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End-users provide the most valuable perspective and insights into how public social space should function. Much of the failure of urban settings can be related to over-structured urban environments which deterministically prescribe usage, constraining instead of enabling socio-spatial performance. Planning decisions by specialists should be made with the participation of the end-user to minimise uncertainty as far as possible, creating enabling environments. Placemaking: An Urban Design Methodology presents a methodology that evaluates the preferences of urban dwellers and synthesises these with the planning specialist’s expertise, better representing all views. Author Derek Thomas integrates the Sondheim Methodology with means to understanding cultural clues to create a matrix methodology that links planning primers with planning actions. A unique new tool for community planners, this book emphasises the importance of the community while taking into account the expertise of the planner in creating public spaces.
This book is an investigation of the cultural phenomenon of branding and its transformational effects on the contemporary spatial – and urban – reality. It develops a novel understanding of the rationale behind the construction of large-scale architectural complexes that relate to corporate brands, and of its tremendous cultural effects. The author suggests that what we see today is the creation of "global mass ornaments", of a thorough ornamentalization of the entire globe. The origins of this are discussed with regard to examples of corporate brand-building from Europe and China (Autostadt Wolfsburg, BMW Welt Munich and Anting New Town). Additional cases are several simulated spaces in...
In The Empty Place: Democracy and Public Space Teresa Hoskyns explores the relationship of public space to democracy by relating different theories of democracy in political philosophy to spatial theory and spatial and political practice. Establishing the theoretical basis for the study of public space, Hoskyns examines the rise of representative democracy and investigates contemporary theories for the future of democracy, focusing on the Chantal Mouffe's agonistic model and the civil society model of Jürgen Habermas. She argues that these models of participatory democracy can co-exist and are necessarily spatial. The book then provides diverse perspectives on how the role of physical publi...
Neoliberal Spatial Governance explores the changing nature of English town and city planning as it has slowly but clearly transformed. Once a system for regulating and balancing change in the built and natural environments in the public interest, planning now finds itself facilitating development and economic growth for narrow, sectional interests. Whilst there is a lip service towards traditional values, the progressive aims and inclusivity that provided planning’s legitimacy and broad support have now largely disappeared. The result is a growing backlash of distrust and discontent as planning has evolved into neoliberal spatial governance. The tragedy of this change is that at a time whe...
With over half the world's population now deemed to be urbanised, cities are assuming a larger role in political debates about the security and sustainability of the global food system. Hence, planning for sustainable food production and consumption is becoming an increasingly important issue for planners, policymakers, designers, farmers, suppliers, activists, business and scientists alike. The rapid growth of the food planning movement owes much to the fact that food, because of its unique, multi-functional character, helps to bring people together from all walks of life. In the wider contexts of global climate change, resource depletion, a burgeoning world population, competing food produ...
The late 1970s and 1980s saw a process of mass factory closures in cities and regions across the Midwest of the United States. What happened next as leaders reacted to the news of each plant closure and to the broader deindustrialization trend that emerged during this time period is the main subject of this book. It shows how leaders in eight metropolitan areas facing deindustrialization strived for adaptive resilience by using economic development policy. The unique attributes of each region - asset bases, modes of governance, civic capacity, leadership qualities, and external factors - influenced the responses employed and the outcomes achieved. Using adaptive resilience as a lens, Margaret Cowell provides a thorough understanding of how and why regions varied in their abilities to respond to deindustrialization.
Traditional approaches to understand space tend to view public space mainly as a shell or container, focussing on its morphological structures and functional uses. That way, its ever-changing meanings, contested or challenged uses have been largely ignored, as well as the contextual and on-going dynamics between social actors, their cultures, and struggles. The key role of space in enabling spatial opportunities for social action, the fluidity of its social meaning and the changing degree of "publicness" of a space remain unexplored fields of academic inquiry and professional practice. Public Space and Relational Perspectives offers a different understanding of public spaces in the city. The...
Interrogating the intersections of food, journalism, and politics, this book offers a critical examination of food media and journalism, and its political potential against the backdrop of contemporary social challenges. Contributors analyze current and historic examples such as #BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19, climate change, Brexit, food sovereignty, and identity politics, highlighting how food media and journalism reach beyond the commercial imperatives of lifestyle journalism to negotiate nationalism, globalization, and social inequalities. The volume challenges the idea that food media/journalism are trivial and apolitical by drawing attention to the complex ways that storytelling about food has engaged political discourses in the past, and the innovative ways it is doing so today. Bringing together international scholars from a variety of disciplines, the book will be of great interest to scholars and students of journalism, communication, media studies, food studies, sociology, and anthropology.
A new taxonomy of placemaking is needed; concerns have been expressed about the professionalization of placemaking through the proliferation of standards, zoning codes, and restrictive covenants. "Place matters" has become a mantra in many disciplines - architecture, urban planning and urban design, geography, and sociology to name a few. While conceptualized narrowly by individual disciplines, a holistic framework of placemaking is sorely missing. Mahyar Arefi seeks to fill this gap by exploring these questions: how are places physically created, socially mobilized, and politically contested? This book explores three competing approaches to placemaking: need-based, opportunity-based, and asset-based. Using a case study approach, the book delves into each paradigm and its stages of physical formation, social mobilization, and political contestation.
Medicinal Agroecology: Reviews, Case Studies, and Research Methodologies presents information on applications of ‘green therapies’ in restoration towards global sustainability. These practices connect the world of medicinal plants with ecologic farming practice, creating a compassionate socio-political worldview and heartfelt scientific research towards food sovereignty and a healthier future on planet Earth. The book communicates benefits of using plant-based solutions to manage the challenges of unsustainable practices in human healthcare, veterinary medicine, agriculture, forestry, and water management. The contributions introduce advances around plants and their active components to ...