Livable cities

Every year magazines, within the design community and from without, publish top ten (or bottom ten) lists of cities to live in. Invariably, they’re bracketed as the “best” or the “worst.” For the former, Metropolis magazine based its criteria for its list of top ten international cities on the magazine’s “core” values:  “housing, transportation, sustainability, and culture.” Copenhagen topped their list while Portland, Oregon (the only US city) finished at number 10.  Singapore came in at number 4, that doesn’t really seem fair as it’s a city-state like San Marino, but with an even higher per capita income.

The worst cities, by comparison, are typically judged by such things as the likelihood of your car being where you left it after dinner and a movie, the wait time for being mugged at a bus stop, or the number of people mortally wounded while celebrating their home team winning a national championship. In the recent past Manchester, England, Detroit, Accra (Ghana), and Port Said (Egypt) have vied for the top of this bottom spot.

That said, the one thing going for Metropolis’s list, is that their criteria centers on what makes a city not just livable, but “the best.” And, they put their values (or metrics) out front for all to see. I’m here this evening, in part because both questions mean much to me: livable and great.

With progressively increased people living in cities, and lately the global COVID-19 outbreak, human mobility within cities has changed. Coinciding with this change, is the recent uptake of the '15-Minute City' idea in urban planning around the world. One of the hallmarks of this idea is to create a high quality of life within a city via an acceptable travel distance (i.e., 15 minutes). However, a definitive benchmark for defining a '15-Minute City' has yet to be agreed upon due to the heterogeneous character of urban morphologies worldwide. To shed light on this issue, we develop an agent-based model named 'D-FMCities' utilizing realistic street networks and points-of-interest, in this instance the borough of Queens in New York City as a test case. Through our modeling we grow diverse communities from the bottom up and estimate the size of such local communities to delineate 15-minute cities. Our findings suggest that the model could be helpful to detect the flexibility of defining the extent of a '15-minute city' and consequently support uncovering the underlying factors that may affect its various definitions and diverse sizes throughout the world.

Governments throughout the world are focusing on public policies to enhance the livability of cities. Two major forces contributing to this trend are, first, those from within cities that revolve around the politics of political reform, the rise of civil society, and the emergence of an affluent middle class wanting a better quality of life in their neighborhoods and cities. The second emanates from intensifying competition among cities for high-level positions in the global economy and is currently taking place within the realm of neoliberal policies focusing on privatization and global competition as the mantra. Neither of these two dimensions is static nor entirely separable, and each local-global context shifts through time to create variations in possibilities for more livable cities. The experience of Seoul reveals these shifts in the politics of livability. The past several years sees two competing visions of livability emerging from the city produced by the 'developmental state'. One, the " neoliberal city " , focuses on mega-projects to create vast new zones of consumption under private ownership of land and land development projects as its version of the global city. The other, here called the " convivial city " , focus on participatory governance and planning, local associational and cultural life through place-making and diversity in urban landscapes, including historic preservation and vernacular architecture. Elements of both types of cities can be found in Seoul. Further, new ideas, such as those extolling the need to attract and keep the " creative class " as the principal way to sustain urban economic growth, suggest that global competition and convivial cities could possibly find common ground. The gap remains large, however, for a number of fundamental reasons, including questions of social equity, citizen participation in the production of urban space, genuine versus pseudo-public space, and a human scale of urban development. 1. Livable Cities – Past and Emerging Paradigms in Asia Urbanization is now a worldwide process, and over the past 4 decades Pacific (East and Southeast) Asia has been experiencing among the most rapid urban transitions in the world. The speed and universality of urbanization makes us pause to wonder why we build cities. What do we expect during the urbanization process and at the end of the day when the urban transition is over and large shares of national populations are living in gargantuan city regions, as they now do in Seoul, Korea? Do they provide the high quality of life for their residents? In other words, are they worthy of the title of " livable city " ? What constitutes a livable city and who is to judge that it is livable are inseparable questions. In the same light, developing a policy framework for livable cities is not just about goals or the ends. It is equally about the process of participating in decisionmaking and taking action, which has its own social value. However, in most societies in Pacific Asia, city planning still takes place largely as a state-private sector function with little or no input from residents. Moreover, even as democratization advances, privatization of land development is expanding under neoliberal policies, effectively moving questions of livability out of the public sphere of deliberation and placing them into a realm of consumption that is heavily biased toward wealthier urbanites and global competition. In this " neoliberal city, " spaces such as public parks or playgrounds that the market cannot provide tend to diminish with the downsizing of government deregulation of land development by the private sector. In not a few cases, selling

Cycling as a way of life and mode of transportation is on the rise in city after city around the world. For those looking to dip their proverbial toes into the waters of urban cycling the prospect at times can be rather intimidating. What kind of bike should I ride? A skinny-wheeled high-end road bike? A fixie? A chunky city commuter bike? A department store bike? How about fashion? Do I have to wear brightly colored skin-tight Lycra outfits? Can I just wear normal clothes? How do I lug my gear around?

The Bohemian Guide to Urban Cycling takes the reader into the world and workings of cycling in the city to uncover the essentials to how to join in on the cycling revolution. Your bicycling guide on this journey is a card-carrying bohemian living in Portland. By using the bike-crazy city of Portland as the backdrop, this book covers all of the basics needed to bike comfortably in the city and to know what the heck you’re talking about ... from bike selection to fashion to bike lanes to gentrification and more. After reading this you’ll know precisely what to ride, how to ride, what to wear, and how to talk like an insider. Well, maybe not, but it’ll still be a fun journey together.

But this book is more than about urban-cycling fashion and high-end bikes. It also plunges headlong into conversations about mobility, equity, race, and justice. If there is going to be a book about all-things cycling in the city it must delve into these uncomfortable topics in order to develop a more holistic view of urban cycling. The bottom line must be to affirm all kinds of people pedaling through the streets of our cities on anything that rolls.

It is known that the walkable friendliness and livability of space is a function of its physical characteristics, urban design qualities, and individual reactions, in an interrelated way. There is already some evidence regarding the physical aspects that contribute to several urban design qualities, but there are several qualities yet to be measured and the vast majority of research has been focused on North America. This article tries to contribute to this discussion, bringing evidence from Portuguese cities. We have identified physical characteristics that can reflect already measured urban design qualities, namely imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity, but also other less known qualities such as legibility, linkage, coherence, and tidiness. A group of experts, consisting of architects, urban planners and designers, validated the urban design qualities and identified the physical characteristics for each. The experts were selected in order to have a broad and diverse group of people, working in different urban settings. Our results validate some of previous identified physical characteristics, but also reveal that their relative importance varies in a European context. Therefore, it seems that the urban design qualities have a different importance in accordance to the urban context, which in turn helps to identify physical characteristics that can be used to measure them.

What role does the church play in shaping the built environment of the city? Or does it? Blueprints for a Just City is an exploratory journey looking at the ways in which God’s people have played a pivotal role in not only influencing life in the city, but in the actual built environment as well. Together we will delve into the parameters of the Gospel, the role of common grace in the city, and God’s involvement in shaping urban form. If God’s heartbeat is for justice and equity, as part of the Gospel story, how then does the church immerse itself into the city influencing and shaping the built environment? The outcome of Blueprints for a Just City is to collect and synthesize blueprints for what a just and equitable city can look like when marked by the Gospel.

This comparative study of the four MURs of Bangkok, HCMC, Jakarta, and Manila focuses on three principal realms of livability: lifeworld, personal well-being, and environmental well- being. The analysis is further disaggregated into three concentric zones of each MUR: the urban core, inner zone, and outer zone.  In terms of lifeworld, a general decline is observed in needed public, green, and civic spaces due to growing commercialization of land, resulting in a dampening effect on community life separate from state and economy.  Growing economic polarization leading to spatial separation along class lines and a further marginalization of the poor has exacerbated this trend.  In terms of personal well-being, livability in the MURs is typically better than life in other cities of the nation.  Significant areas of concern continue, however, with most related to widening economic disparities. In terms of environmental well-being, government capacity to keep pace through the provision of environmental infrastructure and services. Inequalities in access to non-polluted environments are readily observable in the contrasts between slums and new housing for the more affluent. Negative health effects are compounded in lower income communities by high population density and a general neglect of environmental infrastructure and services as well as open space and disease transmission is highest among the poor. Air and water pollution remain the greatest threats to livability in the core of the MURs.

This study briefly examines the theoretical and practical landscape of prominent Eco-Villages, Eco-Districts, and Eco-Cities throughout the world. It presents a concise summary of the principles behind successful application projects around the globe. The literature review and research explores various definitions for ecovillages, ecodistricts, and ecocities focusing on sources that are most commonly associated with the terms documenting several different examples under each category in the literature. The good news is that the types of applied research, demonstration and training that the ecovillages, ecodistricts and ecocities are engaged in are "precisely those that will be needed to navigate the rough waters ahead. Seen in this context, the initiatives that have been described on these pages – in reforestation, seed-saving, place-specific technologies for energy-efficient housing, food-growing, energy-generation, the development of inclusive decision-making structures, voluntary simplicity, and so on – appear not so much idiosyncratic tinkering as the very stuff that the building of future societies will be made of" (Dawson, 2006, p. 77).

This article discusses two contrasting conceptual understandings of place. The approach of analytic relationality interprets places as sets of interconnected parts and their relationships. In contrast, synergistic relationality interprets places as integrated, generative fields, the parts of which are only parts as they both sustain and are sustained by the constitution and dynamism of the particular place as a whole. This article presents one interpretation of place as synergistic relationality by describing six interrelated, generative processes: place interaction, place identity, place release, place realization, place creation, and place intensification. The article considers how concepts and principles relating to space syntax contribute to understanding places as synergistic relationality broadly; and to understanding the six place processes specifically.

After 40-year hiatus, industrialized housing is back in the Bay Region and elsewhere in the U.S. This paper looks at the past - especially at Operation Breakthrough, the U.S. Government's attempt to jumpstart the market for it in the early 1970s - and the present, with an emphasis on the Bay Region.

"Hubricity" is a timely, convenient neologism, and may be useful for a guided in-classroom discussion that aims to explore the nature (Nature?) of Modern cities. Hubricity is a compound term comprised of the two English-language words "hubris" and "city." This paper argues that the Modern hubri-city is a "built environment" designed, constructed and inhabited by a super-diversity of "swarming" human animals, and who count on their collective "hive" mentality/productivity to enable them to successfully compete, survive and evolve into the future (in a Darwinian sense) as individual human organisms. The Modern hubricity "progresses"/"develops"/"advances" (risking catastrophic collateral socioeconomic and environmental damage) by spatially integrating itself at myriad geographical scales within a chaotic and complicated ideological context of global capitalism, dogmatism, authoritarianism, scientism, and technophilia. To do so, Modern hubris-citizens choose to alienate themselves from Nature, This results in their hubris.

"Le nombre de plus en plus élevé de villes moyennes en Afrique nécessite de développer une analyse du phénomène urbain qui ne soit subordonnée ni à l’étude des métropoles ni à celle des communautés, lesquelles ont fait les beaux jours des études anthropologiques. Après être revenu sur l’histoire de la discipline, cet article esquisse les jalons d’une approche globale de la ville permettant d’étudier de manière comparative les centres secondaires.

An important feature of urbanization process in Africa is the proliferation of small and medium urban centers which constitute the major part of the urban population today. However in the literature these towns remain often in the shadow of studies devoted to the analysis of metropolis or small communities in the city. After a retrospective of urban anthropology’s history, this paper outlines a global approach able to grasp secondary cities in a comparative perspective."

Background: Novel efforts and accompanying tools are needed to tackle the global burden of chronic disease.
This paper presents an approach to describe the environments in which people live, work, and play.
Community Health Environment Scan Survey (CHESS) is an empirical assessment tool that measures the
availability and accessibility, of healthy lifestyle options. CHESS reveals existing community assets as well as
opportunities for change, shaping community intervention planning efforts by focusing on communityrelevant
opportunities to address the three key risk factors for chronic disease (i.e. unhealthy diet, physical
inactivity, and tobacco use).
Methods: The CHESS tool was developed following a review of existing auditing tools and in consultation
with experts. It is based on the social-ecological model and is adaptable to diverse settings in developed and
developing countries throughout the world.
Results: For illustrative purposes, baseline results from the Community Interventions for Health (CIH)
Mexico site are used, where the CHESS tool assessed 583 food stores and 168 restaurants. Comparisons
between individual-level survey data from schools and community-level CHESS data are made to
demonstrate the utility of the tool in strategically guiding intervention activities.
Conclusion: The environments where people live, work, and play are key factors in determining their diet,
levels of physical activity, and tobacco use. CHESS is the first tool of its kind that systematically and
simultaneously examines how built environments encourage/discourage healthy eating, physical activity, and
tobacco use. CHESS can help to design community interventions to prevent chronic disease and guide healthy
urban planning.

Generalizations about 'car culture' in the United States, and about American's 'love affair with the automobile', have concealed persistent values and practices among millions of Americans that do not suit such stereotypes. Car culture and the car's attractions are not denied. American society, however, is a complex of numerous subcultures, including many that resented and resisted the automobile's growing priority during the twentieth century. Such groups' resistance to automobile domination has been neglected. Persistent advocacy for pedestrians' interests is illustrated through numerous examples from the 1920s to the 1960s, the decades when 'car culture' rose to its apogee.

Qual è il senso e il ruolo della progettazione urbana nel contesto del global change? La risposta a questo interrogativo è in parte contenuta in quelle esperienze che ne hanno maggiormente evidenziato la capacità di portare a sintesi, alle diverse scale, istanze sociali e ambientali, esigenze funzionali e materiali urbani eterogenei e talvolta confliggenti.
Sul piano teorico, il contributo recupera i concetti di capital design (Crane, 1960) e civic design (Scott Brown, 1990), proponendo di integrarli per identificare uno specifico ambito dell’urban design caratterizzato da una forte regia pubblica, che alla luce dei bisogni contemporanei (riassunti in quattro coppie di attributi-chiave della città: sostenibile-resiliente, green-healthy, vivibile-inclusiva, smart-creativa) possa costituire un paradigma progettuale a servizio di una nuova “urbanità responsabile”

It is my master thesis' book completed at Meiji University in 2021. The research title is The "New & Old" Livable Redevelopment Approach in 1960s Hong Kong Residential Blocks (1960年代の香港の古い建物の新旧の再開発計画). 

There are many 1960s small-scale old building blocks in Hong Kong. With Metabolist theory, this study is suggesting a redevelopment idea between new development and historical preservation to make architecture achieving growth and change with city in the future.

Nowadays, the word Sustainability is widely known and it emphasizes a balancing point between economic efficiency, social equity and environmental aspects. It highlights the need for coordinated planning among different sectors to direct human activities. On the other hand, the concept of Livability refers to the subset of sustainability impacts that unswervingly affect communities and people who live in those communities. The subset of sustainability impacts include local economic development, local environmental quality, social equity, affordability, public safety and health, and community cohesion (Kaydee et al, 2010).
The paper wants to emphasize the close relation between the two above-mentioned words, analyzing the things that make livable communities, because livable communities means vibrant communities, with a high sense of place and high quality of life. In addition, one of the main aim of the paper is to generate people-based policies that can support disadvantaged people in terms of education, to understand what the consequences of a wrong use of resources, and enhance the skills of the entire population in order to do a good resource management. Secondary policies may be place-based policies that could create an attractive region where will be high quality of life and, for this reason, people will want to live in the Calabria region. In general, a livable and sustainable region recognizes its own distinctive identity, therefore, the planning processes have to help manage growth and change involving people who live in the region.

ABSTRAK Pada tahun 1861, Appleyard mengemukakan konsepnya terkait livable street, atau konsep daya hidup pada jalan. Dimana untuk menarik livabilitas pada jalan atau aktivitas manusia di jalan terutama pada jalur pedestrian yaitu dengan peningkatan aspek kenyamanan dan keamanan di jalur pedestrian tersebut. Lokasi studi berada di Jalan Tanjung Duren Raya dan MH. Thamrin. Lokasi ini merupakan jalur yang memiliki aktivitas manusia yang tinggi di karenakan keduanya merupakan mixed use area. Hal tersebut menjadi dasar pertanyaan mengenai pengaruh kondisi fisik jalur pejalan kaki atau pedestrian berdasarkan konsep livable streets dengan aktivitas manusia yang melalui Jalan Tanjung Duren Raya dan Jalan MH. Thamrin. Dalam penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan induktif kualitatif dengan paradigma yang naturalistik, dan observasi secara menerus serta pemetaan faktor fisik yang mempengaruhi daya hidup jalan. oleh karena itu dalam menjawab penelitian ini dilakukan dua analisis, yaitu analisis behavior dengan metode analisis place centered mapping dan deskriptif kualitatif dengan melakukan wawancara para pedestrian. Setelah dilakukan penelitian, maka Jalan MH. Thamrin dan Tanjung Duren Raya dapat dikatakan livable dengan aktivitas manusianya baik statis ataupun dinamis. Kata Kunci : Livable Street, Livabilitas, Daya Hidup, Pedestrian, Jalur Pedestrian, dan Aktivitas Manusia. Pendahuluan Dahulu pembangunan jalan di kota-kota besar hanya berfokus pada kendaraan bermotor, tetapi semakin bertambahnya tahun, perspektif tentang hal tersebut bergeser, diiringi dengan kesadaran manusia akan lingkungan, banyak dari mereka yang beralih untuk berjalan kaki menuju ke tujuan. Melihat fenomena tersebut, pemerintah Amerika mulai menerapkan konsep livable streets untuk menunjang aktivitas pedestrian dengan membuat jalur pedestrian yang ramah untuk pejalan kaki atau jalur tersebut nyaman dilalui serta aman. Di Indonesia konsep livable streets sudah mulai diterapkan dalam pembangunan jalur pedestrian, seperti jalur pedestrian di Jakarta secara fisik sudah dapat di katakan sesuai dengan kriteria livable streets, yaitu terdapat vegetasi peneduh, dan tempat duduk untuk menunjang aktivitas manusia yang berada di jalan tersebut agar aman dan nyaman, bila rasa aman dan nyaman sudah dimiliki pejalan kaki maka banyak pejalan kaki yang melewati jalur tersebut sehingga banyak terjadi interaksi antarmanusia dijalur tersebut, dan membuat jalur pedestrian menjadi hidup. Konsep ini juga sudah diterapkan di jalur pedestrian terutama pada koridor komersil dan perkantoran, tetapi realitanya masih ada jalur pedestrian yang rusak, terputus serta ada juga yang dijadikan tempat berjualan serta parkir liar yang mengganggu kenyamanan dan keamanan pejalan kaki. Jalan Tanjung Duren Raya dan Jalan MH. Thamrin, menurut Perda No 01 Tahun 2012 berisi tentang pembangunan dan peningkatan fasilitas jalur pejalan kaki di Jalan tersebut untuk menunjang pengembangan prasana transportasi di wilayahnya, dimana kedua lokasi memiliki ciri wilayah yang berbeda walaupun memiliki fungsi yang sama yaitu mixed use area. Jalan Tanjung Duren Raya merupakan wilayah yang di khususkan untuk area mixed use, dengan perdagangan dan jasa seperti pasar, ruko dan ada apartemen dengan kegiatan yang berhubungan rumah tangga yang tinggi. Lalu di Jalan MH. Thamrin merupakan mixed use dengan area perkantoran, mal dan hotel dan kegiatan tertinggi oleh aktivitas mobilitas para pekerja. Untuk mengetahui efektifitas dari rencana pengembangan prasarana transpotasi di sana, dapat dinilai dengan tingkat aktivitas pejalan kaki di kedua wilayah ini. Maka, dilakukan analisis tingkat livabilitas di kedua jalan tersebut yaitu dengan mengimplementasikan

It is the abstract of my master thesis' book completed at Meiji University in 2021. The research title is The "New & Old" Livable Redevelopment Approach in 1960s Hong Kong Residential Blocks (1960年代の香港の古い建物の新旧の再開発計画). In 2021, the writing was published in “Japanese Architectural Institute Convention Academic Lecture Summary Connection” in Japan.

There are many 1960s small-scale old building blocks in Hong Kong. With Metabolist theory, this study is suggesting a redevelopment idea between new development and historical preservation to make architecture achieving growth and change with city in the future.

One of the core objectives of this research study is to provide a concise presentation of the socioeconomic dynamics at play within a portion of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, which is made up of five contiguous counties i.e. Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, and McHenry. The discussions start with a brief review of existing regional population and employment patterns, including a series of future growth and development projections that are most likely to exert varying levels of pressures on each individual community within the region.

Despite neighbourhood parks meet residents' social needs, provide visual enjoyment, and create passive and active recreational opportunities, most of them are underutilised. To understand this issue, research focused on the social and physical aspects of parks using mainly quantitative methods. Few explored the psychological aspect in terms of motivation and dependence. Hence, this qualitative research aims to provide a more in-depth understanding of resident's functional needs that foster their dependence towards neighbourhood parks. The study involved purposively 29 park users living in the neighbourhood of Precinct 9, Putrajaya, Malaysia. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used then verbatim transcribed. Based on the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, results revealed that the contextual dimensions and the incentives for park utilisation constitute the major themes, where gathering outdoors, physical activity, emotional, functional, and environmental motivation variables are the sub-themes. The practical and theoretical implications are outlined regarding park users' expectations and experiences for enhanced park utilisation.

Jan Gehl distinguishes between necessary/functional activities, optional/recreational activities and social activities in public spaces. While necessary activities (must) take place regardless of the quality of the physical environment, optional activities depend to a significant degree on what the place has to offer and how it makes people behave and feel about it: "Whether people are enticed to walk around and stay in city space is very much a question of working carefully with the human dimension and issuing a tempting invitation." (Gehl: 2013). The better a place, the more optional activity occurs and the longer necessary activity lasts. Social activity is the fruit of the quality and length of the other types of activities, because it occurs spontaneously when people meet in a particular place.
Social activities include children’s play, greetings and conversations, communal activities of various kinds, and simply seeing and hearing other people.

The Europaplatz forms a privately owned square at the western backside of the Hauptbahnhof Darmstadt. It has been finished in 2003 by the architects Uwe Maier and Alfons Burkart, Baden-Baden and connects the commercial part of the station, the „Bahngalerie“, with the mixed-use urban quarter „Europaviertel“. The latter encompasses residential, business and commercial use, including the famous European Space Operations Centre
ESOC. Looking at the physical environment of the open space, the circumstances seem to provide rather good external features to activate communication and social life. The equipment includes a sufficient number of benches, trees, water fountains, shopping and eating facilities and a close-by children's playground. However, "Europaplatz" is barely being frequented for other than transit activities, neither by travellers nor by neighbours. In which ways adds the architectural design of the environment to hindering social activity and communication?

Jan Gehl's concept of the 12 qualitative criteria (Gehl 2010: 275) was used to assess the examined space in three categories: protection, comfort and delight. Secondly, some of Gehl's structured observation methods were adopted including tracing and activity observation. The users' perception was captured by transforming the criteria assessment into a structured questionnaire.

Concern about the livability of urban spaces has led to an increasing interest in findings from analyses aiming to quantify livability in particular places such as city centers. In traditional cities, city centers have always been known by their diverse functions, activities and social interactions. However, today, with the effect of fast urbanization and the growth of cities outwards of the city centers, we lose the meaning and use of the concept of city center in many cases. This paper therefore aims to explore the characteristics of successful city centers and tries to identify the main parameters to achieve livability. Based on these, a strategy is proposed in order to promote the city center of Famagusta, a city in North Cyprus with a serious problem in its central area, to achieve livability. The study contributes some experiential evidence to investigate the claimed benefits and deficiencies in terms of effects of physical, social and economic parameters on the overall perception of livability of the residents in the central area of Famagusta and cities of similar development trends.

The objective of this paper is to reveal the shift of thoughts in city planning in terms of livability demonstrated in one of the newly planned satellite towns of Dhaka city. Ever since the emergence of the term 'livable cities' back in 1980’s by IMCL (International Making Cities Livable LLC), considerable amount of research and practice have been oriented towards understanding how the contemporary cities should grow or be planned for livability, in terms of physical, socio-economic and cultural aspects. Cities around the globe demonstrate diversified vision, policies and strategies for achieving these desired goals. This paper takes Dhaka city as a case study to critically investigate the intentions and attempts of urban planning and design practice focused on the livability aspects of the city. The human settlement of Dhaka city can be traced back as early as the 12th century. Till then, the city received attention, negligence, natural calamity, political instability and w...

Around the world, cities face the challenge of accommodating growth while optimizing the use of their networks and resources, reducing inequalities of access, and creating livable environments.

Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco share this challenge and have achieved interesting successes in the last years/decades. They are also interesting because of an inherited car-centric system.

This report is based on study trip to these cities, aiming to examine how transport planning contributed to the positive outcomes, and provide a synthesis /lessons learned, that can be useful to other cities. Local best practices are illustrated and put in perspective using the material collected through visits, meetings with 13 local planners and academics, and elements of local strategies and planning documents. In particular, the integration between the transport systems with the urban development, and the ways it was achieved to successfully trigger good reactions in the urban metabolism is examined.

Three major causal reactions are looked at:
1. Urban intensification facilitated by transport systems, contributing to the attractiveness of brown-field locations
2. Modal shift used as potential for unlocking the potentials of streets as public spaces
3. Intensification allowing for new efficient transport solutions, in particular PT interconnected with walkable or cyclable “last miles”

The role of transport in moving away from the vicious circle of unlivable city centers / sprawl / and induced traffic is outlined, while another, more positive, form of interaction comes to sight. In conclusion, we illustrate how a good combination of land use, network optimization (moving people and goods, vs vehicles) and tailored solutions contributes towards the challenges such as traffic congestion, growth or affordability.

This report is to be published within the IPENZ conference proceedings, in a slightly condensed and reviewed version.

Livable city is referred to as the quality of living in an area that contributes towards a safe, healthy and enjoyable place. The Safe City and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) programs were implemented to address this issue. However, due to the rising crime index in 2004, it is questionable whether CPTED had successfully been implemented in this country especially in Kuala Lumpur since the implementation is more focused on the building design aspect. This paper discusses the role of CPTED in making Kuala Lumpur a liveable city and to assess the awareness and understanding among the citizens and the local authorities on CPTED program. The study was conducted among the professionals and staffs of Kuala Lumpur City Hall as they are the real implementers who are also responsible to inform the community of the CPTED programs. The findings revealed that, there is still lack of understanding of CPTED program that affects the success of this program in increasing the safety levels of Kuala Lumpur to make the city more liveable.

Jan Gehl'in "Cities for People" kitabı "İnsan için Kentler" ismi altında Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları'nca Türkçe olarak benim çevirimle yayınlandı. 
Jan Gehl's "Cities for People," my first cover-to-cover translation, is published as "İnsan için Kentler" in Turkish by Koç University Press

Historical coastal town are those with unique urban typologies where the first living spaces have been designed with local characteristics, natural landscape properties and accessible spatial attributes. Coasts play important roles in shaping the physical and social structure of cities with impact on the quality of life as well. The concept of the quality of life is while in close relation with the provision of the liveable city and environment standards in the urban environment while also including physical, social and cultural processes within the context of the relationships between people and environment. Today, cities with high quality of life are known to be more livable, sustainable and healthy. Hence, the concept of the urban quality of life has special importance with regard to urban sustainability (economic, environmental and social development).
In this paper, the city of Amasra which is the part of the Bartın Province in the Western Black Sea Region in Turkey has been selected as the study area. The town of Amasra is a peninsular settlement with historical importance at both national and international scales. In addition, the Amasra Castle has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage Center Tentative List since 2013. The objective of the study was to carry out evaluations for improving the urban quality of life in the city of Amasra which provides significant contributions to the quality of life with its natural and cultural attributes.
Expert opinion evaluation was carried out with regard to urban quality of life indicators for contributing to the sustainable development of the study area. In this regard, a survey was applied on 20 interdisciplinary experts with knowledge on the city of Amasra, planning-design and management subjects. The quality of life was evaluated in 6 categories (Use and fruition, Health and wellbeing, Appearance, Solid waste control, Environment, Safety and security) including the related indicators during the survey applied to the experts. As a result, suggestions have been developed for improving the urban quality of life regarding the sustainable future of the city of Amasra.
Keywords: Amasra, urban quality of life, expert opinion, sustainable cities, livable cities

The cities of the developing world are the engines of economic growth, but they also face and cause multiple and pressing environmental issues. Those highlighted at the 1992 'Earth Summit' included water supply, sanitation, and pollution, and shaped the 'brown agenda.' A decade later, this agenda includes the interactions between cities and the regional and global environment. This note reviews the World Bank's urban environment project portfolio, with special focus on the contributions of the Bank's various sectors and on the achievement of the urban environmental targets set forth in the millennium development goals. The note also argues for a more comprehensive and holistic approach to urban environmental priorities.