Articles

An activity theory of research methods in architecture and urbanism

Using activity theory this article argues that intentional activities are central to knowledge-production and may be compared to methods in research, and the worldview within which these activities are perceiv...

Authors: Michael AR Biggs

Urban public space between fragmentation, control and conflict

The article is focused on the different tendencies affecting urban public space in contemporary cities. It is based on a reflexion on some emerging themes in the recent debate in urban studies, paying particul...

Authors: Alfredo Mela

Ecological planning as an inner-city revitalisation agenda for Harare, Zimbabwe

This article examines approaches for integrating ecological thought in inner-city revitalisation with a special focus on the inner-city of Harare. It is an exploration and possible (re-)framing of the garden s...

Authors: Abraham Matamanda and Innocent Chirisa

A spatial strategy for the production of place in two German cities - Urban design interventions as a driver for spatial transformation

The paper introduces a new methodological perspective to the process of urban design, which reacts to the increasing interdependence of multipe scales in almost all facets of life. The production of place in t...

Authors: Anne Wiese, Agnes Förster, Lukas Gilliard and Alain Thierstein

Towards a polyphonic urban score

By drawing on literature from various disciplinary fields, in particular branches of geography, philosophy, urban design and planning, the article investigates the deep spatial transformations affecting cities...

Authors: Lidia Decandia

Stratigraphies: archaeology as a threshold and passage

Authors: Antonello Marotta

Rethinking waste as a resource: insights from a low-income community in Accra, Ghana

Conventional solid waste management protocols and thinking generally tend to assume that waste already exits and therefore needs to be managed. Consequently, most models of solid waste management, especially i...

Authors: Martin Oteng-Ababio

Municipal regulations and the use of public space: local ordinances in Italy

The article discusses the regulation of public space with specific reference to municipal by-laws. It focuses on the case of municipal “ordinances” in Italy. The basic features of the municipal by-laws will be...

Authors: Stefano Moroni and Francesco Chiodelli

To design is to design oneself

This article begins with the analogy between work in philosophy and work in architecture proposed by Wittgenstein, based on the idea that in both cases we are faced with work on ourselves and on the constructi...

Authors: Silvano Tagliagambe

What ever is happening to urban planning and urban design? Musings on the current gap between theory and practice

Over the last decades, the gap between disciplinary dreams and real outcomes has been growing in the field of urban planning and urban design. Great difficulties are evident in problematic contexts as the Ital...

Authors: Pier Carlo Palermo

State, citizenship, and common good: British idealists’ influence on social philosophy and planning culture

This paper is part of an investigation of the relationship between planning and citizenship, and considers the contribution of British Idealists because it advances of almost a century the contribution given b...

Authors: Luigi Mazza

The future of the city from Science to Science Fiction and back (and beyond)

There are many ways of imagining the future of the city. We can start with the growth of urbanisation, which envisages that in 2050 more than two-thirds of the world population will live in cities. And from th...

Authors: Arnaldo Cecchini

Public art and the making of urban space

Following in the footsteps of seminal studies like E. W. Soja Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000) or Miwon Kwon One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity (2004),...

Authors: Félix Duque

Spatial primitives and knowledge organization in planning and architecture: some experimental notes

Cities and territories share structural references to a common environmental ontology, in which space perception and representation play a major role. Many human abilities deal with space management, whose ont...

Authors: Dino Borri, Domenico Camarda and Rossella Stufano

The territory as an intermediate space

Authors: Giovanni Maciocco