2008 ISOCARP Conference

.An Urbanicity Conference Alert: Web version

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Update: We have the pleasure to inform you that the paper platform of the 44th ISOCARP congress taking place in Dalian/China is open now. Please go to: www.isocarp.net

Here you can have a look at the all papers which will be presented in the different workshops.

The theme of the congress refers to one of those grand goals of city planning that – as so many other city planning promises - is in striking contrast with the reality of rapid urban development all over the world. For most city planners (and other critical minds as well), sprawl clearly has a negative connotation, conjuring up images of uncontrolled residential subdivisions and ribbon development, square miles of unused and derelict land, wasteful and unplanned conversion of valuable agricultural soil, clogged-up roads and expensive but under-used utility lines.

Two congresses in parallel: ISOCARP and UPSC

A very large number of participants are expected to meet in the two congresses that are to be run in parallel at Dalian in September 2008, i.e. the ISOCARP congress with up to 300 participants (estimated), and the annual congress of the Urban Planning Society of China (UPSC) with usually more than 1,200 participants. The ISOCARP Congress organisation will provide ‘bridges’ between the two events to facilitate synergies. Arising from such special circumstances, there would thus be considerable scope for specific emphasis on present Asian experiences with sprawling problems in a broad political, cultural, and geographic context.

The natural emphasis on China (and other Asian countries) in this congress of course does not exclude other country-specific subjects – on the contrary, the congress contents will be as international and widespread as usual in all ISOCARP congresses.

Much of the now common unrestrained physical form of urban development, and with it, the economic and social implications of a sprawling urban continuum, appears to be the inevitable consequence of increasing automobile ownership and use, and even more so, of the global market forces that are at work in our urbanizing world, along with rampant rural-urban migration, and an increasingly unregulated private sector. The global fifty-percent line in urbanisation has already been crossed, and in Asia, it will very soon be reached.

China, as the largest country with a very rapidly growing urbanisation rate, has reached enormous proportions of challenges, but also of opportunities, in its mega-urban regions where an overwhelmingly large proportion of national wealth is generated. In contrast with an earlier era in the People’s Republic of China when everything, including urban growth, was claimed to be firmly under control, the Chinese government now finds it close to impossible to “control” urban growth. So in China, as much as in India or any other fast developing country, “cities without sprawl” would seem to amount to wishful thinking or un-attainable goals, or – to invoke another image that is hard to pin down – an important dimension of the idealistic goal of “sustainable city development”. At any rate, growth and proportions of mega-cities in the so-called developing countries are unprecedented; they are much greater than those in industrialized countries in history or at present; and the global environmental and social effects of urban sprawl are beyond imagination.

 

PARALLEL WORKSHOPS

WORKSHOP 1: The economics of urban sprawl vis-a-vis the regulatory framework – contrast or complementarity?

WORKSHOP 2: Public transport, road pricing, congestion management and urban land use development – well known basic facts and innovative concepts in practice

WORKSHOP 3: Concepts and policies against urban sprawl: Compact city, eco-city, city greening, and similar concepts – promises only or real successes

WORKSHOP 4: Metropolitan management as part of an urban development and governance framework, from the national to the local scale

WORKSHOP 5: Integrating ecological management and cultural heritage conservation agendas in urban development – new dimensions in many countries

WORKSHOP 6: Patterns between sprawling and compact city forms: Urban densities, housing and community formation, and social implications

 


Is it possible at all to plan and govern such developments? Do we not have the right kind of strategic concepts that would lend themselves as powerful instruments for achieving those “cities without sprawl”? Some of them are, in random order – the sustainable city, or perhaps the liveable city (which is even more difficult to define), the compact city (straightforward as a physical concept but hard to do in practice), national urban development strategies for better regional distribution of urban growth, regional networking, public transport (including the new miracle of bus transit, or perhaps retro-fitting of public transport systems), brown field development as well as urban conservation and regeneration, and several other concepts. Are they effective in practice, or do they just reflect utopian thinking, as much as the imperative of “cities without sprawl” would seem to do?

Dalian, the host city, is a large industrial and commercial city that would offer a rich laboratory of proven and rejected strategies to learn from. China certainly has much to show in terms of urban development lessons, as much as China wishes to learn the lessons of other countries.

visit the congress website at: http://2008.isocarp.org/