Showing papers in "Progress in Planning in 2006"

Comparing metropolitan governance: The cases of Montreal and Toronto

Abstract: The transformation of metropolitan governance cannot be understood without adopting a double reading frame referring on the one hand to the actual content of policies aimed at the metropolitan scale, their raison d’etre, the macro-economic logics that underlie them, and on the other hand to the configurations of actors and institutions which evolved strongly in the last 20 years. Essentially, the metropolitan level, beyond the municipal, progressively became (and not without conflict or opposition) the new territory of reference for political leaders as well as for economic ones. Big cities bring pressures for a new configuration of intergovernmental relations. In this institutional and political flux, the main challenge of public policy-making is to stabilize a place for exchanges between institutions. There seem to be an emerging political space at the metropolitan scale, where collective action and claims for local democracy unfold. The recent reforms have created more and more organized local and metropolitan societies. Metropolitanization also means an internal reconstitution of the political sphere and its articulation with civil society. There is a diversification of local and metropolitan responsibilities and activities, from the

Design codes: their use and potential

Abstract: Design codes are nothing new, but in recent years have increasingly been identified. both in the urban design literature and in practice. as tools that might help to deliver better quality development, more efficiently, and in a more inclusive manner that better integrates the contributions of key stakeholders. This paper reports on a research project that has sought to establish what is already known about design codes, in order that lessons from that existing experience can feed into the future development of design coding. The paper draws on an extensive literature review. a survey of existing practice in England. and on five case studies of design codes that have been used to deliver development on the ground. An analytical framework is first developed which integrates the three sources of data, which are then presented in the chapters that follow. The framework is used again in the final chapter to draw out conclusions. Based on the findings. it is argued that despite the design, certainty and integration benefits that codes seem particularly suited to deliver, design codes are only one means to deliver these benefits. Furthermore, they may not be the quickest, most inclusive or most resource efficient means to do so.

Public space in the “blue cities” of Russia

Abstract: The balance between the public and private realms is an important characteristic of all societies, a key issue in both advanced democracies as well as less-democratic states. The categories of public and private, however, could vary significantly in their meaning in different societies (Oswald and Voronkov, 2003). In the writings of Soviet sociologists, one can rarely find the term private in use. This directly reflects the tenets of the communist ideology according to which the life of every person has to be “public” at all times. The ideal Soviet citizens, it was proclaimed, should identify themselves with the Soviet society and subordinate their private interests to the social aims of the state (Shlapentokh, 1989). Thus, patterns of public behavior were prescribed as a common standard instilled in the public conscience through the various venues of the Soviet propaganda machine. The concept of public space in Soviet town planning is most clearly exemplified in the so-called “blue cities” of Russia. This colloquial term was popularized by a song in the Soviet movie “Two Sundays,” which depicted the dream of a better life in post-war Russia, associated with the founding of new cities in the east. These new urban places springing up beyond the Urals quickly became a symbol of progress and prosperity (Tolstoy, 1979). The fact that they were not open to the public gave rise to all kinds of speculation about the reality of life in them, contributing further to their mysterious appeal. The majority of the Blue Cities were founded during the period of big industrialization programs, between 1955 and 1975, in the northern parts of Siberia and the Far East. The availability of enormous resources of space and minerals in this part of the country combined with the availability of cheap labor resulted in an extensive economic rise of these regions (Tumanik, 2001). Within the span of two decades, close to 800 new towns were built, casting a net of settlements over the remote and sparsely populated lands of the North1 (Brade et al., 1998). Many of them were developed as highly specialized military, industrial, and research centers (Semzov, 1970) located along new transport lines and development axes leading from important cities along the Trans-Siberian railway to the north. After the 1970s, new cities were created as part of a plan to concentrate different industry branches, such as natural oil and gas refineries, the nuclear industry, and the mining industries used to recover natural resources such as nickel, platinum, and diamonds.

Regional development as a policy for growth with equity: The State of Ceara (Brazil) as a model

Abstract: We consider the well-known and painful problem of countries, mainly in the developing world, that suffer not only from low levels of economic development, but also from high levels of inequality and poverty. They struggle to solve their development problems by implementing various policies for economic growth (investing in infrastructures and education, providing incentives for capital investments, etc.), but in many cases it seems that economic growth, even when it is achieved, does not necessarily resolve the fundamental problems of poverty and unequal income distribution (Selowsky, 1981; Cardoso and Helwege, 1992). The fact that national economic growth does not necessarily imply a diminution of poverty or inequality may be explained by the argument that economic growth involves a concentration of efforts in specific economic sectors or population groups, such as in the ‘big-push’ theory (Rosenstein-Rodan, 1961). The diminution of inequality is expected to be achieved at a later stage, mostly as a result of a ‘trickle-down’ effect: the ‘unbalanced growth’ theory of Hirschman (1988) considers development as a chain of disequilibria, Progress in Planning 65 (2006) 131–199 www.elsevier.com/locate/pplann