsidence in many delta regions. Together these processes have led to serious erosion of many urbanized deltas (Saeijs, 2006; van der Meulen et al., 2007; Mulder et al., 2009). The Nile delta is an extreme example, but also the Dutch delta and the Mississippi river delta are suffering from this. The question is to what extent sediment supply and the water retention and absorption capacity of delta areas can be restored, by repairing the natural system and/or introducing artificial methods of sediment supply and new drainage technologies. ‘Building with Nature’ and ‘Working with Water’ have become new slogans in delta technology during the last decade, for instance in the report of the Dutch Delta Committee (Deltacommissie, 2008).
These slogans express a new approach to hydraulic and coastal engineering, with new collaborations between ‘traditional’ civil engineers and specialists with a more ecology or landscape oriented background.
Changes in Delta Management
Finally, how can these changes be managed and combined with new flood defence strategies? This question touches perhaps the most important change in delta areas. The two nations with the greatest expenditure on flood control systems in the twentieth century were the United States and the Netherlands (O’Neill, 2006). In both countries, their flood control systems were built by strong and centralized state-institutions: the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat. In the Netherlands, flood control policy was combined with central government policy related to industrialization and urbanization of the delta (Meyer, 2009). This approach no longer fits the reality of local and regional communities and other stakeholders in the deltas of the twenty-first century. This is not just about ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’, but also about the roles and responsibilities of public authorities, private institutions and individual citizens. The Dutch delta might be considered as a benchmark of sophisticated delta management in the twentieth century. It was based on avoiding risks as much as possible, with the state having the monopoly in organizing this risk-avoiding policy. This approach ended up on a slippery slope from the end of the twentieth century, because of the increasing complexity of organizing this policy and because of an erosion of the role of the state. New concepts have been introduced such as the ‘multi-layer safety’ approach, which involves, in addition to building appropriate flood defences, more attention being given to the possibility of flooding and to evacuation. It also means moving responsibilities from central government to local authorities, private institutions and citizens (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, 2009).
This issue of Built Environment addresses the increasing complexity (and the increasing awareness of this complexity by scientists, planners, designers and politicians) of urbanized deltas, resulting in a paradigm change regarding management and spatial planning in urban deltas. The question is pressing forward if more integrated and comprehensive approaches of planning and design in the delta are possible. The key issue is no longer to solve the ‘problem’ of climate change but to derive new strategies to save delta regions from erosion, subsidence and disastrous flooding; strategies that can also play a role in creating and supporting processes of changing land-use, as mentioned above, in desirable directions.
An Outline of the Issue
This issue comprises three sections. The first has an introductory character and starts with an exploration of the complexity of delta regions. Ed Dammers, Arnold Bregt, Jurian Edelenbos, Han Meyer and Bonno Pel argue that it makes sense to consider delta regions as complex systems and to make use of the insights of theories of complex systems. This delivers not only new theoretical perspectives on the spatial development of delta regions, but also new perspectives for the practice of spatial planning, design and governance. This article is a result of research by a consortium of Dutch universities, consultancy firms and research institutions, which tried to develop new perspectives for planning and design in the Dutch Southwest delta. This region became world famous because of the Delta Works, built in the second half of the twentieth century and an extreme example of top-down planning. While this type of planning has become impossible under the current societal conditions, interventions in the region are necessary in order to adapt the region to climate change and to changing economic, demographic and environmental conditions. The article ends with some suggestions for a new practice of planning, design and hydraulic engineering in this region.
The second contribution to the introductory section by Luuk Boelens focuses on the issue of the governance of delta regions. Boelens argues that ‘delta metropolitan regions’ worldwide are characterized by a history of self-organization, strongly related to the physical fragmentation of the delta territory. This history distinguishes delta regions fundamentally from ‘capital metropolitan areas’, which are characterized by a history of strongly centralized political power. Boelens underpins his theory with two different case studies: the Northwest European ‘Eurodelta’ of the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt, and the Asian Pearl River delta. Both delta regions have been confronted with attempts by strong central governments to get the region under control. However Boelens claims that the forces of self-organization in these regions are much stronger in the long term. Spatial planning in these delta regions should depart from the awareness of this tradition of self-organization.
The second section focuses on the interaction between the physical development of the delta region, the use and technical treatment by humans and the management of the delta region. In many delta regions this interaction has resulted in severe erosion, an increase in people’s exposure to hazards and serious decay of natural eco-systems. The need to develop an alternative approach is explained in the article on the Mississippi River delta and the Senegal River deltas by Richard Campanella. By describing the historic evolution of these delta regions, and especially of the management and technical interventions in there, he shows that both deltas have reached a point of a critical dilemma. Both delta regions find themselves at a crossroads of different approaches. One direction is the continuation of the policies and interventions as developed during the last century, which will lead to an acceleration of the erosion of the deltas and to an increase in their citizens’ exposure to hazards. The other direction will be a radically different approach, which means different types of technical treatment of the delta, different types of land use, and especially a different type of management and governance of the delta. The last will be the most difficult but, in the long term, the only one which creates perspectives for sustainable urban development.
The next three articles in this section build on this need for a new approach and focus on three different delta regions, which find themselves in different stages of physical growth or erosion.
Cornelia Redeker and Sameh A. Kantoush describe the disastrous situation of the Nile delta, which finds itself in an extremely vulnerable situation because of the building of large dams upstream. The lack of fresh water supply results in an increase of saltwater intrusion, while the lack of sediment disposal leads to land subsidence below mean sea level. The region is threatened both by flooding and by desertification. The Nile delta already suffers a daily land-loss of 34 hectares, and this is expected to increase in the future. The authors plead for more attention to grassroots initiatives, which might if not stop then at least slow down this dramatic process of land loss.
The Parana delta in Argentine, as described by Veronica Zagare, is an example of an opposite development. Because of the ongoing process of transport and disposal of enormous amounts of sediment (derived from the Andes), the land in this delta is still growing. The natural process of land creation means that the edge of the delta area is moving with a speed of between 500 metres to 1 kilometre a year. Several attempts have been made to cultivate the new land in the past, but without much success. Most of the delta territory still looks like a wilderness. Today, the growth of the delta area is a reason for two types of human intervention: one is the building of new urban settlements. While the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires has become very crowded, the new delta area provides opportunities for new urban development – both gated communities and shantytowns. Uncontrolled progress of this development will create problems for the discharge of water and result in serious floods. The second type of human intervention is the dredging of the main channels of the river in order to maintain the accessibility of the upstream seaports; the port of Buenos Aires is threatened by silting up, which is a reason for intensified dredging. These dredging activities lead to an increase in the vulnerability of the hinterland to storms and flooding from the sea. A fundamental reconsideration of policies concerning port development and shipping, urbanization and flood control will be necessary to prevent serious disasters in the future.
The fourth contribution in this section by Marcel Marchand, Pham Quang Dieu and Trang Le describes the difficult dilemma in which the Mekong delta finds itself. Because of an ingenious system of canals, constructed during French colonialism in the nineteenth century and related with the specific agriculture of rice growing, large parts of this delta territory are frequently flooded in a controlled way. The result is a coincidence of intense land use and continuous supply of fresh water and new sediment deposits. It means that the land rises with the same speed as the sea level. However this system is threatened by dam constructions upstream and by industrialization in the delta region itself. The question is whether this delta region will take the same path as many Western delta regions in the nineteenth and twentieth century, resulting in a future comparable with the eroding deltas of Nile, Mississippi and Rhine, or will the region be able to continue its unique way of natural land elevation?
The third section focuses on the specific patterns of land use in delta regions and on the meaning of design. The article by Peter Bosselmann and Sarah Moos explains the urban patterns as developed in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pearl River Delta. Both delta regions show a strong tradition of developing urban patterns, which were able to deal with the specific conditions of the delta. While both regions have been confronted with explosive urban growth recently, the question is what lessons can be learned from this tradition which are relevant for today’s and tomorrow’s urban development. Bosselmann and Moos organized design projects with American and Chinese students in order to test some concepts, based upon historic typologies of delta cities.
Nikki Brand, Inge Kersten, Remon Pot and Maike Warmerdam were involved in a research by a consortium which investigated the possibility of using the need to enforce the Dutch coastline as a means of improving the spatial quality and accessibility of the coast. The Randstad Holland, with 6.5 million people, has a unique possibility to enhance the quality of its coastline. The use of this coast is not very intensive, mainly because the accessibility as well as the quality of most seaside resorts is rather poor. A consortium of the Dutch Delta programme, Delft University, public authorities and a dredging company investigated the possibilities of combining the task of strengthening the flood defence with a substantial improvement in the spatial quality of the Dutch coast. A process of research by design, organized in a series of workshops with experts and local stakeholders, resulted in a new vision on the coast, which will be adopted by the new Dutch delta programme.
While the second section starts with the contribution of Campanella on the Mississippi river delta, the third section ends also with the same delta region. The article by David Waggonner, Nanco Dolman, Derek Hoeferlin, Han Meyer, Pieter Schengenga, Sabien Thomaesz, Jaap van den Bout, Jaap van der Salm and Chris van der Zwet can be considered as an answer to the plea from Richard Campanella to look for another approach of the physical development of the delta. The authors participated in a large American-Dutch consortium responsible for the making the ‘Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan’, which aims to guide the Greater New Orleans metropolitan region to become ‘America’s Water City’. New Orleans already had major problems before the Katrina disaster of 2005, suffering from an economic downturn, increasing poverty and a shrinking population. Just repairing the flood defence system will not change this situation. Also in this case, design played an important role as part of a method, which combines improving water management with improving spatial quality, resulting in new economic and social perspectives. This is necessary in many urbanized delta regions. The authors claim that the process of the New Orleans plan has resulted in a method, which is also relevant for other delta cities.
Conclusion
The articles in this issue address a number of topics concerning urbanized deltas and climate change, which leads to the following conclusions.
First, the threats and vulnerability of flooding are not the result of climate change, but mainly of the way humans deal with the physical conditions of rivers and deltas. The decay and erosion of many delta areas, caused by human intervention, should be stopped. A fundamentally different approach is necessary.
Second, the attention to new flood defence and water management approaches should be combined and integrated with new spatial, economic and social issues. Many delta cities do not suffer only from flooding, but also from economic and social problems and poor spatial quality. The need for investment in new water management systems provides a unique opportunity to combine different goals with these investments.
Third, design can play a powerful role as part of a research method, aiming to discover new possibilities for combinations of new types of flood defence, water management and new spatial and functional features. Urbanized delta regions might become the most interesting testing laboratories to develop methods with new balances of science, engineering and design.
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