Tactical Urbanism as an Approach to Reuse Residual Spaces

Most cities around the world have residual spaces. Perhaps no city has no residual spaces. The residual spaces are areas in the city layout that have no real benefit to the community. These spaces appear as a result of the planning process. They are located in places such as between streets, between buildings and under bridges. Sometimes they are also called in-between spaces and lost spaces. These residual spaces seem to be a burden on city planning as they turn into abandoned or informal activities. On the other hand, they may represent a source of income and allow for community participation, which in turn could be a part of the sustainable development of cities. Therefore, these areas could be exploited and oriented towards community serving and problem-solving such as unemployment problem in developing countries in particular. In other words, these spaces have potentials that can be exploited through reuse. Tactical urbanism is a trend that seeks to reuse urban spaces and transform them into development opportunities that benefit society. Tactical urbanism mainly relies on low-cost, service-oriented projects in the community. This paper highlights the reuse of residual spaces through the adoption of tactical urbanism as an approach. In this sense, the paper identifies the residual spaces, their classification and their potentials. The paper then proceeds into determining the tactical urbanism by definition, its importance and how it works. In the analytical part, the paper investigates a local case study, “306 street” project in the Dokki area, Egypt. The study concludes the importance of reusing the residual spaces using tactical urbanism approach and their contribution to community development. The study ends with a set of recommendations on various levels

Plot-based urbanism : towards time-consciousness in place-making

Some of us have recently argued that what we still miss is the serious consideration of the factor of time in urbanism, or, in other words, a deeper "time conscious" approach (Thwaites, Porta, Romice, & Greaves, 2008). Inevitably, that means focusing on change as the essential dynamic of evolution in the built environment, which in turn leads to re-addressing concepts like control, self-organization and community participation. After time and change have been finally firmly placed at the centre stage, the whole discipline of urban planning and design, its conceptual equipment as well as its operational toolbox, reveals its weaknesses under a new light and calls for the construction of a different scenario. This paper poses the problem of this scenario in disciplinary terms, it argues about its premises and outlines its essential features. The scope of this paper is not to deliver a comprehensive model for a new approach to urban planning and design, but to set the right framework and rise the right questions so that we can start thinking of issues such as urban regeneration, informal settlements and massive urbanization, community participation and representation, beauty and humanity in space, in a different way

It's About How and Where We Build: Connecting Energy and Smart Growth

In recent years, energy issues have become a growing concern for Americans. Largely missing from present energy discussions, however, is the role that land-use practices have on energy consumption and the use of alternative energy resources. By efficiently locating development, we can reduce the amount of energy needed for transportation and for other infrastructure as compared with spread-out, suburban development. Moreover, by including greater use of energy efficient design, these "smart growth" land-use practices could become even smarter -- and better achieve their goals of environmental protection, economic prosperity, and community livability. The smart growth land-use and energy efficiency movements are intrinsically linked, yet these two fields have mostly operated in separate worlds. Greater coordination between these two professions is warranted, yet substantial barriers exist. A recent survey reveals that planners' technical knowledge of energy issues is limited, as is their inclusion of energy factors in comprehensive planning, zoning, and development review. Heightened concern about foreign oil dependence, climate change, and the other ill effects of fossil fuel usage makes the energy-land-use collaboration especially important. Recently, there have been some hopeful signs of collaboration between energy professionals and community developers

Energy and Smart Growth: It's about How and Where We Build

By efficiently locating development, smarter growth land use policies and practices offer a viable way to reduce U.S. energy consumption. Moreover, by increasing attention on how we build, in addition to where we build, smart growth could become even more energy smart. The smart growth and energy efficiency movements thus are intrinsically linked, yet these two fields have mostly operated in separate worlds. Through greater use of energy efficient design, and renewable energy resources, the smart growth movement could better achieve its goals of environmental protection, economic security and prosperity, and community livability. In short, green building and smart growth should go hand in hand. Heightened concern about foreign oil dependence, climate change, and other ill effects of fossil fuel usage makes the energy-smart growth collaboration especially important. Strengthening this collaboration will involve overcoming some hurdles, however, and funders can play an important role in assisting these movements to gain strength from each other. This paper contends there is much to be gained by expanding the smart growth movement to include greater attention on energy. It provides a brief background on current energy trends and programs, relevant to smart growth. It then presents a framework for understanding the connections between energy and land use which focuses on two primary issues: how to build, which involves neighborhood and building design, and where to build, meaning that location matters. The final section offers suggestions to funders interesting in helping accelerate the merger of these fields

'Cette autre nécessité essentielle: 'l'urbanisation': electrification and the Urbanisation of the Nebular City

The advent of modern utility systems together with improved transport infrastructures and information technologies introduced new spatial arrangements and temporalities in the territory. In time, these reveal a notion of urbanisation that does not only takes place in or directly adjacent to the traditional (territorially bounded) city, but in which co-evolving processes lead to differentiated territorial arrangements. Belgium’s distributed urban condition – the ‘nebular city’ – emerged out of the interplay of such multiple territorial arrangements. Often, it is explained by a historical roots in policies of industrial dispersal, while historical efforts to actively accommodate and organise the territory from the broader perspective of urbanisation are assigned a secondary role only. This article, however, takes a close look at two projects from the 1930’s that took the emerging condition of dispersal as their starting point and which both reflect on the role of urbanisation in the reproduction of the conditions in which industrialisation, among other processes of modernisation, can take place. In particular aspects surrounding the Belgian electrification are examined. Although not one of their main drivers, the electrification is both intertwined with the rise of industrial production and the development of an urban modern lifestyle. Only in the 1930’s, however, Belgian spatial planners started to explore issues concerning the distribution of electricity and its spatial and economic consequences. Both projects are embedded within the international debate on the functional city and present Belgium as a particular case. They show the general delay and mismatch between the process of industrialisation and urbanisation because of the nation’s chosen development path, both in spatial and temporal terms

Rethinking mobility at the urban-transportation-geography nexus

Building on the main sections of the book, this concluding chapter identifies four thematic areas for future research into the urban-transportation-geography nexus as follows: (1) the everyday experience of transport and mobility in the “ordinary city”; (2) the environment and the urban politics of mobility; (3) connected cities and competitive states; and (4) transportation mobility and new imaginaries of city-regional development

Water infrastructure and social housing in Bogotá: an intersection between modern water management and social housing production

En la actualidad Bogotá afronta la presión de construir viviendas sociales en ecosistemas frágiles, áreas rurales o zonas propensas a las inundaciones, y al mismo tiempo proteger estas áreas para asegurar la capacidad de resiliencia del medio ambiente. Ante esta contradicción, la pregunta de investigación es: ¿Cómo se pueden modificar las tendencias de urbanización para crear una interacción que favorezca el manejo sustentable del agua? Con el fin de responder esta pregunta ésta comunicación presenta un análisis histórico de planes de alcantarillado y control hidráulico desarrollados desde 1990, junto con una revisión de proyectos de vivienda social representativos, e investiga la interacción entre estos dos campos. El análisis permite definir diferentes etapas en la transformación física del sistema hídrico que se basan en los cambios universales de paradigma en la gestión del agua e ilustra diferentes construcciones socio-culturales en torno a la naturaleza, además analiza la producción de vivienda en relación a la transformación del sistema hídrico.Currently, Bogotá faces the pressure to continue to urbanize fragile ecosystems, rural lands and flood prone areas with low-cost housing projects and simultaneously protect these areas to ensure environmental resilience. Given this contradiction, the question is how urbanization trends could be reversed into a constructive interplay with a revised water management? In order to that, this paper provides an historical analysis of representative water infrastructure projects, urban plans and housing projects in Bogotá developed after 1900 and investigates the interplays between this two realms. The analysis allows to define different stages in the physical transformation of the water system that are based on universal paradigm shifts in water management and illustrates different socio-cultural constructions around nature. It also analysis the production of social housing in relation to the water system transformation

Developer-Planner Interaction in Transportation and Land Use Sustainability, MTI Report 01-21

This study argues that significant unmet demand exists for alternatives to conventional auto-oriented development; and further that planning interventions that restrict densities and land use mixing in developed areas are a major reason that this demand remains unmet. In order to explore these hypotheses, this study carried out two principal investigations. The first is a national survey of developers, randomly selected from the database of the Urban Land Institute in Washington, DC, the premiere national organization of land developers. Overall, the survey reveals considerable interest on the part of the private development community in developing in a fashion that is more compact than regulations currently allow. This interest varied by region, with the greatest interest expressed in the densely settled regions of the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Developers in the Southwest and South Central regions (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) expressed considerably less interest in developing in a more dense or mixed-use fashion than permitted by current regulation. Similarly, interest in developing more intensely than current regulations permit varied by setting. Little such interest exists for development in rural areas, but developers\u27 interest in such development in inner suburbs was especially keen

A People's History Of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation

Who are the people leading the charge in urban transportation? As our report explains, the short answer is that it takes leaders from three different sectors of urban society to make change happen quickly.First, there needs to be a robust civic vanguard, the more diverse their range of skills and participation, the better. Second, mayors, commissioners and other city leaders need to create the mandate and champion the change. The third sector is the agency staff. When these three sectors align, relatively quick transformation is possible. Several cities, including New York and Pittsburgh, recently experienced this alignment of a healthy civic community, a visionary and bold mayor and transportation head, and internal agency champions. Our report also highlighted the potential of other cities, such as Charlotte, where the civic sector continues to build on and widen their base