ABSTRACT. Car dependency and proximity to essential destinations in cities are closely interrelated. The sprawling nature of cities often results in longer travel distances, leading to increased travel times, traffic congestion, and higher carbon emissions. Conversely, proximity plays a vital role in reducing car dependency. Bearing this in mind,  new urban models have emerged as potential solutions to address these challenges and some major cities have already taken steps towards the negative impacts of car dependency. However, in many other cities, urban and transport planning still operates within isolated frameworks and failing to adopt these integrated approaches.

This research is seeking answers to understand the possible challenges to implementing proximity-centered concepts in areas plagued by inefficient public transport and traffic congestion, as Palermo in this case study, by integrating the 15-Minute City Concept and TOD concepts. In order to achieve this aim, the research looks for answers to the following questions; (i) How compatible are 15-Minute City and TOD concepts regarding their principles and measurement indicators, (ii) How this integration could be systematically applied in a car-centered urban context, and (iii) Does this integration could help to identify areas to promote urban planning strategies by analyzing the state and weaknesses of the built environment, including accessibility to services and walkability.

The objective of this study is to determine the socioeconomic characteristics of the area, assess the existing built environment in terms of service accessibility and walkability, and identify suitable areas for urban planning strategies. The paper is organized into five sections, encompassing the theoretical framework, a detailed description of the case study, and a methodology section that elucidates the indicators employed for the analysis. In the concluding part of the paper, we present the analysis findings and provide a critical overview of the potential of this approach for future research endeavors.

ABSTRACT. We have already crossed the threshold of several planetary boundaries, indicating the urgency of climate change mitigation efforts to maintain favourable living conditions on our planet. Cities can play an important part, as urban areas are soon to be home to 66% of the global population. Cities cause about 75% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Previous studies have found that despite densification strategies to create more compact and car-free lifestyles, urban residents have been found to have higher GHG emissions than their rural counterparts. Furthermore, despite having pro-environmental attitudes, urban residents take several long-distance trips annually, adding greatly to their environmental impact. One main reason for travel is wellbeing.

The aim of the study is to examine exposure to urban green spaces through activity spaces, and how this exposure might influence one’s wellbeing and travel-related GHG emissions. Activity spaces describe mobility in space and time, providing an understanding of which urban spaces the person interacts with regularly. The study is based on a softGIS survey conducted, in which people were asked to mark their frequently visited locations on a map. Activity spaces and exposure are calculated based on the individualised residential exposure model (Hasanzadeh et al., 2018), which has previously been applied in Finland using similar data. Activity spaces and their connection to GHG emissions and wellbeing have scarcely been studied and have not been studied in Iceland.

The study demonstrates the applicability of activity spaces in mobility-related GHG emissions studies, noting the need for further studies with more granular spatio-temporal data. Policies should support reducing cities’ GHG emissions while meeting the day-to-day and wellbeing needs of people.

ABSTRACT. New Belgrade was planned as an automobile-dependent city with a block structure. After the drastic changes it had been exposed to, the block structure remained untouched but with new usages, pedestrian activities, and routes as a final product. These changes are sporadic and scattered, but together there is a system of elements of a compact city making pedestrian-friendly environments. In this paper, based on a conceptual approach, these elements will be mapped in New Belgrade super-block 30, one of the mainly unchanged super-blocks. There are examples of small urban design interventions, such as new park areas, paths, and ramps. It is making the inclusion of different groups of users – from the youngest to oldest ones or recreationists and wheelchair users. Historically, some parts of super-block 30 have been left unfinished in its construction and had formed empty spaces. From undefined large areas to equipped zones dedicated to specific users, these changes created a new perception of communal public spaces by residents in super-block. An aim is to define how inclusive territory is formed. In which way do these changes contribute to making a new identity for this part of the city? They have new gathering places for activities and a new way of belonging to that super-block, at the same time creating new reasons to stay and influence the community in the super-block. In that sense, there was conducted unobstructed observation and semi-structured interviews with residents to examine if new interventions helped the community, their perception, and usage. Connections between these new pockets contribute to making new pedestrian routes as a part of the walking system through the New Belgrade block structure. Planning further development of these activities and routes can help in the transformation of post-socialist block structure neighbourhoods to compact cities and more inclusive and pedestrian-friendly environments.

ABSTRACT. Mental health, particularly for urban populations, is a growing public health concern. As urbanisation continues it is important to plan and develop towns and cities that maximise population wellbeing, and related health and social outcomes, whilst also contributing to the sustainability agenda. Understanding how people relate to and feel a sense of belonging in the urban environment is therefore an important research agenda. There is mounting evidence about the importance of green (e.g. parks, trees) and blue (e.g lakes) infrastructure for the health and wellbeing of urban residents. There is also emerging evidence about the benefits of certain ‘grey’ features (e.g. historic buildings, active travel routes).

This paper reports on the preliminary results of a RECLAIM Network Plus project exploring the relationships between Green-Blue-Grey Infrastructure (GBGI) and a range of health and social outcomes in neighbourhoods across Bristol (United Kingdom). Using GIS and spatial analyses we link various GBGI features to self-reported health, social interaction and neighbourhood satisfaction from the Bristol Quality of Life Survey - an annual city-wide survey conducted since 2001. Multiple GBGI factors such as tree density, distance to quality green and blue spaces, and the presence of historic buildings and transport infrastructure are considered.

By exploring the relationship between different GBGI and self-reported quality of life we aim to be able to better understand the importance of these features for improving people’s lives and reducing inequalities within neighbourhoods and across the city. The evidence we produce we hope will further our understanding of how citizens relate to their urban environment, and will help more inclusive decisions to made by local councils about investment to ensure that all residents, wherever they live, benefit from GBGI which enhance quality of life for urban communities.

ABSTRACT. More and more spatial researchers are engaged with the theories and practices of the arts. They are exploring artistic practices as a means to examine how spaces are practiced and experienced. Artistic practices, in fact, reveal the experiential qualities of space and place, but also provide a way to explore new approaches to shape spaces, to make decisions on their futures. Artistic practices in the end can contribute to broadening our knowledge about the world we live in and offer means to re-imagine it. Within this perspective, the authors present the conceptual framework of the PALIMPSEST Project, a Research and Innovation action funded under the call HORIZON-CL2-2022-HERITAGE-01-10 within the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative of the European Union launched in 2020. In coherence with the NEB vision and focussing on landscapes as living heritage. Heritage landscapes are usually the result of a fairly sustainable exploitation of environments through material and immaterial practices, determined by and rooted in ways of imagining, living, inhabiting, producing and managing a territory and its resources. Whilst slow incremental changes have mainly added to the valued characteristics of these landscapes, more contemporary and short-sighted practices are no longer contributing to their sustainability. Also, anthropic pressures are increasingly leading to a loss of heritage value, bringing out the need to (re-)imagine a landscape in the face of relevant social-environmental challenges, e.g. related to climate risk and related territorial conflicts. Adopting a “living heritage” perspective, the proposed contribution reflects on the role of artistic and creative practices in envisioning and co-producing future landscapes and in enhancing the capacity of the local ecosystems of actors to tackle wicked problems in a sustainability transition horizon.

ABSTRACT. More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and account for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is recognised in goal 11 of the sustainable development goals which aims at making cities and human settlements safe, resilient and sustainable. Cities are becoming key players in sustainability research through science to policy partnerships. This paper examines cities sustainability partnerships showing how they are developed, the research and action goals, and how this partnership is implemented in practice. It examines the conditions that are necessary for promoting cocreation of knowledge and looks at the integration of different perspectives and approaches, different financing approaches and the creation of new partnerships. It then makes policy recommendations for the changes to support the coproduction of knowledge with cities, for an integrated science-policymaker- practitioner community.

ABSTRACT. In Sydney, as in many cities worldwide, the process of enclosure of the commons is ongoing. Land that only a few hundred years ago was understood in the Aboriginal sense as Country to which those dwelling on it owed a deep and enduring duty of care, has become a commodity from which to extract value. In the inner-city suburb of Waterloo, a former public works depot, now a weedy field of concrete ringed by cyclone fencing, was to be redeveloped. The field would soon be gone, replaced by new apartment buildings in an area once wetland, then industrial, now the densest residential area in the city.

As the artists chosen to work with the local community to develop public art concepts for this site we were uncomfortable with the potential instrumentalization of our work. Public art is often used as a tool of real-estate value creation. Practices of participation, while initially radical, have come to be utilised cynically as means to placate opposition. At first glance these tools would appear ill-equipped to resist the behemoth of neoliberal transformation of the city, yet we saw in them the potential to use the existing framework to enable a much more radical approach.

Our project ‘Open Field Agency’ proposed a re-routing of the mandated financial contribution paid by the property developer for ‘place-making’ and public art away from the construction of objects to the payment of an ongoing series of ‘Caretaker Residencies’ for artists, scientists, historians and others. Each residency will be tasked with inciting and continuing discussions with the diverse publics of this site, proposing new uses, forming new collectives and augmenting the public space. Reimagined as a process of slow, repetitive care, public art becomes the ongoing practice of tending to a site and the many publics who may use it.

ABSTRACT. This research was initiated by the concern of the authors about the potential role that academia can play in determining the education of the architect. The role of the architect was re-introduced as an ‘Agent’ . Beginning from the notion that space is a social product, hence the architectural design is a social practice, the authors structured UNIT 2, a research-based design studio, to address the possibilities of the emergence of cities out of the notion of care. By addressing a main problem of architecture of responding to the generic user, students were asked to borrow an avatar to experience the city. Getting in the place of an elder person, a pregnant woman with a stroller or even an animal as a dog; students related to the diverse needs of the users of our cities. Consequently, these first observations led inevitably to socially sustainable ways of thinking of the city and architecture that takes in consideration the minorities, and a city that is a living organism being shaped by the notion of Urban Commons and Inclusive Architecture. The multiple and diverse identities of its inhabitants acted as the driving force to facilitate the ever changing evolving city, a ‘caring’ city for their abundance needs and wishes. This empirical process urged discussions on the notion of ‘Living where Immaterial Matters’; where buildings could be discussed, as Pallasmaa suggests, as verbs not objects. It shed light on understandings where the city could be a collaborative result, where citizens are co-authors of the making of our built environment, and architects serve mainly as facilitators. By caring about the ‘other’ enabled synergic processes to be brought forward for social and environmental sustainable living.

ABSTRACT. Much current scholarship has raised concern about current practices of architecture and urban planning, raising concern about their current hyper-capitalist, exclusionist and patriarchal modus operandi. Both professions are criticized for their role in furthering socio-spatial polarization, displacement and consumerism. In the face of business-as-usual architecture and urbanism, an increasing number of architects and planners reclaim their professions and seek for ways to counteract mainstream practices by prioritizing a multitude of socio-spatial problems and responding them through collective and innovative experiments and interventions. In this paper, I aim to discuss how care informs and shapes these alternative practices. Care, as discussed in feminist theory, is deliberately a comprehensive term. In order to contribute to a spatial theory of care, I will examine how it is reflected in the toolkit of methods these collectives have developed for spatial production and trace common design elements. To do so, I will specifically look at a number of collectives from Turkey active within the last decade which demonstrate that “another profession is possible” by their mostly voluntary work in defense of public interest. Despite their diverse scopes, such as social design, emergency architecture, architectural pedagogy and ecological design, and the scales they are operative at, these collectives pave the way for a much needed shift in the spatial disciplines. The more we discuss spatial production that is off the beaten path, the louder will be the voice of alternatives shaped by care, inclusion and solidarity.

ABSTRACT. The idea to care—with, rather than —about or —for, moves beyond understandings of care as a provision from institutions to individuals, or from individual to individual, which position the cared—for as passive recipients. This understanding of care, introduced by Tronto in her 2015 book Who Cares?, where she suggested that it could pave the way for a ‘better definition of democracy’, sets in motion a second path which we argue necessitates a reconceiving of the role of design professions concerned with the city.

That we might reframe design professions in the city as a way of acting on the world where ‘everybody designs’, was expressed by Manzini et al. (2015) and more recently, by Harriss et al. (2021) in their edited publication Architects After Architecture. A more porous and open notion of practitioner operating across multiple crossroads — public/private/practice/theory/disciplinary — builds on Critical Spatial Practice as a form of critique (Rendell, 2006) and action (Hirsch & Miessen, 2011).

Our paper reflects on such ideas, framing the situated design practitioner through the lens of three UK case studies as examples of caring—with. Explored through mapping and interviews, these case studies were developed in the context of the British Academy funded project ‘Caring—with Cities’ and aim to provide commentary on the entanglement between care practices and expanded modes of spatial production, and how this gives rise to what we term the situated practitioner. Entangled within local politics and with situatedness as an essential characteristic of caring–with practice, we invite reflections on an expanded set of actors and ways of becoming together set along a dynamic spectrum of giving/receiving of care.

Caring—With Cities: Enacting more care-full urban approaches with community-led developments and policymakers was supported by the British Academy 2021—22 (VSFoFGD1\100002)

ABSTRACT. We are looking for the development of architecture, not based on exploiting resources, whether material, energetic, or even human. The possible alternative to the infinite development model won't be over-exploiting the territory and producing unnecessary elements. But is it possible to do architecture without resources? It is explored an architecture practice looking for processes that built the space using the already existing physical space and answering the different requests through a process of space re-signification. Based on a transdisciplinary approach, it explored how the idea of ready-made from conceptual art could be one of the answers to future architecture. It is a reaction to the sustainable targets, since it is based on the no exploration of any material: the reality is the resource itself. Antagonistically radical it is proposed that the architecture project rethink the space and attribute a new meaning to it, and in doing it, solves the requested new necessities. The project happens in the combination between reality and the look over it, emphasizing the potentiality of reality. Unusual actors are included in the process like the users - extending and enhancing its demands -, and the power - obliged to rethink the request when faced with a ready-made proposal that solves it. Instead of the design as the base ground for architecture, in this methodology, the act of choice is the architectural practice. This intellectual process with critical reflection is an architecture act since the discipline has the tools and the expertise to decide in a legitim way. This methodology emphasizes the emergency for a fundamental change of attitude in our culture, in our society, and towards our built environment, by legitimizing the possibility of the proposal being the use of what is here and now.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents tools, techniques and knowledge tested and acquired through an ongoing public art project 'I Am From Reykjavik'. This work positions acts of architectural making as a form of activism and advocacy for marginalised people to establish their own right to occupy and be present in public space. The paper demonstrates how acts of making can generate a sense of belonging through a participation within and a subversion of existing social, cultural and power dynamics of public space. In this instance a small structure was designed by myself for artist Sonia Hughes to build and then remove in a single day.

“I AM FROM REYKJAVIK IS AN ARTWORK BORN OF A PEEVISH INCIDENT BEGAT FROM A HISTORY OF RACE. MADE SO I CAN DECLARE POCKETS OF THE WORLD FREE FOR ME, ERGO YOU, TO BE. I’M GONNA UNWRITE THAT LETTER IN ME, I’LL BUILD MYSELF A HOUSE WHERESOE’ER I DAMN WELL PLEASE” SONIA HUGHES

This quote summarises the way in which this project creates a provocative opportunity for empowerment through a sustained and visible presence within public space. An almost surreal visual presence that is created by a lone, black woman building herself a place of shelter creates curiosity amongst the passing public that leads to conversation, participation and collaboration. Those that offer their help then join Sonia in the completed structure before dismantling it. This active participation in place situates the maker as an observer as well as an actor; experiencing other behaviours and their impact; revealing existing desires, frustration, conflict, oppression, agency and ideas. Acts of making at this scale and for this duration provide an opportunity to manifest modes of change that are immediate and tangible; an opportunity to display agency, amend a condition and shift and evolve your own sense of place and identity.

ABSTRACT. The paper introduces “Architectures of care”, a funded research project that aims to undertake a pilot study to assess the effectiveness of informal practices of social inclusion and environmental care in three commons: le Piagge in Florence, Kirkayak in Ankara, Old Hall in Colchester. In fact, these communities can offer possible and noncommodified responses to today’s social inequalities and climate emergency, proposing models that avoid further forms of social and environmental depletion in favour of integration, circularity, durability and resilience. The project expands a previously collected sets of data through the direct engagement of the three community members. Through facilitated group conversations in Florence, Ankara and Colchester, a textual/visual repository of local practices of social inclusion and environmental care has been collaboratively produced. Group participants have been invited to verbally and visually respond to specific hints to raise awareness and outline potential areas of improvements in their respective community. Texts and drawings produced within the group conversations contributed to the development of the pilot version of the online catalogue “Archive of informality”.

ABSTRACT. The growth of the capital area of Reykjavík is the most striking feature of regional development in Iceland. At the turn of the twentieth century, about one in ten Icelanders lived in the Reykjavík capital area while three in four lived on farms around the country. In 2023, the Reykjavík capital area accounted for about two-thirds of the national population while the proportion of farming communities had dwindled to about one in twenty inhabitants. The course of regional development does however seem to have changed in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Long-distance domestic migration from the provinces to the city has declined and short-distance domestic migration from the city to exurban regions in Southwest Iceland has increased. As a result, the Reykjavík capital area has experienced net population loss due to domestic migration patterns. At the same time, however, immigration has increased in all regions of the country and the population growth of the Reykjavík capital area has therefore not slowed while other regions of the country have also experienced some growth. In particular, the larger towns within 100 km from Reykjavík have grown substantially and the regional center of Akureyri in Northern Iceland has continued on its long-term trajectory of population growth. In this paper, the complex migration patterns underlying these changes are examined on the basis of census data and the results of large-scale surveys. The results indicate that these new patterns of microurban growth can only be partially explained by conventional patterns of counter-urbanization and that indirect and return migration play a substantial role in the observed patterns. Implications for future processes of urbanization are discussed.

ABSTRACT. In November 2022, Italian government approved a law reforming the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI). This policy, started in 2014, aims at helping areas characterized by a relevant distance from schools, hospitals and train stations. This is not conceived as a welfarism/dependency, but the Strategy should trigger inter-institutional relationships, fostering the role of municipality unions (in particular the small regional city, “comune capofila”) and local stakeholders. The Strategy may lead to a path of economic growth and socio-cultural renewal, mitigating population decline and migration, and strengthening community building (Carrosio, 2016). The case of SNAI has been praised at international level as an example of place-based policy (ESPON 2017, p. 45) and it’s one of the few structured national policies for rural areas in the European context. The new reform acts on governance and project investments. About the former, Regions will have a stronger coordination role, proposing investments, visions and strategies; Regions will also benefit from a new commission (Autorità responsabile per le Aree Interne). Regarding the latter, public works will be strictly linked to the Strategy (a document stating the future path of the area), enhancing executive planning to the possible detriment of flexibility; moreover, new areas were selected, while the previous areas will receive only EU-based funds in the future. The paper will explore the consequences of the new reform from a local institutions perspective: at least one case will be analyzed (Inner Area Alto Lago di Como e Valli del Lario, a remote area on the shores of Como Lake, Lombardy) interviewing local and regional authorities. The main question that will be addressed is the new management of the regional setting, particularly exploring the capacity of the small regional city in dealing with the stronger regional role in SNAI, and its effects on demography and micro-urban relations.

ABSTRACT. Last twenty years of development of the Czech settlement systems were characteristic with growing intensities of international migration and young drain from peripheral areas to large cities. Suburbanisation and counterurbanisation could be seen as reactions to these concentration processes. Contemporary growth of small municipalities in Czechia raises traditional question whether this trend is supported by extended suburbanisation or counter-urbanisation. Firstly, we want to discuss, which theoretical concepts are useful to explain and predict future development of the Czech settlement system. Stages of urban development, differential urbanisation, counter-urbanisation, suburbanisation or micro-urbanisation could be confronted as the most useful concepts. The empirical analyses presented within the paper are based on migration yearly evidence secured by the Czech Statistical Office in the period 2000-2021, which can be evaluated in the detail of more than 6250 municipalities. We use the typology of municipalities which combines population size with their position in or outside the metropolitan areas and agglomerations, therefore we can evaluate core cities, suburban and rural municipalities as sources and targets of migration. This approach can differentiate among various urbanisation processes, for instance to distinguish suburban and counterurban migration. Moreover, the specific attention is paid to small rural municipalities. We argue that these municipalities outside metropolitan areas and agglomeration gradually gain specific groups of population. The reasons for this migration increase are not only connected to traditional push and pull factors of urban and rural environment, significant part of out-migrants from the cities was displaced to rural areas as a consequence of new and increasing wave of international migration to cities, gentrification and displacement of urban poor. Specific process in surrounding of the large Czech cities is transformation of recreational houses and cottage into permanent living, the trend which further strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemics.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays we are living in an age of recessions, and the Covid-19 period has given new meaning to many social and welfare issues. Rural areas and small towns, which were the centres of these areas, have been revalued, in many ways as an alternative to metropolitan life. The changed interpretative framework has refocused attention on small town society, on the inequalities that are usually hidden in comparison with big cities. In addition to the benefits that appear, the vulnerabilities of small town areas must also be taken into account; such as the availability or lack of access to health services and basic infrastructure, the lower number and quality of commercial and catering outlets, and the emergence of overcrowding. The study examines the concept of vulnaribility in a functional sense in hungarian small towns and seeks to answer the question: what dynamics have been observed in recent years with regard to the quality of life in small towns.

ABSTRACT. In Iceland there is one city with two thirds of the country population or close to 250 thousand. It has been assumed that there is no other city in Iceland and therefore common way of looking at the population distribution has ben some dualism, the capital area vs the rest. Putting the rest in one box has been criticised and the rest is often looked at as rural area. That is the city vs the rural and nothing there between. Now there are signs of change. It seems like small cities are forming in Iceland giving people the extra option of small city as way of living. In this lecture the focus will be on three towns in Iceland which seem to becoming small cities, their growth rate stated and what it means if their growth rate will keep on next decades. The city size distribution in the Scandinavian countries is examined using Zipf law to compare to Iceland. Is there some obvious lack of small cities in Iceland which appears in such comparison? Is possible to see some “need” or demand for small cities in Iceland? Furthermore one could ask if the state should support the forming of small cities in Iceland if the inhabitants show clear interest in that form of residence and if small cities can support the rural.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the relationship between use of active transport modes, walking or cycling, and the aesthetic quality of the overall images of urban spaces. Aesthetic quality refers to subjectively perceived characteristics of the surrounding urban space and its capacity to provoke pleasure by the traveler, thus may include positive as well as negative aesthetic features. Because of the slow travel speed by active modes compared to cars and thus more detailed perception of the surroundings, a better awareness is needed regarding how urban spaces appear as fulfilling the aesthetic needs of active transport modes. The overall aesthetic image of urban spaces for active transport can be linked to the paradigms of car-oriented versus human-oriented types of urban spaces, where the latter is assumed to better fulfill the needs of slow transport modes. This study goes beyond previous studies that have quantified particular aesthetic characteristics by focusing on whether and how the aesthetic quality of the overall image of urban spaces plays a role in stimulating the use of active transport modes. Moreover, the study does not pre-select any urban spaces, nor is limited to central areas, but takes into account the whole metropolitan region of the Reykjavik capital, which serves as a case. Analyses of routes to neighborhood grocery stores used by selected survey respondents in Reykjavik shows a relationship between choices of travel modes and the two types of urban spaces; car- and human oriented. Based on a theoretical framework and interview data, an abstraction was conducted of the factors that influence the interpretation of the aesthetic meaning of an urban space by a travelling person and how they relate to the two types of urban spaces. This results in four groups referring to relationships between the urban space and use of non-motorised modes for utilitarian purposes.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we used a survey to examine how urban residents value and use distinct urban public spaces. Ve were interested to assess if urban public spaces are used/perceived as restorative environments which can build resilience by buffering the effects of recent stressful lifestyle in the cities. We addressed the question: To what extent do restorative properties differ in 9 selected urban public spaces, varying in size, design, amenities, number of visitors, and degree of naturalness? The main objective was to determine to what extent the selected urban public spaces in Ljubljana differ in terms of their perceived degree of restoration. The differences between the types of urban public spaces are generally smaller than one would expect in terms of the perceived restorative dimensions. Old town scored the highest overall and above average for most restorative dimensions. It seems that the old town of Ljubljana have been well designed area where all the studied dimensions, escape, fascination, coherence, compatibility and novelty are well presented. The second highest score of all the dimensions have sports facilities. They are built as a multifunctional places and are well formed from a landscape planning perspective. Large city parks and riverside green spaces were also rated above average. Urban residents seem to prefer well-kept, organized, and tidy places, even though these places are only an artificial representation of nature. The presence of water seems to have an additional positive influence on people's ratings. Urban forests ranked first for escape, suggesting that people feel away in isolation from everything in an environment which is the closest approximation to nature from all. Thus, the promotion of restorative environments should be strengthened, especially since the health benefits of physical activity and relaxation from stress, have not yet been explicitly addressed in the Urban Agenda for the EU.

ABSTRACT. While scholars study pathways for making our cities more resilient to climate change, they also highlight the embeddedness of resilience-making efforts within other social phenomena such as environmental injustice. Yet, while the importance of considering implications of (in)justice when studying climate resilience is generally agreed, is it more difficult to find harmony between the many different frameworks and approaches that have been proposed to investigate the connection between vulnerability to climate change, climate resilience and environmental justice.

The aim of this research is to summarize and organize the recent literature concerning the connection between climate resilience and environmental justice through a comprehensive systematic literature review. With this review, the research articles analysed have been classified into four approaches that look at the connection between resilience and justice in different ways. The first approach – resilience as adaptive capacity - considers the capabilities and agency to adapt to climate change of different citizen. The second approach – intersectional justice – observes the differences in exposure for marginalized groups. The third approach – community centred resilience – prioritizes the needs and bottom-up initiatives of local communities. The fourth approach – transformative resilience – defines resilience as a transformation not only in in regard to climate change, but also in terms of social justice.

The results of the systematic literature review will be presented as a meta-analysis which shows the current historical and geographical trends in the literature, and a SWOT analysis which evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each approach as well as their applicability to different research designs. The results will thus highlight gaps in the current literature on the relationship between climate resilience and environmental justice and will shed light on possible future pathways to address these gaps.

ABSTRACT. Sudden extreme weather-related disasters like the 2021 European floods prove to be primarily social disasters and challenge neighbourly communities. For a long time, planners and politicians responded to such disasters by strengthening physical and technical infrastructure for hazard prevention (Aldrich and Meyer, 2014). With the recognition that future extreme weather-related disasters cannot be avoided or be managed solely by technical solutions (Voss, 2008), the community resilience of neighbourhoods has become more important.

Vulnerabilities and resilience are unequally distributed. Certain neighbourhoods can be more vulnerable and resilient than others. This study uses two case studies (affected neighbourhoods in the city of Hagen, Germany) to examine how two different neighbourhoods cope with and recover from the July 2021 flood event. The research focus is on the internal characteristics of these neighbourhoods and their influence on community resilience and collective vulnerability, with special attention to the social capital and place attachment. For this purpose, the study employed a mixed methods approach, including interviews, a standardised survey, statistical analysis, and participatory mapping.

The study shows that the two neighbourhoods with different social structures cope with and recover from the flood in different ways. There are differences in the dynamics and approaches to coping and recovery within the neighbourhoods, but especially between them. The presentation provides information on which socio-spatial factors are decisive for those different ways. Furthermore, the paper shows how urban planning can proactively promote the community resilience of the different neighbourhoods.

References: Aldrich, D. P. and Meyer, M. A. (2014) ‘Social Capital and Community Resilience’, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 254–269. Voss, M. (2008) ‘The vulnerable can′t speak. An integrative vulnerability approach to disaster and climate change research’, Behemoth, vol. 1, no. 3.

ABSTRACT. Under the influence of climate change, disasters caused by extreme weather and climate events have occurred frequently. It damages the resident's life and property and threatens a region's social-economic development (McGlade et al., 2019). Further catastrophe will derive from the related combined disasters in the high-density region. In 2016, the New Urban Agenda adopted at the United Nations Habitat III Conference acknowledged the great challenges of urbanization and climate change in the next two decades and indicated the importance of well-planned and well-managed urban areas. Climate action is also one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN, which urges cities to propose long-term strategies for better resilience. In terms of evaluating the climate resilience quantitatively, BRIC (Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities) is one of the assessment tools developed for local scale studies. For Asian countries, however, the high-density built environment characteristics form a very different urban context than western cities. Japanese researchers have proposed a domestic ‘disaster resilience score’ to assess the local cities. There is lack of such local climate resilience evaluation tools in Taiwan. In addition, according to the World Bank, over 73% of population in Taiwan has under the threats of at least three types of disaster. Hence, this study applied literature review and two-phase Delphi studies to establish climate resilience evaluation index for high-density areas in Taiwan. The 17-indicator set consists of multiple aspects including socioeconomic conditions, infrastructure capability, and environmental resilience. Kaohsiung City is the pilot city to apply the index. The results confirm spatial differences between climate resilience and population density at district level. We also provide future urban planning strategies based on various resilience aspects of 3d scatter plot and radar chart in each district.

ABSTRACT. The flooding of western Germany’s Ahrtal in 2021 is an example of how disastrous climate change-induced events can impact a community and its infrastructure. Aspects that are becoming increasingly visible through such events are the threat climate change is posing on critical infrastructure (CI), such as energy and transportation systems, as well as the rising challenge it is imposing on urban and regional planning to increase vulnerable CI systems’ resilience. Furthermore, different approaches regarding how the criticality of CI can be assessed and defined and additionally a variety of different climatic events which expose regions, are aspects and primary research results which currently highlight the importance of enforcing research in this field. The main focus of the project KRITIKLIMA is therefore a step-by-step assessment of the need for action enforced by climate change for CI in the German state of Hesse in terms of their criticality and resilience. To reach the target of planning resilient cities, researching critical infrastructure in climate change is especially important in urban regions, as a majority of infrastructure nods connect there. For instance Frankfurt: It is not only the biggest city in the state, it is also where one of Europe's biggest airports and the world's biggest internet nod are located. These facets and the impacts of the extensive consequences a disruption might have, underline the significance of researching CIs. The project begins by mapping climate events, which will be followed by identifying focus regions in the state. The results of that identification will then lead to the implementation of sectoral and spatial case studies in which the infrastructure’s resilience, vulnerability, and criticality will be methodically assessed. The project hereby aims to find planning solutions for CI as well as transdisciplinary governance solutions to improve the resilience of CI.

ABSTRACT. An uncertain future requires cities to undertake a series of resilience-building processes to ensure sustainable development. In this study, we seek to link urban resilience and sustainable development by understanding the complexity of current anthropogenic hazards, namely pandemics and war. We searched articles indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE, and JSTOR, with no time limit for publication. The results show an increase in research after 2009, with a pronounced peak in 2021 that extends into 2022. Most of the articles are from the pandemic category, while there are fewer articles from the war category. Regardless of the hazard, most studies focus on urban structural factors rather than socioeconomic impacts and governance. Few studies address the environmental impact factor. We conclude that urban resilience and sustainable development are strongest for urban infrastructure and least for environmental impacts. Given the combination of current anthropogenic hazards, we believe that more research and applied efforts should be invested in maintaining a high quality environment, as this is the first place where it can decline.

ABSTRACT. We were stripped of our ties to the soil - those connections that framed action and thus made practical virtue possible - when modernisation cut us off from the land, from labour, from flesh, from soil and from the grave. The economy into which we have, willingly or unwillingly, been absorbed, often at great cost, turns people into interchangeable chunks of population governed by the laws of scarcity" (Ivan Illich, 1990).

With these words, Ivan Illich denounces a territory that has been made illegible by its progressive separation into ‘pieces’, in which productive functions dominate the organisation of space and productive activities are disconnected from the land.

In France, from the 1960s onwards, a tool for productive territorial planning was put into place: the Zone d'Activité Économique (ZAE). As sites reserved for the establishing of enterprises within a given perimeter, outside inhabited centres, the ZAEs have grown steadily and have become one of the major factors responsible for the peri-urbanisation of the French territory (Lejoux 2015). Their impact on soil artificialisation and the fragmentation of agricultural land forces us today to question their ability for a sustainable development of the territory.

After introducing the ZAEs, the communication will analyse the planning strategies proposed by the Italian School of Territorialists, which aims to establish a synergistic relationship between production and local resources. In the territorialist perspective, it is necessary to return to local development systems: forms of development rooted in endogenous characteristics and territorial specificities that focus their specificities on the production of sustainable and perennial wealth (Magnaghi 2017).

What is the role of the soil in these practices? Can the soil be considered the ‘active operator’ of productive processes, a heritage to be maintained and valued within the economic process?

ABSTRACT. Headwater system areas are among the most critical areas for the promotion of a necessary continuity in a Metropolitan Public Space Network System, as argued in the currently undergoing research project “MetroPublicNet” (Santos, 2020). Headwater system areas not only where a significant number of different kinds of barriers exist (physical, economic, social, political, ..), but they are also particularly pertinent for an overall redefinition of a Metropolitan Ecological Network that reinforces climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies such as the production of soil (greatest contributor for carbon capture), water infiltration, urban forestry, among others. This research proposes the enrichment of the theoretical and practical approach regarding the Metropolitan Ecological Network concept, that is essentially founded, and rationalized at the first instance, on the fragile wetland ecosystems composing the river basin. The methodological goal consists of reverting the focus from the watershed to the headwater system as another structural and structuring ecological system, while always acknowledging that both are “two sides of the same coin” and are systemically, intimately connected. More specifically, it is proposed the development of a theoretical framework focused on the principles of the headwater systems as another territorial design tool. In addition, a practical approach of exploratory nature is intended, namely through a research-by-design process focused on a particular case study within Lisbon’s metropolitan Area. Highlighted principles and practical solutions encompass the design of different types of forestry that can be configured in a great metropolitan park, potentially constituent of a wider ecological plan, generating different types of bridges and connections where barriers previously existed.

References: SANTOS, J. R., M. MATOS SILVA, ET.AL 2020. MetroPublicNet - Building the foundations of a Metropolitan Public Space Network to support the robust, low-carbon and cohesive city: Projects, lessons and prospects in Lisbon. Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, ref: PTDC/ART-DAQ/0919/2020.

ABSTRACT. Multi-level governance is therefore defined by the flexible nature of power, varying among multiple levels. That limits the powers of the central administration in terms of decision-making and process implementation, offering the opportunity for a broader participation, with the involvement of universities, non-governmental organisations, citizens, and supranational organisations. Thus, in multi-level governance, it is imperative that the actors play a key role in society and that the sovereign state negotiate, reconcile, and reach a mutual agreement on social, environmental, and economic issues. States should take the actions they deem appropriate to manage society as a whole with greater efficiency, participation and accountability through effective and active communication and access to a wide range of non-state actors. The multi-level governance structure goes beyond simplistic conceptualisation on relations between Member States and European institutions. From this point of view, political authority does not lie solely with national governments, but also at level subnational institution level, as well as at the level of European bodies, particularly the Commission and the European Parliament. Instead, leading researchers of the multi-level governance system recognise the Member States’ standing authority, while placing greater emphasis on the interaction between regions, the Commission and nation states. These issues are currently of utmost relevance to tackle the issue of sustainable development within the framework of climate change. Interacting with international organisations (United Nations, European Commission, European Parliament, and others), national governments, nation states, sub-national governments, the scientific community and the civil society has become part of the global agenda. It has also become relevant due to the emergence and continuous monitoring of the increasingly crucial and urgent action. This action has been central to the multi-level relationship at a global level. Without a proper structure in place, it is therefore necessary to understand the role of cities in multi-level governance.

ABSTRACT. We investigate land take as an element shaping the foundations of sustainable development. The contemporary paradigm of development emphasises the need to stop overusing the resources of the natural environment by stopping anthropopressure. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, local governments have been recognised as relevant agents for implementing sustainable land use policies. However, contemporary political science still needs to answer fundamental questions regarding the relationship between local politics, land use planning and the overuse of resources. What kind of local institutions are conducive to creating growth coalitions in municipalities where the most intensive transformation of space from natural to artificial takes place? In our paper, we take an institutional perspective and seek to identify the factors influencing land uses decisions. The analysed description factors are, among others, the strength of political parties in the local council and the presence of potential interest groups in the municipality. The study is interpreted through the prism of the political market concept. We present work in progress. Preliminary results of the study show that when one of the political parties gains a significant advantage in the council, there is a greater intensity of space transformation from agricultural land, forests and water areas into artificial areas – urbanised, commercial, transport and construction zones, despite the represented political ideology. An additional factor in the description of the artificialisation processes is the history of urbanisation in the municipality. Still, this factor has a different meaning in Hessen than North Rhine-Westphalia. We use dynamic spatial data from the Corine Land Cover database and official statistical and election data in the study. The data is analysed using various models based on the regression method.

ABSTRACT. It is no doubt that climate change has become an emerging global challenge and required active re-sponses. In Taiwan, the new Spatial Act system will be fully implemented by 2025, in accordance with the ef-fect of the Taiwan Spatial Planning Act. Climate change adaptation strategies and plans should be indicated in the National Spatial Plan and the City Spatial Plan of municipalities, counties, and cities to instruct future land management to adapt to climate change. Further inspection of the climate response actions of the currently an-nounced national land plans at all levels, most of them only focus on the identification of special disaster po-tential and risk, and there is a lack of institutional consensus on climate risk and climate resilience actions among various departments. As a result, the new spatial planning and control tools of the Taiwan Spatial plan-ning Act cannot exert the expected effect of responding to climate resilience at the local level.

This research attempts to explore the context of climate change responses in various sectoral depart-ments. Also, by acknowledging the decision-making process of climate change strategies and laws and the law-making process in European countries such as the UK and the Netherlands, we aim to gain knowledge of how the institution reacts to international climate action advocacy. Qualitative research methods such as literature review and case study are applied. We further develop an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between planning strategic tools and the law-making process from the UK and the Netherlands’ experience. Finally, we applied the analytical framework to Taiwan and conducted comparative studies with the two Euro-pean cases. The preliminary results indicate that there is a lack of cross-sectoral collaborations regarding cli-mate actions in Taiwan which further results in the lengthy process of delivering solid planning tools.

ABSTRACT. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, compared to the UK and Southern Europe, Nordic welfare state countries were seen to evade the most severe forms of austerity politics, such as budget cutbacks and economic restructuring processes. However, although the policies were softer, Finland and other Nordic countries applied/s widely accepted austerity measures in a more subtle, quiet way. Peck (2012, 632) summarises that “’enforcing economy’ is a relational strategy: austerity is ultimately concerned with off-loading costs, displacing responsibility; it is about making others pay the price of fiscal retrenchment.”

With abductive case study methodology, I will dwell on the question: what changed in the urban development and policy after the financial crisis in Tampere, Finland's “second city”? I use several sources of data: previous case study research, urban policy documents, statistics, newspaper articles and resident interviews. I aim to trace what ignited the major transformation in Tampere and its implications. Interestingly, after 2010, the city started going through a large-scale urban restructuring process with urban densification, a new tram-line system, etc. Most of the projects are heavily state-subsidized. And, perhaps by coincidence, urban restructuring aligns with the rise of sustainable city planning.

This research is a work in progress; for now, the results are speculative. Partly urban restructuring is conducted under an economic recovery framework. However, the distribution of public resources accumulates to high-class inner-city development, and real-estate prices in more suburban areas have not increased. Austerity urbanism, in this case, is that public resources are quietly distributed for increasing city growth, gentrifying inner-city neighbourhoods, and keeping other areas disinvested unless significant state-level incentives are available. In practice, the new sustainable city development is a form of state-led social-spatial differentiation.

ABSTRACT. As a wide-ranging societal challenge characterised by complexity and uncertainty, confronting the problem of climate change can be an overwhelming experience for teenagers. Consequently, some become activists, more disengage, yet others become despondent in the face of this formidable predicament. Against this backdrop, this paper responds to the need for new eco-social practices that can cultivate extensive structural changes by sowing the seeds for enhanced citizens’ agency. It does so by showcasing a design-thinking pedagogical framework to enrich the climate change knowledge and communication skills of mature minors (14-17 years old). This framework was developed by a multidisciplinary team of urban planners, urban designers, scientists, artists and educators. Drawing on a nationally funded research project, the paper describes the co-design of a sustainable city climate change adaptation game ‘by’ teenagers ‘for’ teenagers using an integrated arts-science-policy problem-solving pedagogy. The paper describes a replicable series of innovative methods for stimulating collective creativity in resolving complicated urban climate change issues by supporting the agency and empowerment of teenagers. These methods prompt engaged reflection by teenagers on issues of justice, authority, markets, structures and norms in the context of accelerating urban environmental change. The resources developed as part of this project are currently being used in 16 high (secondary level) schools with teenagers (14-17 years) to enhance their: (i) ‘knowledge’ of urban climate change issues; (ii) ‘engagement’ with urban environmental challenges; (iii) ‘reflective capacities’ regarding eco-social practices; as well as (iv) ‘sense of agency’ and empowerment to make change happen. This framework is also being adapted to university level undergraduate students studying resilience, urban sustainability, environmental change, city planning and urban design. As such, this paper will be of interest to planners, designers, sociologists, educators and those involved in theorising, researching, teaching and/or implementing eco-social practices for sustainable cities.

ABSTRACT. Research has shown businesses and nonprofits can form private partnerships to serve the public good. One such partnership is a cause‐related marketing campaign, where a business donates a portion of its sales to a nonprofit to address a social need. This presentation argues that, while large organizations have traditionally such this eco-practice, small enterprises and nonprofits could also form such partnerships to help address gaps in available services, resolve persistent problems, mitigate emergencies, or expedite community response. Given small enterprises and nonprofits are major actors in many country economies, broader familiarity and use of these partnerships has the potential to strengthen local trust-based networks, capacity, sustainability, and resiliency, from the bottom-up. Moreover, greater public awareness and participation in cause-related marketing campaigns may enhance citizen agency and empowerment. Drawing on empirical case study research and recent literature, the presentation offers an example of how, during the COVID‐19 pandemic, a successful cause‐related marketing campaign might help sustain local economic activity, slow the spread of the disease, and reduce health inequities. It summarizes the benefits and risks of such partnerships, the attributes of successful campaigns, and offers original policies proposals that institutional stakeholders could deploy to encourage small enterprise-nonprofit partnerships.

ABSTRACT. Urban regeneration is a policy strongly characterized by an integrated, holistic approach. It adopts a vision that comprehensively considers the relations between the different aspects of degradation in urban areas: social, economic, physical, and environmental. This vision has pointed to urban regeneration as an opportunity to solve the problems that lead to decline and vulnerability in deprived neighborhoods. The evolution of the regeneration approach shows the growing importance of environmental issues in the process. They are expected to dominate regeneration theory and practice in the near future. Green regeneration strategies, especially in shrinking cities, make urban neighborhoods more attractive, improve the quality of life, and provide residents with recreational spaces and opportunities. In this paper, I analyse the data and the opinions of various actors concerning building urban resilience through green regeneration strategies employed in shrinking Polish cities. Particular emphasis is on linking these policies with the former character and changes in cities' social, economic, environmental, and physical structure. The statistical data analysis covered the whole country, while the survey was conducted in the shrinking cities of the Wielkopolska region, representing case studies. The results show that regeneration contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation goals by: - promoting compact urban forms and mixed-use development through regeneration projects on inner-city post-industrial and post-military sites, - improving urban greenery in residential environments (parks, squares, green spaces), - developing low-carbon and climate-friendly neighborhoods that generate and consume renewable energy, save natural resources by recycling waste and rainwater, and reduce the use of private vehicles, - improving public transport systems, increasing opportunities for walking and cycling, and encouraging the use of public transport in cities. However, the above activities are not universal, occurring in varying degrees of intensity in the case study cities.

ABSTRACT. Although the community resiliences concept has been extensively used in research and policy to tackle the problem of climate change from multiple standpoints in urban environments (Leichenko, 2011; Jabareen, 2013), less work has been performed at the scale of small towns and their socio-ecological systems (Salas Tobón and Barton, 2019). Existing community resilience literature underscores the importance of various socioeconomic and political drivers for understanding community resilience. Building on these studies, our paper analyses how natural, urban, cultural, institutional, and socioeconomic factors at the community level affect small towns' ability to adapt to climate change and help support decision-making pathways toward resilience. Mainly, our study focuses on two small towns in the Seine Valley (Normandy, France): Rives-: Rives-en-Seine and Duclair. Both towns are part of the Seine River's emblematic landscape and represent a typical socio-ecological system within the boundaries of a national and regional park with a mixture of rich biodiversity, forests, wetlands, and fertile agricultural lands. These small towns are, however, prone to flooding, erosive runoff, and land degradation risks that are primarily caused by anthropogenic activities, including soil sealing, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss resulting from uncontrolled urbanization on the one hand, and natural, such as soil erosion and floodings caused by the rising of the Seine River level on the other. Our methodology draws on qualitative data obtained from interviews and focus groups across spatial levels to examine the complex relationships between community resilience and land and ecosystem degradation at the small-town level. The results put forward the factors that may support or hinder the development of community resilience to climate change and determine probable futures for the communities that build the capacity to address these threats.

ABSTRACT. The tiny house movement has been growing in popularity over the last several decades and is demonstrated in popular culture through numerous tiny house blogs, TV reality shows, social media posts and even tiny house festivals. However, such outlets often highlight the most exciting and aspirational aspects of tiny house living and design, rather than examine dweller expectations and experiences that are still open for debate. This session will explore the rising prominence of tiny house living in relation to its potential to transform dweller experiences of home and to make an incremental change in terms of sustainability to the housing market overall. Topics of discussion will include: dweller satisfaction, simple living, mobile vs. stationary tiny house lifestyles, regulatory issues, sustainability, debates over the normalization of downsized dwelling spaces, and the future of tiny living.

ABSTRACT. After 1989, the number of urban stakeholders in Poland expanded. In terms of the actors involved in urban space governance, significant (although not - dynamic) transformations can be observed. The social sector, including emerging local communities (e.g. in the form of informal groups), which have so far been treated as passive recipients of activities that take place "above" them, are gaining increasing importance. Bottom-up urban activism is a new form of urban engagement that is at an early stage of development, albeit one that completes the picture of civil society. Contemporary literature focuses overwhelmingly on formalised manifestations of urban engagement by analysing the activities of the NGO sector. However, in the words of Marody (2005), not including within the sphere of civic activity the spontaneous actions of individuals would be a major omission. Thus, it is the bottom-up, spontaneously created grassroot groups’ activities aimed at solving community problems that are the core of civil society. In Poland in the last decade there has been a significant increase in the number of grassroots initiatives, especially in large cities. This work will focus mainly on the example of Łódź, a city that adopted a new development strategy in 2020, which places particular emphasis on socially inclusive growth. The author analysed the new form of citizen engagement tool – microgrants - that has been implemented by a local government to include informal groups in decision-making processes. Research shows that the use of microgrants as a tool for urban participation allows for stronger engagement of far more diverse community members than traditional methods of participation, including previously marginalised groups such as informal groups, children or seniors.

Marody, M. (2005). Społeczeństwo poobywatelskie? In: Kręgi integracji i rodzaje tożsamości. Polska, Europa, świat. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe SCHOLAR, pp. 211-220.

ABSTRACT. The paper proposal is based on the project "Direct Election of Mayors" (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, TL02000540), which was solved by the consortium of the Charles University and the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. In order to ensure the preparedness of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, the project aims to process a variant “modular” solution to the possible implementation of directly elected mayors in the Czech Republic. The presented outcome of the project meets two criteria: 1) the solution could be adapted according the political priorities of the next governments, 2) the solution eliminates the risks associated with the direct election at the same time. The final version of the solution is based on two „platforms“ – policy transfers from Land Salzburg (Austria) and Baden-Württemberg (Germany). The analyse was originally based on nine case studies from Europe, which were based on study of foreign literature, law and governmental documents so as semi-structured interviews with foreign experts.

ABSTRACT. Both the academic and the policy discourse have long considered social innovation (SI) as a positive tool to enhance the capabilities of societies for tackling the distribution of disad-vantages (Gerometta et al, 2005), and to sustain innovative assets of governance for en-hancing development (Moulaert et al, 2013; EC, 2013). The accepted understanding of SI as a picture of success, however, derives from oversimplification, giving the impression that the outcomes of socially innovative initiatives are unchallenged and unproblematic. This is, indeed, a slippery slope, for several reasons. In particular, scholars showed some evidence of how public support is a key ingredient in letting social innovation being durable and with an effect beyond the micro-scale dimension (Ostanel, 2017; Gerometta, 2017); on the other hand, the elitist character of SI has been highlighted.

The Paper is aimed at challenging the ‘over romantic’ character of current research that is addressing the issue at stake on the relation between social innovation practices and local institutions (DeFilippis et al, 2006). To do so two regional contexts in Italy will be addressed, Veneto and Apulia Region with the aim of assessing what spatial, social and institutional conditions and dynamics shape the relationship between SI and institutions, with a particular emphasis on understanding the impact on planning processes. The two contexts have been selected considering the North-South very diverse territorial patterns, but also considering the different attitude of regional governments in relation to SI, the presence of local foundations with diverse level of engagement with SI that can impact on SI-institutions relation as well as the diverse his-tories and cultures of civic participation.

ABSTRACT. Cities have always been the vibrant core of economic development and, therefore, critical to attaining a sustainable future. The latter is highlighted in the 11th goal of the UN’s 2030 agenda, which anchors the transportation sector as “central to sustainable development” (UN, N.D). Therefore, this paper’s departure point is transportation’s role as a critical pillar of goal 11. Starting from the theoretical premise that including the citizens in decisions making, also known as reflexive governance, promotes institutional change, this paper explores how authorities’ interaction with the public shape the decisions linked to policies that promote sustainable transportation when citizens are included through stakeholder dialogue. However, several academic studies have highlighted an often ad-hoc approach by public authorities regarding how and when citizens are included in such dialogues, and therefore the debate regarding reflexive governance is far from being settled. Several scholars advocate dialogue as a pillar of what characterises reflexive governance—due to it being often employed to bridge authorities’ visions and citizens’ lay knowledge. Consequently, this review focused on articles published in the leading transportation journals between 2000 and 2022 to assess how and when dialogue was employed and what political outcome was attained. Further, this review applied Colquhoun et al. (2014) methodology to synthesise from the relevant articles the most effective approaches to including potential stakeholders, how and when dialogues were held, and how citizens perceived these dialogues. This review is, therefore, expected to contribute to the cumulative knowledge about dialogue as a tool to improve political outcomes in (sustainable) transport. Alongside illustrating the critical characteristics of how the dialogue was defined— and employed by the public authorities, this paper’s added value is synthesising evidence for real-world applications, such as probable paths for improving policies aiming to attain sustainable transportation through promoting co-ownership among stakeholders.

ABSTRACT. Smart technologies are unevenly distributed and used. As digitalization and smart technical solutions increasingly becomes embedded into urban settings and buildings, research also need to investigate who benefits from this development. The underlying question to the study presented here thus becomes: are smart cities smart for everyone? The aim of this paper is to study the research-based knowledge production on the topic of smart cities, to illustrate and address how, by whom, where and for what purposes digital services are provided and accessible to people. Results presented here comes from a meta-study on previously published research (available through the Scopus database) on the topics of smart cities, sustainable development goals and the presence or absence of end-users of new technological applications and infrastructures introduced. Through a mixed method review using scoping, structuring and scrutiny of the findings we can draw some conclusions about the research-based knowledge production on smart cities. The study shows how the concept of smart city/cities is to a great extent applied in research from the perspective of security purposes, energy saving and cost efficiency for property owners, commercial developers, providers of technological solutions or from the perspective of local (municipal, regional and city) planners, and to a significantly lower degree from the perspective of everyday users, residents, or workers in the smart city. Within the end-user research available, the perspective, furthermore, rarely focuses on obstacles found in sub-user-groups based on class, assets, literacy, and physical or mental disabilities. The research-based knowledge production is discursively standard-setting, which reinforces the interpretive prerogative by the planners, makers and distributers of smart city technologies rather than the user-end in terms of city dwellers. These findings call for further research about potential use and abuse of smart city technologies and applications by stakeholders and consequences for those left out entirely.

ABSTRACT. The European multilevel-governance system has been gone through dramatic changes in the last decades mostly due to the financial, pandemic, and security crises. The governmental centralizing ambitions parallel with sovereignty conflicts between EU institutions and some member states contributed to the power shift between the different governance levels, with a strengthening of the central level and a marginalisation of local and regional levels. The paper focuses on the Hungarian situation, which is an extreme example of both upward and downward conflicts. The Hungarian government introduced extreme centralization measures during the pandemic and the centralization has continued referring to the financial and security challenges of the recent years. The cooperation/relationship between the central and local, mainly urban governments has been limited for longer time, due to the completely new philosophy of local governance emerged in the new constitution and basic laws on local governments (2011). The relationship has been further deteriorated by the results of the last local elections in 2019 when in major cities and even in the capital an oppositional leadership were elected. The history of MLG in the last 3 years in Hungary reveals several new phenomena of local/ urban democracy: how city leaderships in the oppositional or independent (so called „free”) cities are trying to represent their interest toward central and EU level by building stronger links among themselves, international partners and with the local society. The paper outlines the main features of new types of alliances and power relations based on city cases and electoral and financial data concluding that the fragile governance position could be strengthened by stronger horizontal cooperation between „free” cities and with the local society. The stronger and direct linkages with the European institutions are still open questions.

ABSTRACT. Italy's historic villages constitute a unique reality for their cultural, historical-architectural and traditional variety and richness. Typically located in unfavourable positions, distant from the major economic poles, marked by a predominantly rural cultural past, these areas find today their strength in the quality of the landscape and in the connection with the territory in which they are located.  Historically, the imposition of an "industrial model" has prevailed over a territorial, rural and artisanal dimension, leading to a very rapid economic, social and cultural change, which has collapsed those fixed points of stability in small towns. The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to further exacerbating these critical issues, highlighting the diminished possibilities for smart working and online learning due to the poor quality of online connections, and creating more pressure on already struggling basic services, particularly those related to health care. At the same time, however, this emergence has also highlighted the potential and strengths of inland areas and hamlets, which have been chosen in many cases as places of residence over urban areas because of the availability of larger spaces, the greater presence of nature, and the possibility of more sustainable rhythms of life. This opportunity can therefore represent a significant opportunity for revival and enhancement of great cultural and social value, which is now more possible than ever thanks to a range of available tools and funding. In this context, scientific research, policy actors and the communities themselves are trying to create and develop innovative models to improve living and working conditions in these places.

ABSTRACT. The adverse effects of peer-to-peer platforms on housing markets at destinations are well known, while the influence of the overall shifts in the structure of tourism accommodation on housing prices is still not well understood. One of the open issues relates to the impact of relative changes in the supply of various types of accommodation, both collective and private, on housing price formation at destinations. The paper employs the dataset on housing prices, its main determinants, and tourism demand and supply variables over the 2012-2021 period for cities and municipalities in a small, tourism-dependent country. The results show that more intensive tourism demand and the conversion of housing stock into private rentals boost housing prices. However, the relative shift in the accommodation structure from hotels and campsites to private rentals depresses housing prices, while in destinations where hotels and campsites crowd out private rentals housing prices increase. These findings could be attributed to the pricing-in effects of an increased supply of tourism amenities developed alongside hotels and campsites that improve the general quality of life at a destination and lower quality of life experienced at a destination where private rentals are crowding-out collective accommodation.

ABSTRACT. Although researchers have confirmed the impact of tourism on housing prices in many destinations affected with overtourism, they do not consider housing affordability in relation to the population’s income levels. This study explores the relationship between tourism activity and housing affordability, using a sample of Croatian municipalities. Specifically, the study investigates how tourist accommodation, concentration, seasonality and overall vulnerability to tourism influence housing affordability in this emerging tourism-driven European country. The results obtained reveal tourism intensification’s deteriorating effect on local residents’ abilities to afford housing. The findings indicate a particularly strong tourism seasonality impact, suggesting the presence of common negative externalities, such as employment fluctuations, difficulties in maintaining economic status, and revenue instabilities, in localities prone to seasonal tourism fluctuations.

ABSTRACT. Today, ecovillages house over 100,000 people worldwide. This growing movement represents a reaction to the social and environmental degradation in contemporary society. By look at the space in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, the unique example of an ecovillage in Ireland, this research aims to understand how this space was produced, utilising Henri Lefebvre's spacial trialectics in order to assess its liveability using Jane Jacobs characteristics of a 'good place'. Built onto an existing village, less than 10 years after construction began the project was gravely impacted by the 2008 financial crisis and the ambitious design, driven by an environmentally sustainable ethos, is barely visible today. Conflicts and an inability to make and enforce decisions within the internal voluntary governance structure (the Viable Systems Model) have caused a partial breakdown of the governance structure and community cohesion. This is manifest in its space and the 'objective liveability' of Cloughjordan Ecovillage is certainly below average, however the 'subjective liveability' is high and the environmental impact is far lower than national average.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the drivers and barriers of urban sustainability policy transfer in the case of the city of Izmir in Turkey. We show that what drives the shift towards urban sustainability in Izmir is the coexistence of global norm change around the localization of Sustainable Development Goals and the local demand. Increased opportunities for collaboration between the international and local actors, when a local demand already exists, encourage municipalities to espouse sustainability discourse and implement sustainable infrastructure projects by breaking institutional inertia. However, the lack of municipal jurisdiction over sustainability-related issues is a severe impediment. We argue that the bottom-up attempts of policy transfer have limited long-term transformative impact unless the central government enacts the necessary legislation and regulation to provide local governments with the authority and tools to pursue urban sustainability. This finding provides a key perspective regarding arguments on the localization of sustainable development goals by studying local governments as agents of policy transfer that are distinct but not wholly independent from their respective central governments.

ABSTRACT. In an increasingly interconnected world driven by technological progress, the infrastructure systems we rely on for everyday services have also become increasingly connected. This trend has increased the capability of these infrastructure systems, however it also poses risks. Systemic connections of infrastructures are at the same time interdependencies. A failure of one system can, in result, lead to the failure of further systems, kicking off a cascade of disruptive effects throughout a variety of aligned infrastructure. The increasing prevalence of highly interconnected infrastructure systems therefore needs to be closely monitored. This development is to be viewed against the backdrop of an accelerating climate crisis, leading to a higher cadence of more extreme weather occurrences, which can be the cause for a disruption. The SysKa-Project of the IRPUD (TU Dortmund) and the City of Bochum developed a concept to analyse interdependencies of especially critical infrastructure systems. The true cost of the disruption of CI-Systems is often underestimated, as the complex interdependencies are (increasingly) difficult to understand and model. In order to provide a better information basis for municipal administrative officials for their decisions on how to allocate their finite funds most effectively in the deployment of security solutions, these interdependencies were analysed for specific critical infrastructures in the city of Bochum. Via a participatory approach, the interdependencies of the most critical infrastructure branches in Bochum were defined and inventoried. With the help of experts of the administration and the critical infrastructure service providers the connections where mapped out and summarized in a cascade diagram. With the help of this diagram, security solutions can be tailored to intervene at critical connections between infrastructure systems to limit the damages caused through cascade effects.

ABSTRACT. A broad mobilization of citizens is needed to achieve the sustainable transitions of cities. This entails engaging people with different cultural and social backgrounds, economic situations, and political affiliations to change their everyday practices, such as means of transportation, eating habits and waste management. The paper will report from an applied research project (Greencoin) in the city of Gdansk, Poland, which aims to develop and test a community currency intended to stimulate environmentally sustainable everyday practices. One of the challenges we face in the project is to mobilize citizens beyond the segment that perceives themselves as having a high degree of environmental awareness. Based on focus group discussions where we have explored how citizens in the Gdansk area perceive climate change and environmental issues, we will discuss challenges and opportunities of broad mobilization and how we approach them in our project. One challenge is the politicization of environmental discourse, where certain ways of framing environmental challenges may be associated with political rhetoric on either the left or the right side of the political continuum. We will discuss how we mitigate the risk of alienation based on political associations by engaging local identity in our communication about environmental challenges. Another challenge is that existing sustainable practices motivated by other priorities, such as saving money, are not necessarily valued by citizens as contributions to sustainable transition. By including and rewarding such actions in our community currency system, we seek to encourage more citizens to understand themselves as part of the quest to achieve a sustainable transition of their city.

ABSTRACT. With the increasing impact of climate change, the term "resilience" has been widely discussed. Different from common structural disaster mitigation strategies, countries in recent years have advocated how to apply traditional knowledge and local experience as adaptation strategies for climate change. Many studies have tried to find that traditional knowledge is heterogeneous through case studies, which often varies from factors such as locations, types of disasters, local beliefs, and living habits. They have further pointed to the display of local community cohesion as a key factor affecting how traditional knowledge have been effectively passed on. Nevertheless, relevant research also believes that traditional knowledge should not be regarded as an appendage of scientific knowledge by policy makers, but should be an independent knowledge system. To sum up, this study selects Chiayi County, which has been flooded for a long time due to the impact of serious subsidence, and Hualien County, which has frequent earthquake disasters. Consider that although these two cities are areas with a low degree of urban development and limited resources for disaster reduction from the government, there are still many settlements that have settled here for many years. Therefore, this study will visit Chiayi County and Hualien County, where natural disasters are frequent, and conduct in-depth interviews with local residents to understand whether different disaster types or ethnic characteristics will produce the same or different traditional knowledge application. And discuss whether it is precisely because of the existence of these traditional knowledge that local residents choose to continue to live here. This study also analyzes the disaster prevention and protection plan formulated by the local government, and further discusses the possibility of how to incorporate local unique traditional knowledge into disaster management.

ABSTRACT. The northern neighbourhoods of Milan are recurrently affected by surface water floods. The frequency with which the Seveso Torrent, channelled into the Milanese underground network, flows out of manholes during extreme meteorological events is such that these events became an "ordinary emergency". Public initiatives launched in the last two decades to face the problem include risk reduction plans, voluntary agreements, participatory processes supporting risk governance innovation, changes and updates in urban and regional regulations, modifications of existing sectoral documents, and structural interventions. These actions broadly differ in scope, underlying presumptions, and intended applications. Also, these - often disputed - attempts to reduce flood risk were hindered by political and operational obstacles linked to spatial, governance and discourse fragmentation patterns. Focussing on the latter, the article investigates how different ways of understanding and framing this wicked problem affected risk reduction initiatives and their success. On the one hand, the study looks at how explicit knowledge has been acquired and used - both instrumentally and symbolically - in planning and policy documents. On the other hand, it reports the results of a discourse analysis carried out on media reports, policy documents and interviews, which allowed identifying "framing and reasoning devices" used to make sense of flood events and envision possible solutions. Finally, dynamics related to sense-making, knowledge acquisition and utilisation are interpreted with a triple-loop learning model to discuss their effects in terms of reflective action and policy inertia.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we explore sustainability in the context of strategic management of cities. The paper advances understanding about the conceptualization of sustainability and how sustainability discourses might matter for the formulation or implementation of city strategies. The research question directing our study is: How is the concept of sustainability used in city strategies to address and advance sustainable development in cities?

We scrutinize city strategies reflecting Kornberger’s (2012) view of strategies as socio-political practices shaping cities and societies. In addition, city strategies are seen here as management tools and practices that can be used to address sustainability concerns (Kornberger & Carter 2010) and as performative devices that aim at transforming their objects (Kornberger & Clegg 2011). In Finland, city strategy is a legally obligatory policy document for all cities (Local Government Act 410/2015), and it is a central management tool in defining the city’s main goals and in guiding its policies.

The premise of our article is, that in order to strategically guide the implementation of sustainability policies, the city needs to define and refine the concept of sustainability. This opens the need and the opportunity to assess critically how sustainability relates to and challenges the existing assumptions how cities are managed and how their operations are organized. (Zeemering 2018.) This is needed to embed sustainability into the operations and management of a city instead of just bolting on sustainability to the strategy (Laszlo & Zhexembayeva 2011).

The empirical part of the article consists of a document analysis of the city strategies of the 21 biggest cities of Finland (all the Finnish cities with more than 50 000 inhabitants). Employing frame analysis, we identify how sustainability is framed in the strategies and assess how does the concept potentially steer the cities.

ABSTRACT. Among the ways to build urban resilience, encouraging residents to change their eating habits through food self-production activities deserves attention. Understanding the potential of such activities guided the authors of the scientific project, the aim of which was to carry out an urban experiment in which the residents of a selected block would grow edible plants and insects in hydroponic cabinets located in the corridors of their block. As part of this, in-depth interviews were conducted with participants who had applied to take part in the experiment about their needs, motivations and expectations of the planned innovative activities. Based on the analysis of the collected research material, we present a silhouette of a participant in future food self-production activities, focusing primarily on educational aspects. This is because we are convinced that well-designed educational activities are the key to the success of any endeavour related to the sustainable transformation of cities.

ABSTRACT. The article debates a possible more flexible future city, showing how a new notion of space and time use could be one of the driving forces for the urban revival in a postCovid world. Despite the mega-urbanising time we live in, which has involved massive urban expansion around the world, there’s an excess of inefficiently or unused used space in cities. Many are closed and inaccessible, lying empty for many hours a day. Restaurants stay empty for almost half the day, valuable office floors are only occupied between nine and five, and cars are just standing there doing nothing 95% of their time. This is what is called spatial overcapacity: the use of space here is inefficient and monofunctional, being full at certain times but left empty at many others. So why can't this space be used for other purposes during these off-peak times? What if, an empty restaurant turns into a workplace during the day? How an un-used school auditorium turns into a cinema every evening or a church becomes an indoor campsite at night? If we start to consider time as a design parameter, we’re entering a new dimension of space, in which space begins to behave like a chameleon, changing its identity according to the ever-changing circumstances around it. That’s the way the city becomes more resilient and sustainable. Considering all this, the proposed presentation aims to expose two reflections. On one hand, a speculation about a more flexible and adaptable future city theorizes about how this flexibility can be achieved, in architectural terms but also in a much broader social context. On the other hand, a more practical perspective collects a series of examples of such spatial flexibility in Lisbon. Drawing interpretation along with project and photo documentation is used to illustrate this reading.

ABSTRACT. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development acknowledges that cities will be most affected by climate change and are central for responding to it. The global goals shall support their adaptation. However, the intertwined targets appear to be out of reach. Policies for advancing “sustainable cities and communities” (SDG 11) are often not durable and their implementation later annulled in courts. To address this problem, citizens shall be more actively engaged in urban policy-making processes. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that also in democratic countries citizen participation is most often symbolic. This article explores why the global goals are not guiding urban development and how participatory approaches can be advanced. Our qualitative research conducted in two Arctic municipalities located in Finland and Sweden contributes to ongoing debates in urban and governance studies, particularly in the emerging fields of sustainability transitions in remote areas. We show that participatory approaches fail because of a lack of administrative capacities, path dependencies, societal conflicts and power asymmetries between the actors involved, limiting the transformative scope and legitimacy of policies. For advancing sustainable urban development in the two analysed cases, particularly central governments need to assume more responsibility, to provide more guidance and to invest in capacity-building and community empowerment at the local level.

ABSTRACT. The article is a report on the development of a model of alternative currency Greencoin, implemented as part of an international project. Greencoin is a virtual alternative currency that one earns and spends only on sustainable, local products and services. The alternative currency is seen as a tool to improve the quality of life in the city by motivating its users to sustainable actions. The planned result of the project is the creation of a digital "mother application" enabling the exchange of virtual currency in a given location. Later the application will be adapted and used in other cities to create a local version of the currency. The essence of the project, apart from technical issues related to the creation of an IT system, was to create a mechanism that will motivate users to earn virtual currency through activities for the benefit of the neighbourhood, local community and the environment. This required the creation of a model of cooperation between application users and understanding their motivation. They include the inhabitants of a given city, but also small companies, large companies, NGOs and public institutions. The most important part of the project was to examine and then determine the relationship between these entities in the context of the application's operation. The paper introduces the structure of users and their relations developed on the basis of theoretical and practical research that is a tool for motivating them to sustainable action.

ABSTRACT. Urban green spaces contribute to urban resilience and the well-being of urban residents. The ecosystem service framework allows to disentangle the contribution of each type of green space to well-being, as air quality, temperature, water infiltration or recreation. Based on the current urban planning paradigm which is striving for compactness of cities, soil sealing is expected to increase. Eventually in such a way that no soil will be remain. Green roofs have presented themselves as the nature-based solution for providing green space on sealed soil and buildings. Though services provided by the soil as an ecological entity cannot be provided by green roofs to the same extent. But does it really matter to people? Here we aim to compare the public perceptions of two types of green spaces: on the ground (soil) and on a roof. An image-based online survey performed to 376 Portuguese undergraduate students is used. Results shows that there is not a clear awareness of the roof structure existence and its influence on natural processes, the ecosystem services provided and notably as its effect on the water cycle and biomass development. The presence of vegetation has a significant value increase when compared with areas with no vegetation. Higher values of Perceived Restorativeness (PRS) and Restoration outcomes (ROS) were also identified on the ground green spaces with an increase on the situations with more vegetation. Based on these results the implications of green infrastructure planning are discussed. Ultimately public perception be used to legitimize the progress of soil sealing and its irreversible depletion. Progress needs to be made on increasing public awareness of the benefits drawn from nature as expressed in the ecosystem service concept and developments need be made on ecosystem sensitive sets of performance indicators.