Shophouse and Thai urbanism : towards a 'software approach'?

The role of the shophouse, both as typology and urban stock, in Thai urbanism as a type which is both universal-regional and local. Also discusses the potential of shophouses for sustainable regeneration of Thai urban spaces and practices.

The idea of creative reuse urbanism — the roles of local creativities in culturally sustainable place-making : Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore

Gentrification is a part of the process of urban renewal which generates significant, and often negative, social impact on existing neighborhood structures, as it tends to be driven predominantly by simple rules of an economy and imperatives of a globalized, "free" market, insensitive to the subtleties of local culture and values. This idea of creative reuse urbanism questions the necessity of extreme, damaging impacts of gentrification. It argues for an urbanism which is culturally rooted, locally related and deeply contextualized. This chapter shows that such urbanism is not just another utopian concept, but a living reality. Examples from Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore demonstrate a rich spectrum of possibilities, a kind of pre-gentrification which has the capacity to get involved in creative reuse and recycling of existing stocks and inheritances, thus becoming a positive contributor to sustainable urban regeneration. Presented reused buildings and introduced activities are active ingredients in larger process of place-making in the three cities. Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore were observed through the lenses of sustainability and cultural difference, with main focus on intersections between the practices of reuse and local creativity.

Urbanismo y sistemas agrarios periurbanos / Urbanism and periurban agrarian ecosystems

Publicación de los resultados de la primera fase del proyecto “Integración de los espacios agrarios periurbanos en la planificación urbana y territorial desde el enfoque de los servicios de los ecosistemas - PAEc-SP” (financiado por el Plan Nacional de Investigación I+D+d 2008-2012), que se presentaron en el Seminario internacional celebrado en Madrid en noviembre de 2012. Esta segunda edición, de septiembre de 2013, incorpora las modificaciones realizadas a partir de los comentarios y recomendaciones de los expertos invitados, y de los agentes territoriales a los que se presentaron los primeros resultados de la investigación.

Zuazo in Caracas: The urbanism of exile in Venezuela 1937

Urbanismo de Zuazo en Caracas

Urbanism and dictatorship: perspectives of the field of urban studies

In 1933 public letter to Wilhelm Furtwängler, Joseph Goebbels synthesized the official understanding of the link between politics, art and society in the early steps of the Third Reich. By assuming the ethos of art, politics acquired a plastic agency to mold its objects —population and the state— as a unified entity in the form of a ‘national-popular community’ (Volksgemeinschaft); in turn, by infusing art with a political valence, it became part of a wider governmental apparatus that reshaped aesthetic discourses and practices. Similar remarks could be made about the ordering of cities and territories in this period. Dictatorial imaginations mobilized urbanism —including urban theory, urban design and planning— as a fundamental tool for social organization. Under their aegis the production of space became a moment in a wider production of society. Many authors suggest that this political-spatial nexus is intrinsic to modernity itself, beyond dictatorial regimes. In this light, I propose to use dictatorial urbanisms as an analytical opportunity to delve into some concealed features of modern urban design and planning. This chapter explores some of these aspects from a theoretical standpoint, focusing on the development of dictatorial planning mentalities and spatial rationalities and drawing links to other historical episodes in order to inscribe the former in a broader genealogy of urbanism. Needless to say, I don’t suggest that we use dictatorships as mere templates to understand modern productions of space. Instead, these cases provide a crude version of some fundamental drives in the operationalization of urbanism as an instrument of social regulation, showing how far the modern imagination of sociospatial orderings can go. Dictatorial urbanisms constituted a set of experiences where many dreams and aspirations of modern planning went to die. But not, as the conventional account would have it, because the former were the antithesis of the latter, but rather because they worked as the excess of a particular orientation of modern spatial governmentalities — namely, their focus on calculation, social engineering and disciplinary spatialities, and their attempt to subsume a wide range of everyday practices under institutional structuration by means of spatial mediations. In my opinion the interest of dictatorial urbanisms lies in their role as key regulatory episodes in a longer history of our urban present. They stand as a threshold between the advent of planning in the late 19th and early 20th century, and its final consolidation as a crucial state instrument after World War II. We need, therefore, to pay attention to these experiences vis-à-vis the alleged ‘normal’ development of the field in contemporary democratic countries in order to develop a full comprehension thereof.

On urbanism in the early years of Francoism

On urbanism in the early years of Francoism

Networked Utopia : the Architecture and Urbanism of the Bata Shoe Company Satellite Cities = Utopia en red : arquitectura y urbanismo en las ciudades satélite de la Bata Shoe Company, 1930 al presente

From its humble beginnings as a small workshop established by Tomáš Baťa in 1874, the Bata Shoe Company became a gigantic concern in the 1920s, built on the principles of scientific management and welfare capitalism. The growth of the company engulfed Zlín (in today’s Czech Republic), its hometown, and transformed it into a modern industrial garden city satisfying the needs of both a growing industrial population, and those of the company itself. As a reaction to the aftermath of the crisis of 1929, the enterprise began a strategy of decentralization and international expansion characterized by the design and construction of a series of modern industrial towns that replicated the model of Zlín around the globe. This study is an exhaustive survey of these cities, their rationale, design, and their postindustrial conditions; it is a comparative work that has used field trips, photography, interviews, and archival material to explain the logics behind Bata’s project, to document the design and implementation of the model to multiple contexts and geographies, and to evaluate of the urban legacy of this undertaking. Finally, the research explores the question of what can the design disciplines, and other parties involved, learn from a full synthesis on the history and urbanism of the Bata satellite cities with regard to the re-imagination and sustainability of contemporary industry-sponsored interventions in developing geographies. RESUMEN Con origen en un humilde y pequeño taller fundado en 1874 por Tomáš Baťa, la Bata Shoe Company creció hasta convertirse en una gigantesca empresa en los anos 20, fundada en principios de control científico de la producción y capitalismo de bienestar. El crecimiento de la compañía se extendió por Zlín (en la actual República Checa), su pueblo de nacimiento, y la transformó en una moderna ciudad jardín industrial capaz de satisfacer las necesidades tanto de una población en alza como de la propia empresa. Como reacción a la crisis de 1929, Bata inició una estrategia de descentralización y expansión internacional caracterizada por el proyecto y construcción de modernas ciudades industriales que replicaron el modelo de Zlín por el mundo. Esta tesis es un estudio exhaustivo de estas ciudades: las razones detrás del proyecto, su diseño, y su condición post-industrial; es un estudio comparativo que se ha servido de trabajo de campo, documentación fotográfica, entrevistas y materiales de archivo para explicar la lógica detrás del proyecto de Bata, documentar el diseño e implementación de tal modelo en múltiples contextos y geografías, y valorar el legado urbano de esta empresa. Finalmente, la investigación evalúa qué podrían aprender las disciplinas del diseño y otras partes implicadas de una síntesis completa de la historia y el urbanismo de las ciudades satélite de Bata, en lo relativo a la reinvención y sostenibilidad de proyectos contemporáneos de la industria en geografías en desarrollo.

U4- Landscape Urbanism teaching materials

This teaching material is an elemental information about Landscape Urbanism subject and the introduction to Landscape concept.

The city: urbanism and urbanization in major world regions.

"Readings" at the end of each chapter.

Az esztétikai alapú várostervezés és kapcsolata a tájépítészettel a XX. században. Út a "New Urbanism" és a gyalogosbarát város elméletéhez

Kutatásunk két korszakot vizsgál alaposabban. A XIX. század végének és a XX. század első évtizedeinek városépítészetelméletéből a „Civic Art”-ot mutatjuk be, valamint az ennek alapjain, a modernizmus városépítészetének kritikájaként létrejött, az 1960-as évektől kezdődő „Urban Design”-t. Mindkét éra jellemezhető egy olyan tervezői attitűddel, városépítészet elméleti kultúrával, amelynek célja a jól használható terek (Cultures of good place-making) kialakítása volt (Bohl, 2009). A két korszak összehasonlításánál fontos megemlíteni, hogy egyrészt sok szempontból azonos gazdasági-társadalmi jelenségek zajlottak, másrészt az ezekre nyújtott reakció azonos társadalmi csoportoktól érkezett. Az előbbi példájaként lehet említeni a drámai gazdasági és technológiai változásokat, a gyors iramú városfejlődést és migrációt, valamint a hagyományos városközpontok felbomlását. Az ezekre a problémákra felmerülő válaszok mindkét esetben a tervező mellett a közösségek építésében szerepet játszó szakmák (ingatlan és üzleti szféra, ipar, államszervezet), valamint a lakosság különböző csoportjaiban fogalmazódtak meg (Bohl, 2009). Tanulmányunk a tájépítészet szerepét kívánja feltérképezni ezen irányzatokban, s választ keres arra, hogy szakmánk jelentősége és érdekeltsége hogyan változott az idők során. A kérdés, hogy a napjainkig meghatározó „urban design” teoretika a városi szabadterek alakítása terén tudott-e a „Civic Art” korszakának tanulságaiból meríteni?