The year 1923 was a turning point for Turkey. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after a long war brought in Republican ideology centered on economic self-sufficiency and modern, secular values. With ...the proclamation of the Republic, the reconstruction of war-torn historical cities became a priority, to spread the new ideology and meet the country’s industrial needs. The new authorities encouraged municipalities to consult with Western European architects, many of whom were invited in the first years of the Republic. Their knowledge of the latest technologies and modern urban planning principles in Europe were to be applied to reconstruct Anatolian towns and villages according to the modern ideology. To facilitate this cooperation, the Society of Studies for the Reconstruction of İzmir was established in Paris in 1922. It brought together French experts and Turkish authorities during the planning process of Western Anatolian cities. The most prominent French consultants were Paris-based Henri Prost and Rene Danger, working together in France after having gained long-term experience in French colonies. This paper, firstly, highlights the mobility of these French professionals in Western Anatolia by tracing the history of their planning studies. Secondly, framing the political tension between the two countries, it aims to investigate whether the perspectives of the Turkish authorities associated the guest French architects and planners with colonial France. Lastly, it focuses on the post-war reconstruction process of historical cities in Western Anatolia, discussing the results of the interaction of the decision-makers and focusing on İzmir, Manisa, and Uşak.
Ecosystem services (ES) concepts and approaches have become more appealing to practice, such as municipal/urban planning, environmental policies and governance to address sustainable development. ...Inclusion of this concept in the planning or policy discourses is the first step for further implementation on the ground. Using China’s capital, Beijing, as the case study, this article analyzes how ES (or similar concepts) have permeated China’s urban development history since 1949 when the New China was established and how this has to be with China’s urban green space development. The results show: (1) There were no explicit references to “ecosystem services” per se, but overlapping concepts such as “functions”, “values” and “benefits” can be found in planning documents and, importantly, the lack of the concept per se has not affected the detailed services that emerged in all plans. (2) Among the three ES sections, only cultural services run from the beginning to end although the included services kept changing. Other sections show considerable variation and less continuity – the focal services of each stage changed over time. (3) Through the ES lens, some general patterns regarding China’s urban development can be found such as regulation services gradually become valued for their own sake. The patterns found in Chinese planning documents are then compared with some western regions. This study reveals limitations of the past and opportunities for the future to inform urban development decision-making. Adaptation of old and incorporating new ES concepts can improve the quality of plans and foster cities’ ability to learn from past patterns for future sustainability.
•Analyzing how ecosystem services (ES) have permeated China’s urban development.•The study is based on coding and analyzing discourse and document contents.•Through ES lens, general patterns can be found in China.•Cultural services play a pivotal role in urban development history.•Opportunities exist in the “non-mainstream” ES to incorporate more ES into plans.
Master plans have long been criticized by critical planners who have argued in favour of more strategic, collaborative and relational forms of spatial planning that can more adequately respond to ...local needs and realities, especially in the context of the global South. Rather than critiquing master planning, this paper seeks to interrogate its recent rise in urban Africa. Building on a review of international planning trajectories, the paper seeks to challenge dominant narratives in the Western literature around the rise and decline of master planning. Planning experiences from across the African continent illustrate how master planning was a limited practice under colonialism and emerged more strongly in early post-colonial years, while persisting through a quiet period of planning and proliferating in recent times. By exploring the diversity in the influences and approaches to master planning for new and existing cities in Africa over time, the paper positions master planning as the product of a complex array of transnational circuits and multiple local actors and ambitions which intersect across different scales. The study of master planning should therefore be considered as an important entry point into understanding and rethinking the contemporary politics of urban planning, implementation, and development in Africa.
Ancient China attached great importance to urban ecology, which is reflected in the selection of urban sites conforming to nature and the natural attributes of cities.The rulers of the Ch'ing Dynasty ...paid full attention to the cities of the Ming Dynasty, took the military as the driving force and paid attention to the urban ecology, and built a large number of military and national cities accordingly. In order to consolidate the monarchy and colonize new territories, the Ch'ing Dynasty implemented the Eight Banners Garrison System and built Manchu cities in the interior and parts of the border areas. This paper is based on the official documents of the Ch'ing Dynasty, investigating the history of overall planning of the Manchu City, gradually collecting and analyzing its analogical biological evolution from the northeast region to the whole nation of the Ch'ing Dynasty. Besides, the paper argues that the spatial pattern of Manchu city is characterized by its hierarchy, defensiveness and connectivity, and summarizes the integrated planning of Manchu city, and reveal the intrinsic correlation between its planning and the changes of territory in the Ch'ing Dynasty. The planning and construction of Manchu cities implied the use of natural and social attributes of historical cities.At the same time, the military and urban planning of the Ch'ing Dynasty also provide useful insights and historical thoughts for homeland space security and land planning nowadays.
•Ch'ing Dynasty implemented the Eight Banners Garrison System.•Built Manchu cities in the interior and parts of the border areas.•The spatial pattern of Manchu city is characterized by its hierarchy.•Planning and construction of Manchu cities implied natural & social attributes of historical cities use.
Dalian, a typical modern colonial city, originated in the late 19th century and was planned and built by Russian architects. Academics have traditionally focused on the unique qualities of the ...spatial form from the early stages of urban development, but due to a lack of urban history archives, the formation of the spatial form and the planning ideology of this time have not been examined. For this study, we visited the Russian State Historical Archives to search for relevant materials to restore the process of forming Dalian’s spatial form. Based on this, the heritage value and attributes of Dalian’s modern urban spatial form are discussed. The results show that, although Dalian was always under the control of Russian political power at the early stage of its urban construction, the urban planning ideas were integrated with modern Western urban planning ideas. Secondly, under the influence of modern Western urban planning ideas, including “classicalism” and the “garden city”, the modern Dalian urban space gradually formed a unique form and appearance, bearing the brand of the times and urban memory in a special context. Moreover, this study finds that the evolution of urban space is not simply a cumulative development of itself but the result of the influence of external ideas implanted with unique heritage values and attributes.
This article makes a case for a relational approach to studying the history of 'socialist cities' in Europe as inherently interconnected with various other places through transnational links. It ...attempts to contribute to historians' debates about the socialist city and to interlink them with the project of developing a 'global urban studies'. To do so, it brings several examples from the history of urban planning and urban development in post-war Czechoslovakia which challenge academic representations of socialist cities as specific and disconnected from places across the Iron Curtain. First, based on a review of contemporary professional literature in urban planning and architecture, the article points out some of the channels through which knowledge about and from geographically or ideologically distant places, including the 'Western' world, was available to Czechoslovak experts, and, especially, how this knowledge has been reflected in their own debates about housing construction and urban development in Czechoslovakia. Second, one palpable example of exchanges across the borders of the then-divided Europe is depicted through the transnational story of wooden prefabricated houses. So called Finnish houses were produced in Finland, yet they became an integral part of several cities and towns in socialist Czechoslovakia.
This article examines the Ethiopian chapter in the careers of Peter and Ute Baumbach, prominent architects from the German Democratic Republic (gdr), by analyzing their previously (mostly) ...unpublished plans and drawings as well as oral history. In line with Łukasz Stanek‘s investigation of the architectures of mondialisation, we combine reflections gathered in the course of research on the mobility of East German architects in an effort to broaden the scope of knowledge about the circulation of planning practices between the “Second World” and the “Global South,” embedded in complex Cold War economic and political contexts. While analyzing Baumbachs’ activities, we confront their narrative with the historiography of urban planning in Ethiopia, where we investigate links and disconnections stated by the protagonists themselves or those traceable in the sources. Using first-person accounts as a starting point for an investigation into developments that in many ways escape the conventional historical record, the story of the East German couple’s involvement in Addis also allows us to reflect on the limitations and biases as well as the benefits of oral history approaches, for further research in the history of architecture and planning beyond Europe.
This article explores the concept of porosity as a metaphorical device to investigate the interplay between urban space and urban inclusion. It develops a diachronic case study of Brussels' so-called ..."Congolese" or "African" neighbourhood of Matonge, drawing from urban analysis and fieldwork observations. Different historical and current modalities of city-making (including formal plans, urban projects and more "spontaneous" forms of urbanization) are examined in their respective impact on social exclusion and inclusion. This way, the aim is to reflect on the peculiar role of the built environment vis-à-vis socio-cultural diversity and inclusion. It will be argued that the notion of urban porosity allows to shed light on the intricate interplay between the formation of urban form and its subsequent capacity to "include" diverse forms of urban life. The case study of Brussels' neighbourhood of Matonge thus advances porosity as a qualifier of space in view of urban inclusion.
Against the background of urban redevelopment programs through the lens of varied, country-related planning cultures, this article sets the stage for learning from one country’s recent experience. In ...this article, we focus on two Israeli urban regeneration programs operating since 2000: the ‘Integrated National Planning Scheme’ (TAMA 38) and ‘Evacuate and Build’ (Pinuy Binuy) programs. This article aims to examine the governmental agenda behind these programs in comparison to previous urban regeneration programs and, especially, to critically review the implementation and implication of these programs considering social sustainability issues. Methodologically, the policies and practices of this recent wave of urban renewals in Israel are revisited through a critical reading of a series of studies from the last five years, bringing together multidimensional societal aspects. In terms of ethics and qualitative dimensions, the examined societal aspects are rooted in social sustainability theory and contemporary urban policy design. Our findings regarding this country-related recent experience in urban renewals have identified several gaps concerning certain aspects of social sustainability theory and practice. These gaps call for a better understanding by Israel’s urban policy makers of the comprehensive essence of contemporary social sustainability theory, which should also be mirrored in the respective professional discourse. The gaps are also useful in informing our accumulating transnational knowledge and experience in urban renewal schemes, based on a chain of country-related experiences and planning cultures.
The Garden City Movement is recognized as a dominant forerunner of modern urban planning. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the broad popularity and selective adoption of Garden City concepts ...in Zionist circles and the Jewish Yishuv (Community) in Palestine, to document their implementation in Jewish urban settlement in Palestine, and to follow their local evolution into the creation of a unique urban fabric. We show how the Garden City ideology and its implementation in England and Germany influenced the Zionist movement, its leaders, and settlers in Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine, and led them to adopt and adapt concepts of the Garden City model as the 'national paradigm' of the new Jewish urban planning in Palestine. The planning was influenced by Garden City ideas, with modifications to Ebenezer Howard's original model made to suit local traditions, public demand, and Zionist goals. The application of the message of the Garden City movement to the physical model beginning unintentionally with the building of Ahuzat Bayit (Tel Aviv) in 1909, created a guiding principle for Jewish urban development in Palestine from 1905 until 1945, and continues to exert its influence on current planning. In conclusion, the article adds a dimension to the emerging picture of early twentieth-century Zionist settlement in Palestine as a laboratory for implementing novel planning ideas of international importance.
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