Birmingham’s Eastside story: making steps towards sustainability?

Sustainability has come to play a dominant discursive role in the UK planning system, particularly relating to urban regeneration. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role that sustainability plays in a major regeneration programme, known as Eastside, currently underway in Birmingham, the UK. That this £6 billion redevelopment is now widely talked about by such key players as Birmingham City Council and the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands, as having a central sustainability agenda points to the growing importance of the ideal of sustainability in planning and regeneration agendas. In this paper, we investigate in detail how and why sustainability has become part of the planning discourse for Eastside and critically evaluate what impact, if any, this is having on public policy decision-making

Justice in transport policy

For the last hundred years or so, transport and planning systems have been based on the assumption that people had access to a car. What happens to people who have no such opportunity? Rural shops and facilities close, urban city centres degenerate leaving poorer people with little or no local goods and services. The increase in movement accorded to that part of the population with access to a car has left the other part of the population worse off than they had been before. This has had particularly bad consequences for those members of society who are already losing out, especially poor, elderly, disabled and young people. These people are dependent on others: neighbours, family or friends (if they have them), or what society chooses to dispense (if they do not).This is often seen as a transport, urban or rural planning problem. However, it is much more serious than that. People are being left without access to fundamental aspects of society: health care, education, legal and electoral rights in addition to affordable nutritious food. As a result they are losing out on the benefits of living within a society because the transport system is unable to accommodate their needs. The direction taken by transport and planning over the past hundred years or so has managed to open up enormous opportunities for some elements of society at the expense of restricting access to basic rights for others.The problem now is that society has designed itself to be inaccessible for certain parts of the population who have no means of reaching what are often considered basic aspects of modern life. These people are excluded from full participation in society as a result of a conscious decision to encourage movement rather than access. This has the unintended consequence that those who are unable, for whatever reason, to avail themselves of the means of movement, are also unable to obtain independent access to activities to which they are theoretically entitled as of right. This is inherently unjust.Transport should be available to all in a form that they can use independently because it is the means by which access to the fundamental activities is obtained. In general, this means what we might call ?public transport?: a transport system which the public is able to use. This suggests that the default transport system ? the one that should be designed and implemented as a starting point ? is the public transport system in its widest sense. Design for car traffic is secondary: it includes one part of the population at the expense of the rest. Devising measures that will help planners to plan such a system and which will demonstrate that access is sufficient is a matter of urgency. Such a measure would allow society to decide exactly what it means by ?sufficient? transport ? e.g. maximum walking time to a doctor?s surgery, fresh food, school ? and to allocate funds accordingly. The provision of accessible transport is a necessary element of making a just society

Sustainable Settlement Criteria, Eco-cities and Prospects in Central and Eastern Europe

Eco-city movements constitute a special segment of the sustainable settlement aspirations. Using the classification devised by Mark Roseland, the paper established that the eco-city movement aims at achieving a new, consistent urban solution, while trying also to implement this solution in practice. The movement itself can be traced back to the 1970s in Berkeley, California. Since 1990, a series of international conferences has helped those following this approach to exchange experiences internationally. Eco-city models make efforts to create comprehensive solutions, so that their approach amalgamates the social (community, cultural), economic and ecological dimensions. Implementing solutions in practice requires a manageable, people-centred scale and participants who handle it as their own objective. These conditions make eco-city initiatives territorially limited sustainability experiments. The last decade and a half have brought huge and rapid social changes in the CEE transition countries, with post-industrial views and pressures combining with a learning process for collaboration in a new market economy. There were overestimates of the degree of environmental consciousness to be found in transition societies. These expectations were belied. The main trends have been along the Western path, with replication of all its mistakes. Under these circumstances social lifestyle experiments such as the eco-city movement enjoy relative narrow support: very few followers and relatively little public interest in such experiments. Sectoral division is frequent within environmental (and other) projects. Although there are several movements, they are on the scale of an eco-village, rather than an eco-city

Transport, Social Equity and Capabilities in East Beijing

This chapter utilises the Capabilities Approach to assess different levels of social equity in relation to transport provision in East Beijing. The aim of the analysis is to explore the different levels of social equity relative to gender, age, hukou, personal income and car ownership, specifically in terms of capabilities and functionings, that is, we investigate how the perceived opportunity to travel and access activities as well as actual travel differs across population groups. East Beijing, and in particular the district of Guomao, is used as a case study, to illustrate features of a relatively wealthy area with abundant transport resources. The research analysis shows that capabilities and functionings differ according to an individual’s socio-economic characteristics. In transport planning, in China and beyond, we would argue that transport-related social inequity has been largely overlooked in developing transport systems and is not considered to any significant extent in project appraisal

URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Nigerian cities are witnessing high rate of environmental deterioration and are rated among urban areas with the lowest livability index in the world. It is estimated that between 20 percent and 30 percent of the urban population enjoy decent urban life in the country. Although studies have identified various environmental problems in Nigeria, little attention has been given to their implications for sustainable development in literature. This paper therefore examined the causes and implications of increasing environmental deterioration for sustainable development in the country. Relying on archival records and observations, this paper identified colonial antecedents of Nigerian cities, rapid urbanization and poor psychological orientation of residents as being responsible for the current situation. The paper highlighted the three –fold effects on the human health, the economy and ecological system and suggested that the application of planning, economic, legal, institutional as well as educational tools will address the situation

Migration, Risk and Livelihoods: A Chinese Case

China has turned from a ‘low risk’ to a ‘high risk’ society since the start of the market reforms in the late 1970s. Market, while bringing diverse livelihood opportunities to rural people, has simultaneously distributed risks, and the exposure and vulnerability to them unequally among different social groups. This paper attempts to apply the risk concept to the study of one of the most socially disadvantaged groups in China, namely rural-urban migrants, through analysing the narratives of members of a migratory family of the Hui Muslim national minority from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, who run a business in the northern city of Tianjin. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the research adopts an actor-oriented perspective combined with qualitative longitudinal research methodology (or ‘extended case method’) to delineate a livelihood trajectory of this family, and explore the relationships between livelihood, risk, social networks, agency and public policy interventions

The Submission Of Public Facilities For The Developer Sustainability

This research analyzes the submission of the public facility and social facility by a developer in the city of Depok. This research also analyzes the implication of the submission inconsistencies in the implementation of public facilities and social facilities. This research is normative legal research method covering investigation of legal principles and law norms related to the submission of public and social housing facilities by the developer. The research results show that the developer has submitted the public housing facilities, but has not properly submitted the social facilities namely sport center and the mosque which have ever been promised or informed to the house owners. The deviation of submission give impact on the following project. The community does not trust the DeveloperIntisariPenelitian ini menganalisis penyediaan fasiltas umum dan fasilitas sosial yang dibangun oleh sebuah Perusahaan pengembang di kota Depok. Penelitian ini juga menganalisis dampak Perubahan penyediaan fasilitas umum dan fasilitas sosial Perumahan terhadap keberlangsungan USAha pengembang. Penelitianini adalah metode penelitian hukum normatif yang mencakup asas-asas hukum dan kaidah hukum yang relevan dengan penyediaan fasilitas umum dan fasilitas sosial Perumahan oleh suatu pengembang. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Pengembang telah memenuhi kewajiban menyediakan fasilitas umum, namun tidak melaksanakan penyerahan fasilitas sosial berupa pusat olahraga dan masjid sebagaimana telah pernah dijanjikan dan dipublikasikan kepada para pemilik rumah. Penyimpangan tersebut berakibat terhambatnya kelangsungan USAha pengembang, Masyarakat kurang percaya kepada Pengembang

European Regional Development Policies: History and Current Issues

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the European regional development funds do not allow simultaneous achievement of goals of efficiency and equity when they are dedicated to financing transportation infrastructures. The paper first gives some insights on the history and the nature of regional development funds. Then we focus on the degree to which Ireland, Spain and Portugal (but not Greece), the main beneficiaries of regional policies, have been able to move to the European average (in terms of per capita income) since their membership in the EU, which also corresponds to the time when regional assistance was initiated in these countries. Empirical evidence also reveals that income disparities are increasing among regions within each of these countries and this raises the question as to whether the impact of regional funds is or is not rather favorable to this particular convergence pattern, given that one of the primary objectives of regional funding has been to ensure greater cohesion over the whole European territory. The answer comes mainly from the type of infrastructure regional funds finance. Since a significant part of regional funds is devoted to transportation issues, their impact on regional development has to be seen in the light of characteristics of the transport sector and the specific requirements in transport of each individual sector. The paper concludes that transportation infrastructures promote the country's aggregate growth but cannot be seen as an efficient instrument to reduce interregional disparities in Europe.published or submitted for publicatio

Toward the Development of Egyptian Cities A Proposed Reference Guide for Developing the Visual Image of Egyptian Cities in 2050

This research paper focuses on the developments and changes in the design and shaping of Egyptian cities and their visual image. A discussion of the prevalent urban patterns and trends and the development of the Egyptian city’s visual image is followed by an appraisal of the future vision of Egypt in 2050. The paper reviews principal recent developments, mechanisms of implementing sustainability and their effect on new cities and emerging urban planning principles to determine the impact of recent developments on the visual image of the Egyptian city. A proposed reference guide for the visual image of the capital city follows. Results and recommendations are presented in the final section of the paper. Keywords: Urban Development, Egyptian Cities, Visual Image, future vision for new cities