Adaptive reuse of abandoned buildings for refugees: lessons from European context

The ongoing refugee crisis is described as the most important concern since the Second World War, which has caused a great displacement of people. Many of these immigrants have been departing towards Mediterranean countries, as first-line states, seeking for a chance to enter Europe. This situation has created a challenging condition for many refugee accepting cities as well as for the migrants to get integrated within the new society. This fact has had a great influence on the sustainability condition while the rapid and uncontrolled inflows can overwhelm the host countries' capacities to integrate new arrivals. In this regard, some European countries including Germany and Italy are coming about with strategies for accommodation and integration of these refugees in their countries. This paper aims to study and analyze two of the current case studies reflecting adaptive reuse strategies in European context for providing refugees' temporary housing facilities. In the context of this research, using the existing building stock introduced as the dominant strategy which can provide refugees with a proper shelter and also while providing the chance for their urban integration can contribute to revitalization of urban areas with the newcomers' participation. By analyzing the Berlin's largest refugee shelter inside Tempelhof Airport as the first case study, the major policies in Germany for providing refugee housing in national and local levels have been investigated. However, the second case study -Ex-Moi in Turin, is characteristically different from the case of Tempelhof airport of Berlin; since the refugees occupied the abandoned facility of the Olympic Village and settled down there. Regarding the fact that there is an urgent need for long-term policies and sustainable approaches to cope with the current refugee crisis, this research tries to shed a light on the path towards providing temporary housings by analyzing the challenges and opportunities of two different current case studies in Germany and Italy

Increasing poverty or statistical illusion? Patterns, dynamics and spatial disparities of relative poverty in Germany

As a result of social and economic transformations over the last two decades, poverty in Germany predominantly affects the unemployed, more so than in any other European Union country. This is partly a result of the reforms implemented by the Schröder government between 2003 and 2005. The present article uses two indicators to examine and present the dynamics and geographical disparities of poverty in Germany, and shows that although the considerable East-West and North-South contrasts persist, the most remarkable recent development is the increase in poverty in the cities of the North Rhine-Westfalia and Northern Germany.Mehr als in jedem anderen Land der Europäischen Union trifft Armut in Deutschland in erster Linie Arbeitslose, aber auch Alleinerziehende und Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund. Anhand von zwei statistischen Indikatoren der relativen Armut werden in diesem Aufsatz die Muster, Entwicklungen und räumlichen Disparitäten der Armut in Deutschland untersucht. Die großen regionalen Unterschiede (Nord–Süd und Ost–West) sind noch erkennbar, die bemerkenswerte Entwicklung in den letzten Jahren ist aber der Anstieg der Armut in Großstädten des Rheinlands und Norddeutschlands

Long-term challenges in urban housing: in the search for intersections between design and policy regulations

Current discussions on urban housing confirm the central role of design in dealing with the rapidly increasing complexities of urban challenges. Nonetheless, design often remains detached from decision-making at the level of building regulations and urban policies. Situated around the debate of greater socio-spatial sustainability, this paper aims to an integrated understanding of housing performance devising an analytical discussion of both the design and the policy-making approaches. To explore the interplay of design with policy and regulations, the paper looks at historical housing transformations in different contexts. It focuses on those morphological, spatial and legal affordances that, once embedded into the design of urban housing, can contribute to its sustainability over time. In response to numerous studies of disurbanism and failures of housing interventions in the cities, this paper examines in turn long-standing housing schemes, which remain relevant in space and time. The selected case studies cover a range of different urban housing types from highly mixed-use to pure residential: originally planned row housing in West Village, Manhattan, NYC and Islington, London, UK, and low-rise mass housing in Cité Ouvrière, Mulhouse, France. Comparative results indicate the significance of the following contributing factors to those settlements’ long-term viability: the flexibility of both regulations and building morphology (buildings, plots and blocks) at the various scales of the built environment; the combination of policies and management by various stakeholders at different levels; and the inherent spatio-temporal relation of the schemes with the urban whole. Overall, the paper seeks to inform the design of future housing through an evidence-based understanding of the impact of form and policies in housing longevity. Results suggest that there are certain, cross-cultural, spatial properties acting as shared factors between the practice of architectural design and urban housing governance

Critical Spatial Practices: A Trans-Scalar Study of Chinese \u3ci\u3eHutongs\u3c/i\u3e and American Alleyways

Across time and cultures, the built environment has been fundamentally shaped by forces of occupancy, obsolescence, and change. In an era of increasing political uncertainty and ecological decline, contemporary design practices must respond with critical actions that envision more collaborative and sustainable futures. The concept of critical spatial practice, introduced by architectural historian Jane Rendell, builds on Walter Benjamin and the late 20th century theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to propose multi-disciplinary design practices that more effectively address contemporary spatial complexities. These theoretical frameworks operate through trans-scalar means to resituate the built environment as a nexus of flows, atmospheres, and narratives (Rendell, 2010). Assuming an analogous relationship to the contemporary city, critical spatial practices traverse space and time to engage issues of migration, informality, globalisation, heterotopia, and ecology. This essay documents an interdisciplinary academic design studio that employed critical spatial practices to study correspondences between Chinese and American cities. Here, the notions of urban and interior are relational. Urbanism and interior spaces are viewed as intertwined aspects in the historical development of Beijing hutongs and Cincinnati alleyways. These hybrid exterior-interior civic spaces create sheltered public worlds and socio-spatial conditions that nurture people and culture

Formal Adaptability: A Discussion of Morphological Changes and their Impact on Density in Low-Rise Mass Housing

Upon building completion, housing value starts diminishing over time. If it fails to fulfil stakeholders’ long-term needs, the building becomes obsolescent. While some housing schemes survive, others do not, being inflexible in changes over time. This paper explores physical adaptability as a design characteristic that other things being equal, adds to longterm viability in urban housing. It addresses the topic by investigating the adaptability of urban form and the impact of physical adaptations on space consumption and density in low-income mass residential developments. It studies urban form, buildings, plots and streets in and for themselves independent of their use. The objective is to understand how the three elements adapt over time and which morphological characteristics determine their capacity to adapt, a property that may contribute to greater socio-spatial sustainability in the built environment. Taking ‘Cité Ouvrière’ as an example –a working-class housing scheme in Mulhouse (France)– the paper traces its transformation process from its birth till the beginning of 21st century. First, it focuses on the adaptability of the streets using space syntax analysis. Having the local network resisting to changes over time, its degree of adaptability has been subject to three factors: the morphology of blocks, the evolution of the wider city network, and the configurational relation of the two local and global networks. The second part of the paper discusses the building and plot types of Cité Ouvrière and their bottom-up typo-morphological evolution. Based on empirical and archival data, the study identifies eight ‘mechanisms’ of physical change and examines their impact on the built density using Berghauser Pont and Haupt’s Spacematrix density model at the level of building-plot compounds. Ultimately, the same model is used to describe the degree of adaptability as a matter of built density for four housing typologies. For buildings and plots, adaptability refers to their ability to accommodate effectively changes in their form over time. In the context of Cité Ouvrière, physical adaptations have transformed an initially uniform garden city into a morphologically heterogeneous and compact urban quarter. Despite the original standardisation, a variety of formal outcomes and typological mutations have emerged as a result of three morphological characteristics inherent in the original design: location within the city, low built intensity and small plot coverage providing surplus open space

Sustainable | Sustaining City Streets

Streets are an integral part of every city on Earth. They channel the people, vehicles, and materials that help make urban life what it is. They are conduits for the oft-taken-for-granted infrastructures that carry fresh water, energy, and information, and that remove excess stormwater and waste. The very air that we breathe—fresh or foul—flows through our street canyons. That streets are the arteries of the city is, indeed, an apt metaphor. But city streets also function as a front yard, linear ecosystem, market, performance stage, and civic forum, among other duties. In their various forms, streets are places of interaction and exchange, from the everyday to the extraordinary. As the editors affirm, the more we scrutinize, share, and activate sustainable approaches to streets, the greater the likelihood that our streets will help sustain life in cities and, by extension, the planet. While diverse in subject, the papers in this volume are unified in seeing the city street as the complex, impactful, and pliable urban phenomenon that it is. Topics range from greenstreets to transit networks to pedestrian safety and walkability. Anyone seeking interdisciplinary perspectives on what makes for good city streets and street networks should find this book of interest

The role of built environment practitioners in driving the socio-economic sustainability aspects of sustainable regeneration

In the United Kingdom (UK), over the past three decades efforts have been made to ensure adequate promotion of sustainability objectives through various policy initiatives. However, despite the effort and the existence of these policy initiatives, sustainability projects in particular, regeneration projects are yet to deliver their intended sustainability objectives. While there is a rise in demand for higher sustainability benefits by stakeholders such as clients, communities and policy makers, the delivery of sustainability benefits from sustainability regeneration projects are yet to meet the expectations of these stakeholders. This article provides an overview of sustainability benefits within the context of the sustainable regeneration projects in the UK from a study that examines the roles and sustainability drivers of construction practitioners towards the promotion of sustainability on their regeneration projects. To do so, a qualitative research approach is adopted using a semi-structured interview technique for the study. The data obtained was analysed using content analysis. The findings revealed that out of the eight socio-economic sustainability drivers presented to practitioners, enhancement of reputation was the most important ‘socio-economic’ sustainability driver while the least important driver was legislative and legal requirement. The findings further revealed that majority of practitioners/ organisations were promoting the socio-economic sustainability driver they believed will enable them to meet their own corporate business objectives