The Urban Book Series

This open access book provides in-depth insights into participatory research and planning by presenting practical examples of its use. In particular, it describes theoretical and methodological aspects of participatory research and planning, as well as the implementation of participatory processes in fields such as transport planning, cultural heritage management, environmental planning and post-earthquake recovery. Further, it compares participatory planning experiences from different territorial levels – from the macro-regional, e. g. Southeastern Europe, Mediterranean or European metropolitan regions, to national, regional and local levels.

The book will help researchers, planners, public administration officials, decision-makers and the general public to understand the advantages, disadvantages and constraints of participatory planning and research. Using various examples, it will guide readers through the theory of participatory planning and research, its methods, and different perspectives on how to use it in practice.

This book compares two urban regeneration models, namely piecemeal and comprehensive redevelopments. Tehran, like many cities in the developing world, on the one hand faces extensive deterioration in its inner-city neighbourhoods and on the other hand, faces rapid population growth. Urban regeneration is adapted as a policy that not only accommodates urban growth within the city boundaries, but also tackles the deterioration problems. This book tries to understand how these two redevelopment models operate in run-down neighbourhoods of Tehran, with a specific focus on developers’ behaviour regarding these two models.
Two neighbourhoods that have undergone redevelopments in Tehran, one piecemeal and one comprehensive, are chosen as case studies. Utilising institutional analysis as a qualitative methodological approach, this book improves our understanding of the process of built environment production, as well as the role of developers and state in the development process. The book demonstrates that the development decision-making cannot be solely understood as the result of economic rationality, as it occurs within institutional contexts structured by dynamic needs and concerns of actors. In advancing institutional analysis, the research demonstrates the different approaches taken by developers, development organisations and planners as they engaged differently with the wider structures set by the government through different policies.

This open access book provides insights into challenges, threats and opportunities of urban development in Africa. It discusses how and why African cities need localised urban planning concepts and theories to deal with challenges and threats of rapid urbanisation and climate change. The book delivers an in-depth view of the nature and gaps of the framework on which current planning practice and education in Africa are based. With that, it discusses the potentials of African cities to mobilise local knowledge, resources and capacity building for sustained and resilient urban growth.

This work is addressed to educationists and practitioners in the field of urban development management, climate change adaptation and urban resilience.  Specifically, such audiences include researchers, spatial planners, graduate students and member of civil societies working on urban development management.

This volume sheds light on urban resilience strategies in times of climate emergency and social and economic crisis by reflecting on related social vulnerabilities and inequalities within cities and showing the potential of participatory governance approaches for socio-environmental transformation. The book compiles critical research documenting the articulation of urban resilience strategies dealing with climatic changes, as well as the understanding of the unexpected implications of top-down resilience plans to address the impacts of climate change in cities, especially on the most vulnerable urban populations, and the transformative capacities of bottom-up and socially innovative resilience strategies. The book especially focuses on co-produced and grassroots transformative processes that are concerned with social equity in urban planning for climate change.  

Although several publications cover the topic of urban resilience, this book provides a more nuanced exploration of urban climate governance and citizen engagement in urban climate resilience policies through the lenses of political ecology, environmental justice and co-production. In this regard, the volume moves beyond the approach of multilevel urban climate governance by critically addressing the unexpected impacts of top-down strategies of urban resilience with the goal of expanding the reflection on citizen engagement. The book also explores the emerging possibilities behind the co-production of urban resilience as well as the critical role of grassroots and citizens in promoting such alternative strategies. While the primary target audience is scholars from different disciplines (e. g. geography, urban studies, planning, political ecology, architecture, urban sociology, environmental studies) focusing on urban resilience, the editors also aim to reach urban resilience practitioners from local, national and international organisations as well as environmental grassroots and climate activists.

This book provides an original cross-thematic and wide scope review of crime prevention processes in urban areas that are explicitly based on the cooperation between different scientific and professional fields. Focusing primarily on environmental and community-based crime prevention, this book compiles a peer-reviewed collection of papers and prospective essays that explore how, and to what extent, multi-disciplinarity can be used as a cornerstone for achieving safer cities.

Relying on the input from specialists, researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners from around the world, it covers the various stages from theory to implementation, by discussing theoretical stances, interpreting policy and planning guidelines, uncovering unique educational experiences, and narrating insights and lessons learned from innovative research and practice. Hence, it provides vivid discussions and invaluable insights into processes of partnership building, planning, and management, oriented towards establishing successful mechanism for preventing crime and reducing feelings of insecurity in urban areas.

'This is a textbook about cities or, more precisely, about the physical form of cities. It provides an overview of the main elements of urban form—streets, street blocks, plots and buildings—structuring our cities and the fundamental agents and processes of transformation shaping these elements. It applies this analytical framework to describe the evolution of cities over history as well as to explain the functioning of contemporary cities. After the initial focus on the 'object' (cities), the book introduces how different schools of thought have been dealing with this object since the emergence of Urban Morphology, as the science of urban form, in the turning to the twentieth century. Finally, the book identifies the main contributions of urban morphology to cities, societies and economies.

This second edition of the book offers updated and more accurate knowledge on several morphological issues, presents expanded contents, and it has a more explicit didactic nature, including a set of exercises in the end of each chapter, that will help teachers and students (in architecture, geography, planning, history, sociology and urban studies) in acquiring and consolidating their urban morphological knowledge.

Ecological and livable cities need an objective method to be examined. This book is in search of a method to determine the level of livability, ecology and energy efficiency. Ecological and sustainable cities need to properly make up for the existent weakness of the city's construction under fine ecological environment. The intention of this comparative study is an attempt to improve life quality in Tirana, Albania. It gives examples of successful strategies, e.g. bioclimatic solution through passive solar systems and the use of underground tunnels. This book is aimed at researches, professionals, architects and city planners.

This book provides a much-needed analysis of the pivotal role of the urban kampung in Indonesia’s urbanization process and importantly, provides a deeper understanding of how these communities create their complex socio-physical environments through self-organization. The book challenges the current formal approaches and practices to modern planning in Indonesia where many kampungs are classed as illegal and excluded from city plans. Beyond informality unpacks via three case studies the self-generated planning and development arrangements and mechanisms which occur parallel to processes of formal exclusion, adaptation, negotiation and modification. Kampungs are posited as inseparable urban entities contributing to the complex assemblage of the city and the dynamics of contemporary urban planning and design.
In the context of planning and design practice, this book provides a better understanding on how one needs to consider human-scale urbanism to achieve more effective and efficient planning plans and policies in the self-organized city. Even though self-organization by residents comes with its challenges as outlined in the book, formal planning in both Indonesia and other developing countries has much to learn from understanding self-organized settlements (kampung) and informal settlements ‘as they are’.

This book introduces a comprehensive and updated analysis of the role of public policies to promote territorial cohesion processes and trends in a given territory. By being the first book taking a reflective and holistic approach on how public policies can lead to more cohesive and balanced territories, it advances theoretical avenues for academics and showcases current academic research to policymakers and practitioners by focusing on how public policies, being implemented in different territorial scales (urban, local, regional, national, and European), can actively contribute to foster territorial cohesion trends in a given territory. This reflective approach provides an opportunity for thinking about what lessons can be learned from past and ongoing experiences and how they can improve future implementation of public policies more effectively and efficiently toward territorial cohesion, since all existing analyses show that at the national level, no European country has achieved territorial cohesion trends over the past decades. As such, this book can act as a valid and useful policy manual that can effectively contribute to inverting current territorial exclusion trends at the national level, by highlighting best policy practices and a comprehensive introduction to contemporary thinking about how public policies can play a decisive role in boosting territorial cohesion processes in a given territory.

Despite the significance of urban justice in planning research and practice, how just societies and cities can be organised and achieved remains contested. Spatial justice provides an integrative and unifying theory concerning place, policies, people and their interplay, but  ambiguities about its practical bases have undermined its application in planning. Through creating and substantiating a new conceptual framework comprising a morphological study, policy analysis and embodiment research, this book crystallises the spatiality of (in)justice and (in)justice of spatiality in the context of social housing redevelopment.
Like many countries around the world, social housing in Aotearoa New Zealand is an area of contention, especially at the building and redevelopment stages. Protecting community character and human rights has been used by social housing tenants to resist changes, but the primary focus on material outcomes neglects broadening access to planning processes. Compact, mixed tenure and sustainable (re)developments are regarded as the just built environment, as they enable equal accessibility to all. But there are contradictions between the planned spatiality of justice and individuals’ socialised sensory space. Reconciliation of morphological differentiations in built forms and social cohesion remains a challenging task. 
This book focuses on the re-examination, integration and transferability of spatial justice. It makes a new contribution to urban justice theory by strengthening spatial justice and planning. Social housing areas are expected to adapt to changing social and economic demands while retaining much-valued established community character. This book also provides practical strategies for tackling complex planning problems in social housing redevelopment.

This open access book builds a framework that holds together numerous open issues in territorial planning: from the understanding of territorial, landscape, environmental and climatic dynamics to the analysis of local vulnerabilities, to the use of modern survey techniques to support planning. What is the role of urban and regional planning in achieving the sustainable development goals of our communities considering the major issues posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in urban planning? And how do these medium- and long-term objectives interact with the needs that the emergency has given rise to?

Post Un-Lock—from territorial vulnerabilities to local resilience—aims to provide the reader with a useful key to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a catalyst for a restart based on the concepts of sustainability and resilience. In fact, the COVID-19 experience evidences the need to propose a planning system able to integrate multiple scales according to an interdisciplinary approach focused on in-depth knowledge of the territorial risks and vulnerabilities. Besides, with the contribution of the new technologies, it is able to rethink spaces on a neighbourhood scale, conceived as a „local resilience unit“ that ensures the population high standards of safety, liveability, and accessibility to proximity services. In this view, planning is increasingly concerned about social aspects and the well-being of communities, supported by indicators and evaluation tools. With the proposal of the concept of local resilience unit, Post Un-Lock takes a step forward towards the definition of a new paradigm of local planning and a topic for urban regeneration.

This book offers ideas and practices on contemporary design concepts and illustrates them with plans and photographs of outstanding examples. Current planning and design modes of dwellings and neighborhoods are facing challenges of philosophy and form. Past approaches no longer sustain new demands and require innovative thinking. The need for a new outlook is propelled by fundamental changes that touch upon environmental, economic and social aspects.

The text would be of interest to scholars working in: architecture, urban planning, and construction.

The book provides comparative information about the materialization of the 2030 Agenda in urban policy in ten countries located in Europe and Latin America. The Declaration of Quito is the starting point for the implementation of SDGs into public policies in urban areas. However, there are fewer efforts to understand the impact that the 2030 Agenda and, specifically, the instruments developed for its application in cities. 
The information of each country is presented in relation to two aspects: the construction of a public policy style in each country and the results and impacts on urban public policies implemented in specific cities within the national frameworks. The first means the emergence of a public policy framework and its materialization in public policy instruments. In this regard, the book raises the following questions: To what extent have the SDGs come to generate a common framework for cities in the countries? And how Urban SDGs are translated to national urban policies? The second, results and impacts at the local level, is related to two aspects: a) substantive: the goals of the policy and b) procedural: management aspects related to the policy design, governance, and institutional capacity building.

This book offers a unique perspective on urban processes affecting tourist spaces and city centres. Economic, social and environmental uncertainty has been commonplace since March 2019, when mobility slowed down across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends that have been investigated in urban space for years. The incorporation of technologies, the expansion of tourism and the introduction of policies that in part want to advance sustainability are generating processes of reorganisation of territories that are driving changes. These changes will affect models of city, urbanism and society.
This publication is directed to a wide spectrum of people interested in urban processes, tourism and social change in the context of the Post-Pandemic Covid-19. In particular, the book is aimed at researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students, consultants, public administrations and the public interested in the recent challenges that are affecting developed and developing societies.

The construction of the Panama Canal at the beginning of the twentieth century created an enclave that ran parallel to the interoceanic waterway, controlled by the US government: the Canal Zone. This book aims to understand the implications that Panama Canal Zone urban planning had on human health, natural resources, and biodiversity through the study case of Fort Clayton, highlighting how the sanitary concerns shaped building regulations and the urban landscape of towns.
This book highlights the role of North American entomologists and health workers in developing control strategies for diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and how mosquito’s ecology determined building regulations that shaped the image of the Canal Zone towns. On the other hand, the book determines the environmental assessment of Fort Clayton, determined by the two fundamental aspects that set on the environmental impact of an urban settlement. The first one is the suitability of the site's location. The second is the urban structure of the adopted city model and its impact on the connectivity of the surrounding forests during the twentieth century.
This text is aimed at both undergraduate and postgraduate students, architects, urban planners, historians, and environmental science professionals.

This open access book provides insight on how the tactical urbanism has the capacity to influence change in mobility practices such as cycling. COVID-19 crisis prompted the public authorities to rethink the use of public space in order to develop means of transport that are both efficient and adapted to the health context and their effects on cycling practices in Europe, North, and South America. Its contributors collectively reveal and evidence through policies analysis, mapping, and innovative qualitative analysis bridging video and interviews, how those new infrastructures and policies can be a trigger for change in a context of mobility transition.

The book provides insights into urban infrastructure debates and discourses in Zimbabwe. Through an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach, the book explores the theoretical, conceptual and lived experiences in urban infrastructure. The book focuses on case studies relating to urban transport, public housing, water and sanitation and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) among other substantive issues relating to urban infrastructure and services.

This book explains the variation and determinants of residential quality and housing preferences in urban private housing markets. It describes the residential characteristics and housing preference dynamics of Lagos urban residents who are majorly sheltered in the city’s private housing markets. Lagos Metropolitan Area (LMA) is a wide region with differentiated informal housing markets. The city private housing markets vary in quantity, quality, and prices which conjointly influence residents housing preferences and choices. Based on positivist philosophical stance, this book addresses the peculiarities of each residential market in Low Residential Density (LRD), Medium Residential Density (MRD), and High Residential Density (HRD) areas in terms of residential quality and housing preferences. With heuristic methods including predictive model and conjoint choice experimentation, this book unravels the level and variability of residential quality (neighborhood and structural) and housing preference (revealed and stated) decisions in Metropolitan Lagos. In addition, the residential quality and housing preferences are mapped to give their spatial patterns across Lagos megacity neighborhoods as segmented residential submarkets. Applying the positivist philosophical stance, the book provides evidence to support residential quality and housing preference variability across the city private housing submarkets. The book is both a guide and reference for students in the built environment, urban planners, urban policy decision makers, housing researchers, property managers, and real estate professionals who are interested in understanding the residential quality and preference dynamics within polarized cities.