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The process of globalization has become a common factor in evolving cities in many developing countries. In Kurdistan Region, Northern Iraq, current urban redevelopment plans not only involve design features imported from elsewhere, but also substantially affect urban land use. The primary goal of the regional government is to transform Erbil, Kurdistan’s capital city, into a leading city in terms of attracting foreign investments and tourists. To achieve this, Kurdistan Regional Government is leaning towards urban transformation as the solution. The city is striving to achieve a global status and in doing so, it is inevitably involved in the process of displacement. This study explores neoliberal urban transformation process within Erbil’s historic city centre and its impacts on the local residents, which has resulted in the demolition of an old bazaar and the displacement of its merchants who were relocated into a new shopping mall. In order to achieve its objectives, this study employed in-depth interviews with relocated merchants from Delal Khaneh bazaar to Nishtiman Mall and key informants in the planning and redevelopment field, as well as personal field observation. The findings indicate that the displacement of merchants had both social and economic impacts. The lack of amenities and failure to apply appropriate design standards in the new mall, Nishtiman, are two other implementation failures that the findings reveal. The demolition of the old bazaar and the relocation of its merchants to the new mall illustrate a new form of spatial fix, where the poor are purged from the city centres, a neoliberal ideology that tries to conceal urban poverty. Based on the findings, this study proposes recommendations to Kurdistan’s Regional Government and to the city of Erbil to clarify and redefine their planning objectives and implementation. As well, the concept of public participation is reconsidered while the adaptation of urban design guidelines and thorough market assessment are proposed. This study contributes to the literature on the redevelopment of historic city centres, the development of shopping malls at city centres and the adaptation of neoliberal goals for cities in developing countries.

No abstract available / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Architecture / unrestricted

In Kiruna, a city transformation is taking place as a result of the mining company LKAB's iron ore mining. As the mining goes deeper, the city is affected above ground. The central parts of the city and 33% of the population will, according to the prognosis, be directly affected by the forthcoming urban transformation. The aim of the study is to reach an increased understanding of how individuals who are affected in different ways by urban transformation experience and create meaning in a new situation. The study also aims to investigate whether power dimensions have an impact on sensemaking and how it manifests itself. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate whether it is possible to find any common opinions in the creation of meaning despite the different individual backgrounds and experiences. The study’s results are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with individuals who are in some way affected by urban transformation. The theoretical framework of the study is based primarily on Weick's theory of sensemaking and then supplemented by a perspective of power since there is a lack of this in Weick's theory usually ignores it. The study also takes into account Gidden's concept of trust and ontological security to be used in the analysis of the study's results. The results of the study show that there are a number of factors that affect an individual's sensemaking. Some of the factors that are important for sensemaking are access to information, the possibility of participation and power in relation to the sense of control. / I Kiruna sker en stadsomvandling till följd av gruvföretaget LKABs malmbrytning. En malmkropp lutar in under staden och i takt med att brytningen går djupare påverkas staden ovan jord. Stadens centrala delar och 33 procent av befolkningen kommer enligt prognosen direkt påverkas av den kommande stadsomvandlingen. Syftet med studien är att nå en ökad förståelse för hur individer som på olika sätt berörs av stadsomvandlingen upplever och skapar mening i en för dem ny situation. Studien syftar även till att undersöka om maktdimensioner har någon inverkan på meningsskapande och hur det i så fall yttrar sig. Vidare syftar studien till att undersöka om det går att finna några gemensamma uppfattningar i meningsskapandet trots individernas olika upplevelser och erfarenheter. Studiens resultat baseras på kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med individer som på något sätt påverkas av stadsomvandlingen. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår främst från Weicks teori om meningsskapande och kompletteras med ett maktperspektiv då teorin vanligtvis bortser från det. Studien tar också hänsyn till Giddens begrepp tillit och ontologisk trygghet vilka används för att analysera studiens resultat. Resultatet av studien visar att det finns ett antal omständigheter som påverkar en individs meningsskapande. Några av omständigheterna som har betydelse för meningsskapandet är tillgången till information, möjligheten till delaktighet samt makt i relation till känslan av kontroll.

Urban space has begun to be commodified to full extent by the affect of neoliberalism, which is bared upon free flow of capital over a global network of cities. By 1970&rsquo / s, the phenomenon of globalization made social, political and economic relations all around the world to be redefined under these circumstances. While nation states were altering their role in favor of capital power, early centers of production have come to lose their attractiveness and functions, and in especially developed countries there emerged necessity for the notion of &ldquo / urban transformation&rdquo / . On the other hand, in Turkey, urban transformation projects have begun to be applied lately, under specific conditions and with different reasons, but still under neo-liberal hegemony. The aim of this thesis is to make a comparative analysis of &ldquo / Ankara North Entrance Urban Transformation Project&rdquo / by understanding the notion of urban transformation together with altered role of nation state at the age of neoliberalism, by comparatively analyzing grand transformation projects applied at three capital cities in Europe, namely, London, Paris, and Berlin, during late 20th century. The comparison criteria for project preparation and application processes of the case of Ankara and European examples are, first, the scale and location within the city / second, reasons of application in terms of their legitimating processes / third, the ways of providing financial resources for projects / fourth, administrative dimension of urban policy making / fifth, architectural domain of the projects / and lastly participation conditions of urban inhabitants and social agents, including the professionals.

China has undergone significant urban growth and industrialization over the last 30 years and its incredible development continues to move ahead at an increasingly rapid pace. In terms of urban expansion, China has just recently surpassed the world’s average urbanization rate of 50%, as it moves its massive population from rural to urban areas at an astonishing speed. It’s massive population and fast urbanizing speed aside, China is also unique in terms of its socio-political system and historical-cultural context: it is a hybrid of government planning and market forces. Since it encompasses a large part of the global population and has had a vastly different urbanization experience than that of Western countries, around which most theories are based, studying China’s urbanization is an opportunity to contribute to the field of urban studies in an unprecedented manner. However, these differences also make it difficult to develop a comprehensive study of China’s urban system since the predominant theories in the field are best suited to Western cities. This research rises to this challenge by systematically studying the relationship between the socioeconomic and biophysical processes in the Chinese urban system to understand the interaction between human and physical factors, and the landscape patterns that result from these interactions. This complex urban system is examined using a hierarchical, top-down approach. At the highest level is a Macro-scale analysis of the national urban system, followed by a study of the regional urban system: the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area at the Meso-scale, and finally a Micro-scale examination with a focus on the city of Beijing. Since urban systems develop over both time and space, the urban system is analyzed spatio-temporally on all three levels. Research at the national scale is composed of two parts. First, the challenges and opportunities of China’s urban development since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 are investigated in a general context. The institutional barriers that impede the management and continuation of China’s urban development are also discussed. Rank-size Analysis and satellite images are used to present the structural transitions of city scaling and urban clusters. These changes come with a series of challenges that are also iterated and discussed. This is followed by an analysis of the spatial distribution and transition patterns of China’s urban system using Centrographic Analysis, particularly since the post-1979 reforms. Second, the Macro-scale research focuses on a study of the urban hierarchy that is based on inter-city interactions as determined by the Synthesized Gravity Model (SGM). Under this model socioeconomic variables are synthesized and represented by the Influential Factor, while the Function Distance is derived from a Network Analysis that is based on multiple transportation methods. As an improvement on the conventional Gravity Model (GM), the SGM is used to accurately establish and represent the nodal structure of China’s urban system, the evolution of its hierarchical structure, and the relationships that exist between the nodal structure and socioeconomic factors. The results based on the SGM indicate that China’s national urban system is characterized by the emergence of urban clusters with stronger inter-city interactions since the 1990s. However, development among cities within certain urban clusters is not even, although the general pattern indicates a lessening inequality among cities. Spatially, while most cities at the top of the hierarchy are located in the east of China, cities in the middle and west of the country are also gaining higher positions in the hierarchy over time. On the Meso-scale, the applicability of the Cellular Automata (CA)-based SLEUTH model for regional urban growth pattern is studied through a focus on the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei). By integrating socioeconomic factors into a modified SLEUTH model, the urban growth dynamics and future development scenarios of the area are simulated and predicted. The results based on the CA model show that this region is characterized by a dynamic development pattern with high spreading and breeding growth rules that relies greatly on the growing transportation systems. It also allows for the projection of three possible future urban growth scenarios, each occurring under different environmental and development conditions, showing the future urban growth with or without further intervention. This research confirms that four factors play essential roles in the formulation of the urban growth mechanism of the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area: Urban policies, Industry restructuring, Rural-urban migration, and Reclassification of urban boundaries. The Micro-scale study of Beijing is conducted from two perspectives: the social and natural. The social aspect adopts the factorial ecology approach to identify the social landscape patterns and the factors that have shaped Beijing’s social space in 1990 and 2000. The social mosaic has experienced a significant change due to suburbanization, resulting in a more dynamic and complex internal structure since the 2000s. From a natural perspective, Beijing’s physical landscape patterns are extracted by processing remotely sensed images that have the same temporal span. The physical change through landscape metrics demonstrates that Beijing’s expansion has generated a more complex and fragmented land use/cover pattern. Meanwhile, transportation systems play a significant role in urban expansion, although the expansion across the space (zonal rings and directional sectors) is not even. Finally, the relationship between the social and physical landscapes is quantitatively defined by the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) technique, using physical landscape metrics as dependent variables and social areas as independent variables. The GWR is able to demonstrate the relationship between the social and physical landscapes at this level: as a city’s social mosaic becomes more varied over time it results in the fragmentation of that city’s physical space.

The aim of this thesis is to understand how a repertoire of municipal planning narratives evolved and how these were used as a means to explain, legitimise and produce change in a city that went through a process of urban transformation. The focus is set on the role of narratives in municipal plans as a mental preparation for change. In order to reach this aim, a framework for narrative analysis is developed that shall facilitate a critical reading of such municipal planning documents as comprehensive plans. This shall help to understand among other things how place and community are constructed. This framework is used to interpret four documents of the municipality of Karlskrona, one introductory guide for new inhabitants from 1980, and three consecutive comprehensive plans, adopted in 1991, 2002 and 2010. In short, the narrative analysis consists of four different ways of reading each respective document. First, more or less coherent narratives are identified in the texts. Second, they are analysed with respect to their literary and rhetoric form, in a way that is inspired by historian and literary theorist Hayden White. A third reading places the documents’ narratives into their historical context. Finally, they are classified as certain narratives of place identity on the basis of a typology developed by sociologist Manuel Castells. He states that identities can be constructed with help of narratives that legitimise the existing societal structures, that stand in opposition to these structures, or that create a new identity out of available resources. Based on these readings, I find that the four documents use very different literary and rhetorical forms and that they construct the place’s identity in ways clearly distinct from each other. They express various moral and political perspectives and convey clearly distinct social norms regarding the role of inhabitants and the municipality. Over the decades, there has been a clear shift of expressed values from those that support a leading role of the (local) state in fostering local development to those that highlight the importance of market actors and market forces. A similar change has occurred from the pronunciation of state responsibility for the inhabitant’s well-being to a greater focus on individual responsibility. This confirms the notion that municipal planning is increasingly influenced by ideas of neoliberal development. It could also be observed that storytelling and a purposeful narrative construction of place identity have become more prominent as instruments of planning. Planning narratives were clearly used to explain and legitimise shifts or persistence in municipal policymaking. Due to this it can be concluded that in the eyes of local policy makers, the municipality seems to have gone through a complete process of urban transformation from being in a state of decline to one of stabilised growth.

Estuda as transformações no urbano e na arquitetura da cidade de Campina Grande, interior do Estado da Paraíba, entre os anos de 1930 e 1950. A partir de levantamento de fontes primárias, investiga como discursos e práticas de circulação nacional e internacional aportaram, repercutiram e foram apropriados no município. O intuito é compreender como as investidas do poder público e da iniciativa privada, alicerçadas nos debates médicos e técnicos da época, romperam com formas anteriores de produção e uso da cidade e do edifício, instaurando novas estéticas, sensibilidades e rotinas para circular, habitar e gerenciar as necessidades do corpo. Inicialmente, analisa a cidade à luz dos 1930, como se configuraram sua modernidade e suas formas, usos, edifícios e infra-estrutura ao longo do tempo. Em seguida, estuda como os discursos e as práticas higienistas ordenaram o cotidiano e os espaços da cidade, redefinindo suas apropriações e paisagens. Por fim, examina as ações que adaptaram a arquitetura e a antiga estrutura urbana campinense a novos padrões estéticos e de circulação viária. / Studies the changes in architecture and urban spaces, in the city of Campina Grande (State of Paraiba), between the 1930s and 1950s. Using primary sources, researches how practices and speeches that had worldwide and nationwide circulation reached the city, how they were thought of, and how they were internalized by population. The aim is to understand how public and private attempts, based on medical and technical discussion of the time, departed from previous forms of production and use of the city and its buildings, and how these attempts introduced new aesthetics, sensitivities and habits in circulating, living and dealing with body needs. Initially, analyzes how modern shapes, uses, buildings and facilities rose in the city during the 1930s. Then, studies how hygienist speeches and practices disciplined daily life and urban spaces, redefining its uses and landscapes. Finally, examines the efforts in order to adapt ancient architecture and urban structure to new aesthetics and traffic standards.

Notre thèse analyse la construction du consentement à l’action publique néolibérale de transformation urbaine dans un milieu populaire initialement réfractaire. Nous examinons cette question à Sahintepe, quartier précaire d’Istanbul, de 2009 à 2014 –période encadrée par deux élections municipales. L’étude montre que le consentement à l’action publique passe avant tout par l’appropriation des idées et des gestes du néolibéralisme dans la vie quotidienne, et que cette appropriation, dans le cas étudié, fait suite à une entreprise de pédagogie politique menée par le parti dominant, en collaboration étroite avec la municipalité d’arrondissement. Pour mener à bien cette entreprise pédagogique, nous trouvons que quatre éléments sont nécessaires au parti : une vision claire de l’avenir proposée et un projet pour l’atteindre ; une structure interne apte à communiquer cette vision ainsi que ce projet de manière disciplinée et cohérente ; l’ancrage politique et social du parti et de ses militants à travers les réseaux informels ; l’utilisation systématique des ressources publiques comme privées faisant du parti le patron prédominant dans un système de clientélisme institutionnalisé. Complétant les données empiriques tirées d’observations de terrain et d’entretiens par l’analyse des résultats électoraux, l’étude affirme que l’action publique néolibérale doit trouver une symbiose avec le clientélisme pour jouer le rôle voulu dans ce milieu. Les effets de la pédagogie se mesurent par la progression électorale du parti dominant, mais aussi par le remplacement, parmi les habitants du quartier, d’une politique de confrontation par une politique recherchant avant tout la compensation. / This thesis analyzes the construction of consent for a neoliberal policy of urban transformation among an initially reticent low-income population. We examine this question in Sahintepe, a slum neighborhood of Istanbul between 2009 and 2014. Our study shows that consent for public action is built above all through the appropriation by residents of the discourse and actions of neo-liberalism in daily life, and that this appropriation is itself the result of the political pedagogy of the dominant party in close collaboration with the district municipality. To carry out this strategy of pedagogy, we include that four elements are necessary to the party: a clear vision of a desired future and a project to bring it about; an internal structure suited to communicating the project in a disciplined and coherent way; political anchoring of the party and its workers in the informal networks of local society; the systematic use of both public and private resources in such a way as to make the party itself the predominant patron in a system of institutionalized clientelism. Using primary data from interviews and observations and the analysis of electoral results, the study concludes that neo-liberal policies must reach a symbiosis with clientelism in order to play their desired role in this social setting. The effects of this pedagogy can be assessed not only through the electoral progression of the ruling party but also through the gradual replacement on the part of neighborhood residents of confrontational tactics by demands for compensation.

China has undergone significant urban growth and industrialization over the last 30 years and its incredible development continues to move ahead at an increasingly rapid pace. In terms of urban expansion, China has just recently surpassed the world’s average urbanization rate of 50%, as it moves its massive population from rural to urban areas at an astonishing speed. It’s massive population and fast urbanizing speed aside, China is also unique in terms of its socio-political system and historical-cultural context: it is a hybrid of government planning and market forces. Since it encompasses a large part of the global population and has had a vastly different urbanization experience than that of Western countries, around which most theories are based, studying China’s urbanization is an opportunity to contribute to the field of urban studies in an unprecedented manner. However, these differences also make it difficult to develop a comprehensive study of China’s urban system since the predominant theories in the field are best suited to Western cities. This research rises to this challenge by systematically studying the relationship between the socioeconomic and biophysical processes in the Chinese urban system to understand the interaction between human and physical factors, and the landscape patterns that result from these interactions. This complex urban system is examined using a hierarchical, top-down approach. At the highest level is a Macro-scale analysis of the national urban system, followed by a study of the regional urban system: the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area at the Meso-scale, and finally a Micro-scale examination with a focus on the city of Beijing. Since urban systems develop over both time and space, the urban system is analyzed spatio-temporally on all three levels. Research at the national scale is composed of two parts. First, the challenges and opportunities of China’s urban development since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 are investigated in a general context. The institutional barriers that impede the management and continuation of China’s urban development are also discussed. Rank-size Analysis and satellite images are used to present the structural transitions of city scaling and urban clusters. These changes come with a series of challenges that are also iterated and discussed. This is followed by an analysis of the spatial distribution and transition patterns of China’s urban system using Centrographic Analysis, particularly since the post-1979 reforms. Second, the Macro-scale research focuses on a study of the urban hierarchy that is based on inter-city interactions as determined by the Synthesized Gravity Model (SGM). Under this model socioeconomic variables are synthesized and represented by the Influential Factor, while the Function Distance is derived from a Network Analysis that is based on multiple transportation methods. As an improvement on the conventional Gravity Model (GM), the SGM is used to accurately establish and represent the nodal structure of China’s urban system, the evolution of its hierarchical structure, and the relationships that exist between the nodal structure and socioeconomic factors. The results based on the SGM indicate that China’s national urban system is characterized by the emergence of urban clusters with stronger inter-city interactions since the 1990s. However, development among cities within certain urban clusters is not even, although the general pattern indicates a lessening inequality among cities. Spatially, while most cities at the top of the hierarchy are located in the east of China, cities in the middle and west of the country are also gaining higher positions in the hierarchy over time. On the Meso-scale, the applicability of the Cellular Automata (CA)-based SLEUTH model for regional urban growth pattern is studied through a focus on the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei). By integrating socioeconomic factors into a modified SLEUTH model, the urban growth dynamics and future development scenarios of the area are simulated and predicted. The results based on the CA model show that this region is characterized by a dynamic development pattern with high spreading and breeding growth rules that relies greatly on the growing transportation systems. It also allows for the projection of three possible future urban growth scenarios, each occurring under different environmental and development conditions, showing the future urban growth with or without further intervention. This research confirms that four factors play essential roles in the formulation of the urban growth mechanism of the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area: Urban policies, Industry restructuring, Rural-urban migration, and Reclassification of urban boundaries. The Micro-scale study of Beijing is conducted from two perspectives: the social and natural. The social aspect adopts the factorial ecology approach to identify the social landscape patterns and the factors that have shaped Beijing’s social space in 1990 and 2000. The social mosaic has experienced a significant change due to suburbanization, resulting in a more dynamic and complex internal structure since the 2000s. From a natural perspective, Beijing’s physical landscape patterns are extracted by processing remotely sensed images that have the same temporal span. The physical change through landscape metrics demonstrates that Beijing’s expansion has generated a more complex and fragmented land use/cover pattern. Meanwhile, transportation systems play a significant role in urban expansion, although the expansion across the space (zonal rings and directional sectors) is not even. Finally, the relationship between the social and physical landscapes is quantitatively defined by the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) technique, using physical landscape metrics as dependent variables and social areas as independent variables. The GWR is able to demonstrate the relationship between the social and physical landscapes at this level: as a city’s social mosaic becomes more varied over time it results in the fragmentation of that city’s physical space.