Urban plans for restructuring

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Urban plans for restructuring
Danish Forest and Landscape Research
Institute Centre for Urban and Regional
Studies links to Arge REZ
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Background

• Restructuring of cities causes changes of urban
  space and urban planning
• land-use
• urban functions
• spatial relations between the city and the region
  
• Partner-cities ask for advice

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Revitalisation of city centres

• Jüterbog
• GDR period no attention was paid. Now a top
  priority.
• Kuldiga and Kronstadt
• keeping historical buildings as a means to
  enhance the uniqueness of the cities
• Lappeenranta
• the physical and economic revitalisation of the
  city centre towards a more high-quality,
  pedestrian-oriented attractive city environment
  is seen as a top-priority

4
New housing needs

• Housing is a core issue of several cities.
• keeping families from moving out of the city
• housing policy must adapt the market
• Due to a decreasing population the city of
  Nakskov expects an increasing surplus of houses
  in the years to come. However, at the same time
  the city assumes that the change in the
  composition of the economy entails new demands
  for housing as well. Paradoxes like this show
  that urban restructuring is not just about
  increasing or decreasing needs it is about
  changing needs.

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Industrial areas

• Planning for new types of companies and
  industries - a key issue for Randers, Nakskov,
  Kokkola and Jüterbog.
• Lay-out of green fields for domiciles and
  business services
• the development of small and medium sized firms
  (Kronstadt)
• obsolete industrial areas
• Randers how can cities, that successfully
  revitalised from traditional to modern
  industries, handle the change of larger
  industrial areas?

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Brownfields

• Brownfield development is about conversion of
  former industrial, military and other areas, that
  have become obsolete and are in need to be
  converted into new land use.
• Argerez forwarded a special case-study on
  brownfield development. Also, Kronstadt pays
  special attention to the issue.

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The city and the region

• Several cities are deeply concerned about their
  regional position.
• Nakskov and Nyköping measures for keeping
  families from moving away. Kuldiga strengthen the
  role as a regional centre.
• Competition from metropolitan cities. Formerly,
  cities like Randers did not pay attention to the
  phenomenon. However, the decreasing local labour
  markets and the concentration of new urban
  functions within the largest cities have now made
  Randers more dependent on two regional capitals.
  Thus, the issue has become a core strategic issue
  of the city. This is also the case for Nyköping,
  Vyborg and Jüterbog.

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Urban identity

• Restructuring calls for new planning tools.
• Jüterbog
• Integrated planning
• Conceptualising the city
• Nakskov
• environmental concept to join actions within
  one strategy
• Randers, Nakskov, Nyköping and Kuldiga
• how to replace unfavourable images by forming new
  identities?

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Goal

• The aim of the case study is to
• identify the key elements of urban planning
  during restructuring
• facilitate the exchange of ideas on solutions to
  key planning problems
• examine the need for new paradigms of urban
  planning

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Theoretical orientations

• Urban functions
• Polycentrism
• Strategic planning and marketing
• New concepts of urban space

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Urban functions

• Convergence of industrial society into a service
  society.
• decline of industrial plants
• increase of business domiciles
• new types of production sites
• increase of business service and the need for
  education

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Polycentrism

• The need to strengthen international relations
• Hence, cities might profit from building urban
  functions that are complementary rather than
  competing
• Thus, the development of polycentric rather than
  hierarchical urban systems is becoming and option
  for many cities.

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Strategic planning and marketing

• Need for new planning methods
• Local planning must deal with changed relations
  to the outside world. Need for strategic
  planning.
• Further, the changing roles and functions changes
  the identities and images of the cities
• Therefore, marketing has become a core instrument
  along with legal, institutional and economic
  planning measures.

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New concepts of urban space

• It has become common to rely on local strengths
  and competencies (endogenous development)
• Local assets include the special qualities and
  characteristics of the local territory.
• functional space.
• uniqueness of space.

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Methodology

• Interviews with the cities
• Urban plans before and after/during restructuring
  
• patterns of land use and urban functions.
• changes of the role of the city in the region
• The role of new strategic planning tools, new
  concepts of the urban areas
• Quality of urban environment has as an active
  asset in revitalisation strategies.
• Close co-ordination with the case study on
  brownfields development (ArgeREZ).

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Expected outcome

• a number of individual case-studies on urban
  planning
• a comparative analysis of new planning elements
  and principles
• guiding principles of local urban planning and
  recommendations for national and EU-policy measure