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Großsiedlungen sind nicht nur ein Erbe der Moderne, sondern seit über drei Jahrzehnten Gegenstand der Stadterneuerung. Dieses Buch erörtert, was eine heute „normale“ Großsiedlung stadtplanerisch benötigt und welche stadtentwicklungs- als auch wohnungspolitisch gesteuerten Ressourcen in einer integrierten Planungssteuerung gebündelt werden sollten. Dabei wird das grundsätzliche Planungsinstrument des Quartiersmanagements aktualisiert – über den Gegenstand Großsiedlungen hinaus.
Since the end of the 1950s, Italy has focused part of its modernization on the erection of public works. Due to corruption, mafia, and further malpractice, this form of development has occasionally failed, producing a high number of constructions that have remained unfinished for decades. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video constructed an informal survey in the form of an on-line tool open to public contributions, which revealed that there are 395 unfinished public works in Italy from which 156, approximately 39.5%, are located in Sicily alone. In view of such a statistic, Alterazioni Video opted to coin the term ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ – literally ‘Sicilian Incompletion’ – to refer to unfinished public works as a formal architectural style. This re-interpretation, which aims to convey the recovered dignity of these ‘modern ruins’, considers unfinished public works a type of heritage with the potential to represent the entirety of Italian society. Furthermore, it goes as far as to say an unfinished public work is ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ despite being located in another of the Italian regions.
This doctoral dissertation embraces the artists’ argument to develop a complete study of Incompiuto Siciliano by embedding this architectural style/artistic project within the main debates on modern ruins at present. This is important because it is expected to contribute to the revalorization and eventual recommissioning of unfinished sites by validating Incompiuto Siciliano in the realm of academia. Furthermore, this work aspires to be a worthwhile source of information for future investigations dealing with cultural interpretations of incompletion in any other context – a not unreasonable goal considering how unfinished works are one of the key urban topics after the 2008 financial crisis. Hence, this doctoral dissertation uses Incompiuto Siciliano to discuss a different perspective in each of the five chapters and, though these can be read as independent contributions, the objective is that all chapters read together, form a clear, concise, continuous unit. And so it must be said this is not a dissertation about unfinished public works in Italy; this is a dissertation about Incompiuto Siciliano as an artistic response to unfinished public works in Italy – which clearly requires an interdisciplinary analysis involving Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, Contemporary Archaeology, Critical Heritage and Visual Arts.
Die Dissertation Staubaufwirbeln oder die Kunst der Partizipation stellt die Frage, ob und inwiefern künstlerische Interventionen zur Aktualisierung und Entwicklung demokratischer Teilhabe beitragen können. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung stehen sechs Projektgruppen, die experimentelle Freiräume gestalten, in denen neue Formen von Demokratielernen, Stadtnutzung, gesellschaftlicher Repräsentation und Symbolpolitik erprobt werden. Die Kunst der Partizipation wird in fünf Dimensionen beschrieben: Initiative, Kollektivität, Inszenierung, Öffentlichkeit und Kooperation. Sie erweitert damit das Repertoire demokratischer Beteiligungsformen sowie gegenwärtige Kunstbegriffe. Ihre heimliche Relevanz besteht darin, sich immer wieder dem Risiko auszusetzen, von allen Seiten als unzureichend betrachtet zu werden. Demokratie konstituiert sich hier als ästhetische Erfahrung. Die Kunst besteht darin, die Flüchtigkeit demokratischer Teilhabe erfahrbar zu machen, also gestaltbar und veränderbar.
The Chinese Shopping Centre: Integration of a Western Commercial Format into Chinese Urban Space
(2009)
Being transposed to China and absorbed by its urban space, the Western shopping centre undergoes a process of “Sinicisation”, which turns it into a spatial hybrid: a Western retail format shaped by distinctive features of Chinese space production and space use. To a large extent, this study can be regarded as a marginal number of its kind which tries to scientifically understand the impact of a socially, culturally and economically absolutely different urban environment on the model (ideal type) of the Western shopping centre.
The main hypothesis of this research is that civil society’s participation is able to improve the planning results in the Chinese city of Qingdao in the contemporary age. Qingdao is a young city developed from a German colony in eastern China. Apart from the powers of the government and the market, the 'third power', including mainly the power of volunteer citizens and the citizens’ organisations, also positively promoted the spatial development in Qingdao’s history. Since 1978’s reform, Qingdao’s great progress in urban housing, historic preservation, public space and urban traffic results mainly from the increasing strength of both the government and the market, while the government has always been the dominant promoter for urban construction. The actual planning mechanism – the government formulates 'what to do' itself and decides 'how to do it' with the market – has much limit in reacting to the rapidly changing situation, serving diversified social interests, and raising sufficient funds for the city’s urgent demands in Qingdao. Searching for new development strategies based on the understanding of civil society in the Chinese context can provide a promising perspective on the urban studies of Qingdao. Chinese civil society can be understood as the intermediate sphere of individuals, families, citizen’s organisations, social movements, public communication, and of the non-governmental body’s non-for-profit involvement for the provision of public services between the state and the market. China has its own cultural tradition of civil society, and the modern civil society in China is showing its great potential in improving social integration and urban life. The Chinese government has started to advocate for civil society’s participation in urban construction, and encouraging the 'bottom-up' mechanism in the planning-related issues through political statements and legislative approaches since the last two decades. The existing planning practice in China is able to demonstrate that civil society’s participation helps improve the quality of Chinese urban planning realistically under present conditions, and that moderation of planning experts and the push of the authority are the key factors for successfully integrating the strength of civil society in planning. However, the power of civil society is not yet sufficiently discovered in Qingdao’s planning. For better planning results, the city of Qingdao needs more initiatives to mobilize civil society in the planning practice, as well as more support to enrich the related studies. This thesis recommends that Qingdao establishes the 'Foundation for Collaborative Urban Solutions' through the joint efforts of the authority and civil initiatives, which aims at moderating and facilitating the strength of civil society. The suggested pilot projects include: a. The Community-based Housing Workshop for regenerating the living environment of the run-down communities, where the residents are willing to collaborate with the foundation with own efforts. b. The Heritage Preservation Workshop for suggesting an efficient supervision mechanism involving civil society which protects the historic heritage from being destroyed in the urban construction. c. The Public Space Forum for improving accessibility, quantity and ecologic function in the development of Qingdao’s urban public space with the knowledge and creativity of both the government and the citizens. d. The Mass Transport Forum for a realistic strategy for funding the rail-based traffic system in Qingdao through enabling the civil society - especially the individual citizens and their households to invest. The 'Foundation of Collaborative Urban Solutions' is able to improve Qingdao’s planning to cope with the urban problems the city are facing in its contemporary development, as well as to provide valuable reference for the further research of civil society’s participation in Chinese urban planning.
Post Conflict Reconstruction is a very complex topic, whether it is to be undertaken by the Local or the International Community. The process of the Post Conflict Development is to be very hard to investigate, primarily for the combination of socio-cultural phenomena, war and political instability; having difficulties of conducting solid empirical analysis (obtaining reliable data) and dealing with war-torn communities. The multifaceted process of the reconstruction is ought to touch a lot of countries vital segments, whereas each of them requires different approach; coordination with one another; and unification in their common aim.
The emergency of the assistance programs are not equal, same as with the priority and weight when compared with each other, therefore occasionally there are programs for the success of which the other less important actions are violated or neglected.
The case is with the International Community presence ( the set up), which aside from their mission and projects, it is considered to play a very important role on the urban development of a post conflict city; the setting was never planned or considered in a holistic manner, therefore IC establishment was done ad hoc and it was guided by issues which did not help at its greatest to the urban development of the city and more over to the citizens who were most in need.
The study is about the Urban Development, due to the fact that the biggest concentration of the International Community is likely to be in the urban centers, and the experienced changes are of a much considerable magnitude. The reconstruction phase is likely to be lasting at about 10 years and more , consequently the International Community for that time being tends to be recognized as temporary citizens of the city, and it is inevitably that they will be having an impact on the urban development of the city; in that basis it is considered to be significant that the International Community Establishment/Set Up be included into the International Organizations mission and assist in the overall mission of the reconstruction.
The conservation of living heritage sites is a highly complex process. Two factors need careful consideration in order to achieve a balance in the management of such sites: the conservation demands of conservation experts for built heritage and the needs of local people for development of their heritage living space. The complexity of factors involved make for an interesting study of living heritage, taken up by this research in its main case study of the town of Nan in Thailand.
Research into the historical background of Nan and its cultural heritage reveals a living heritage site, which is both unique and diverse. Present day Nan was examined using a variety of analysis tools, which were applied to data from interviews, empirical data, field surveys, and documents, in order to better understand the nature of the living heritage site and changing trends over time. Luang Prabang in Lao PDR, a World Heritage site since 1995, was also selected as a further case study with which to compare Nan’s potential World Heritage status from a point of view of changes to living heritage attributes.
The outcomes of the research indicate the importance of the management of the sites, which can be at risk of losing balance by focusing on one aspect of heritage to the detriment of the other. The conservation perspective, if allowed to dominate, as in Luang Prabang, can cause irreparable damage to the social fabric, where the development needs of the town are not met. This research concludes that a balance of power amongst stakeholders in the collaborative networks managing such sites is vital to sustaining a balance of living heritage attributes.
There is a continuous exacerbation of environmental problems in big cities of today’s world, thereby, diminishing the quality of life in them. Of particular concern is the fact that today’s megacities are evolving in the developing world without corresponding growth in the economy, infrastructure and other human development indices. As urban population continues to grow in these cities of the Global South, governing institutions are usually unable to keep pace with their social responsibilities, thus, making the issue of urban governance very critical. This is because effective and efficient urban governance is highly essential for the creation, strengthening and sustenance of governing institutions.
Lagos, a mega-city of over 15.45 million people and the most populous metropolitan area on the African continent epitomizes the fundamental grave characteristics of the emerging megacities of the Global South, thereby, constituting an apt choice in understanding the emerging megacities of the next generation. Two out of every three Lagos residents live in slums and de-humanizing physical and social conditions. Many of them sleep, work, eat and cook under highway bridges, at the mercy of weather elements.
This research, therefore, evaluated urban governance through housing administration in Africa’s largest megacity. It examines the extent of housing problems in the city, the causal factors and the culpability of government agencies statutorily responsible for the provision, control and management of housing development in Lagos - the tenth largest city in the world. A representative geographic part of the city which manifests classic characteristics of slum life, listed by Mike Davis as the largest slum in Africa and the 6th largest in the world – Ajegunle - was adopted for case study. The research design combined rigorous literature search (desk research) with quantitative and, especially, qualitative approaches to data collection. The qualitative approach was more intensely adopted because government officials often respond to enquiries with ‘official answers and data’ which may not be reliable and the study had to rely on keen observation of physical traces, social interaction and personal investigation. The cross-sectional research method was adopted. Information was solicited from house-owners, building industry professionals, sociologists and officials of relevant government agencies, through research tools like questionnaires, interviews, focused group discussions and personal observations.
The analysis and discussion of these field data, in conjunction with the information from the desk research gave a better understanding of the status-quo, which informed the recommendations proposed in the dissertation for mitigating the problems. The research discovered that many of the statutory housing agencies have the capacity to effectively discharge their responsibilities. However, it was also shown that corruption and abdication of responsibilities by the staff of these agencies constitute primary causes of the chasm between the anticipated lofty outcome from the laudable building regulations/bye-laws and the appalling reality. It also discovered that lack of political will and apathy on the part of successive Governments of Lagos State to the improvement of housing conditions of the poor masses are major causes of the housing debacle in Lagos.
Several germane and realistic recommendations for redressing the situation were subsequently proffered. These include amongst others, the conduction of an accurate census for Lagos, in conjunction with credible international agencies, as a requisite basis for effective planning of any sort. The process of obtaining legal titles for land should also be made less cumbersome, while the housing administration process should be computerized; in order to reduce inter-personal contacts between applicants and government officials to the barest minimum, as a means of curbing the wide spread corruption in the system.
This is a work concerned with the increasing processes of social exclusion in cities nowadays. In approaching this phenomenon, the research highlights how people interact with their institutional environments. This is also, perhaps centrally, an investigation into the possibility to engage an individual perspective to understand the transformation in urban experience, which is orienting society to new uses and forms of exclusion. Following the perspective deployed by the so-called “sociology of individuals” in French sociology or “reengagement of agency” in the Anglo-Saxon world; I claim that individuals as well as collectives are gaining increasing power to question and re-organize institutions. This re-organization, in the case of socio-urban institutions, is no guarantee for major levels in integration, cohesion, and equality. Unfortunately, social institutions are becoming hard in its exclusionary capabilities under people intervention during the last four decades.
I believe that urban sociology is a field of struggle between different perspectives competing to “make sense” of social phenomena in cities. The orientation supported in this research is just one on many and it follows the roots of people and their life experiences within cities and how they influence the processes that shape the city. The last formulation is possibly not the clearest, because as we all know, references to “inhabitants” are presented in every variant of urban sociology. Nevertheless, there are not many variants focusing on peoples’ capability to influence institutional environments and by this way affecting the urban condition in which they find themselves. The particular institution selected for this study is the “School”.
This thesis is organized around two parts: part one includes the conceptual framework, methodological approach, and historical contextualization; part two describes three case studies produced to analyse the forms of and the relations between individuals and school institution. Part one starts from a premise: within the context of declining welfare State in the case of industrialized countries, an important part of urban studies focuses on economic and spatial restructuration. Confronted with the same situation, a part of social sciences shifts to the individuals’ agency and social uncertainty. This research is embedded in the last theoretical description presented above, thus, because it tries to observe urban processes from the perspective of the individual and outside of developed economies. In this sense, Latin America represents a fundamental reference because urban conditions are historically marked by weak institutional arrangements to integrating people and large levels of marginality and exclusion among population. In this scenario individuals’ practices around inclusion-exclusion have an essential meaning in everyday life.
Part two offers three study cases in which the relation between individuals and school institutions has been analyzed for the Metropolitan area of Santiago de Chile (MAS). Using different methodological resources an exhaustive account on three levels is presented: i) geo-referencing State intervention in public policies connected with neighborhood and schools to understand the form and extent of socio-urban exclusion in MAS, ii) narrative biographies applied to parents with children attending primary school, in order to reconstruct the familiar process of school selection and describing its impacts on the stabilization of school as an exclusionary device, and iii) autoethnography to describe in detail the temporal dimension involved in stabilizing actions which reinforces social mechanisms of urban integration-exclusion during the last three decades in Chile.
A key argument advanced by this research proposes that: the way in which the idea of integration is enacted by people in their biographical careers imprints changes on the institutional orientation and by this way, contributes to the reorganization urban life. The high level of social exclusion in Santiago de Chile is not accountable without considering transformation in all socio-urban institutions, especially the school. No family considers social integration with people from a low social, economical or cultural background as relevant orientation for school selection. This particularity of the Chilean social reality is not derivable from any big capitalistic or modernization processes impacting our cities.
Within the light of the thesis findings, I conclude that socio-urban institutions logics must be reassessment under the influences of people actions and representations. I also propose a consideration to major complementarities between urban studies and urban-institutions analysis. The school institutions is not just a sectorial field reserved to the researcher in education, on the contrary, it represent a key entrance to address people’s experience in their institutional urban environments. The re-emergence of social and urban movements in 2010, under the “Arab Spring” or the “Chilean Student Movements”, is not only a demonstration in the public space as result of major global trends. These situations are in essence, for this research, individuals gathering together and calling for recognition and autonomy inside institutional environment that tends to reject them. Similar situation was the focus of the Latin American urban sociology research, within the focus on grassroots and urban social movements at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s.
In both cases, socio-urban institutions, unaware of recognition requirements claimed by inhabitants, are not beyond individual or collective reach. My main concern is to show that socio-urban institutions are constantly re-shaped as a result of individual action, what makes the difference, is the spirit that we all, socially, imprint on the logics of our socio-urban institutions, moving them to inclusion or exclusion.
The thesis concerns a work of urban history intended not to describe the city but rather to interpret it. By doing so, I have interpreted the city by means of the role played by the so-called ‘great property’ in the European city-making process during the last three decades of the 20th century, specifically focused on the concrete case of military properties in Italy. I have also considered the role played by other kinds of great properties, i.e. industries and railway, which previously acted in the production of the built environment in a different way respect to the military one. As all of them have as common denominator the fact of being ‘capital in land’, I analysed great industrial and railway properties in order to extrapolate a methodology which helped me to interpret the relationship between military properties and city-making process in Europe in the late 20th century.
I have analysed the relationship between the capital in land and the city-making process on the ground of the understanding the interrelation between the great property, the urban development, and the agents involved in the urban and territorial planning. Here I have showed that urban planning is not the decisive factor influencing the citymaking process, but instead the power held by the capital in land. I have found that is the great property the trigger of the creation of new ‘areas of centrality’ intended as large areas for consumerism. As far as the role played by great property is concerned, I have also discovered that it has evolved over time. Originally, industrial and railway properties have been regenerated into a wide range of new profit-driven spaces; successively, I have found out that most of the regeneration of military premises aimed to materialise areas of centrality. The way of interpreting this factor has been based on focusing my attention on the military premises in Italy: I have classified their typology when they have been built and, most importantly, when they have been regenerated into new areas of centrality.