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One of the most volatile sites in Jerusalem is the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, at the heart of which lies the City of David archeological site. Much scholarship focuses on the contemporary tensions that arise from its two contradictory identities: an East Jerusalem Palestinian residential community and a Jewish symbol of a mythical past. This article, by contrast, explores a largely overlooked historical moment that has been key to the shaping of these dynamics: the declaration within merely six weeks after the 1967 war of an Israeli national park around the Old City Walls. The article explores how an unrealized British colonial plan for a green belt around the historic walls of Jerusalem was updated in 1967 by Israeli landscape architects using cutting-edge North American environmentalist ideas. Their blueprint, we argue, was crucial to the shaping of the 'holy basin's' spatial logic, landscape imaginaries, and legal structures, necessary to understand the current turn of events. In this process, we highlight the centrality of incorporating longer-term perspectives in the study of contemporary urban realities, bringing into closer dialogue scholarship on present-day urbanism with historical studies of planning and cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The colonial Garden City Movement represents the culmination of a whole sequence of relationships between botany and imperialism that had developed from the seventeenth century onwards, but particularly in the Victorian era. Botany was central to the transnationality of imperialism and botanical exploration while plant collecting fed into many Victorian phenomena in Britain which also had their colonial counterparts. These were intended to alleviate the social, environmental and medical evils of industrialism, providing a closer interaction between the rural and the urban. They included the creation of green belts, the founding of model villages, the emergence of municipal public parks and botanical gardens, and finally the garden city movement. By these means it was intended that industrial (and sometimes rural) workers should experience a healthier lifestyle, as well as a social uplift which would mitigate class conflict while also providing rational recreation. In the export of garden city ideas to the British Empire, there were additionally significant colonial precedents in street tree planting and in the beautification movement of the Victorian era and early twentieth century. This article specifically focuses upon the translation of aspects of this garden city movement and of these other influences into the creation of the new capital of Lusaka in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in the twentieth century and the manner in which a great diversity of both indigenous and exotic plants were used to express the idealistic characteristics of this urban development while also reflecting the social and racial norms inherent in the colonial relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gaby Steiner is a visual artist and photographer from Switzerland. During her visits to Beijing she witnessed dramatic urban changes and started to explore the transformations around the Beijing Greenbelt as a researcher with a camera. This visual essay includes the photographic exploration of a particular aspect of rapid urban change in China. It is about the greenbelt of the City of Beijing and its effects. The photographic work is intended to illustrate the background to social and urban change. The artistic and photographic perspective is complemented and further illuminated by Yimin's analytical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, efficiencies of eight indigenous plants of Baishnabghata Patuli Township (BPT), southeast Kolkata, India, were explored as green barrier species and potentials of plant leaves were exploited for biomonitoring of particulate matter (PM) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The present work focused on studying PM capturing abilities (539.32−2766.27 μg cm−2) of plants (T. divaricata , N. oleander and B. acuminata being the most efficient species in retaining PM) along with the estimation of foliar contents of PM adhered to leaf surfaces (total sPM (large + coarse): 526.59−2731.76 μg cm−2) and embedded within waxes (total wPM (large + coarse): 8.73−34.51 μg cm−2). SEM imaging used to analyse leaf surfaces affirmed the presence of innate corrugated microstructures as main drivers for particle capture. Accumulation capacities of PAHs of vehicular origin (total index, TI > 4) were compared among the species based on measured concentrations (159.92−393.01 μg g−1) which indicated T. divaricata , P. alba and N. cadamba as highest PAHs accumulators. Specific leaf area (SLA) of plants (71.01−376.79 cm2 g−1), a measure of canopy−atmosphere interface, had great relevance in PAHs diffusion. Relative contribution (>90%) of 4–6 ring PAHs to total carcinogenic equivalent and potential as well as 5−6 ring PAHs to total mutagenic equivalent and potential had also been viewed with respect to benzo[a]pyrene. In−depth analysis of foliar traits and adoption of plant−based ranking strategies (air pollution tolerance index (APTI) and anticipated performance index (API)) provided a rationale for green belting. Each of the naturally selected plant species showed evidences of adaptations during abiotic stress to maximize survival and filtering effects for reductive elimination of ambient PM and PAHs, allowing holistic management of green spaces. [Display omitted] • PM and PAHs vitiate ambient atmosphere to a great extent, risking human life. • Urban green belts aid to the deliverance from the hazards of atmospheric pollution. • PM and PAHs accumulation capacities of plants differed with species composition. • Plant adaptive responses involved upregulation of key foliar traits for tolerance. • Plant species are selected based on performance for landscape ecology enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in northern Europe, the capital regions of Helsinki, and Oslo have many similar premises concerning urban development. However, the structure of the two regions differs by many measures. We explore the differences in urban density and its development in the both regions and the policy instruments that have affected them. Differences are identified by comparing the population densities of urban settlements and the mean distances from residents and workplaces to the city centres of Oslo and Helsinki using GIS methodology and existing literature. In the Oslo region, the population density shifted from a decreasing trend to an increasing one in the late 1980s. In contrast, the Helsinki region only started to densify in the 2010s. Also, the mean distance of residents and workplaces from the city centre is farther in Helsinki. The long period of low-density housing development and the creation of jobs outside centres in Helsinki is related to weaker political steering towards a compact urban form. In Oslo, regulations such as a greenbelt policy but also physical factors, led to densification relatively early. Lagging in densification policies, Helsinki could learn from the experiences of steering land use and mobility in Oslo, which would need additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds a machine-learning-based land-use change (ML-LUC) model to analyze the effect of green belt (GB) regulation in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA) and predict the spatially explicit development potential of the land within the GB under the assumption of a no-GB policy scenario. It stands out for its ML-LUC application to simulate counterfactual planning for urban land use regulation. After comparing the predictive power of extreme gradient boosting (XGB), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN), the ML-LUC model utilizes the XGB algorithm due to its outperformance. Three scenarios based on SMA's land market demand were simulated to estimate the potential population and employment within the GB under the no-GB policy: high, moderate, and low land market demand. The results suggest 0.6 to 1.5 million residents, 0.2 to 0.5 million manufacturing jobs, and 0.4 to 1.0 million service sector jobs could have been located within the GB, accounting for 3 % to 6 % of total population and 5 % to 13 % of all employment in SMA. The findings imply the GB regulation prevents population and employment from locating within the GB, pushing them to central Seoul or suburbs beyond the GB under a closed-city assumption. • To simulate Seoul's green belt (GB) with a machine-learning-based land-use change (ML-LUC) model. • To predict the spatially explicit development potential within the GB under the assumption of a no-GB policy scenario. • A ML-LUC application to simulate counterfactual planning for urban land use regulation. • The GB regulation prevents population and employment from locating within the GB, pushing them to central Seoul or suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has been motivated by a wide range of concepts of the term urban green infrastructure. As the aim was to indicate a clear basis for the term, an investigation of its development was a necessity, not only in the European, but also in a broader context. Although green infrastructure is included in the 21st century policies of protection and development of EU landscapes, its foundations can be traced back to the models of ideal Renaissance towns and urbanist concepts mainly from the 19th and 20th century. In these historical periods used concepts meant urban landscapes as systems, a part of the environment, as seen in green corridors, green belts, green wedges, green networks and through the perception of urban green 1 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, Zagreb, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4158-8918 2 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, Zagreb 3 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, Zagreb, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9774-4158 ihrdalo@agr.hr pperekovic@agr.hr dtomic@agr.hr Scientific Subject Review https://doi.org/10.31522/p.29.1(61).5 UDC 711.4 (947.5) Technical Sciences / Architecture and Urban Planning 2.01.02. - Urban and Physical Planning Article Received / Accepted: 24. 11. 2020. / 18. 6. 2021. systems. As a modern concept the urban green infrastructure has been upgraded with developed roles, extending functions, scopes and scales from previous historical models. In that sense it maintains its social role of improving the quality of life in towns, while at the same time defining town texture with its urban morphological significance. At the same time it also develops ecological values and extends its scale to nonurban local, regional and international contexts. Despite its benefits, spatial planning documents in the Republic of Croatia still lack measures and actions which would recognise the true benefit of green infrastructure in spatial development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green belt, without question the most well-known and influential legacy of town and country planning in the UK, continues to attract interest from a wide range of interested parties – from those eager to maintain the protection it offers to the countryside, to others more concerned at the negative impacts it is argued to have on housing supply and consequently prices. In this paper we explore how the arguments for a green belt around a particular city in the UK – Liverpool – were built up over the middle years of the twentieth century, in particular through three important (sub-)regional plans. Analysis of those plans is situated within national policy and nationwide rhetoric to illustrate how perfectly justifiable arguments about the need to limit urban sprawl "baked in" resentment and opposition to much-needed housing growth. A situation which, as the final section of the paper briefly reflects upon, not only contributed to the wide-scale construction of high-rise flats in the city from the 1950s onwards, but continues to resonate today through the objections lodged against attempts to enhance the spatial footprint of the city through development on the green belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

İmrahor Valley, which covers a significant part of the urban fringe in Ankara, has a crucial role in conserving the ecological balance of city with its landscape and other natural features. The valley has long been considered as one of the most important ecological areas of the city and protecting the valley as part of green system has been a primary objective since the first plan of city. However, the valley has rapidly lost its natural characteristics under the effects of recent planning policies and implementations. This article investigates the changes in İmrahor Valley as a contemporary example of the transformations at the fringe of Ankara. The aim of this article is to analyze the changing process of the valley and to determine the factors affecting this process. In the light of previous literature, researches and interviews, it is seen that the plan revisions since the mid-2000s, market forces and speculative pressures have been the main drivers that increase the tension in the valley and pave the way for construction. The importance of greenbelt regulations, protective land policies and the plan decisions taking into account the upper-scale ecological systems are also emphasized in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reclaiming the Urban Commons: The Past, Present and Future of Food Growing in Australian Towns and Cities: Edited by Nick Rose and Andrea Gaynor. Extends the discussion historically with its fine chapters by Gaynor (see also her book), Clay, and Kunek and Shone, and the conclusion by Rose. Significantly, I Reclaiming the Urban Commons i points to the structural and political problems that frame food resilience. [Extracted from the article]

The greenway system in Taichung is a successful case that regenerates urban greenbelts through various activation strategies. This paper takes greenways in Taichung for example, analyzes their renewal plans, and finds out their experience of regeneration. The greenways in Taichung were first designed to control urban sprawl and then became idle greenbelts. Afterwards, the greenways were transformed into an urban vitality belt with the joint efforts of multiple parties. The existing greenbelt model in many cities does have some deficiencies. Therefore, it is recommended that there be room for growth in urban development in these cities and they can draw lessons from Taichung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful and efficient urban planning requires direct, rapid evaluations of the urban ventilation potential. An urban ventilation environment can be analyzed and evaluated using numerical simulations; however, such simulations require considerable time and effort, especially at the start of planning or when the area is vast. This study presents a method that can rapidly analyze urban ventilation potential of the whole city and each district by combining the rule-based modeling method with urban enclosure index. The first step of the proposed method is to rapidly generate building models using rule-based modeling, and the buildings in different districts are color coded by their use. Then, several vertical sections of the whole city and each district are cut, and the sectional data is extracted for plotting the enclosure charts. Finally, the enclosure index charts are superimposed on the urban wind rose diagram to analyze the ventilation potential of the whole city and each district, and optimization suggestions are proposed based on the analysis results. A case study was then performed on Lipu County, Guangxi, China and the optimization suggestions were proposed from the aspects of road orientations, building layout and the arrangement of greenbelts and open recreational space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban-planning authorities continually face the problem of optimising the allocation of green space over time in developing urban environments. The problem is essentially a sequential decision-making task involving several interconnected and non-linear uncertainties, and requires time-intensive computation to evaluate the potential consequences of individual decisions. We explore the application of two very distinct frameworks incorporating evolutionary algorithm approaches for this problem: (i) an ‘offline’ approach, in which a candidate solution encodes a complete set of decisions, which is then evaluated by full simulation and (ii) an ‘online’ approach which involves a sequential series of optimisations, each making only a single decision, and starting its simulations from the endpoint of the previous run. We study the outcomes, in each case, in the context of a simulated urban development model, and compare their performance in terms of speed and quality. Our results show that the online version is considerably faster than the offline counterpart, without significant loss in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article traces the history of the greenbelt of Chandigarh, India’s first modernist city, designed by Le Corbusier. The zone’s protection was mandated by the Periphery Control Act of 1952, although the act’s contents are often misinterpreted and do not fully reflect the project team’s complex vision. This work clarifies the intentions behind the Periphery’s creation, and establishes its integration with the master plan. I demonstrate how ongoing transformations violate the spirit of the Periphery’s original purpose, but rarely the letter of the law. I highlight ongoing conflicts whose resolution will fundamentally shape the future of the Periphery and the master plan of Chandigarh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper analyzes the history of green wedges in Britain from their origins in the first decade of the twentieth century up until the outbreak of the Second World War. Often neglected by the literature in favour of the ‘greenbelt’, the ‘green wedge’ was equally at the forefront of the minds of planners debating urban growth and the provision of open spaces for modern cities. Firstly, the paper looks into the origins of the idea, with particular focus on discussions about the integration of park and traffic systems in the period. Secondly, it focuses on the fundamental role that the 1910 RIBA Town Planning Conference played in the emergence of the green wedges idea and in its immediate reception and diffusion. Subsequently, the paper discusses the idea's development after the Conference, predominantly in plans for Greater London and in texts by its main supporters, which included H. V. Lanchester, G. L. Pepler, T. H. Mawson, and P. Abercrombie. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Southern Ontario's Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) is the most heavily populated and urbanized region in Canada. Given its large population size, economic importance, and projected population growth, the Ontario provincial government recognized the need to plan for the growth of jobs and people to avoid the adverse effects of urban sprawl, traffic gridlock, and the loss of farmland and natural areas. Ontario's 2005 Greenbelt Plan and 2006 Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (Places to Grow) established the legislative framework to guide development and population growth within southern Ontario. While directing development and promoting population growth in specified areas, an unintended consequence of these legislative plans may, however, be increased commuting distance as workers commute from beyond the Greenbelt into the employment dense areas inside the Greenbelt. This article focuses upon the intersection between migration and commuting distance in southern Ontario's GGH region, within the context of ongoing population growth, and Greenbelt and Places to Grow legislation. Results indicate that migrants moving beyond the Greenbelt have generally longer commute distances, with implications for the sustainability of communities and government policies aimed at reducing the carbon footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a period of three decades, from 1928 to 1959, the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) formed an unconventional working team and a complex laboratory of progressive ideas for designing the city. During the founding years of the organization and the transatlantic emigration of many of its major figures during the second half of the 1930s, a profound engagement with the most important trends in the European and North American debates on planning had become the critical foundation for their common task. The organization's consequent basic convictions and demands summed up the most effective maxims of the discipline since the turn of the century. Officially, CIAM tried to distinguish itself from traditional urban planning and instead advocated modern urban planning as the antithesis to everything that existed previously. Seen from a historical perspective, however, numerous points of connection – in particular to the garden city movement – become very clear. The various members of CIAM were deeply influenced ideologically by Ebenezer Howard's visions for urbanism. Personal contact to representatives of the garden city movement, active involvement in its institutions, and broad implementation of Howard's ideas in the context of European and North American planning led CIAM from the analysis of the functions of the existing city to a comprehensive design of the modern city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of vernacular landscapes at the urban fringe is poorly studied, limiting our understanding of the contemporary character of the fringe and our knowledge of the urbanization process. This article argues the necessity of a combined analysis of the legacies of planning and the footprints of former landscape ideals in order to understand the conditions for spatial planning at the urban fringe. After first introducing the methodological use of landscape/planning history, the article focuses on the Swedish discourse on landscape change and landscape planning concerning the urban fringe in the 1930s. Particular focus is placed on the discourse on agricultural landscapes at the urban fringe. The third section of the article presents an examination of the footprints of the 'landscape convention' (i.e. an agreement on the meaning of landscape in relation to law and justice) resulting from the landscape discourse of the 1930s. The article argues that the legacy of the 1930s explains some of the difficulties arising when planners of today aim to utilize the farm landscape as a resource for recreation at the urban fringe. The shadow of the landscape discourse of the 1930s also creates difficulties in dealing with peri-urban landscapes in Swedish planning and Swedish law. With the ongoing discourse on how to implement the European Landscape Convention, such knowledge is particularly useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful establishment of the greenbelt around London during the 1930s acted as an inspiration for postwar planners in the United Kingdom and in other countries. The history of ideas that supported this establishment has been investigated, but no research has examined the implementation of the 1930s' greenbelt. The objective of this article is to investigate why the greenbelt was successfully established in the 1930s, despite the United Kingdom's weak planning system and the unprecedented urban growth at the time. In particular, the authors highlight the role of landowners and county council members in establishing the greenbelt. Finally, they discuss how the history of the greenbelt has to be reassessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the evolution of the green-belt policy in Great Britain and its implication for urban spatial management. A green-belt is an area of land set aside during the development of a city or town. The concept started in the 1940s as a tool for urban containment and as part of the plan to keep residents and industries from congested areas. It was intended to prevent urban sprawl, preserve landscape settings in cities and provide land for recreation.

Countries around the world have responded to the problems associated with rapid urban growth and increasingly land-consumptive development patterns by creating a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth. Of the array of growth management techniques, urban containment policies are considered by some to be a promising approach. This paper focuses on greenbelts, the most restrictive form of urban containment policy. The long-standing greenbelt of Seoul, Republic of Korea is examined as a case study. Seoul's greenbelt has generated both significant social costs and benefits. Costs include higher land and housing prices in the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt, additional costs incurred by commuters who live beyond the greenbelt and work in Seoul, and increased congestion and related quality of life impacts. Benefits include the amenity value of living near the greenbelt, recreational resources, bequest and heritage values, fiscal savings due to increased efficiency in the provision of public services and infrastructure, and a wide range of life-supporting ecosystem services. After standing virtually unchanged for almost three decades, Korea's greenbelt policy is currently being revised and weakened, largely due to pressure from greenbelt landowners and developers. Although there is no definitive answer to the question of whether Seoul would be a more or less ‘sustainable city’ today without the greenbelt, it is certain that in the absence of the greenbelt, Seoul would have lost much of its rich natural heritage and essential ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on the incorporation of nature in cities. When town planning emerged at the end of the 19th century, its proponents did not envisage the city without nature. It was thought that the garden city would become the new face of the urban landscape, bringing together only the positive aspects of both city and country. However, behind the planners' inclusion of nature lie very different intentions, from one period to another and one culture to another. The globalized, standardized nature that was subsequently part of marketing the city is just an image; whether wild or tamed, it is no longer localized, no longer a partner in societies' inhabitation of the earth.

It is widely acknowledged that Ebenezer Howard's Garden City inspired many important urban planning achievements throughout the world. Using democratic dilemmas as a means of characterizing Garden City allows attention to be drawn to the political 'work' that this form of planning undertook. Examination of Garden City's realization at Letchworth and its core democratic values reveals Howard's prescient struggle with the central contradictions of democratic planning, illustrating the difficulties of achieving social goals in planning framed by liberal democracy. While significant gains were made in living conditions through the development of the Garden City, its realization through largely liberal-based market mechanisms emphasized its physical virtues at the expense of its social goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on legislation presented to the Victorian Parliament in April 2003 that establishes an urban growth boundary, defines the extent of the green belts and prevents subdivision below existing minimum lot sizes. Importance of non-urban metropolitan areas; Need for legislative protection; Nature of green belts; Methods of implementation and protection.

Focuses on the greenbelt town program, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's most innovative and radical interventions in American city planning and the role of architect/planner Clarence S. Stein. Stein's advisory role; Stein's influence on the character and quality of the communities, especially Greenbelt, Maryland; Socially and environmentally responsive community design.