Rethinking Design and Urban Planning for the Cities of the Future

Abstract

Growth of urban areas and abandonment of rural areas are phenomena that increase quickly. The main consequences of urbanization are pollution, consumption of resources and energy, waste dumps, and junk yards. These aspects require a better planning and design of European urban metropolitan areas, considering benefits, opportunities, costs and risks (B.O.C.R.), derivable by urban transformations and available resources. The paper consists of five parts. The first part contains some reflections on consequences of urban sprawl. In the second part, some possible kinds of cities are discussed (sustainable city, smart city, and compact city). The third part briefly describes a multicriteria decision-making approach known as the 'analytic hierarchy process' to deal with complex decisions. In the fourth part, alternative city models are analyzed (compact city, elevated city, green house city, and water city). Finally, in the fifth part, the criteria selected for the planning and design of the alternative city models are used for the prioritization of some European cities.

Spatial Suitability Evaluation of an Arid City Based on the Perspective of Major Function Oriented Zoning: A Case Study of Urumqi City in Xinjiang, China

“…On the one hand, cities supply good living environments, a large number of employment opportunities, convenient infrastructure, rich amounts of food and clothing, and other material aspects [3,4]. On the other hand, with the expanding of city scale and the decline of the countryside, the built up area is sprawling, urban space is eroding natural ecological space, and its change has caused the waste of land resources, natural resource depletion, soil erosion, urban ecological landscape fragmentation, degradation of ecosystem service function, and pollution [5]. These factors have profound influences on the spatial pattern of regional development [6,7].…”

Public Initiatives of Settlement Transformation: A Theoretical-Methodological Approach to Selecting Tools of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

“…The proposed approach not only supplements what was proposed by Guitoni et al [19], but it can also be used by public and private operators as a support for the rationalization of decisions regarding initiatives of settlement transformation [65,66].…”

Immigration and the Housing Market: The Case of Castel Volturno, in Campania Region, Italy

“…The examination of the local property market and the analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of Castel Volturno give useful indications on the context of the investigation but do not allow to hypothesize scientifically founded correlations or even infer from causal relationships between the various factors affecting the housing market [49][50][51].…”