Session details
Organizer(s)
Ilja Van Damme (University of Antwerp)
Abstract
Since the 1980s many cities across the globe became the terrain of new, political-ideological induced urban renewal projects. Most of these were aimed at transforming the industrial use value of cities by seeking to strengthen, among others, tourist and retail driven urban growth-trajectories in the face of an increasingly global inter-urban competition. Recent research, however, indicates a growing disconnection between increasing urban economic competitiveness on the one hand and social integration on the other. Many recent urban renewal schemes have effectively created new spatial and social inequalities both within cities (often caused by gentrification cycles), between inner cities and suburbs, and on an inter-urban level (with capitol-cities being clear ‘winners’ in the process). In the following session, we will examine for different historical-geographical contexts in Europe and abroad the complexity of political-ideological urban renewal processes, and question how and why these can lead to the creation of new inequalities.
Papers
Matosinhos Sul - Urban Requalification vs Vacant Places in Matosinhos (Portugal). Urban Inequalities in the Southern Part of the City
Author(s)
Francisco Costa (CITCEM – Centro de Investigação transdisciplinar «Cultura, Espaço e Memória» - Faculdade de letras da Universidade do Porto), Hugo Barreira (CITCEM – Centro de Investigação transdisciplinar «Cultura, Espaço e Memória» - Faculdade de letras da Universidade do Porto) and Maria Botelho (CITCEM – Centro de Investigação transdisciplinar «Cultura, Espaço e Memória» - Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto)
Keywords
Urban Inequalities, Industrial Heritage, Urban Voids
Abstract
The paper discusses the inequalities arising from the impact of urban redevelopment and vacant places in the area of the city of Matosinhos currently known as Matosinhos Sul (Portugal). Today a polysemic place, its urban arrangement is a consequence of the urban management and orientations given during its development. The construction of the Porto de Leixões (1891) created new conditions for the development of the industry, resulting in a steady development of the local subdivision on a vast sandy beach by the sea. As a result of economic crises, one factory after another went out of business (1920-1995). With the abandonment of the industrial activity, urban voids are established in the territory that today concentrate social problems, enhanced by the degradation and segregation of these spaces. Matosinhos Sul, according to Eduardo Henriques (2018), identifies itself as a «Perforated City», whose landscape is formed by crowded areas and urban voids. The present article resorts the analysis of the interventions linked to the process of urban management of Matosinhos (1988-2021) in order to understand the requalification of urban voids and old factories, or in the construction of new architectures, inquiring about the processes that contributed to the formation of the new image, of Matosinhos Sul, as a space of leisure, luxury housing and tourism. The approach of this management processes will allow us to better understand the current reality of local urban inequalities, perceptible in the built urban landscape, in the organization of its post-industrial occupation and successive gentrification. Thus, we resorted to the analysis of plans that aimed at a deep reconversion of the seafront, having as examples the first Urbanization Plan of Matosinhos Sul (1988) and successive management changes, in line with the imposition of the Municipal Master Plan (1992) and the application of the bureaucratic strategies in the formation of the local estate market (1996). We also question the urban policies "Cidades Polis" (2007/2014) and "Sustainable Cities Strategies" (2015/2021) in the way have changed local urban reconversion practicies.
Responding to Inequality Caused by Modernization of Tokyo and Flood Damage: A Case Study of the Family of Takao under the Meiji Regime of Japan
Author(s)
Shoji Mimura (National Defense Academy of Japan)
Keywords
Tokyo, Modernization, Flood
Abstract
The family of Takao had had a long tradition of building banks and bridges over the Arakawa River flowing from Saitama through Tokyo into the Tokyo Bay since fifteenth century. Mr. Noriyoshi Takao, the 18th head of the Takao family, was a philanthropist and a man of high repute with respect and honour from people. He represented the town headman of Senjunakagumi in 1878, the town of which located in the northern part of the Old county of Tokyo with population of around 2,000 or 3,000. Under the governmental policy of modernization by the newly established Meiji Regime in 1868, infrastructure such as roads, rivers, and the water supply was the primary task to be developed at a high pitch. Noriyoshi was also in charge of Minumadai irrigation canal constructed in the Edo period originally diverted from the Tone River. The Minumadai canal was essential for the irrigation for the residents in the upper canal while people in the lower canal frequently suffered from flood damage. Noriyoshi played a significant role in the restoration of the bank as well as preventative measures after the flood damage caused in 1890 although he began to realise that such measures would further widen the gap economically and socially between the upper and the lower people of the canal. Hitherto-research tends to focus on men of high-repute who contributed to modernization of Japan in rural areas, but not those in the city. This paper explores how Noriyoshi contributed to modernization of Tokyo, and responded to inequality caused by its modernization and measures to flood damage in the Meiji period.