3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #4. Liveability

This policy brief showcases a successful initiative to improve urban liveability in a shrinking city through repurposing its historical heritage. It shows how old industrial buildings could be used to accommodate new creative arts entrepreneurs and host high profile cultural events. The brief focusses on Spode Works, a 10-acre bone china pottery and homewares production site located in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with population loss. Building on local knowledge and stakeholders’ experiences of using the Spode site after the factory’s closure in 2009, this brief demonstrates how a shrinking city can challenge a negative stereotype, raise its profile, and improve attractiveness by generating new creative arts and culture dynamics from within the effectively repurposed old industrial assets. The key lesson learnt is that to enhance liveability one should not drive it down to specific concerns like housing, jobs, or leisure. Urban liveability is about the dynamism and wider significance of a place. These qualities can be improved by a visionary local authority, enthusiastic civil society, and risk-taking private sector partners, all committed to urban regeneration and raising the city profile through the development of local creative capacity for impactful events and knowledge exchange

3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #3. Compact connected city

This policy brief displays a successful compact and connected city solution – the consolidation of Staffordshire University into a distinct University Quarter – that has been implemented in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with population loss. Building on local knowledge and stakeholders’ experiences, it shows how better integration of local knowledge infrastructure can improve the compactness and connectivity of the city. It reveals a number of conditions to make it happen. The key lesson is that achieving compactness and connectivity depends on building unique university expertise, meeting the current and future requirements, and aspirations of the academic staff, students, and visitors, and on providing good learning, teaching, and everyday life experience

3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #1. Resilient urban economy & municipal finance

This policy brief features a successful solution to low economic productivity through the development of a Central Business District (CBD). This was achieved in the 2010s in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with economic restructuring and demographic decline. Building on local knowledge and the stakeholders’ experience in implementing this project, this brief demonstrates how to develop a solid evidence base, design and build a CBD that works effectively for the whole city. The key lesson learnt is that to build a CBD, one should utilise non-traditional co-production and experimental methods for managing a major project in an uncertain and risky environment, combining technical skills and expertise, whilst tapping into the day-to-day knowledge and experience of the local community. The brief offers a set of policy recommendations on enabling mechanisms for an effective CBD delivery

Makroregionalnye tendentsii razvitiya gorodov byvshego SSSR [The macro-regional trends in the development of cities in the ex-USSR states]

The article reviews key trends in the development of cities in ex-Soviet states. It discusses demographic and socio-economic preconditions for the development of cities, changes in urban governance and spatial planning systems, the state of housing. It also highlights factors conditioning the uneven development of post-Soviet cities

OntoAgency: An agency-based ontology for tracing control, ownership and decision-making in smart buildings

This article proposes an agency-based design ontology (OntoAgency) to systematically trace the relationships between stakeholders who own, control, and decide upon the benefits and experiences provided by smart building services. The ontology associates ‘smartness’ to different building operation domains and assigns their functionalities to agents involved in the flow of data and decision making. It enables control paths to be traced back to specific people, machines, and companies behind smart operations – including those that appear to be ‘external’ to a smart building. Based on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the ontology connects knowledge from the social sciences to technical knowledge from building design, construction, operation and controls. The need in developing this ontology originates from the limits of conventional design and engineering ontologies, particularly with respect to their unproblematic take on the interplay between different social and technical systems and their neglect to model the varied abilities of stakeholders to exert control over, and benefit from, the technical systems and operations. The proposed ontology addresses these gaps by offering a more realistic and versatile model of inter-agents relationships. It can also highlight points of consented and unconsented data leakage and associated security issues. This knowledge becomes critical for designing and managing increasingly more complex smart building systems

Habitat III Regional Report on Housing and Urban Development for the UNECE Region: Towards a City-Focused, People-Centred and Integrated Approach to the New Urban Agenda

Recognition that sustainable development needs to be the central pillar of urbanisation has become a clear and present concern of stakeholders in the 20 years since Habitat II. The attention of stakeholders to sustainable development in urbanisation has been steadily increasing in the last several years in all regions of the world. In the region covered by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe with its 56 member States, the importance of sustainable urban development and the role of cities is now central to public, political, business and scientific debates. This regional report to Habitat III will not only contribute to the debate among stakeholders in the region but also inform the New Urban Agenda and the negotiations on the outcome document of the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development that will take place in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. This analysis of urban development in the large and diverse region of UNECE, together with the conference conclusions, will serve a wide range of stakeholders in their efforts to improve the quality of urban development and to use this as a positive force to enable a more sustainable development in their cities and communities. It addresses a wide variety of issues that have a strong regional interconnected urban dimension – from urban structure, through environment and climate change, to job creation, affordable housing and equality. Sustainable urban development can be achieved through regional and sub-regional frameworks which guide the effective translation of sustainable development policies into concrete actions at the national and sub-national levels. UNECE and UN-Habitat will continue to work in close partnership by joining forces with the Programmes, Funds and Agencies of the United Nations to advance the findings of this Report in implementing the transformative Agenda 2030 and the outcome of Habitat III. We will strengthen joint efforts to promote existing instruments like the Geneva UN Charter on Sustainable Housing to make housing safer, more affordable, resilient, and available while encouraging investment and growth. Or the International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning that provide national governments, local authorities, civil society organizations and planning professionals with a global reference framework promoting more compact, socially inclusive, better integrated and connected cities and territories that foster sustainable urban development. Together, we will support policies and actions and encourage international cooperation at all levels to serve the Member States, their cities, and all stakeholders in their quest for sustainable urban development

The housing question and the production of uneven urban spatialities in Post-Soviet Moscow and Russia

Since the early 1990s, Russia's housing system, along with many other spheres of social life, has been undergoing radical changes, involving a shift from a state-led planned socialist system to that based on market principles. These reforms have generated multiple contradictions in the organization of housing and residential life, such as a fragmented housing policy, intensified residential inequalities, rapidly degrading Soviet era housing, and a situation when the majority of the population have little prospect of sustainability improving their housing status. Yet, at present, there is no comprehensive theory-driven analysis that would explore these complex and important developments and contradictions. This study aims at building a more comprehensive understanding of the housing and residential condition by integrating a critical geographical imagination into both classic and contemporary politico-economic thoughts in relation to the housing question. The study argues that housing is a central facet of 'the web of life' and is a socio-spatial arena through which the capitalist regime establishes itself in everyday life and where it is contested. Capitalism subjects hitherto universal housing and residential spaces to the praxis of accumulation by disposession, by which a scarcity of quality residential life is being created and, thus, new opportunities for extra profits are generated. Constituting these processes are new housing ideologies and practices that promote the reorganization of the complex matrix of socio-spatial relations centring on housing, from urban to national scales and along multiple spatialities. The argument develops through a set of cumulative approximations and case studies. Firstly, the processes of gentrification and a more systematic strategy of residential 'elitification' are discussed, by means of which urban space is structured according to residential 'prestige', producing exclusionary 'golden islands' of wealth accumulation. Secondly, the study moves on to reveal how the so-called national affordable housing project revokes the universal right to housing as inherited from the Soviet system to withdraw the state and to formulate new meanings and practices that only assist the more powerful interests. Thirdly, the study looks at how privatization and financialization spread into Soviet- era multi family housing spaces by reforming the existing socio-physical infrastructure that maintains these areas. It looks at how the hitherto universal housing and utility services undergo destructive fragmentation and wealth transfer. It is through this chaotic fragmentation of housing and residential life that the new commodity capitalism introduces and reproduces itself while also bringing serious contradictions into urban socio-spatial organization, with implications for social reproduction. Overall, the thesis proposes a unified conceptualisation of the housing and residential changes based on a critical ontology of space. It develops an understanding of housing beyond physical changes and abstract market representations to reveal housing as 'socio-spatial praxis' of capitalism and a means of class transformation. The study also sets a new agenda for policy and research, which reconsiders the housing question as a socio-spatial justice question.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The housing question and the production of uneven urban spatialities in Post-Soviet Moscow and Russia

Since the early 1990s, Russia's housing system, along with many other spheres of social life, has been undergoing radical changes, involving a shift from a state-led planned socialist system to that based on market principles. These reforms have generated multiple contradictions in the organization of housing and residential life, such as a fragmented housing policy, intensified residential inequalities, rapidly degrading Soviet era housing, and a situation when the majority of the population have little prospect of sustainability improving their housing status. Yet, at present, there is no comprehensive theory-driven analysis that would explore these complex and important developments and contradictions. This study aims at building a more comprehensive understanding of the housing and residential condition by integrating a critical geographical imagination into both classic and contemporary politico-economic thoughts in relation to the housing question. The study argues that housing is a central facet of 'the web of life' and is a socio-spatial arena through which the capitalist regime establishes itself in everyday life and where it is contested. Capitalism subjects hitherto universal housing and residential spaces to the praxis of accumulation by disposession, by which a scarcity of quality residential life is being created and, thus, new opportunities for extra profits are generated. Constituting these processes are new housing ideologies and practices that promote the reorganization of the complex matrix of socio-spatial relations centring on housing, from urban to national scales and along multiple spatialities. The argument develops through a set of cumulative approximations and case studies. Firstly, the processes of gentrification and a more systematic strategy of residential 'elitification' are discussed, by means of which urban space is structured according to residential 'prestige', producing exclusionary 'golden islands' of wealth accumulation. Secondly, the study moves on to reveal how the so-called national affordable housing project revokes the universal right to housing as inherited from the Soviet system to withdraw the state and to formulate new meanings and practices that only assist the more powerful interests. Thirdly, the study looks at how privatization and financialization spread into Soviet- era multi family housing spaces by reforming the existing socio-physical infrastructure that maintains these areas. It looks at how the hitherto universal housing and utility services undergo destructive fragmentation and wealth transfer. It is through this chaotic fragmentation of housing and residential life that the new commodity capitalism introduces and reproduces itself while also bringing serious contradictions into urban socio-spatial organization, with implications for social reproduction. Overall, the thesis proposes a unified conceptualisation of the housing and residential changes based on a critical ontology of space. It develops an understanding of housing beyond physical changes and abstract market representations to reveal housing as 'socio-spatial praxis' of capitalism and a means of class transformation. The study also sets a new agenda for policy and research, which reconsiders the housing question as a socio-spatial justice question.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Human settlements and environment

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