Video: Hou Hanru

According to Larkham (2002), urban morphology is an important assessment method in determining the transformation processes of urban contexture, making sense of the historical roots of spatial and functional structure and bringing them to the present day. The purpose of this study is to explore various urban forms in European and Asian cities from its morphological aspects, and construe the distinction between them. To be able construe them based on their city representatives from each continent (Europe and Asia), this study begins with a discussion toward the city of Rome and London as the representative of European city, and city of Singapore and Tokyo as the representative of Asian city. Exploratory approach is used for descriptive case study to deliberate decision in figure out the comparison between two urban form in European and Asian cities based on its morphological aspects. The result of this study shows that history, road patterns, and city’s architecture strongly influence the morphological changes of the cities that discussed in this paper. Lastly, this paper also discuss the main comparation between european and asian cities based on the morphological characteristic. Keyword : European and asian cities, urban form, urban morphology

The new Asian city: three-dimensional fictions of space and urban form

Despite the spectacular contemporary metropolis image of Luijiazui, the new Central Business District (CBD) of Shanghai on the Pudong side of the Huangpu River, this paper discusses the ways Shanghai might be understood through the ‘reality’ of its urbanism. The purpose is to check in a practical way the actuality of the built environment in relation to its history and political presence through first-hand primary sources, which is intended to fill unanticipated voids that surfaced in the understanding of Shanghai in a physical sense. This can be done from the four following perspectives: urban form; individual buildings and urban imagery; visualization of the skylines; and streetscape. Using the city as a primary source, this paper succinctly presents specific information derived from the observations needed to authenticate the research, i.e. to understand the existence of contemporary architecture as a means of urban iconography, which will contribute to the theory of how we conceive and experience the hybridized urban complexity in Asian cities in a practical manner from the perspectives of both the pedestrian and architect-planner critical to the awareness the far-reaching consequence of Shanghai’s urban environment.

In investigating the relationship between urbanization and sustainability in cities of developing countries, many researchers have looked to rising incomes as a driver for environmental improvement. This article challenges the transition and evolutionary models of urban environmental development that suggest that as cities grow in per capita income, their local environmental problems will diminish. The transition model is outcomes‐based, and a competing model based on greater attention to participation in setting sustainability goals and assessing the progress toward those goals is presented. Consensus on appropriate sustainability indicators is a key element, albeit a challenging one, in the task of pursuing urban sustainability. This is due to the contested nature of the concept of sustainability and also the fact that much of the work done on sustainability has been conducted among countries or on a national scale. A brief review of health, urban transport, air quality, and sewerage indicators suggests that cities do not necessarily see more progress as the per capita income increases. Low‐income cities in Southeast Asia that are performing well are likely to see a deterioration in standards with rapid economic and population growth.

The Proceedings of the Fourth Tokyo Conference of Argumentation bring together a selection of 19 papers presented on August 2012 at the Sophia University Junior College Division, Kanagawa, Japan. The presentations related to the convention theme ‘‘The role of argumentation in society.’’ Almost 60 people gathered in Tokyo to discuss a wide variety of the roles argumentative discourse plays in daily interactions. The most popular subject of study was the uses of argumentation in the process of crisis management and, in particular, in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that followed the Tohoku earthquake and the Tsunami of 11 March 2011. The collection of papers published in the Proceedings reflects the conference’s emphasis on crisis management. Indeed, six authors analyse discourses prompted by the Fukushima nuclear disaster; two contributions deal with argumentation during and after political crises in the U.S. and Mexico; and one paper analyses Bush’s speech in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The remaining contributions comprise theoretical approaches to the study of argumentation in social contexts, and analyses of case studies illustrating the everyday work of rhetoric in the process of (re)producing social knowledge, morality, and ideas about female sexuality. The comments proposed below focus only on those essays relating to Japan’s nuclear crisis and the theoretical contributions by Anthony Blair, Frans van Eemeren and Manfred Krauss.

There have been several development models. Each of these models attempts to identify the causal and explanatory factors that can explain why some societies are developed or underdeveloped, or how those that are underdeveloped can (if they can) improve on their wellbeing. Some of these models are: modernization model, economic development model, dependency model, human development model, and so on. I intend to argue in this paper that most of these development models, especially the dependency model, are faulty because they sustain irresponsibility, and are therefore dehumanizing. In their place, I argue in this paper for the culture-agency model of development which is based on the logic that development is the result of human actions. Human actions are results of human choices. Human choices are results of human valuation systems. Valuation systems are aspects of a people’s culture. Thus, the best development model is one that puts the members of every society at the centre of their development process and developmental activities. Based on my analyses of the Igbo expression that “eziokwu bu ndu” (truth is life) and Paul Ricoeur’s idea of narrative-identity, I establish in this paper, a close connection between truth (which results from the narrative-identity of/by a people about themselves) and social development. I did this with some particular reference to Nigeria.

The United Nations (UN) estimates that an additional 2.5 billion people will reside in urban areas by 2050. Due to rapid economic development and urbanization, urban areas are responsible for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from final energy use. Rapid urbanization will predominantly occur in emerging nations, particularly in Asia, where more than four billion people reside, accounting for around 55% of the world’s population. However, the temporal and spatial characteristics of urban structure in emerging cities and their correlations with GHG emissions are hardly understood, despite the fact that urban form is an important determinant of urban sustainability. Given this context, the study aims to evaluate the dynamics of urban form using three key measurements—population density, Moran’s index, and population gradient coefficient—in the capital cities of South, Southeast, and West Asia and investigate how urban form affects CO₂ emissions. The study employs a modified STRIPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model as its major framework, using panel data from 2000 to 2019 with a five-year gap. The results indicate that the evolution of urban form varies from city to city while the population density continues to increase with slight variations in Moran’s and population gradient coefficients. Considering the changes in the three indicators over time in the cities under study, it can be concluded that urbanization in the researched areas is generally getting more compact. Moran’s index is a statistically significant factor concerning CO₂ emissions, indicating that CO₂ emissions could be lowered in cities with more clustered forms. The findings of this research have major implications for urban policy-makers seeking to explain the dynamics of urban form, how it evolves in developing countries, and how CO₂ emissions are affected.

High school dropouts: Interactions between social context, self-perceptions, school engagement, and student dropout

In an increasingly urbanized world, there are pressures being placed on our cities to which planners, decision-makers and communities need to respond. Leading thinkers suggest a need for enhanced expertise in urban systems and call for additional and improved case studies as well as models for planning, management, policy development and decision-making. Planning support systems (PSS) offer demonstrated strengths in modelling and analysis of urban systems, communication of information and public engagement. However, in spite of the demonstrated need, a dominant thread in the planning support literature is the under-utilization and lack of implementation of systems and instruments. This chapter investigates the relevance of PSS to address urban problems in the twenty-first century by reviewing project-based use cases and the social context in which they take place. The review confirms the utility of PSS but finds that planning and governance are strongly dictated by a number of societal trends that are antithetical to effective and impactful PSS implementation.

Theories of identity fail to recognize the flexibility of identity within its social context, a conceptualization that is particularly relevant for Japanese-Americans. This chapter is about understanding how Japanese-American individuals create and negotiate identities as multiple categories, rather than a single category. Japanese-Americans are those who have been exposed to and have internalized two cultures, requiring the synthesis of cultural norms from two groups into one behavioral repertoire. As a consequence, the sense of identity among Japanese-Americans is both individualistic and collectivistic. The Japanese self is coded to participate in both extremes, but the self must be able to switch. The contradictions that these oppositions present are managed by contextualization in place, time, and social group. The chapter explores what it means to be Japanese-American, living at the juncture of two cultures and belonging to two cultures, either by being born of mixed racial heritage or born in one culture and raised in another. Based on recent personal interviews with bicultural Japanese-Americans, the author proposes a model of ethnic identity development The discussion focuses on how Japanese-Americans have negotiated the development of their identity in the United States according to the generation of their birth and relates how this experience is uniquely Japanese-American.

It is difficult to find the ideal term to refer to the complex process of establishing and asserting one's identity-as an individual or as part of a group. This process, referred to by some as constructing a social reality is, indeed, personal and self-initiated but, at the same time, it is dynamic, interactive, and in part, reactive. The mirror in which an immigrant sees his or her identity is, in part defined by the community in which he or she lives and, within that community, his or her social networks. Farmworker's ambivalence as to whether their identity can really be reduced to life as braceros, working machines, or, whether there is more to life than that is inevitable. Mexican immigrants' ambivalence expressed by as to whether they should be left out of the decennial census and remain statistically invisible because they don't belong, is equally predictable. However, effective engagement implies an identity-a perspective, hopes, dreams, ideals, and a personal style. One's personal identity, or one's social identity as a member of an informal or formal group is the fulcrum for social interaction and, thus, for participation.The process of defining and asserting one's identity is a lifelong one and it is fairly obvious that for most of us it is something of a struggle, a never-ending work in progress, punctuated with fitful starts, experiments, adjustments, and modulations. As Verba, Schlozman, and Brady point out, the process of developing skills is affected both by personal experience in informal settings and by learning experiences in formal educational settings. However, the Civic Voluntarism model tacitly assumes that the social context in which all of these learning experiences take place are the same one. This is not the case when it comes to immigrants. Because immigrants find themselves transitioning from one environment to another, the basic assumptions which govern our overall model of skills development do not hold true. Past experience, knowledge of processes, styles of communication,, and understanding of how civic systems work must be adjusted to a new reality and the inferences which govern this translation involve much more than just acquiring a new skills set; they involve creating a new personal identity, a new social identity (i.e. persona), and developing a new voice, that includes personal style and modes of communication.At the level of community life, this dynamic process of re-invention is not simply a personal one but, also, one which may engage an entire family, an entire social network, or, an entire ethnic group (since ethnicity, by definition, refers to self-identification and network relationships). We focus on two particular cases, each of which exemplifies a more general challenge relating of immigrants' adaptation to California society and development of activism.My analysis highlights the experiences and reflections of two quite different immigrant activists. One is Jorge San Juan, a young Mixteco construction worker who is also the volunteer coordinator of a Mixtec cultural group Se'e'Saavi, and a member of the Board of Directors of a community-based organization, the Centra Binacional para el Desarollo Indigena Oaxaqueno (CBDIO). Jorge's story is relevant not simply to his individual development but to the more general challenge of Mixteco immigrants' re-assertion of their cultural, social, and political identity in a transnational space now referred to by some researchers as Oaxacalifornia. The second of these community activists is Raquel Velasco, a middle-aged mother of two teenager daughters and a grown son, who was, for several years, the informal but charismatic unpaid leader of a group of immigrant activists seeking to secure affordable housing in Winters. Her story, too, transcends her personal struggle, to reflect on the challenges faced by Mexican women in negotiating new gender roles in the course of their life in California Through these two activists' accounts of their experiences and perspectives, we explore both the process through which individual immigrants' re-invent their identity in the brave new world of California life and the process through which groups of immigrants engage in the process of creating or strengthening bonding social capital and deploying it within the arena of local life. …

Megalopolis refers to a cluster of densely populated cities stretching over a large region. Megalopolis (“the great city”) was the name given in classical antiquity to a strategic urban development that the Theban general Epaminon‐das “planned” and founded in rural Arcadia in 371 bce . The new city became the center of the Acadian (subsequently Achaean) League and led several battles against the Spartans, who burnt it down in 223 bce ; but it was rebuilt by the League and, although abandoned in late antiquity, it still survives today as Megalopoli. The late geographer Jean Gottmann (1915–1994) popularized the term in the early 1960s, when he classified the region from Washington to Boston, which encompasses the states of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Gottmann urged researchers to view the megalopolis as a novel urban form that is multinucleated and multifunctional. Population growth fueled suburbanization and suburbs later became their own independent and autonomous regions, which merged with the central city to form an extensive metropolitan region on the US East Coast. Between now and 2050, scholars estimate that more than half of the United States' population growth will occur in the megalopolis region. Similar networks of cities in Europe and Asia are now seen as the new competitive units in the global economy and megalopolis regional development. Major public and private investments are being made in high‐speed rail, broadband communications, and other infrastructure designed to strengthen transportation and economic synergies among the component centers.

As the world entered the twenty-first century, population trends as forecast by the United Nations pointed clearly to the onset of the 'urban century', in which more people on earth would live in urban places for the first time in human history. Against this trend is the growing pace of globalisation and the attendant emergence of a genre of cities world cities or global cities - that are poised to exert an increasing influence on the political economy of countries and cities and the lives of their citizens. Exactly a decade ago, an edited volume on the emerging world cities in the Asia-Pacific region was published, the culmination of several years of research by a group of scholars across the region on a relatively novel phenomenon (Lo and Yeung, 1996). The book emphasised the emergence of a class of cities that were distinguished by the functions they brought to bear on world affairs, be they in economic, cultural, religious or other domains. The functional city system formed a central thesis of that study which also examined the interrelationship of cities within the region. Ten years later, the world is more urban and globalised. The tale of three Chinese world cities that constitutes the core of this special issue makes fascinating reading because they offer insights and images that have come with rapid political and economic changes. The cities have been shaped and reshaped during this period. Within these ten years, China has continued its rapid economic growth, having become, by some reckoning, the fourth most powerful economic nation in the world. It was admitted to the World Trade Organisation in late 2001, won its bid to host the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, and won a similar bid to host the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. China is being rapidly integrated with the community of nations and has become a new centre of converging globalising forces. In 1997 Hong Kong went through a historic handover back to Chinese sovereignty and has now settled into more than eight years of One-country, two-systems' rule. Taiwan saw the fall of Kuomingtang (KMT) from political power after the general election in 2000 and the rise of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with very different political philosophies and severe implications for the mode of governance in Taipei. Indeed, the past ten years have witnessed different trajectories of world-city formation and distinct modes of governance in Taipei, Beijing and Hong Kong, as the authors present in their case studies. Certainly, they have gone another step further in their formative process and governance evolution from the situation I described a decade ago (Yeung, 1996). At that time, there was no Chinese world city to speak of, but the situation has been changing rapidly. For example, in recent years, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have actively fostered their international and global status by taking pertinent measures and investment to further their development goals. In a 1999 study (Beaverstock et al., 1999), a total of 122 world cities were identified, and these included Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei in Asia. Hong Kong was one of three highest (alpha) order world cities in Pacific Asia, whereas Beijing and Taipei belonged to the lowest (gamma) order world cities. Clearly, Hong Kong is a relatively more advanced world city, a fact which is readily understandable given its long history of being an active participant in world trade and a free port. The mode of governance in the three cities is, as a result, very divergent. The similarity between Beijing and Taipei is striking in their being capital cities, with another higher level of government which wields more power and resources above the city. Yet the hierarchical relationships between different levels of government in urban and spatial planning are played out in very different ways in the two cities. The state has been a dominating factor in shaping Beijing's urban form, functions and spatial order since 1949. …

A model of curriculum development that enables students of architecture in the developing nation of Taiwan to draw on their own life experiences in formulating their own architectural education is proposed. Such an ideology recognizes that while education certainly includes the acquisition of the technical skills needed to ply one’s trade, its more important aspect is the development of the ability to learn throughout life and to apply those skills creatively as social, economic, and cultural contexts change. An architecture curriculum that accomplishes this end will draw on existing designs and encourage input from a wide variety of disciplines and cultures, especially including the humanities and social sciences. In particular, it will recognize the philosophical tradition of epistemology and the epistemological tradition of constructivism. Moreover, such an architectural curriculum will shift its focus of study from the modern tradition of aesthetics to the postmodern concern for environmental ethics. For both practical and cultural reasons, these changes will not be easy, but they are necessary.

Many international development efforts have been limited because they are elaborated as exclusively economic projects. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues, however, that combating poverty requires expanding individual freedoms and capabilities, in place of bolstering only macroeconomic growth. Based on the work of IMIFAP (The Mexican Institute of Family and Population Research) in Mexico and Latin America, this book seeks to transform Sen’s philosophical approach into an operative model for sustainable development through its Framework for Enabling Empowerment (FrEE). The book offers a new, practical paradigm based in social psychology which empowers marginalized individuals to interact critically and constructively with their social, education, health and civic contexts.