Neighborhood and Community Planning

Ochocientas casitas unifamiliares de planta baja en la orilla del río Besós, cada una de un color diferente, comprimidas entre una zona industrial semiabandonada y la nueva Barcelona del AVE y del Fòrum. En este lugar de márgen, desconocido y estigmatizado, grupos de migrantes y autóctonos lucharon juntos para crear un paisaje humano excepcionalmente denso y rebelde: un barrio anticlerical y anarcosindicalista, en el cual la resistencia duró ochenta años, donde buscaron amparo Buenaventura Durruti, Quico Sabater y un sinfin de excluidos e indeseados de todos los sitios y de todas las épocas.

Mientras las excavadoras del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona avanzan en el derribo de esta ciudad horizontal, un grupo de habitantes retoma la histórica tradición de lucha del barrio para oponerse al nuevo urbanismo de bloques de pisos, reivindicando la importancia de sus calles, de sus estilos de vida, y de la convivencialidad que permitía la forma urbana de qué se habían apropiado.

Este trabajo es el resultado de una implicación a la vez etnográfica, política y humana con el barrio de Bon Pastor durante los años del derribo (2002-2012), para desvelar la profundidad del trauma que representa la desaparición progresiva de un barrio, con sus memorias de autogestión y autonomía, con su vida cotidiana basada en la proximidad, con sus fiestas que servían para resolver conflictos, y de sus conflictos que creaban comunidad.

Irvine is the largest North American new town. It is also the quintessential Urban Design inspired new town (Forsyth, 2006); its planning and design were shaped by the latest Urban Design principles adapted to low-density, single-family environments . Perhaps the most unique aspect of Irvine's design of Irvine is the deliberate use of Urban Design as a marketing tool. Imageability was not only valued in aesthetic terms, but became a way to differentiate between different marketing "products," a term that included the homes as well as the identity that would derive from living in them. Three decades after its founding the city is still developing according to these Urban Design principles.

Estimating health outcomes at a neighborhood scale is important for promoting urban health, yet costly and time-consuming. In this paper, we present a machine-learning-enabled approach to predicting the prevalence of six common non-communicable chronic diseases at the census tract level. We apply our approach to the City of Austin and show that our method can yield fairly accurate predictions. In searching for the best predictive models, we experiment with eight different machine learning algorithms and 60 predictor variables that characterize the social environment, the physical environment, and the aspects and degrees of neighborhood disorder. Our analysis suggests that (a) the sociodemographic and socioeconomic variables are the strongest predictors for tract-level health outcomes and (b) the historical records of 311 service requests can be a useful complementary data source as the information distilled from the 311 data often helps improve the models' performance. The machine learning models yielded from this study can help the public and city officials evaluate future scenarios and understand how changes in the neighborhood conditions can lead to changes in the health outcomes. By analyzing where the most significant discrepancies between the predicted and the actual values are, we will also be ready to identify areas of best practice and areas in need of greater investment or policy intervention.

Although planned as the " City of Tomorrow " , the Bijlmer district in Amsterdam quickly became the quintessential symbol of urban decline. Today, even with half of the planned renewal of the Bijlmer completed, the alleged success of this urban revitalisation programme is questionable. Parts of the black middle class did not move out and some are even returning to the Bijlmer; the combination is producing a type of " black gentrification " , which forces the " undesirables " like drug users, homeless people and undocumented immigrants to leave. This revanchist renewal not only benefits the middle and lower-class population of the district, but it also serves the interests of private developers. European revanchism makes the city safe for corporate investment and aims to restore social order as well as stimulating the development of a strong middle class. This paper demonstrates how hard revanchist policies are demanded not only by private developers but also by the middle and lower classes, and they exist alongside soft " caring " policies, even for the " undesirables " . 
Keywords: revanchism, urban revitalisation, gentrification, Amsterdam, black middle class, homeless people, modernist urban planning, undesirables, drug use, public space, high-rise flats

The urban environment is a product of many tangible and intangible factors for communities, involving activities, spaces, and users of different age groups. Stakeholder consultation has become an essential part of envisaging any urban space. In general practice, mostly adults’ opinions and suggestions are taken into account, and children are sidelined, even if the issues are related to children. Children are an integral part of the present urbanizing world and are some of its most sensitive and affected users. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes three P’s: provision, protection, and participation. The third, participation, is a crucial dimension of creating a healthier environment, but it has largely been neglected. The drawing technique is among the methods to gather information directly through the children’s participatory approach. It has been observed that children prefer to express themselves by drawing rather than answering questions and find it...

After World War II, members of a small black middle class in southern cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans settled in newly built suburban-style subdivisions of single-family homes. While scholars have examined the design process and political negotiations that led to the development of black middle-class planned subdivisions, very little is known about how and why residents formed communal bonds. This article seeks to understand how original residents in Pontchartrain Park, a subdivision located in New Orleans, Louisiana, created a sense of community in the early years of the neighborhood. The research specifically focuses on the process of community building among adults who spent the majority if not all of their childhood and adolescent years in Pontchartrain Park. Interview data show how residents relied on communal bonds to offset some of their early experiences with racial hostility. Former residents retain strong ties to the neighborhood by attending church services, visiting neighborhood friends and participating in neighborhood organizations. Longstanding communal bonds have also played a vital role in the neighborhood's post-Katrina recovery.

Acknowledgments 9 Contributors 157 5.7 Outdoor comfort C1 Heat mitigation | Hwang Yun Hye C2 Noise abatement | Hwang Yun Hye 167 5.8 People P1 Sense of place | Agnieszka O. Guizzo | Jane Chan P2 Aesthetic values | Agnieszka O. Guizzo | Jane Chan P3 Social relations | Vincent Chua P4 Environmental education | Vincent Chua P5 Recreation | Agnieszka O. Guizzo | Jane Chan Nature, Place & People Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by 137.132.116.72 on 05/23/18. For personal use only.

Neighbourhoods are increasingly gaining attention as planning units of great potential for contribution to sustainable development. Many assessment tools such as LEED-ND, BREEAM Communities and CASBEE-UD have been developed to examine the sustainability of neighbourhood development projects. Some of these tools are claimed to be suitable for assessment in different contexts, and LEED-ND has already been utilised in various countries. This study investigates the viability of using global standards through a series of comparative case studies. One certified case from each of the aforementioned tools is chosen and evaluated against its non-corresponding assessment tools. Selected cases are, respectively, Hoyt Yards, MediaCityUK and Koshigaya Lake Town. Results of this study provide evidence that casts doubt on the viability of using global standards. The paper concludes that neighbourhood sustainability assessment should be regarded as a pluralistic practice. This implies that any realistic and reliable assessment should take account of the specificities of specific locations and varying needs of different stakeholders.

Charlestown Riverside holds huge potential to attract investment due to its location in Salford, North West England: one of Britain’s key growth areas. The aesthetic appeal of Charlestown Riverside’s waterfront and open spaces gives the area a unique edge. This report sets out by outlining findings from an in-depth Baseline Analysis previously conducted by Group 12 (see Annex A). The Baseline Analysis focusses on the physical attributes and fundamental issues present on the site. The Baseline Analysis then outlines three indicative visions for the development of the site which have the aim to meet the development needs of the Charlestown in different ways.

Kāne'ohe: The Vision 2020 Community Study. 1994.
Beryl Blaich, Robert Choy, Kimberly Evans, Barry Magaoay, Seiichi Matsukawa,
Daniel Ornellas, Veronica Soriano. Luciano Minerbi, faculty participant, co-editor.
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i

This planning study was a service to the Kāneʻhoe Neighborhood Board, the Kāneʻohe Business Association and the Department of Planning of the City and County of Honolulu. 
The community in Kāneʻohe expressed the desire that its future development would protect and enhance existing resources and maintain civic pride. The practicum facilitated the planning process by providing a participatory working tool (document) and preliminary data toward the Development Plan update for the City and County.  The report addresses: (1) cultural landscape; (2) land use; (3) socioeconomic conditions; (4) transportation; (5) residential; (6) community business district (CBD); and (7) views and vistas. Throughout this practicum, the students actively got involved with the community by actively contributing to the Vision 2020 community meetings and events.  The students did also a major display exhibit at Windward Mall showing all their work in the progress. This is a working tool and not a final solution/recommendation for Kāneʻohe, but it documents a participatory planning process and explores relevant themes requested by the residents and business of the area.

This is an ethnographic study of a marginal neighbourhood of Hong Kong, Sham Shui
Po. It focuses on the everyday lives of Hong Kong’s urban poor in Sham Shui Po. By
taking an insider’s point of view, this study examines how underprivileged residents
experience, manage and think about their lives in post-industrial urban Hong Kong.
This study seeks to understand the social structures and cultural processes that
contribute to Sham Shui Po’s marginality in the centre of Hong Kong by exploring the
lives and livelihoods of underprivileged residents. I show how Sham Shui Po’s regional
development, low-cost economy, residential composition, as well as the mindset and
behaviour of its residents all contribute to the making of a marginal neighbourhood in the context of post-industrial Hong Kong.

[Sham Shui Po is pronounced as sam1 soey2 bou3. The Cantonese Romanisation appearing in this thesis is Jyutping Cantonese. Throughout the thesis, Cantonese Romanisation appears underlined. The numbers that follow are not footnotes, but indicate the different tones.]

【論文摘要】
本文環繞香港都市的一個邊緣社區，探討深水埗居民的生活。從當地人的角度，研
究後工業社會的弱勢居民，怎樣體驗，應對及理解他們的生活情況。透過了解居民
的日常生活，本論文旨在探究在社會結構與文化進程的互動下，如何令深水埗成為
香港中心的邊緣社區。研究顯示在香港不斷轉變的政治經濟環境下，深水埗的地區
性發展、低成本經濟、居民的組合，以及居民的心態和行為，都是構成邊緣社區的
重要因素。

“Kırklareli Kent Merkezinin Tarihsel Gelişimi” adlı lisans bitirme ödevinde, farklı egemenliklere ev sahipliği yapmış, önemli tarihsel ve kültürel birikimine sahip olan, önemli tarihi ve ticaret yollarından geçen ve savaş, mübadele, göç gibi çeşitli tarihsel kırılmalar yaşayan Kırklareli kent merkezinin, tarihsel süreç içerisinde nasıl bir makroform gelişimi geçirdiği incelenmiştir. Trakya Bölgesi’nde yer alan Kırklareli kenti, Edirne ve Tekirdağ illerine göre daha az bilinen bir kent olmuştur. Son yıllarda ise kent belleği ve koruma alanında yapılan çalışmalar ile birlikte tarihsel birikimine sahip çıkılan çeşitli sosyal, kültürel projelere ve etkinliklere ev sahipliği yapmıştır. Temel olarak kentin nüfusu, ekonomik yapısı, cadde ile sokak sistemi ve anıt yapılarıyla birlikte kentin nasıl bir değişim geçirdiğini incelemek amaçlanmıştır. Bu değişim incelenirken de imar planları ve mahalleler özelinde kent merkezin gelişimi ele alınmıştır. Mahalle kavramı üzerinden seçilen Demirtaş Mahallesi, Yayla Mahallesi, Karakaş Mahallesi ve Karacaibrahim Mahallesi ile birlikte bu değişimin ve gelişimin nasıl gerçekleştiği incelenmiştir. Kronolojik sıra ile incelenen imar planlarında kent makroformunu etkileyen eksenler ile sınırlar belirlenmiştir. Mahalle ölçeğinde de mahallelerde yer alan 19. yüzyıl ve 20. yüzyılda yapılmış çeşitli üsluplu anıt yapılar incelenmiştir. Bu anıt yapılar ile eksenler birlikte ele alınarak 19. yüzyılda Hızırbey Cami ve Külliyesi çevresinden gelişen mahalle sınırları ile günümüz mahalle sınırları karşılaştırılmış ve çözümlenmeye çalışılmıştır.

Since the early 20th century various planning movements have been developed. It would be useful to trace the evolution of these movements to see how their underlying principles have changed and how successful they have been in addressing the requirements of sustainable development. Literature on five selected movements is reviewed. These are, namely, Garden City, Neighborhood Unit, Modernism, Neo-traditionalism, and Eco-urbanism. Results show that evolution of neighborhood planning is characterized by the progressive inclusion of different dimensions of the sustainability concept. However, there are still many difficulties in terms of translating the rhetoric into action.

Neighborhood sustainability assessment tools have become widespread since the turn of 21st century and many communities, mainly in the developed world, are utilizing these tools to measure their success in approaching sustainable development goals. In this study, seven tools from Australia, Europe, Japan, and the United States are selected and analyzed with the aim of providing insights into the current situations; highlighting the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures; and making recommendations for future improvements. Using a content analysis, the issues of sustainability coverage, pre-requisites, local adaptability, scoring and weighting, participation, reporting, and applicability are discussed in this paper. The results of this study indicate that most of the tools are not doing well regarding the coverage of social, economic, and institutional aspects of sustainability; there are ambiguities and shortcomings in the weighting, scoring, and rating; in most cases, there is no mechanism for local adaptability and participation; and, only those tools which are embedded within the broader planning framework are doing well with regard to applicability.

"As the building blocks of cities, neighborhoods play a major role in helping to achieve global sustainability. In the past decade, several assessment tools worldwide have been developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the increasing number of neighborhood (re)development plans. While there is a plethora of research investigating various aspects of building assessment tools, until now little studies have looked at the empirical aspects of neighborhood sustainability assessment. To address this lacuna in literature, this study explores the uptake of sustainability criteria in projects certified under neighborhood sustainability assessment tools. In addition, it examines three cases from the US, the UK, and Japan that have been highly ranked under LEED-ND, BREEAM Communities, and CASBEE-UD, respectively. This is done through investigating compliance of each case with the principles of sustainable development. Furthermore, a series of comparative case studies are undertaken to evaluate each case using assessment tools other than the ones that have, in reality, been used for certifying the selected developments. In addition to highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each development, results show that social, economic, and institutional aspects are not adequately accounted for in theory and practice. Practice of neighborhood sustainability assessment is, to a large extent, market-driven and characterized by the dominance of the environmental aspects of sustainability. Also, results indicate that assessment tools can co-evolve through learning from their successes and failures. Results of this study can be used for optimizing the assessment tools.
"

This thesis explores the history and current practice of Intersection-Repair-style street paintings in Seattle, WA and Portland, OR. It assesses relationships between functions street paintings perform and reasons people want to paint, and suggests that the better these factors align, the greater the likelihood of successful street painting projects that can contribute to city livability and sustainability goals. Street painting history was gathered via archival research, site visits, and interviews with city officials in Portland and Seattle and people from the City Repair Project in Portland. Seattle street painting organizers and participants shared their motivations and experiences via interviews and an online survey. After assessing street painting processes and outcomes in Seattle and comparing municipal guidance to that in Portland where the street painting phenomenon originated, this thesis suggests ways to improve Seattle’s messaging and municipal rules and guidance to support better alignment between street painters’ motivations and painting functions.

Along with the increasing recognition of the significance of the neighborhood level for achieving urban sustainability, many Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools have been developed over the past decade or so. The broad aims of these tools are to guide and promote sustainable planning and design, and to recognize/certify best practice cases. Since the late 2000’s, many articles related to diffident aspect of NSA tools have been published. Through reviewing these articles, this study seeks to identify major methodological limitations that may undermine NSA tools’ ability to promote sustainability. Nine major categories of methodological limitations were identified. These are, namely, limited and unbalanced coverage of sustainability dimensions, top-down and non-transparent approaches, limited consideration of context-specific issues, rigidity and prescriptiveness of design measures, lack of measures to ensure that basic sustainability requirements are met, lack of agreement between different assessment methodologies provided by different tools, limited consideration of interlinkages between indicators, limited consideration of boundary linkages, and the complexity of the assessment tool. In addition to discussing these limitations, this study provides recommendations that can inform tool developers of measures that could be taken to develop tools that are better capable of promoting sustainable development principles. An important issue, however, is that addressing all limitations simultaneously may be challenging due to trade-offs that may emerge between the recommended actions. It is, therefore, essential to develop methods for dealing with such trade-offs. Since the reported evidence is mainly related to a few tools, the study concludes by suggesting that more research on the methodological limitations of all the forty tools identified in this analysis is needed.

This study examines LEED-ND’s criteria for Neighborhood Pattern and Design (NPD).  LEED-ND was developed as a system for rating new neighborhoods on the sustainability of their planning.  However, it has increasingly been adopted by cities as a de facto measure of “livable” neighborhood design and used to accelerate development processes.  We hypothesize that these criteria do not accurately capture livability as defined by residents. Our study area is Temescal, a gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland, CA.  Temescal could not achieve LEED-ND certification due to technical disqualifications yet residents of the neighborhood rated its livability very highly.  Furthermore, residents consistently rated and ranked NPD characteristics quite differently than did LEED-ND, calling into question its validity as a universally codifiable rating system.  We propose that a single set of weighted, prescriptive design guidelines may not be able to reflect the diverse values and desired amenities of different communities.

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

Impacted by the compounding effects of climate change and urbanization, cities are facing a panoply of risks that threaten their sustainability. Recognizing the potentially catastrophic ramifications of inaction, local governments are increasingly involved in resilience-building activities that are informed by a vast body of research related to different socioeconomic , environmental, and institutional aspects of urban planning and design. However, despite its significant impacts on growth and evolution of cities, limited research exists on how urban form can enhance resilience by increasing the abilities to plan for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events. As a step towards filling this gap, this paper explores how meso-scale urban form elements can affect urban resilience. This is done through synthesizing theoretical and empirical evidence reported in the literature. The focus is on morphological parameters related to the following urban form elements: neighborhoods, blocks, lots, and open spaces. Results show that existing evidence is mainly related to the associations between 'neighborhood density, size and configuration of open spaces, and land use mix' and resilience to 'climate change impacts', 'earthquakes', 'social issues', and 'resource scarcity'. There is also considerable evidence on the association between design of blocks/lots and resilience in terms of climate change adaptation/mitigation and adaptability to changing circumstances. The analysis also shows that each element influences and is influenced by other elements in the urban system and different elements should not be studied in isolation and the interplay between them should be considered. Existing evidence on conflicts is mainly related to density, but measures related to other elements may also involve conflicts. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for future research towards improving resilience of urban form at the meso-scale.

As part of their coursework, these students interviewed 11 stakeholders involved with Chinatown, conducted extensive observation fieldwork around Chinatown, analyzed nine Chinatown reports from other cities, and prepared their own reports based on what they learned over the term. Additionally, within the weekly seminar meetings, Matt Patterson and the students brainstormed and discussed many of the issues that would eventually make it into this final report.

Community Based Environmental Risk Ranking:  Rural and Hawaiian Quality of Life, Kahaluʻu Oʻahu. 1992.
Nuria Ciofalo, Carol Ibanez, Richard Kirschenbaum, Moana Lee, Lisa Nakao, Heru Poerbo, Michael Robinson, Debra Tom, Jason Yazawa, and Xiaohua Zhao. Luciano Minerbi faculty participant, co-editor. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawaiʻi, Honolulu.

This report was done in support of the Hawaiʻi Environmental Risk Ranking Project (HERR) and explores socio-cultural risk assessment methods in rural communityof Kahaluʻu on the island of ʻOahu, Hawaiʻi.  It conduct a minisurvey as a learning tool and use ethnomethods to interview Native Hawaiians and Local people in the community.  Particicpatory Action Research (PAR) is applicable at the community and neighborhood levels, especially in rural settings. Community groups and organizations can employ this method to conduct their own risk assessment and therefore participate in planning their own future. Quality of Life is an important part of human health and well-being; people and their environment are dependent on one other; the Quality of Life for individuals and groups can be highly variable; human activities and the sites at which those activities occur are physical representations of the Quality of Life.  Using a participatory approach, the practicum team and community members evaluated community activity settings and developed a risk analysis process for evaluating the community's Quality of Life. Results are not statistically valid, but valuable for demonstration purpose for what is researchable with properly funded projects. The themes, rural lifestyle, shared community values and visions, basic needs, access to the mountain and the sea, type of development and land use, transportation and traffic, security of residence and land leases,were studied in terms of their respective assets and stressors.  Outstanding Class Project Award, Advocacy Planning Award, 1992-1993 American Planning Association, Hawaiʻi Chapter.

This pilot study tested a child-guided protocol integrating qualitative field techniques with spatial analysis tools to explore children's neighborhood perceptions and use. Sixteen children aged 7-9 in London, Canada led researchers and city planners on guided walks of their school neighborhood to document and
discuss places of significance to them. Children were equipped with digital cameras and maps to record neighborhood features, while adult facilitators recorded the ongoing dialogue and tracked the routes taken with GPS units. Children's photographs from the walks supported a group photo-elicitation exercise that further probed and clarified the children's community perspectives. Location data from the GPS and narratives allowed for the analysis of children's comments and photographs within a geographic information system (GIS). Thematic and spatial analysis of narratives and photographs revealed significant but complex patterns of neighborhood perception and use, suggesting that this child-led protocol is an
effective tool for engaging children in community assessment and for revealing their local lived experience.

Throughout history, achieving the “Good Society” was a prime concern for many scholars in the Western culture. Plato‘s normative theories embodied in The Republic initaiated what was later called “Utopianism” which prompted the creation of the “Good Society” within the “Ideal City”. The concept of the “intentional community” was a manifestation of that dream. Since the Renaissance, many related urban theories emerged, however, with the fall of Modernity and its housing utopian theories in the 1960s, a new post-modern housing utopianism was created in the forms of “Housing Coopertaives”, “Co-housing”, “Condominiums”, “Ecovillages”, “Gated communities”, and recently “New Urbanism” which emerged in the 1990s aiming at fulfilling the long awaited dream of the “Good Society”.
This research critically examines such approaches at their “deep structure”, i.e. production mechanisms, property ownership, and administrative system, to prove that despite the apparent differences (in titles, territoral structure, and ownership patterns for example), they all stem from the same deep structure in terms of their driving mechanisms and general societal system, i.e. capitalism. In other words, all those approaches are bounded by the capitalist kaleidoscope.
To explore this, a substantially different perspective that exists outside the boundaries of capitalism, such as that of Islam, is used to review those approaches. It was found that Islamic residential communities have achieved democracy, equity, justice and freedom more than contemporary capitalist housing communities. Islam, through its mechanisms, power structure and decision making process has achieved the Western dream of the “Good Society”, in its Western sense.

Semi-urban settlements are places where large numbers of people come together, whether forcibly or voluntarily, in special-purpose settlements that lack many of the features characteristic of cities. This exploratory study examines 11 different types of semi-urban settlement from the present and the past and finds that neighborhoods are present as important social and spatial units in 10 of the types. This finding supports the notion that neighborhoods are fundamental and perhaps universal features of cities and semi-urban settlements. The following social drivers for neighborhood creation are identified in both formal and informal semi-urban settlements: defense, group preservation, sociality, convenience, administration, and control/surveillance. The results have implications for understanding urban and neighborhood dynamics in a wide range of cities and other settlements.

Quartieri come reti. Le reti territoriali come dispositivi di inclusione tra competenza e rappresentanza

Nel quadro dei mutamenti avvenuti con la crisi del fordismo, la figura della rete si è affermata come metafora della società. Le politiche sociali e urbane hanno assunto così un assetto “reticolare”, affermando un regime di orizzontalità tra attori differenti che ha generato importanti rinnovamenti nell’approccio al territorio - i principi dell’integrazione della partecipazione e della attivazione. Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, l’affermazione degli orientamenti neoliberisti al governo urbano hanno tuttavia posto una forte ipoteca sulle prospettive di allargamento e democratizzazione dei processi di produzione di politiche pubbliche. In questo quadro incerto, la figura della rete è stata assunta come riferimento di un nuovo ordine di rapporti societari, valori e bisogni culturali di autonomia, autoimprenditorialità e libero scambio che hanno sollevato numerose critiche alla presunta apertura e orizzontalità dei processi reticolari e del principio cardine dell’autoorganizzazione. In questo scenario, le periferie urbane attraversate da significativi cambiamenti sociodemografici sono state tra i principali bersagli sia delle politiche urbane che dell’azione autorganizzata del terzo settore. Questi due processi stanno sollevando interessanti interrogativi sugli strumenti per accompagnare lo sviluppo di territori soggetti ad uno scollamento tra domande sociali e target dalle politiche di welfare. Una condizione che apre un interessante prospettiva intorno al concetto di rete come strumento organizzativo per operare all’interno di contesti che sono nella loro multiproblematicità anche frontiere culturali della società.
La tesi guarda al caso della città di Milano, in cui il nuovo scenario di politiche ha riportato al centro del governo urbano il concetto di rete territoriale. Attraverso l’analisi di due quartieri di Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica, la tesi esplora tre domande di ricerca, che esaminano i concetti sviluppati negli studi organizzativi e nei diversi approcci alla network analysis nella prospettiva specifica delle reti territoriali: 1) quali dinamiche caratterizzano il funzionamento delle reti territoriali per garantire un bilanciamento tra autonomia e collaborazione tra le organizzazioni; 2) quale ruolo di intermediazione è svolto dalle reti territoriali nella relazione con le politiche e le istituzioni pubbliche; 3) quale ruolo dei singoli nelle reti. Per rispondere a queste domande è stato utilizzato un approccio immersivo e partecipante, raccogliendo dati prevalentemente di natura qualitativa attraverso note di campo e osservazioni, conversazioni, interventiste in profondità e biografiche.
Gli esiti della ricerca mostrano che le reti di quartiere si manifestano come contesti organizzativi emergenti, in cui la dimensione culturale dell’interazione sociale risulta determinante per la convergenza degli attori, influenzandone i repertori delle competenze, delle esperienze comuni e i discorsi. Motore del funzionamento della rete sono però i processi di coinvolgimento dei singoli operatori e volontari e l’interpretazione data del proprio mandato di azione nella rete. La possibilità di rielaborare creativamente la tensione tra interesse individuale, collettivo e organizzativo ha sostenuto nei due casi lo sviluppo di pratiche di intervento e il riconoscimento ruoli inediti, che stanno ridefinendo le figure tradizionali sia dell’intervento sociale territoriale che dell’attivismo civico politico. Queste figure si stanno facendo portatrici nelle reti del terzo settore di un nuovo mandato politico rispetto al territorio, introducendo la variabile del legame affettivo. L’interazione tra queste figure e i processi di governance reticolare assunti dal welfare locale può determinare una ridefinizione dei percorsi e degli obiettivi dell’attivazione in rete, ricostruendo un rinnovato ruolo di intermediazione del terzo settore di prossimità, cura e rappresentanza.

This study examines the neighborhood activity spaces (NAS) of 9- to 13-year-old children (n = 143) from seven schools in London, Canada. Data from Global Positioning System (GPS) loggers worn for 7 days were used to isolate and test measures for children’s pedestrian-based neighborhood activity: the maximum distance traveled from home and relative time spent in neighborhood settings. Descriptive and linear regression analyses examined the influence of individual, perceptual, and environmental factors on neighborhood use and travel. Participants spent a large portion of their out-of-school time (75%) in their NAS. Although traveling far from home on occasion, 94.5% of children’s time on average was spent within a short distance of home; participants spent little of their free time in broader neighborhood settings. School travel mode and independent mobility were among the strongest predictors of both distance traveled and time spent close to home. Perceptions of neighborhood safety, neighborhood type, and nearby land uses also influenced local activity.

In neighborhoods throughout major American cities, grassroots efforts in community revitalization are reshaping the public processes and institutional framework involving the design and development of public space. Treating the public realm as both a physical space and an expression of relationships between multiple institutions, organizations, and individuals, this study examines the social and political epistemologies and processes behind the creation of a waterfront park in Oakland, California. It also presents a framework of community-driven practice in the making of the public realm, based on converging theories of social movements and planning and a critique of the current participatory design model.

The research focuses on the living together in Viennese neighborhoods mainly composed by subsidized estates. In this context, it looks at the Monte Laa neighborhood as an example. The area comprises subsidized housing estates built since the early 2000s that stand for different generations of Viennese housing policies. It houses more than 3000 apartments and is still under construction.

In looking at Monte Laa the research discusses several questions:
How has the living together among residents in the neighborhood developed so far and which factors have been most influencing?
How does the development of the living together relate to implemented planning policies and measures at neighborhood level?
What were the effects of the residential turnover in the area?
Which conclusions could we draw for future planning of subsidized housing estates?

The qualitative, empirical research builds the juxtaposition of two interview series with residents. It does for the moment cover an arch of seven years. The report draws from material collected in the context of this research project and of an earlier one, also commissioned by the Vienna Housing Research in 2011 (Karasz, Sirbegovic and Dika 2011). In both cases residents of Monte Laa were interviewed. I recorded the persons’ residential histories as well as their dwelling practices in biographical, narrative interviews. Most persons interviewed in 2011 were interviewed again in 2018. Moreover, I conducted several stakeholder­interviews and participant observations.

The specificity of the research project lies exactly in the repetition of biographical interviews with residents. This method results in a depth of analysis concerning both the quality of data and its temporal dimension, which is rare in research on the living together in residential areas in Vienna. The unusual extent of the studied period, moreover, emphasizes the temporal dimension of the living together in subsidized estates. Accordingly, the graphic representation of the changes between 2011 and 2018 is one of the core aspects of this research.

As first step of analysis, I relate several sets of data to each other, in order to reconstruct the living together in Monte Laa: implemented planning policy measures, neighborhood activities organized by residents of Monte Laa and activities in social media platforms at neighborhood level. In taking this juxtaposition as an entry point, I discuss the living together in Monte Laa in the context of an interplay between aspects that can be planned at neighborhood level and others that cannot.

The report points to several developments that had a relevant impact on the living together in Monte Laa: the strong turnover of residents in the estates under study, different forms of mobility enacted by residents, the important role of social media for the living together, shifting borders among residential groups as a consequence of the public debate on immigration in Austria and in other European countries, transformations of Monte Laa’s urban surrounding, as well as its experience by residents.

The research discusses how these developments intersect with a multiplicity of policy measures implemented by municipal, as well as by non­profit or profit oriented actors. Many of these policies had a supportive effect on the living together in the neighborhood. In parts, they could counteract broader processes that exceed the neighborhood level. In taking Monte Laa as example, the report, however, names several challenges and questions rising for future planning of subsidized housing in Vienna.

Sense of community and social life are two key concepts related to social cohesion, which have been the subject of extensive studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and built environment. Social life studies have been mostly conducted in the built environment discipline focusing on city centres; while sense of community studies were mostly the target of sociologists and psychologists focusing on neighbourhoods. As a result, the role of the built environment on the sense of community and social life of neighbourhoods is considered as a missing gap in the literature. This paper, through defining the concepts of social life and sense of community, aims to develop a conceptual framework for further implementation in future research. Accurate implication and interpretation of the concepts show that neighbourhoods can include the sense of community in the residential environment and the social life in the commercial environment. This is because residential environme...

This chapter investigates sidewalk sociability and neighborhood use, by focusing on the regular encounter of a group of retired men to play cards on their neighborhood’s main street. Direct and ethnographic observa- tions were used on one Lisbon suburban working and lower middle- classes residential district.
Sidewalk card-playing is understood as “focused gathering” (Goffman, 1971a) and this concept discloses the social organization of a public gaming held encounter and the specific rules created to regulate inter- actions between players and their audience. The sidewalk sociability effects produced by card-playing are interpreted as originating from “triangulation stimuli” (Lofland, 1998; Whyte, 2002) and “sociability pillar” construction (Charme ́s, 2006).
Card-playing encounters are discussed in detail as a practical and symbolical neighborhood-use (Blokland, 2003) enacted by an elder-men peer-group. Research underscores the relationship between the elderly peer-group members’ practices and the neighborhood’s public space appropriation, their public characters’ attributes (Jacobs, 1972) and behavior, and social con- struction of a sidewalk small social place. Among aged peer-group members, sidewalk card-playing accounts for an increase in social and psychological benefits, ranging from social contacts to memories self-expression, derived either from the gaming situation or from its pervasive sociability.

This essay was published in Public Art Dialogue in November 2020 (Volume 10, Issue 2). It looks at Watts House Project in Los Angeles, a community-based public art project focused on home repairs and neighborhood revitalization. I reflect upon how the project has been portrayed as a failure, with the aim of recuperating its pedagogical value for contemporary critics and practitioners of socially engaged art. The project involved attempts by artists and community organizers to transform the neighborhood surrounding the monumental Watts Towers in a manner beneficial to residents, thereby aligning itself with the aims of other socially engaged art projects: challenging conventional understandings of art, ameliorating social conditions and engaging specific publics in the production of art. However, it met resistance from homeowners and from other community organizations in Watts, many of whom felt that the promises made to them had not been kept. In analyzing what can be learned from the project, I examine the potential for socially engaged art to challenge the critical distance and deconstructive tendencies of the avant-garde by constructing aesthetic models and frameworks associated with reparative practice.