中国土地管理权行使模式的未来走向——立足于《土地管理法》修改背景下的思考

中国现行《土地管理法》践行的是以土地用途管制为核心的土地管理权行使模式,围绕这一模式的存与废已成为当下修改该法之争的一个重要表现。综合考量多种因素,在转型时期,继续坚持以土地用途管制为核心的土地管理权行使模式具有理论正当性和实践可行性。现行土地管理法修改的理性选择应是在继续坚持这一模式基础上,重点围绕土地规划、土地用途管制、土地开发许可和土地征收等权力存在的弊病基础上,以适应市场化为价值取向进行制度内在结构升级。     

SafetiPin: an innovative mobile app to collect data on women's safety in Indian cities

Women's safety is a key concern of governments and civil society today. In India, the issue has become prominent in the wake of the gang rape and murder in 2012. One of the key elements in addressing the lack of safety in cities is identifying the causes. SafetiPin, a mobile app, is one tool that has been developed to collect data on safety in cities. Building on the international methodology of safety audits, SafetiPin has transformed it into a mobile app that crowd sources data and information on insecurity in cities. Using SafetiPin, data have been collected in seven Indian cities. This article examines some of the data to understand what factors lead to lack of safety and insecurity in cities, and discusses future plans for the project.     

Gender-based health interventions in the United States: An overview of the coalition for healthier community initiative

Health disparities by gender constitute an important yet often overlooked aspect of health around the globe. Within the United States, there is both a paucity of research as well as planned programs that take into account how socio-cultural roles and expectations for men and women may differentially affect symptoms, access to care, and treatment. Viewing women's health exclusively as a function of sex (i.e., biological) differences represents a narrow understanding that does not fully explain gaps in health disparities between men and women. In September 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) launched a national initiative entitled the Coalition for a Healthier Community (CHC) to employ a gender-based framework in several urban, suburban and rural communities across the nation. The Office on Women's Health (OWH) within the DHHS funded 10 coalitions to ultimately improve the health of women and girls utilizing a gender-based approach. This article provides an overview of the initiative and the focus of the special issue.     

Capacitated qualification management in semiconductor manufacturing

In semiconductor manufacturing, machines are usually qualified to process a limited number of recipes related to products. It is possible to qualify recipes on machines to better balance the workload on machines in a given toolset. However, all machines of a toolset do not have equal uptimes and may further suffer from scheduled and unscheduled downtimes. This may heavily impact an efficient recipe-to-machine qualification configuration. In this paper, we propose indicators for recipe-to-machine qualification management based on the overall toolset workload balance under capacity constraints. The models, deployed in industry, demonstrate that the toolset capacity must be considered while managing qualifications. Industrial experiments show how capacity consideration leads to an optimal qualification configuration and therefore capacity utilization.     

Planners' Perspectives on Obstacles to Sustainable Urban Development: Implications for Transformative Planning Strategies

A major problem confronting planning is the gap between transformative proposals and enduring urban development trends. The paper interprets interviews with 62 planners involved in a sustainable urban development strategy in a large region focussed on Toronto, Canada. Surveyed planners were asked about the obstacles they encounter when attempting to modify prevailing urban development. Mentioned obstacles are consistent with expectations arising from three major perspectives on inertia: institutionalism, political economy and path dependence. Interviews also highlight the role of planners' practical knowledge in identifying and interpreting obstacles, and the existence of a consensus among respondents over sustainable urban development.     

Actor-Relational Planning in Deprived Areas: Challenges and Opportunities in Luchtbal Antwerpen,Belgium

In this article, we report and discuss our experience with actor-relational approaches (ARA) in the regeneration of a postwar housing estate in Luchtbal, Antwerp, Belgium. ARA are informed by post-structuralist ideas of space, complexity theory, and actor network theory. Although ARA itself is not new, the application of ARA to deprived area's such as Luchtbal is novel. We report how the approach has been elaborated, its process and outcome. We conclude with our evaluation from an insider's perspective.     

Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From Theory to Practice

The paper complements Abu-Orf's theory about violent settings by setting out a theory of fear in urban planning in ordinary urban contexts around three arguments: spatialization of fear; (modernist) spatialities and the encounter and political economies of urban fear. The three theoretical arguments are used to re-frame the planning history of Chelas, an affordable housing district in Lisbon, Portugal, and debate the way fear shapes, and is shaped in turn by, planning practice. Confirming that (growing) fear in ordinary urban contexts is not just an effect of the contemporary organization of cities, the paper argues for a theorization of fear that combines global (hegemonic) and a local (discursive/contingent) perspectives in the theorization of urban fear, and advocates for the need to put fear, and its capacity to create a crisis in urban policy, at the heart of planners' agendas.     

Reducing Bushfire Risk by Planning and Design: A Professional Focus

While links between planning and resilience are increasingly touted as fundamental to managing urban settlements, there are limited practical examples. This paper provides an example via regulatory processes, in parallel with the exercise of professional discretion. Using analysis of diverse urban planning proposals in bushfire prone areas of Victoria Australia, a systematic and site-specific approach for bushfire risk assessment is set out. A three-step process is proposed as a basis for delivery of design solutions to manage bushfire risks. The paper concludes by arguing that professional judgement is a fundamental part of bushfire risk reduction within a regulatory framework.     

Carry on Shrinking?: The Bankruptcy of Urban Policy in Detroit

Much attention has recently been focused on the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit in 2013 and the reasons for the largest municipal fiscal melt down in US history. Contrary to a view gaining currency, which dismisses Detroit as the product of exceptional forces and largely calls it the architect of its own collapse, this article argues the case that Detroit conveys more general lessons for European cities struggling with decline, not least of which is the need for interventionist regional planning to avoid predictable but avoidable urban distress. The article briefly reviews the well-documented decline of the city of Detroit measured against population, economic, fiscal and image impacts. It considers five current misreadings of the reasons for Detroit's predicament and implicit signposts for European practice before concluding with an assessment of what has been hailed as the shoots of yet another possible renaissance in the originally proclaimed Renaissance City over 40 years ago.     

Shared Ownership and Affordable Housing: A Political Solution in Search of a Planning Justification?

Planners in England routinely include shared ownership (SO) housing in the affordable housing element of new developments. Government policies in a number of European countries have also backed intermediate housing market mechanisms as a solution to housing affordability. The rhetoric of such mechanisms makes claims about its social progressiveness, its role in facilitating socio-economic mobility and helping people move from rented accommodation into full owner-occupation. SO schemes in England have been justified on the grounds of being transitional tenures and planners have accepted SO on this basis. However, given the paucity of rigorous empirical work, there is a concern that this is a policy based on assumption rather than evidence. This paper delineates existing knowledge, clarifies dimensions of the intermediate housing market and highlights underlying policy issues based on a large data-set of shared owners in England. Our analysis indicates that SO may not be appropriately classified as affordable housing, and justifiable policy requires further evidence.