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This article explores the potential values of a critical realist theory of ideology on the analysis of planning issues. In particular, it argues its usefulness in promoting planning as a vanguard of societal transformation. The critical realist theory of ideology revitalizes the epistemological inquiry of beliefs, which enables an evaluation of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the ideas and beliefs embedded in planning. Furthermore, the essence of critical realist theory of ideology is to explain the (re)production of the ideology, which paves the way for transformative planning, as transformation cannot be realized without eliminating constraining social conditions. Finally, critical realism situates its critique of ideology within the wider transformation process by rendering visible the dimensions that can contribute to eradicating the ideology in question, and shaping better planning ideas, including ethical reasoning, utopia thinking and transformative agency. A meta-theoretical framework based on critical realism is proposed to guide a critique of ideology in planning. By using an example of planning for sustainable urban development in Copenhagen and Oslo, the paper demonstrates the ways in which the meta-theoretical framework can be applied to planning in a quest for societal transformation.
In our times, "classical" interventionist planning and the traditional land use regulatory model are gradually giving way to "strategic spatial planning", necessary for the efficient and coordinated management of spatial change in fragmented and uncertain environments. The author presents the multilevel research paths of critical thinking in the field of strategic spatial planning, territorial cohesion, and sustainable development as a point of recasting of spatial policies in Europe.
The main objective is to show the impediments currently present in spatial planning and to suggest directions for the implementation of a con-temporal spatial policy. For this reason a short review of the evolution of spatial planning in the Hellenic Republic is presented and the primary malfunctions are identified with respect to the “polyphony” of spatial plans, the need for integration in planning simultaneously with the process of specialization from the higher levels of planning towards finer scale plans and, finally, the need to functionally join spatial planning and sectoral policies with spatial impacts. For the documentation of these issues a reference is made to law provisions but also to issues emerging from Hellenic Supreme Court decisions where the “dead-end” of planning becomes obvious along with the necessity for an additional coordination mechanism, that will act as the “Spatial Planning Supreme Council” and the simplification of planning tools in order to more efficiently tackle issues that where left pending by the previous development model.
This research describes the evolution of the Irish spatial planning system and explores the impact of EU cohesion policies aiming to reduce regional and social disparities within the European Union with respect to recent developments in Ireland. The changing nature of the Irish planning system is seen as movement from a market or local development led approach towards a more strategic regional and national approach. This trend has in part been influenced by EU policies, directives and initiatives with evidence of both difficulties and successful delivery of some major projects. The discussion is complemented by evidence from two case studies in the transportation area and interviews with key participants in the policy processes. In conclusion the implications of such trends for future planning policy in Ireland and the EU are explored. * Bibliografia
European cities are experiencing a mushrooming of a new urban imagery amid multiple types of crisis. In fact, the ‘smart city’ has become a widely spread vision used by a variety of powerful key actors as well as a top-down urban political strategy that is applied in order to promote new arrangements, models and technologies for almost all policy areas.
By using the Italian case as a point of reference, this paper analyses how smart city strategies are institutionalized and embedded in times of crisis on different spatial scales. Therefore, the paper adapts a strategic-relational approach that provides a conceptual framework for understanding the spatial dimension of smart city strategies. It argues that smart city strategies reflect a set of multiscalar political strategies leading to new responsibilities and powers on a local scale, as well as the creation of new state territoriality. Smart cities in Italy are part of metropolitan reforms that strengthen
the role of large cities while reproducing existing territorial inequalities. Furthermore, they are used to create new public–private partnerships and new investment opportunities on different spatial scales. In addition, a content analysis of smart city rankings and reports sheds light on the modes of representation of smart city strategies, analysing them
as elements of policymaking in times of crisis.
Ireland is beginning to emerge from an extended period of austerity following the global economic collapse of 2008. In this time, private sector investment in historic urban cores all but halted, and state funding for heritage was dramatically cut. However, both the state and civil society have placed a new emphasis on the potential of built heritage to act as a driver of economic recovery, reflected in both local and national policies and strategies relating to the conservation and regeneration of historic urban cores. Through a discourse analysis of local documentary material, and of semi-structured interviews with a range of key factors involved in the management of two historic urban cores in Ireland (Limerick and Waterford), the paper explores how conservation policy has been fashioned to suit its deployment as an instrument of local and national economic recovery within the context of entrenched entrepreneurial urbanism, and how local stakeholders have responded. The paper concludes on the implications for both conservation policy—specifically tensions between traditional conservation approaches and more flexible instruments utilised in heritage-led regeneration.
Light – whether natural or artificial – plays multiple roles in the home: both as a material enabler of everyday life and as a device for exercising a variety of social relations. The post-2008 Greek economic crisis has endangered those roles by limiting people’s ability to access or afford adequate energy services. This paper focuses on the enforced lack of illumination in the home, and the strategies and tactics undertaken by households to overcome this challenge. I connect illumination practices and discourses to the implementation of austerity, by arguing that the threat of darkness has become a tool for compelling vulnerable groups to pay their electricity bills. The evidence presented in the paper is based on two sets of interviews with 25 households (including a total of 55 adult members) living in and around Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest city, and one that has suffered severe economic consequences as a result of the crisis. I have established that the under-consumption of light is one of the most pronounced expressions of energy poverty, and as such endangers the ability to participate in the customs that define membership of society. But the emergence of activist-led amateur electricians and the symbolic and material mobilization of light for political purposes have also created multiple opportunities for resistance.
Greece is a country undergoing major changes in its course towards recovering from the recession and meeting the desirable economic standards. Over the past years, a series of legislative acts have reformed not only the sectoral policies and guidelines for the development of the main economic sectors of the country, but also the spatial planning policy and system, which in the period of just two years (between 2014 and 2016) underwent a double reform (Laws 4269 and 4447). Planning procedures became more ‘favourable’ to investments and the market’s needs. However, despite this early shift towards a more flexible and neoliberal approach, competitiveness and economic growth have not yet been achieved, whilst spatial planning is still ‘on hold’, leading to further entrepreneurial hesitancy and to a further delay in meeting the State’s requisite economic goals. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding the future of spatial planning in Greece, in view of achieving economic stability and prosperity. The paper concludes that a suitable spatial planning model for Greece should prioritize public interest and territorial justice, in a way that it will not asphyxiate or discourage private sector initiatives that are so needed for the economic recovery.
This article analyses the margin of manoeuvre of Portuguese executives after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010-2015. To obtain a full understanding of what happened behind the closed doors of international meetings, different types of data are triangulated: face-to-face interviews; investigations by journalists; and International Monetary Fund and European Union official documents. The findings are compared to the public discourse of Prime Ministers José Sócrates and Pedro Passos-Coelho. It is shown that while the sovereign debt crisis and the bail-out limited the executive's autonomy, they also made them stronger in relation to other domestic actors. The perceived need for 'credibility' in order to avoid a 'negative' reaction from the markets - later associated with the conditions of the bail-out - concurrently gave the executives a legitimate justification to concentrate power in their hands and a strong argument to counter the opponents of their proposed reforms. Consequently, when Portuguese ministers favoured policies that were in congruence with those supported by international actors, they were able to use the crisis to advance their own agenda. Disagreement with Troika representatives implied the start of a negotiation process between the ministers and international lenders, the final outcome of which depended on the actors' bargaining powers. These strategies, it is argued, constitute a tactic of depoliticisation in which both the material constraints and the discourse used to frame them are employed to construct imperatives around a narrow selection of policy alternatives.
The Irish Government is in the process of developing a National Planning Framework (NPF). This will replace the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002-2020 (NSS). The NSS is generally considered to have been unsuccessful, mainly due to a lack of implementation driven by shortcomings in governance. This paper explores these shortcomings, and suggests ways to prevent similar difficulties with the NPF. The paper concludes that the political process needs to be at the heart of the preparation and adoption of the NPF. There is the danger that the NPF will fail if the political environment remains embedded in traditional approaches to planning across the state.
1. ´Functional Regions`: from concepts to intervention proposals
2. Urban-based and sub-regional level territorial development interventions based on ‘functional regions’
3. Functional Regions | Key Concepts and Indicators
4. Functional regions and the relation between urban and rural areas in the context of the preparation of the 2014-2020 Community policies
5. Initiatives based on the concept of ‘functional region’
Many commentators and scholars blame a lack of regulation for the present economic crisis. They maintain that the crisis is mainly due to the alleged neoliberal deregulation of the socio-economic system. This article considers a different possible explanation, attributing greater responsibility to interventionist public policies. In this perspective, and within a framework of general reform, the role of land and building regulations in particular will be critically discussed. To avoid any misunderstanding: the idea is not to put ‘all’ the blame on public intervention, but to also recognize its contribution.
In this article, I contribute to recent debates about the concept of neoliberalism and its use as an explanatory concept, through the analysis of urban planning and regeneration policy in Lisbon amidst crisis and austerity. Suggesting a look at neoliberalization from a threefold perspective—the project, governmentalities, and policymaking—I analyze how current austerity-policy responses to the European economic crisis can be understood as a renewed and coherent deployment of neoliberal stances. The article presents implications for urban planning in Lisbon and thus suggests an exploration of the negotiations and clashes of hegemonic neoliberal governmentalities and policies with the local social and spatial fabric. For this exploration, I select a “deviant” case—the Mouraria neighborhood, a “dense” space in which the consequences of policies diverge sharply from expectations. In conclusion, I suggest that neoliberalization (in times of crisis) should be understood as a coherent project compromised by a set of highly ambiguous governmentalities, which bring about contradictory policymaking at the local level.
The paper examines the restructuring of local-level spatial planning in Greece during and after the crisis period. It analyses the reform paths that were developed and assesses the directions of change concerning the scope of planning, the actors and the practices. The paper concludes that the orientation has turned towards special-purpose planning, the privatisation of planning powers, and the transfer of planning power to the central state. However, despite these shifts, the domestic local-level planning maintains its long trends, such as clientelism and conformative approach, making the trajectory of planning unpredictable.
Modern Greeceis an updated and enhanced edition of a classic survey of Greek history since the beginning of the 19th century. Giving equal weighting to social, political and diplomatic aspects, it offers detailed coverage of the formation of the Greek nation state, the global Greek diaspora, the country's relationships with Europe and the United States and a range of other topics, including women, rural areas, nationalism and the Civil War, woven together in a nuanced and highly readable narrative. Fresh material and new pedagogical features have been added throughout, most notably:
- new chapters on 19th-century nationalism and ‘Boom to Bust in the Age of Globalization, 1989-2013';
- greater discussion of the late Ottoman context, Greeks outside of Greece and the international background to the Greek state formation;
- revisions to take account of recent scholarship, Greekscholarship ;
- new timelines, maps, illustrations, charts, figures and primary source boxes;
- an updated further reading section and bibliography.
Modern Greece is a crucial text for anyone looking to understand the complex history of this now troubled nation and its place in the Balkans, Europe and the modern globalized world.
Porto has long been a site of experimentation in the field of European urban policies, implemented through different initiatives and supported by EU funding. The paper describes the different urban regeneration experiences that have been undertaken by the city, analyses the nature of the policy instruments which have been implemented, and in what ways they relate to local policy-making, governance and development. What emerges from this analysis is a more complex perspective of the relationship between local/national/European policies, which needs a broader understanding of local processes to understand the emergence and transfer of the holistic approach promoted by the EU.
More than half a century has passed since the first use of models in urban planning. Most urban planners have agreed on using models either to simplify complicated systems or to make simulations of such systems in order to predict their future. There is, however, disagreement on how far such simplifications and simulations have worked toward the planners’ goals and objectives. In this paper, through historical analysis, we placed the model-theory interaction into the broader scope of scientific modeling to develop guidelines applicable to the narrow field of urban modeling. Here, we developed an argument that models’ applicability and meaningfulness in urban planning are primarily dependent on planning theories, that is, models and theories should move parallel to achieve all the functions and capabilities claimed by models. Thus, an interactive process shapes the model as the mediator between the theory and the phenomenon: (a) the theory explains an abstract phenomenon, (b) the model provides an understanding of that phenomenon, and (c) the original abstract explanation is revisited and made more practical. This evolutionary process is our view of the “mediator model,” that is, a new definition of the urban model.
This book explores Portugal’s response to the 2008 economic crisis and how the country regained the trust of the global capital markets through investor support. The experiences and successes of Portugal are compared with the other Eurozone countries, in particular Greece which had to negotiate a series of assistance programs, to highlight the strategies which helped lessen the impact of the debt crisis.
This book aims to provide insight into the global investor ecosystem and to how financial globalization works in practice, illustrating how the multinational investor universe, the financial media, rating agencies, and how investment banks interact. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in financial markets and political economy, and also financial market practicioners and policy makers.
João Moreira Rato is a visiting professor at NOVA University Lisbon IMS and a research associate at the Systemic Risk Centre at the LSE. He was previously CEO and Chairman of the Portuguese Debt Management Office and Treasury.
Problems of institutional design and redesign, structuring and restructuring, acquired particular poignancy through recent developments from eastern Europe to southern Africa. At the same time, scholars in each of several disciplines - political science, economics, sociology, history and philosophy - have increasingly come to appreciate the important independent role that is, and should be, played by institutional factors in social life. In this volume, disparate theories of institutional design given by each of those several disciplines are synthesized and their peculiar power illustrated. Through analysis of examples ranging from changes in the British welfare state through the transition of eastern European societies to the reward structure of the modern university, the contributors emphasize the important interpenetration of normative and empirical issues in theories of institutional design.
Major policy or paradigm shifts to more sustainable development paths present political, economic and social challenges. In Ireland, the experiences of other European states have been used to shift what was a localised development-led planning system towards the incorporation of national and strategic approaches. The transition is from a land-use planning approach with a market-led emphasis based on a local plan making function with regulatory controls. This paper explores the process, factors and inherent difficulties involved in moving from a localized to more integrated and strategic approaches and examines experiences to date.
This chapter is divided in two main sections. The first section serves conceptual purposes. I lay out a dualist concept of institutions and contrast it to related concepts such as organization, norm, ritual, and convention. How do we recognize an institution, in the proper sociological sense, if we see it? The second part looks at institutions in a longitudinal perspective. What happens to them over time, how can we explain what happens, and how can we conceivably intentionally determine what happens to institutions and, as a consequence, to those living in or under these institutions?
“Institution” is a key conceptual tool in the social sciences. Sociology, political science, economics, but also the disciplines of history, anthropology, and law can hardly work without it. Moreover, the creation of institutions, or the building of new and “better” social, political, and economic institutions is generally considered to be the central practical problem that societies confront as they emerge from their thoroughly discredited past, such as postauthoritarian and, in particular, postcommunist societies.
The Dual Nature of Institutions
Let me start with the proposition, widely shared in the sociological but not so in the economic literature on the subject, that institutions embody normative intuitions or principles of those who live in or under the institutions in question. The relationship between institutions and social norms is, however, not unilateral, but reciprocal and cyclical. Social actors generate, support, and enact institutions, and these institutions, in turn, generate social agents capable of observing social norms.
Broad-ranging in its coverage, this major new text introduces all the main competing theoretical approaches to the study of the state as well as key contested issues in relation to globalization, new forms of governance, the changing public/private boundary, changes in the powers and capacities of states, and the differences between advanced liberal democratic and other states.
In Berlin, Rome and Barcelona, three cities affected on different levels by the most recent wave of neoliberalisation and the global crisis, a rekindled interest in the strategies for the (re)appropriation of urban space has emerged among urban activists, as a way of resisting and challenging competitive oriented policies and austerity urbanism. The following three cases are hereby analysed in detail: the Flughafen (airport) Tempelhof in Berlin; the former Snia factory in Rome; the Can Batlló old industrial complex in Barcelona. The practices of resistance that have played out over these contended vacant public spaces have emphasized the limits of the current urban ideology in proposing alternative ways of doing things. Embodying the growing mistrust towards policy-makers and the intentions of institutional actors, these contentious urban practices have aimed to (re)politicise urban policies, planning and theoretical debates but face complex issues of institutionalisation that can co-opt and neutralize radical claims.
Vacant shops are an important problem affecting urban areas today, particularly in the wake of the economic crisis. Most strategies to analyse and deal with this issue are related to economic and financial variables. However, the amount of research associating store geography and performance with urban morphology has increased over the past decade. Thus, this research tests the hypothesis that specific morphological features characterize vacant retail sites. Using four Portuguese cities as test-beds and Kernel density analysis to plot spatial patterns, vacant shops were for example positively correlated with low segment betweenness and negatively correlated with block area.
This paper examines the practices deployed to de-democratise elements of the Irish planning system. It does so through scrutinising the processes by which a new streamlined planning procedure for large scale residential developments was institutionalised. The paper investigates how a development lobby group successfully prompted the institutionalisation of this streamlined procedure by momentarily capturing the policy formulation agenda surrounding a housing crisis. It demonstrates how this was achieved by defining problems regarding the democratic character of the planning system and accruing agency through solution specification and resonance with the ideologies and rationalities of pertinent political and senior civil servant decision makers. The paper undertakes this analysis by situating a discourse analytical approach within the Multiple Streams Framework. In doing so, the paper provides an original contribution to academic scholarship through novelty of theoretical application on a disquieting aspect of neoliberalism in a planning context that as yet has received limited attention.
This book is not a historical or archaeological treatise, but rather a study in which the author looks at the past, not as a historian, but as a planner who has the ambition to unravel the early manifestations of his discipline; a discipline which did not exist as such in remote periods, but the ingredients of which were nevertheless present. The author has observed the past equipped with knowledge and understanding of what regional planning was in the second half of the twentieth century and still is. He stands in the period of the first decades after the Second World War, which were the formative years of regional planning, and looks back at bygone ages. He discusses ideas and literature from the immediate post-war period in order to examine the ancestry of regional planning through their lens.
The book will attract a broad range of readers because of its approach and its wide coverage of historical periods and world regions. Although Europe is the main focus, the book contains material on all continents and all periods, the ancient world, the medieval age and the modern era. The history of Urban Planning is taught and researched widely, but the history, or pre-history, before the twentieth century, of Regional Spatial Planning is not. This book will fill that vacuum.
Land ownership determines fundamental interests, prescribing a framework of alliances and oppositions around its development and use. The public sector constitutes one of the main categories of large landowners, although this type of ownership takes more than one form, due to the wide variety of public sector bodies holding property. Public land management became one of the focuses of austerity policies in many European countries after the burst of economic crisis in 2008–2009, externally imposed in those countries that went through bailout programmes. In Greece, the history of land policy shows that a fundamental objective of state policy was the distribution and liquidation of public land, a policy that contributed to the formation of an extensive system of small land ownership. From 2010 onwards, a plethora of formal legislation sought to accelerate development procedures for the remaining large-scale public property, as a background resource to attract large-scale, so-called “strategic”, investments. This paper explores the critical characteristics and outcomes of the reforms to transform public land policy, identifying the interactions with urban planning, before and during the economic crisis. Taking a longer temporal view, the paper highlights the entrenched relationships existing between public land policy, urban planning and property development processes and their significance in the diachronic continuities often concealed in major policy reversals and reforms. It argues that ultimately there is a lack of a coherent and sustainable public property valorisation policy, being deprived of any institutional innovation for new forms of urban development, as well as of social acceptance.
First published in 1984, this book addresses key questions about the pattern of urban development in Southern Europe and the mechanisms employed to control and regulate this development in individual countries. It examines five countries – Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey – that have experienced different scales and rates of urbanization and industrialization. It identifies common problems arising from these processes, as well as the successes and failures of the planning policies employed to regulate development.
This book will be of great value to geographers interested in Southern Europe and urban and regional planners interested in comparative patterns of development
Can we design institutions that increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision making process? At a time when there is growing disillusionment with the institutions of advanced industrial democracies, there is also increasing interest in new ways of involving citizens in the political decisions that affect their lives. This book draws together evidence from a variety of democratic innovations from around the world, including participatory budgeting in Brazil, Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform in Canada, direct legislation in California and Switzerland and emerging experiments in e-democracy. The book offers a rare systematic analysis of this diverse range of democratic innovations, drawing lessons for the future development of both democratic theory and practice.
This chapter outlines three main elements of a cosmopolitan urbanism, or intercultural political philosophy. It discusses the challenge to the urban sociological imaginations in thinking about how one may live together in all of the differences. The chapter proposes the importance of a political and psychological understanding of difference, and its significance in urban politics. Identity and difference are an intertwined and always historically specific system of dialectical relations, fundamental to which is inclusion and its opposite, exclusion. The chapter suggests a way of theorizing an intercultural political project for 21st century cities, addressing the shortcomings of 20th century multicultural philosophy. As a fact, multiculturalism describes the increasing cultural diversity of societies in late modernity. Empirically, many societies and many cities could be described today as multicultural. Finally, the chapter links all of these with the actual achievement of the Collingwood Neighbourhood House in the integration of immigrants in Vancouver.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide readers with an inclusive explanation and understanding of the evolution of spatial planning system and policy in Greece after 1990. The focus is, in particular, on analyzing the main problems and challenges that led to major changes in the Greek planning system, explaining the dimensions and the directions of change, and highlighting the role of various actors and actors’ constellations in producing change and institutional innovation.
This article traces the transfer of competitiveness and cohesion policies from the European Union (EU) institutions to the national and subnational authorities in Greece, both before and after the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that prior to the crisis, the flexibilities of the EU governance system allowed the Greek central government to use the competitiveness and cohesion agenda, as well as the associated funds, to build a domestic socio-political consensus focused on the idea of ‘convergence’ with Europe. The crisis-induced bailout programme deepened neoliberal policies and reorganised vertical and horizontal power relations: policy-making powers have been upscaled towards the supranational level, while the national authorities have been socially disembedded.
There has been more than twenty years of regional planning financed by EU Structural Funds since 1986, when the first Integrated Mediterranean Programmes were implemented in Greece. Throughout this period, successive regional programmes have stated their overall priorities, their social, spatial and sectoral objectives, their means of intervention and the available public resources. In this chapter, we attempt an ex-post assessment of how this officially-stated, regional policy evolved and how it matured, expanded or completely changed over the said period. We examine the contents of 39 regional programmes, covering all the Greek planning regions, by engaging in a comparative analysis of programme objectives, instruments and resource allocations. More specifically, we make comparisons between three consecutive planning periods covered by the 1 st, 2 nd and 3 rd Community Support Frameworks for Objective 1 regions. Our emphasis is both on the relative weight of the economic sectors, and on the hierarchy and content of intrasectoral objectives and policy measures. Amongst the main findings of our work is the fact that basic infrastructure and agriculture remain an overwhelming priority in almost all the programmes, that significant deficits in resource concentration and internal programme cohesion have not been corrected and that innovative and technology oriented measures are the least integrated in programme interventions. Finally, the spatial allocation of funds is also examined, revealing modest change in the geography of priorities over the period concerned.
Modern Greece: A History since 1821 is a chronological account of the political, economic, social, and cultural history of Greece, from the birth of the Greek state in 1821 to 2008 by two leading authorities. Pioneering and wide-ranging study of modern Greece, which incorporates the most recent Greek scholarship Sets the history of modern Greece within the context of a broad geo-political framework Includes detailed portraits of leading Greek politicians Provides in-depth considerations on the profound economic and social changes that have occurred as a result of Greece's EU membership.
This is a completely new and updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World. For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West.
