Introduction. Urban Redevelopment and Revitalisation. A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Habitat International, 2014

Urban renewal and sustainable development are two popular issues in both policy agenda and academia. Although their importance has been increasingly recognized, an integrated review covering sustainability, planning, and urban renewal has yet to be produced. Based on 81 journal papers, this paper presents a critical review of recent studies on sustainable urban renewal over the period 1990 to 2012. The review focuses on the planning subsystem and the social subsystem of urban renewal in terms of the evaluation of sustainability. The complexity of achieving sustainable urban renewal is emphasized and discussed. To better clarify the mechanism behind the urban renewal process and improve urban sustainability, recommendations of future research directions are also provided. This paper therefore presents a critical review of recent studies on sustainable urban renewal. It starts with the background of sustainable urban renewal, followed by the research methodology and an overall picture of the research progress. Selected papers are then discussed from three aspects, namely planning subsystem in sustainable urban renewal, stakeholders and their engagement, and evaluation of sustainable urban renewal. Finally, the discussion section includes a summary the findings from this study and recommendations for future related research. 2. BACKGROUND OF SUSTAINABLE URBAN RENEWAL Urban renewal has become a major element of urban policy in many countries and regions. Couch (1990) gave two reasons for its growing importance. Firstly, people increasingly moving to and living in urban areas, in particular old urban areas, give rise to the need for renewal of the urban fabric. Secondly, urban renewal responds to the concern of urban sprawl and large quantities of abandoned urban areas. Nowadays, it is closely involved with sustainable development. Definition of Urban Renewal Urban renewal, urban regeneration, urban redevelopment, and urban rehabilitation share similar meanings in the town planning field but are significantly different in terms of scale. Urban renewal and urban regeneration have very similar meanings and both involve work of a relatively large scale: urban renewal is defined as the process of slum clearance and physical redevelopment that takes account of other elements such as heritage preservation (Couch, Sykes, & Boerstinghaus, 2011); while urban regeneration is a comprehensive integration of vision and action aimed at resolving the multi-faceted problems of deprived urban areas to improve their economic, physical, social, and environmental conditions (Ercan, 2011). By comparison, urban redevelopment is more specific and on a smaller scale, being any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses, such as the redevelopment of a block of townhouses into a large apartment building (De Sousa, 2008), and urban rehabilitation is restoring a building to good condition, operation, or capacity (Zuckerman, 1991). In summary, urban renewal (used interchangeably with urban regeneration throughout this paper), aims at improving the physical, social-economic and ecological aspects of urban areas through various actions including redevelopment, rehabilitation, and heritage preservation.

Cities and towns are living organisms; they are born, they live, they age and they die. As conglomerations of socio economic advancement, at times parts of cities fail to live up the potential they have to improve the course of human life. In addressing this decay and deterioration of cities, the challenge appears greater than restoring and rebuilding the physical fabric of cities. Inherently there arises a need to design processes that would provide a new local economic base to replace the one that has failed, to restore hope to communities, within environmentally responsible or sustainable approaches. Urban regeneration is often themed around Community, Culture, Retail, Public spaces, Tourism, Housing, Heritage, and Public Art as anchor activities (drivers). The regeneration strategies ought to take cognizance of the apparent stakeholders, drivers, investment, ecological implications, local, national and global interests, collaboration and partnerships. The concept of sustainable urban regeneration introduces a variation from classical regeneration through establishing social and environmental justice, being in harmony with natural systems, public/community participation processes and upgrading the quality of life.

Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona eBooks, 2016

Urban development has always been affected by regeneration processes, especially after the World War II. After several decades’ experiences of urban regeneration, urban image, quality of life, and urban environment are now recognized as prerequisites and catalysts for the economic development of cities1. Today we face changes in needs, technology, spatial texture, life quality and the economy especially in the urban settlements on a daily basis. The economic development, the push of the urbanization and the capitalist approaches towards the land uses are often debated. The gates and cores of the cities such as the waterfronts, riverbanks, harbors and squares have been involved in urban regeneration projects with the intention to make them the symbols of the city. The aim of this article is to investigate the transformation processes of today and discuss the new methods of regeneration. The main focus will be on the use of titles, events, and activations as a promoting element and a tool of the regeneration.

Construction Economics and Building

Orum, A. (ed) Wiley Companion of Urban and Regional Studies. John Wiley and Sons., 2019

This entry traces the shifting balance in the political and definitional significance of regeneration. The role of a more proactive regeneration is examined as a significant area of activity that has emerged and dominated the regeneration landscape for the last two or three decades. While the entry begins by considering what regeneration means, how it evolved, and how it is interpreted, case study material is presented to assess the impact of the physical transformation of places through urban renewal, to the wider needs of urban and regional areas. This provides an important framework for discussing the contemporary critical issues and dilemmas now facing practitioners, and how this shapes the postrecession landscape.

2021

Grounded on urban morphology studies, the research tries to overcome the analysis of the permanents elements of the city seeking for a transitional paradigm in urban morphology, aiming at grasping the dynamics in urban evolution and providing operative tools for urban regeneration design in an adaptive approach. A combination of four actions of urban analysis is here suggested to highlight urban dynamics: a. Sorting the transitional steps of urban morphologies (within rapid market processes), b. Underlining rules and Processes characterizing urban coding in transition, c. Mapping urban assemblages in the adaptive city and d. Reading and representing urban permutation phenomenon. The results of this multifaced and multidimensional set of analytical tools allow to outline a new design thinking paradigm moving towards a parametric approach to urban design of cities in transition broadening the extent of urban regeneration process and supporting urban policies in the framework community...

It is not unusual to witness buildings that are relatively young being demolished to make way for new developments. Redevelopment is one of the alternate solutions to adapting buildings and sites to new demands and economic uses. Redevelopment implies the total replacement of existing buildings whereas rehabilitation involves maintenance, repair and adaptation in order to ensure a sound structure and some functional adjustment of the building. Redevelopment therefore offers wider possible advantages in modifying land use, site coverage and density as well as introducing new building techniques and standards of construction, specification, design and layout. Urban redevelopment involves comprehensive redevelopment of numerous buildings and activities extending to large parts of an urban area. Population growth and urban decay has led to city redevelopment projects which are undertaken through different strategies. This study would discuss alternate ways through which urban redevelopm...

2021

Grounded in the study of urban morphology, this position paper seeks to overcome the analysis of the permanent elements of a city in the search for a transitional paradigm in urban morphology, with the aim of grasping the dynamics of urban evolution and providing operative tools for the design of urban regeneration through an adaptive approach. Four actions for urban analysis are suggested here to highlight urban dynamics through the use of different tools: (a) sorting the transitional steps of urban morphologies (within rapid market processes), (b) underlining rules and processes that characterize urban coding in transitions, (c) mapping urban assemblages in an adaptive city, and (d) reading and representing the phenomenon of urban permutation. The results of this multifaceted and multidimensional set of analytical tools make it possible to outline a new paradigm for design thinking that moves towards a parametric approach to the urban design of cities in transition by broadening t...

Topos, 2010

City regeneration is not about building cities that look old. A new Renaissance to overcome the “dark ages” of modernism is no sufficient answer to today’s urban challenges. Planning must be informed by nature, evolution, history and a critical evaluation of existing patterns.