Creating cities, towns and communities that are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable, and which meet the challenges of population growth, migration and climate change will be one of the biggest tasks of this century. Given the scale at which new settlements are being planned and developed globally, there is need to create both a practical understanding and professional commitment to creating new cities and communities that are socially, as well as economically and environmentally, sustainable. “If we are to have any chance of creating vibrant new communities that offer residents quality of life and that open up new opportunities – communities that are well balanced, integrated, sustainable and well connected – then we have to think about building for the wider needs of the whole community, not just focus on building homes.” (A good place for Children? 2005) Community development can help with numerous things within the community. It can help people settle into their new homes/environment, build networks with other citizens, help to ‘champion’ the new community and enable residents to find their own voice within the community. Ultimately this will build recognition and accelerate positive identity.
Creating cities and communities that work socially, economically and environmentally and can also be sustainable in the long run will be one of the main challenges of this era. If we continue to imagine a perfect world of equality, communication, understanding, and the readiness to take on the many issues at hand, we will never be able to reach a point of equilibrium or get along with one another. We must accept the differences of the people within our society rather than exclude certain “other” peoples in orde...
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...e effective action and leading roles in the development of their communities.’ Masdar City on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, has until recently been held up as an example of best practice in environmental sustainability and green building. Designed as a zero-waste, car-free and carbon-neutral city for 50,000 people, it was intended to promote innovation in energy efficiency, resource recycling, biodiversity and sustainable transport. However, even this experiment has failed to consider the social needs of people trying to live in a model environmental city. In conclusion, I would like to see social sustainability to be the aspiration for the next generation of new cities and communities around the world; with governments, planners, developers and architects committing to learn from the many lessons of the past: cities and communities need to work as places for people.
Finally in 1991, the federal government initiated a ‘Better Cities Program’ which aimed to make Australian cities sustainable and more liveable. It encoura...
The decision to do away with the long-standing community was reflected in academic studies and city-commissioned planning reports as a means t...
Kennedy A. (2014) Castle Vale Housing Action Trust: Lessons in Regenerating Communities Lecture, University of Birmingham.
The following case study critiques Upton’s vision to establish a sustainable community through implementing comprehensive sustainable strategy. The urban periphery development is thought to demonstrate superior execution of sustainable principles in development (Jackson 2007). As a parallel, the report focuses on the development of Upton’s design code and demonstrates how large -scale mix-use developments can incorporate sustainable practice and principles of urban growth.
It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people lack adequate housing; some 100 million have none at all.? In an attempt to correct this worldwide dilemma, a United Nations conference, Habitat II, was held in Istanbul, Turkey in June of 1996. This conference was open not only to government leaders, but also to community organizers, non governmental organizations, architects and planners. “By the year 2000, half the world’s people will live in cities. By the year 2025, two thirds of the world population will be urban dwellers ? Globally, one million people move from the countryside to the city each week.? Martin Johnson, a community organizer and Princeton professor who attended Habitat II, definitively put into words the focus of the deliberations. Cities, which are currently plagued with several of the severe problems of dis-investment ?crime, violence, lack of jobs and inequality ?and more importantly, a lack of affordable and decent housing, quickly appeared in the forefront of the agenda.
Of the many problems affecting urban communities, both locally and abroad, there is one issue in particular, that has been victimizing the impoverished within urban communities for nearly a century; that would be the problem of gentrification. Gentrification is a word used to describe the process by which urban communities are coerced into adopting improvements respective to housing, businesses, and general presentation. Usually hidden behind less abrasive, or less stigmatized terms such as; “urban renewal” or “community revitalization” what the process of gentrification attempts to do, is remove all undesirable elements from a particular community or neighborhood, in favor of commercial and residential enhancements designed to improve both the function and aesthetic appeal of that particular community. The purpose of this paper is to make the reader aware about the significance of process of gentrification and its underlying impact over the community and the community participation.
It has been given due priority in urban design and planning for promoting social cohesion as a constituent concept of the sense of belonging and community values through ethnic mixing to deal with challenges of multiculturalism in the West especially in England and Canada. The limitation of social cohesion to deal with multicultural challenges has led to contemporary planning imaginations that emphasize the meaningful engagements among different cultures. In the multicultural context, although contemporary planning imaginations do not directly refer to the role of public space at the level of local living per se, it nevertheless consider the significance of socio-physical setting public space provides for 'meaningful intercultural interactions' (Sennet, 1994), ‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (Donald, 1999) and, as settings for ‘active civic engagements with clearly defined goal’ (Sandercock 2003). Trying to deal with the problematic of contested nature of public space in multicultural context, these imaginations in a way argue for the active civil engagements in public space through broad social participation with clearly defined goal for promoting social and civic solidarity by maintaining the meaningful distance or unassimilated otherness to live together
Sense of community has been operationalised as a state like entity, and as the outcome of certain social processes. As such, a conceptual framework has been developed that allows understanding of the way people are socialised into their communities and maintain, or fail to establish and maintain, social engagement. This has also been understood in terms of process analysis of social change. Its linkage to power is important, as it helps define the setting in which power is used and is less likely to be abused. From a process perspective, sense of community is a changing feature of people’s relationships to others, and as such can be a barometer of change in 18 18 community. It can be beneficial in helping people create a sense of identity and a resilience to untoward social change. As a central aspect of the development and maintenance of social connectedness, it is useful in conceptualising adaptive and protective factors for positive life in community. Sense of community can also be associated with negative aspects of social life. The nature of exclusion of ‘others’ can lead to harmful social consequences. Local social cohesiveness can be at the expense of minority groups and newly arrived immigrant groups. It can provide an analytic tool
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a description of the “urban question” allows the reader to better understand the divergent schools of thought. For Social Science scholars, from a variety of disciplines, the “urban question” asks how space and the urban or city are related (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective that guides the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought asks the “urban question” in separate distinct terminology. Respected scholars from the ecological mode of thinking, like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rationale that geographical scope determines society (The City Reader, 2009). The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm sees the relationship between the city (space) as influencing the behaviors of individuals or society in the city. On the other hand...
While sustainable placemaking is designed to increase livability, efforts are often focused on bringing in cultural creatives, who have disposable incomes. This thus creates an equity deficit, which bolsters the divide and hierarchal structure that plagues many urban areas and neighborhoods, and often highlights a blindness within the placemaking movement to the intersectionality of community members different, daily experiences and histories. Therefore, an emphasis on sustainability and biophilia in the placemaking movement must include measures toward equity. This can be achieved through systemic changes and changes to the planning theory and practice that embrace the importance of cultural competency. Further, placemaking should incorporate the practice of place governance. Through place governance, community members are engaged, and interventions/programs are designed to meet the community’s specific needs at a given time, rather than implementing a project that is designed to promote a general benefit. Place governance heightens community ownership and responsibility, and equips community members with the self-efficacy and capacity to create change, whether it be economically, aesthetically, or socially. Placemaking thus is not a solution to problems, but a
Frequently however, issues arise amongst a community that need attention. In this essay I will outline and discuss some of these issues and the interventions, projects or programmes designed and used to tackle and combat them. The three models of intervention or, ‘Community Development’, I will discuss in this essay, "Social Planning", "Community Development", and "Social/Community Action", all have the same aim regardless of how it is accomplished and this is to improve and maintain the conditions which affect the lives of the community.
In this regard, city authorities all over the world are increasingly adopting energy efficiency measures in a quest to become sustainable into the future. Consequently, this has led to the emergence of the term ‘green cities’ (Aulisi & Hanson, 2004). New York City, viewed by many as an urban, concrete jungle, was recently named the “greenest city" in the United States. This is mainly because most of its residents live in energy-efficient buildings, and use public transport, bicycl...
Gated communities are residential areas developed in a restricted access in which public space is privatized (Blakey & Snyder, 1997). Gated community is a form of residential community containing strictly controlled entrances and often surrounding by a walls, fences or barriers. They are now a feature of the urban landscape in most cities around the world. It is including a wide range of facilities or amenities for collective use. The smaller communities may be just a park or other public area, and the large communities may include most of the daily activities which the residents can stay in the community for all activities. There is a common interest in development, but separate from purposive communities (Sorkin, 1992; Ellin, 1997 and
In a world where over half of the human population calls a city their home, the need to restructure and revolutionize the way we design our urban environments has never been greater. Currently, the notion that these vast metropolises of metal, concrete, and sludge could one day be fully realized pillars of sustainability is certainly laughable. However, when these same cities are constantly growing and multiplying across the globe, all the while using a greater and greater chunk of our planet’s energy, this impossible task becomes a necessary focus. To strive towards the closed, continuous loop of “true” sustainability could greatly alter the image of the modern city. Any improvement over the current state of urban affairs could carry weight, and even if that goal is not entirely fulfilled, the gained benefits would be immense.
With the development of urbanization, an increasing number of social problems have emerged. These problems will decelerate the urban development, however, there are many ways in which sustainable development can reduce the impact of these urbanization problems. “Sustainable development seeks to improve the quality of human life without undermining the quality of our natural environment” (Adams, W.M. 1999). Actually, sustainable development can partly solve the urbanization problems, for it can reduce the impact of the problems such as traffic jam, housing shortage and severe pollution, but it is difficult to completely solve these problems in a short time.