Waterfront Design In Small Mediterranean Port Towns

This book addresses issues that waterfronts face in small Mediterranean port towns due to increases in the tourism industry. Integrating theory and pragmatic approaches, Waterfront Design in Small Port Towns proposes a design matrix which can go on to be implemented in waterfronts globally. The demand for a sustainable regeneration of the urban waterfront is constantly growing and represents the ultimate challenge to preserve and value the uniqueness of the region and to activate an overall redevelopment of small port towns. To understand these issues, Waterfront Design in Small Port Towns contains an in-depth investigation of the cultural and environmental assets and spatial socio-economic factors of the urban waterfront. This is conducted through the author’s original methodological framework, the Waterfront Design Matrix, which responds to the specific scales and idiosyncrasies of the archetypical waterfront. The methodological and theoretical approach developed in the book can be applied to different geographical locations and countries, presenting comparable characteristics. This book is an ideal read for professionals and students alike with an interest in urban design and planning.

The book explores the relationship between the shrinking process and architecture and urban design practices. Starting from a journey in former East Germany, six different scenes are explored in which plans, projects, and policies have dealt with shrinkage since the 1990s. The book is a sequence of scenes that reveals the main characteristics, dynamics, narratives, reasons and ambiguities of the shrinking cities’ transformations in the face of a long transition. The first scene concerns the demolition and transformation of social mass housing in Leinefelde-Worbis. The second scene deals with the temporary appropriation of abandoned buildings in Halle-Neustadt. The third scene, observed in Leipzig, shows the results of green space projects in urban voids. The scene of the fourth situation observes the extraordinary efforts to renaturise a mining territory in the Lausitz region. The fifth scene takes us to Hoyerswerda, where emigration and ageing process required a reduction and demolition in housing stock and social infrastructures. The border city of Görlitz, the sixth and last scene, deals with the repopulation policies that aim to attract retirees from the West.

This book is about the soul of the city, embodied in its spaces and people. It traces dynamics in inner city neighbourhoods of South Africa’s post-apartheid capital, Pretoria. Viewing the city through its most vulnerable people and places, it recognizes that urban space is never neutral and shaped by competing value frameworks. The first part of the book invites planners, city-makers, and ordinary urban citizens, to consider a new self-understanding, reclaiming their agency in the city-making process. Through the metaphor of "becoming like children", planning practice is deconstructed and re-imagined. A praxis-based methodology is presented, cultivating four distinct moments of entering, reading, imagining and co-constructing the city. After deconstructing urban spaces and discourses, the second part of the book explores a concrete spirituality and ethic of urban space. It argues for a shift from planning as technocracy, to planning as immersed, participatory artistry: opening up to the "genius" of space, responsive to urban cries, and joining to construct new, soul-full spaces. Local communities and interconnected movements become embodiments of urban alternatives – through resistance and reconstruction; building on local assets; animating local reclamations; and weaving nets of hope that will span the entire city. Providing a concrete methodology for city-making that is rooted in a community-based urban praxis, this book will be of interest to urban planning researchers, professional planners and designers and also grass-root community developers or activists.

This book investigates China’s railway transformation through history, along with culture changes and urban development. The book begins by looking at the background of China and the history and growth of railway development in China through five key phases, followed by assessing the cultural changes in the railway carriage and exploring how these are linked to social equality and national provisions. The core of this book aims to analyse the Chinese urban transformation through the development of the high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in China. Eleven important new HSR stations in mainland China, plus the new Hong Kong West Kowloon Station, have been selected to contextually explore how HSR infrastructures have affected the development of the Chinese urban context. The selected case studies are the stations of Beijing South, Wuhan, Shanghai Hongqiao, Guangzhou South, Xi’an North, Nanjing South, Chengdu East, Tianjin West, Zhengzhou East, Hangzhou East and Hong Kong West Kowloon. All of these were built between 2008 and 2018. In these case studies, the location and the intentions and success of promoting urban development are analysed and assessed. Following this, the book further investigates the peculiarities of the new HSR stations in China in comparison with stations in Europe. An assessment framework is established to evaluate the Chinese case studies comparatively with significant cases in Europe, attending to the urban structure of the area, the architectural quality, the functional diversity and the quality of the public space generated in the surrounding area.

The dynamics of globalization brought a radical change in megacities and tensions between the stakeholders and dwellers against top-down urban renewal policies. This unique book provides a worldview of multi-stakeholders in the urban housing market. With a longitudinal research approach, it paves the way for interdisciplinary researchers to critically assess the urban renewal projects and update such studies. The urban renewal processes are implemented without participation, and the book highlights field-based information for policymakers. The reader will find, with the information provided from the field, why participation is necessary for a sustainable urban development, why there are different types of urbanizations, and how it works under different conditions. Better understanding of the challenges of urban renewal processes in the world cities is intended with the focus on the changing informal settlements. Istanbul is a megacity, housing more than half of its dwellers in informal settlements. After many decades of self-upgrading and silently communicating with the local authorities, the informal sector had become adapted and maintained its living spaces. Unexpectedly, the end of the first decade of the 21st century marked a radical urban land valuation and international investments. Top-down interventions started with naming Istanbul the 2010 European Capital of Culture. Then came the Law of Urban Transformation, which meant the fast decline of squatter housing and the speedy loss of its cultural value of the mahalle spirit, place identity. The book will raise curiosity on why the time has come to change the perspectives about the informal urban sector.

This book exposes the potential to advance a cultural approach to sustainable urban development. It explores urban "spaces of possibilities" and links them to the seized or missed opportunities for innovative forms of transversal partnerships throughout the city and of culturally sensitive urban policies. The call for sustainability brings with it challenges for which, in view of the urgency of social transformation, institutional innovations are necessary. Sustainable urban development will only succeed through creative impulses, experiments, trying out innovative ideas, and making alternatives visible, in particular through locally rooted urban initiatives, artistic actions, and social movements. Discussing many concrete examples from several years of empirical research in the cities of Hanover and Hamburg (Germany), Baltimore and Chicago (USA), Bangalore (India), St. Petersburg (Russia), Singapore, and Vancouver (Canada), the book connects urban spaces and their actors; looks at their guiding principles, strategies, and concrete practices; and identifies new levers, networks, and alliances. Readers will find in this book not only inspiring examples of culture in everyday life in the city but also explanations about the qualities that make local cultural initiatives especially full of potentials, and how they may translate into city-wide changes, engaging with the whole City as Space of Possibilities. The book will interest researchers and advanced students in the interdisciplinary fields of urban studies, sustainability science/sustainability research, cultural sciences, urban sociology, and sociology of the arts/cultural sociology; and those interested in the transdisciplinary collaborations between the arts, academia, and civil society.

Most books on waterfronts deal with a relatively narrow collection of cities and projects; one might describe them as the 'top ten' list of waterfront revitalisation projects. For instance, Boston and Baltimore are now the stuff of waterfront redevelopment legend. Waterfronts in Post-Industrial Cities is a second generation waterfront publication which reflects on recent and contemporary developments. Amsterdam, Boston, Genoa, Sydney and Vancouver are successful examples of cities that faced considerable challenges in their revitalisation efforts. Bilbao, Havana, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Shanghai are contemporary examples that represent the emerging contexts for waterfront revitalisation today. Four themes form the basis of this book and provide a structure for considering particular aspects of waterfront redevelopment - connection to the waterfront, remaking the city image on the waterfront, port and city relations and the new waterfronts in historic cities. Broad issues that might be applicable to a variety of situations are dealt with alongside specific city case studies.

Waterfronts Revisited addresses the historical evolution of the relationship between port and city and re-examines waterfront development by looking at the urban territory and historical city in their complexity and entirety. By identifying guiding values, urban patterns and typologies, and local needs and experiences, cities can break the isolation of the harbor by reconnecting it to the urban structure; its functions, spaces and forms. Using the UNESCO recommendation for the "Historic Urban Landscape" as the guiding concept and a tool for managing urban preservation and change, this collection of essays illustrates solutions to issues of globalisation, commercialization of space and commoditisation of culture in waterfront development. Through sixteen selected case studies, Editors Heleni Porfyriou and Marichela Sepe offer planners and urban designers a broad spectrum of alternative solutions to waterfront regeneration interventions and redevelopments, addressing sustainability, regional cultural diversity, and the debate between conservation and transformation.