Explorations on an urban interventions management system: a reflection on how to deal with urban complex systems and deliver dynamic change.

Miguel, Marta Alexandra Godinho

Abstract

How we plan and manage urban development has become an increasingly complex challenge, due to unpredictable and rapid conditional changes in post-modern cities. In turn, this calls for a paradigm shift in the way we understand and practice urban planning and design. A resilient urban planning system must be open and flexible rather than restrictive and rigid. It must respond promptly and adequately to the fast and diverse ways in which cities are reorganising as they respond to globalisation, environmental challenges and advances in technology. The need for a new kind of urban planning, which is able to embrace the complexity and unpredictability of the post-modern city, has been explored by several planning theorists. However, these theories were often developed from the perspective of urban planning and the city itself. In this thesis, complexity and evolutionary theories are used to approach the subject of the planning process, from a perspective in which the city is considered as the emergent and self-organising product of a sequence of interventions in the urban environment. This research suggests a planning approach focused on the design and selection of human interventions. Within this, the strategic roles for both top-down and bottom-up interventions are investigated, in relation to the formation of urban character and urban development. The research presents and tests exploratory models that help us to recognise, understand and mediate between a complex range of urban actors and external pressures derived from urban conditional changes. Findings from case studies indicate that the models are useful tools to structure and simplify the process of dealing with complex urban problems, and that they yield useful insights into how society should perceive cities in transition, as well as adopting an ideological shift to deal with contemporary and future city planning.

Citation

MIGUEL, M.A.G. 2019. Explorations on an urban interventions management system: a reflection on how to deal with urban complex systems and deliver dynamic change. Robert Gordon University [online], PhD thesis. Available from: https://openair.rgu.ac.uk

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2020
• Keywords: Urban planning; Post-modern architecture; Post-modern cities; Urban environments
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/841507
• Award Date: Jul 31, 2019