Urban studies | EPFL Graph Search

Urban studies or pre-urban planning education is based on the study of the urban development of cities. This includes studying the history of city development from an architectural point of view, to the impact of urban design on community development efforts. The core theoretical and methodological concerns of the urban studies field come from the academic disciplines of history, economics, sociology, geography, political science, anthropology, civil engineering, environmental studies, business administration, and the professional fields of urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Urban studies is a major field of study used by paraprofessional practitioners of urban planning, it helps with the understanding of human values, development, and the interactions they have with their physical environment. History The study of cities has changed dramatically from the 1800s over time, with new frames of analysis being applied to the development of ur

Les étudiants, l'université de masse et la ville durable

Ismail Haddad

In a globalized space where mobility is growing, the capacities of attraction of the city are becoming increasingly decisive. Between the cities, through its attractive quality and attraction capacity, the university will become a decisive factor of location activity. The contribution of the capacity of city culture, development of meeting places is fantastic. Universities cannot live permanently on their side, next to the city. However, for too long, the city and the university in Tunisia have developed in ignorance of each other. Universities, since they have existed, admit with difficulties contingencies of civil societies. Governments are wary of students and teachers. This latent divorce materialized especially through the creation of campus, away from city centers in the functionality and the monotony of isolation. The urban university countdown is now universally condemned. Addressing universities as major facilities for both generating modern middle classes and meet the needs of these classes is probably a new perspective in the architectural and urban studies in Tunisia. Investigate the essence of the university and its space, understand, give it a face, it takes to trace the sources of the university, the genesis of the position in relation to our time, in any its specificity, to lay a few landmarks able to give an account for the complexity of its course. Why, how, by whom and under what conditions taking shape at a given time an edifice (the university) from a social vocation? What general needs and specific answers? In short, what is the territorial space that University now covers? In this sense, the systemic approach presents an additional interest because it proposes to connect into a single and same application dimensions of reality that are sometimes addressed separately by different disciplines and different actors, professional town planning, culture, life student or teaching. Indeed, we have chosen to begin this research by presenting a sample of general policies of academic development in an international perspective. In a second stage, we will continue research on the same theme, but by focusing it on Tunisia. In this context, we will consider the current inadequacy between the university and the changing needs of society. In the third part, we will study the spatial impact and synergy between the university and the economic environment. This theme is central to the debate on the complex interactions of urban dynamics and local development. We will conclude by reviewing the first two parts in the light of the results of the third. Furthermore, this research involved a provision of knowledge, which is able to provide solid foundations for working professionals in architecture and urban, social scientists, lawyers, economists and current officials in charge to define strategies and projects of agglomeration.

EPFL2009

Advancing Analytical Tools to Understand Urban Planning: Mapping Controversies around the Mumbai Development Plan 2014-2034

Tobias Stefan Baitsch, Salomé Clémentine Houllier Binder, Christine Lutringer-Gully, Luca Giovanni Pattaroni

The proposed article suggests that urban studies are in need of new tools to describe and analyze the different “regimes of urbanization” in an increasingly heterogeneous urban world. In order to create dynamic and relational descriptions of contemporary cities, we propose to use innovative mapping and analytical tools, which allow representing the richness and complexity of the controversies that accompany the making of a common urban future. Such tools are urgently needed to understand better the conflicting processes that drive urban development and to improve planning methods and policies. Through the event of the publication of draft Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) 2014-2034 and its temporary withdrawal and revision due to an unprecedented public outcry and strong criticism, we propose to use the methodological tool of mapping controversies in the field of urban planning. This event is highly representative of the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the Global South as well as in the North. Using preliminary findings from this ongoing study this article highlights the need for new descriptive methodology that would describe better the heterogeneous characteristic of the cities. Thereby, it proposes to contribute to the international debates on the transformation of urban conflicts and more broadly on the renewal of critical urban studies.

2016

Discussion of three definitions of spatial justice in the writing of Jacques Lévy

Ana Moura Bastos de Fernandes Póvoas

This text address the challenge of answering to two inseparable question: What is a just territory ? and What can we do to approach more just territories? The first section of this text explores three approaches of spatial justice as deployed by Jacques Lévy in two main sources: “L'espace demande justice” (2011) and “Société” (2012): 1) unequal uniformism in the distribution of a-spatial goods in the territory; 2) differentiated egalitarianism in the co-production of spatial public goods and 3) self-organisation of a cities’ development project. This section is complemented by two other elements. The first is an exploration of empiric recommendations that follow from the theoretical approach, through the concrete example of social policy of housing in an urbanistic perspective. The second considers the imbrications of spatial justice and justice theories. In the second section we attempt to discuss Lévy’s argument in relation to his own theoretical sources (Sen, Rawls, Samuelson) and the implications of his recommendations for a politics of justice through space.

2013

Les étudiants, l'université de masse et la ville durable

Ismail Haddad

EPFL2009