Characterising Neighbourhoods

It is increasingly important to define what constitutes the unique character of our neighbourhoods, in order to identify what we value and should protect, to pinpoint areas for improvement and places which could be enhanced through sensitive change. But how do we define ‘character’ or a ‘sense of place’? How do we appraise the setting and site of a development area, in order that the essential character is retained and reflected in the design of new development? How can these qualities be communicated to decision makers and involve communities? Characterising Neighbourhoods provides an accessible and richly illustrated guide to the practical methods of appraising neighbourhoods which are precise, well informed and engaging. It demonstrates how characterisation is used as an evidence base for the planning and management of neighbourhoods and urban areas. The core focus is on a proven characterisation method developed and used by the authors and used by community groups, schools, planning and urban design students and professionals. It creates a common language used by these groups in evaluating places. This guide provides a wealth of supporting information, including; briefing on the recognition of local architectural styles, periods and materials, detecting the influence of historic street layouts and property boundaries, townscape concepts such as scale and enclosure, and topographical characteristics. Characterising Neighbourhoods is a valuable resource for practicing planners, urban designers and environmental professionals as well as students in these subjects.

Shaping Neighbourhoods is unique in combining all aspects of the spatial planning of neighbourhoods and towns whilst emphasising positive outcomes for people’s health and global sustainability. This new edition retains the combination of radicalism, evidence-based advice and pragmatism that made earlier editions so popular. This updated edition strengthens guidance in relation to climate change and biodiversity, tackling crises of population health that are pushing up health-care budgets, but have elements of their origins in poor place spatial planning – such as isolation, lack of everyday physical activity, and respiratory problems. It is underpinned by new research into how people use their localities, and the best way to achieve inclusive, healthy, low-carbon settlements. The guide can assist with: • Understanding the principles for planning healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods and towns • Planning collaborative and inclusive processes for multi-sectoral working • Developing know-how and skills in matching local need with urban form • Discovering new ways to integrate development with natural systems • Designing places with character and recognising good urban form Whether you are a student faced with a local planning project; a public health professional, planner, urban designer or developer involved in new development or regeneration; a council concerned with promoting healthy and sustainable environments; or a community group wanting to improve your neighbourhood – you will find help here.

This collection of essays presents insight and methodology that are highly relevant for readers today as they consider the future of the world they live in. Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, people have realized how fragile the current economy is and the necessity for reconstructing the socio-economic system. That system, which was considered the default for so long, was succeeded by the analytical framework of economics and regional science. The contents of this book are diversified, as are the achievements of Prof. Yasuhiro Sakai, to whom this volume is dedicated, and cover a wide area from mathematical and experimental economics to conventional and emerging fields of regional science. Some are timeless topics that have had new life breathed into them. Part I deals with, among other areas, risk management with uncertain events; the effectiveness and impacts of regulation and friction related to trading; the stability of strategic behavior and market equilibrium; and sustainable regional development and urban planning from the long-term perspective. Part II also presents a diversity of subjects, including input–output analysis and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling for internal as well as external structure and network linkage, such as a value chain; openness and creativity as related to competition among cities and regions; dispersion versus concentration; and inequality versus equality.

Shaping our cities, streets and public spaces, urban design informs the places we live. It is a complex multi-disciplinary process, requiring the input of a wide variety of stakeholders and design and construction professionals. Each urban project invariably throws up a new set of problems and strategic decisions for the design team. This guide distils the essential information required for the expert direction of the day-to-day work of urban design, from strategic design to masterplanning through to character assessment and collaboration. Compact and accessible with over 250 hand-drawn figures and plans, it's the perfect everyday companion for junior practitioners and experienced heads alike across the built environment.

Intelligent Decision Technologies (IDT) seeks an interchange of research on intelligent systems and intelligent technologies which enhance or improve decision making in industry, government and academia. The focus is interdisciplinary in nature, and includes research on all aspects of intelligent decision technologies, from fundamental development to the applied system. This volume represents leading research from the Second KES International Symposium on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES IDT’10), hosted and organized by the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola University Maryland, USA, in conjunction with KES International. The symposium was concerned with theory, design development, implementation, testing and evaluation of intelligent decision systems. Topics include decision making theory, intelligent agents, fuzzy logic, multi-agent systems, Bayesian networks, optimization, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, decision support systems, geographic information systems, case-based reasoning, time series, knowledge management systems, Kansei communication, rough sets, spatial decision analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize decision making in many areas of management, healthcare, international business, finance, accounting, marketing, military applications, ecommerce, network management, crisis response, building design, information retrieval, and disaster recovery.

From about 5500 cal BC to soon after 5000 cal BC, the lifeways of the first farmers of central Europe, the LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik), are seen in distinctive practices of longhouse use, settlement forms, landscape choice, subsistence, material culture and mortuary rites. Within the five or more centuries of LBK existence a dynamic sequence of changes can be seen in, for instance, the expansion and increasing density of settlement, progressive regionalisation in pottery decoration, and at the end some signs of stress or even localised crisis. Although showing many features in common across its very broad distribution, however, the LBK phenomenon was not everywhere the same, and there is a complicated mixture of uniformity and diversity. This major study takes a strikingly large regional sample, from northern Hungary westwards along the Danube to Alsace in the upper Rhine valley, and addresses the question of the extent of diversity in the lifeways of developed and late LBK communities, through a wide-ranging study of diet, lifetime mobility, health and physical condition, the presentation of the bodies of the deceased in mortuary ritual. It uses an innovative combination of isotopic (principally carbon, nitrogen and strontium, with some oxygen), osteological and archaeological analysis to address difference and change across the LBK, and to reflect on cultural change in general.

Somewhere, between character and caricature, there exists an authentic—a truly unique—urban place, that blends global and local, old and new. Yet, in a dramatically changing world dominated by crises of climate change, maintaining public health, and social justice, finding such places—and explaining their relevance—may be easier said than done. Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character accepts that challenge, and provides a comprehensive method for assessing how and why successful places come to be, with an explicit emphasis on context: Authenticity, culture, character, and uniqueness are words with meanings that depend on who is using them and in what contexts. Through text interwoven with 160 full-color photographs by the author, and select illustrations by others, this book addresses how to enact blended and contextualized urban change, using the past and the status quo as catalysts rather than castaways. It provides resources and examples for the context-vetting process and for understanding how one era, object, or generation informs the next. This beautiful full-color book illustrates how we can understand—or unlock— a public place, neighborhood, or city. Based on comparative experiences around the world, the book proposes a new tool—called LEARN (Look, Engage, Assess, Review, and Negotiate) —as a way of sustaining urban culture and character in transformative times. Inspired by recent efforts and outcomes, the book is full of relevant examples. They include moving a small Swedish city, reviving Irish market towns, and revitalization efforts adjacent to London’s Waterloo Station. Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character provides a catalog of techniques that emphasize “bottom up,” resident-based input about local history, building forms, natural and open spaces, cultural assets and tradition, and related policy, planning, and regulatory examples. For those who seek an urbanism of distinctiveness to enhance city livability, rather than a bland, generic uniformity, the book examines on a global basis how the many interrelated facets of an urban area’s unique, yet dynamic context—built, social, cultural and intangible—can be championed and advanced, rather than simply borrowed from another place.

Growing inequalities in Europe are a major challenge threatening the sustainability of urban communities and the competiveness of European cities. While the levels of socio-economic segregation in European cities are still modest compared to some parts of the world, the poor are increasingly concentrating spatially within capital cities across Europe. An overlooked area of research, this book offers a systematic and representative account of the spatial dimension of rising inequalities in Europe. This book provides rigorous comparative evidence on socio-economic segregation from 13 European cities. Cities include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Milan, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. Comparing 2001 and 2011, this multi-factor approach links segregation to four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regimes and housing systems. Hypothetical segregation levels derived from those factors are compared to actual segregation levels in all cities. Each chapter provides an in-depth and context sensitive discussion of the unique features shaping inequalities and segregation in the case study cities. The main conclusion of the book is that the spatial gap between the poor and the rich is widening in capital cities across Europe, which threatens to harm the social stability of European cities. This book will be a key reference on increasing segregation and will provide valuable insights to students, researchers and policy makers who are interested in the spatial dimension of social inequality in European cities. A PDF version of the introduction and conclusion are available Open Access at www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license.