A debate on the top-down approach to architectural interventions in conflicted historic cities: Jerusalem's Museum of tolerance

The focus of this paper is the extravagant architectural works designed and built in conflicted historic cities, where continuity with the physical environment and social and political realities is critical. The paper will discuss the decision-making process at both the planning and urbandesign level and the architectural-design level. For this purpose, the paper will critically evaluate an attempt to intervene architecturally in the conflict zone of the historic walled city of Jerusalem, focusing on Frank Gehry’s design proposal for the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem (MOTJ) and the contradictory symbolic meanings this kind of architecture creates in relation to conflict. The MOTJ project, which has followed a top-down decision-making process since its conception and whose goal is to contribute to peace in Jerusalem, is a helpful example for understanding the relationship between the trilogy of conflict, historic cities, and architectural intervention. The paper concludes that architectural interventions can successfully contribute to conflicted historic sites figuratively and literally only if they are truthful to the empirical reality of the context and based on real and common grounds recognized by all parties involved throughout the process

Urban morphology within architecture and urban planning curricula : the case of educational programs in Turkey and Northern Cyprus

Cities are the settlements where the physical, social and natural structures that make up their formal diversity come together. Urban patterns created by the combination of urban areas (streets, squares), parcels and buildings, which are the basic physical components of the city, form the shapes of the cities. Urban morphology can be defined as the study of urban form in the most general sense. According to the definition of Whitehand (2001), urban morphology forms a basis for generating ideas to produce urban form in the future, while examining the cyclical nature of urban growth, adaptation, and redevelopment processes in the production of urban forms and the effects of different actors. The main basis of this study is that urban morphological studies will provide important inputs to the design and planning processes for architects, urban designers, and urban planners, who are the leading actors in the shaping of urban spaces. In this context, the main purpose of this study is to reveal and explore the scope and methodologies of teaching/learning urban morphology within the architecture and urban planning programs in Turkey and Cyprus, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. For this purpose, the curricula of architecture and urban planning undergraduate and graduate programs in Turkey and Northern Cyprus will be analyzed separately, to locate the position of "urban morphology" within the whole program layout. Additionally, a survey will be conducted with scholars who teach urban morphology in relevant programs. With the findings to be obtained at the end of the study, it is expected to make predictions about the context in which urban morphological studies are handled in architecture and urban planning education and how this will be reflected in architecture and planning practices

Exploring the Severity of Factors Influencing Sustainable Affordable Housing Choice: Evidence from Abuja, Nigeria

It is a shared global experience that a house which is already expensive will become even more costly. This experience is partly because housing supply has always failed to satisfy demand. In many developing countries, the issues of affordable housing supply center on shortage and poor distribution. Recent studies on this subject reveal that distribution-related problems can be addressed through choice reconciliations. Therefore, understanding how housing affordability problems affect housing choice enables a broader interpretation of the issue. Thus, critical in housing policy making and implementation, as well as towards sustainable development/delivery of affordable housing programs. In Nigeria, housing choice has never been investigated, neither has it been studied within the framework of sustainability. It is not a common strategy to incorporate sustainability into the concept of affordable housing choice. However, integrating sustainability into the concept of affordable housing choice allows for the introduction of wide-ranging and broader criteria such as environmental and social factors, which are routinely neglected in housing choice literature. Therefore, this study aims at filling this literature gap by identifying the determinants of sustainable affordable housing choice (SAHC) in the study area. The purpose is to establish the severity of the identified factors based on respondents’ perception and discuss the agreement levels amongst the three respondent groups. Regarding this, a comprehensive list of 43 different factors contributing to SAHC were determined through a systematic literature review. Based on which a survey of 83 affordable housing applicants, 102 and 69 residents of affordable housing estate and shantytown respectively, was performed. Through statistical analysis, results reveal that the factors affecting SAHC cuts across economic, social and environmental dimensions. Also, there is an agreement (correlation) by each group and the overall ranking of all participants. The tests confidence level for all inferential statistics was 95%, which implies 0.05 level of significance. These figures indicate that the data were obtained from the same population and points to the relatedness of factors identified. Using principal component analysis (PCA), the 43 different factors were narrowed down to seven. The study findings show that “Housing price in relation to income” and “rental price in relation to income” are the most severe factors with relatively high overall scoring, which is consistent with similar studies in this domain. However, it was uncovered that respondents placed high priorities on other non-economic factors like security (safety), housing location and building type. The study presents an interesting topic, usually unexplored in the field of decisions and public policy. It argues that at present, the housing affordability concerns and affordable housing choice determinants in the study area cannot be restrictedly defined in economic terms. Our findings build on previous studies and reiterate the need to consider a broader view towards affordable housing problem. It offers salient information to stakeholders and real estate companies, which could aid sustainable development/delivery of housing projects that are affordable