Post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East and North Africa region: A bidirectional parametric urban design approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-313
Author(s):  
Nicolai Steinø ◽  
Marwa Dabaieh ◽  
Karima Ben Bih
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Model Combining

Post-conflict reconstruction is a major topic in war-torn cities in the Middle East and North Africa region. Rather than being limited to re-establishing pre-conflict conditions, new formats of urban settings may be adopted, both for the design and quality of urban space, as well as for the design and building process. This article proposes a combined top-down and bottom-up design approach, supported by parametric urban design modelling. As sustainable (re-)development of the urban-scape requires coordination across different scales, a top-down approach is partly needed for reasons of coordination. As participatory design processes involving local stakeholders work from the partial to the whole, a bottom-up approach is partly needed for reasons of inclusion. By means of a parametric urban model combining both overview and detail, the two approaches can be combined. This article shows the theoretical framework and, by way of example, applies the model to Fallujah in Iraq as a case study.

scholarly journals From prototypical to prototyping: mass-customization versus 20th century utopias in architecture and urban design

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Celani ◽  
Rafael Urano de Carvalho Frajndlich
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Mass Customization ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Este trabalho procura estabelecer conexões entre as quatro fases da Revolução Industrial e utopias propostas nas áreas de arquitetura e desenho urbano. O artigo começa com uma revisão geral das quatro fases da industrialização, tentando estabelecer conexões com as respectivas tendências arquitetônicas e urbanas em cada etapa. Da mesma maneira que a Segunda Revolução Industrial e seu novo sistema de produção em massa influenciaram as utopias modernas no início do século XX, os métodos da Terceira e Quarta Revoluções Industriais têm impulsionado novas utopias contemporâneas. A fim de ilustrar essa tese, são apresentados exemplos em diferentes escalas: produtos de consumo, componentes construtivos, unidades habitacionais e desenho urbano. Foi possível concluir que a principal diferença entre as utopias modernas e contemporâneas é uma mudança da maneira de pensar "top-down" para processos "bottom-up" nas diferentes escalas. Novos sistemas de CAD paramétrico e novas máquinas de produção pessoal, tais como as fresadoras CNC, cortadoras a laser e impressoras 3D, e o conceito de personalização em massa, estão permitindo que os usuários se tornem mais participantes na produção de seus bens de consumo, residências, e até mesmo os espaços urbanos. O trabalho termina perguntando aos arquitetos e urbanistas quais serão as próximas utopias, com base nas novas tecnologias esperadas para as próximas décadas.

Bottom-up rather than top-down: evidence from Middle Eastern and North African educational institutions

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-690
Author(s):  
Osama Mah'd
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
North African ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Managerial Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Difference

PurposeEducational institutions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are striving for better resource management and finance. The bottom-up budgeting approach plays an important role in motivating executives' performance. The main aim of this paper is to discover whether there is a significant difference between bottom-up and a top-down approaches to budgeting in terms of managers' performance.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were distributed to 453 university executives in 21 MENA educational institutions. The Kruskal–Wallis test was utilized to test the difference between the three groups (bottom-up, top-down and consultative approaches). Further analysis was conducted to test the difference between the two groups using the Mann–Whitney test.FindingsThe results show that there is a significant difference between a bottom-up and top-down approach in terms of managerial performance. The study's findings indicate that the bottom-up approach to budgeting leads to higher performance indicators than a top-down approach to budgeting.Originality/valueThe current study contributes to the research as it increases awareness of budgeting approaches that are used in higher education institutions, specifically in terms of the effect of these differences on executives' performance.

scholarly journals A Bottom-Up and Top-Down Participatory Approach to Planning and Designing Local Urban Development: Evidence from an Urban University Center

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodoro Semeraro ◽  
Zaccarelli Nicola ◽  
Alejandro Lara ◽  
Francesco Sergi Cucinelli ◽  
Roberta Aretano
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
University Center ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban University

The urban area is characterized by different urban ecosystems that interact with different institutional levels, including different stakeholders and decision-makers, such as public administrations and governments. This can create many institutional conflicts in planning and designing the urban space. It would arguably be ideal for an urban area to be planned like a socio-ecological system where the urban ecosystem and institutional levels interact with each other in a multi-scale analysis. This work embraces a planning process that aims at being applied to a multi-institutional level approach that is able to match different visions and stakeholders' needs, combining bottom-up and top-down participation approaches. At the urban scale, the use of this approach is sometimes criticized because it appears to increase conflicts between the different stakeholders. Starting from a case study in the Municipality of Lecce, South Italy, we apply a top-down and bottom-up participation approach to overcome conflicts at the institutional levels in the use of the urban space in the Plan of the Urban University Center. The bottom-up participation action analyzes the vision of people that frequent the urban context. After that, we share this vision in direct comparison with decision-makers to develop the planning and design solutions. The final result is a draft of the hypothetical Plan of the Urban University Center. In this way, the bottom-up and top-down approaches are useful to match the need of the community that uses the area with the vision of urban space development of decision-makers, reducing the conflicts that can arise between different institutional levels. In this study, it also emerges that the urban question is not green areas vs. new buildings, but it is important to focus on the social use of the space to develop human well-being. With the right transition of information and knowledge between different institutional levels, the bottom-up and top-down approaches help develop an operative effective transdisciplinary urban plan and design. Therefore, public participation with bottom-up and top-down approaches is not a tool to obtain maximum consensus, but mainly a moment of confrontation to better address social issues in urban planning and design.

scholarly journals CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS OF A BOTTOM UP URBAN DESIGN PROCESS TO DELIVER SUSTAINABLE URBAN DESIGNS

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuwan Dias ◽  
Kaushal Keraminiyage ◽  
Dilanthi Amaratunga ◽  
Steve Curwell
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Critical Success Factors ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
The People

A sustainable urban environment caters for peoples’ need. When the needs of the people are addressed, it increases the property values and attracts investors. The current urban design process is top-down, i.e., Designers and planners play the key role and the community has less engagement. There are serious criticisms of this process as it may not touch the “ground” level requirements, and therefore, these projects will fail to create sustainable environments. Accordingly, to overcome the drawbacks of the current top-down process, researches have discussed implementing a bottom-up process in order to deliver sustainable urban designs. Based on this argument this paper discusses what are the positive and negative implications of a bottom up urban design process and what are the critical success factors which can be derived from a bottom-up urban design process in order to deliver sustainable urban environments.

scholarly journals Emergent ecology: Creating inclusive cities through speculative interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shaneel Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Socioeconomic Condition ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Design Behaviour

<p>Many cities within developing countries are facing an increased demand for space to work and live as contemporary top-down urbanisation strains to facilitate the rising urban population. Future projections estimate that the world’s population will transition from rural to urban living within a relatively short period of time, causing concern towards transition and facilitation of culturally specific demographics and their values within the existing socioeconomic condition of a city. This research proposes a speculative bottom-up approach to urban design which utilises the behavioural tendencies of various demographics within a cultural context to inform how a city can facilitate inclusivity through diverse social and economic interaction. Inclusive cities are paramount to the socioeconomic success of developing countries, with the potential to provide over 80% of the country’s economic growth. This investigation looks at New Delhi, India as a context within which to test the proposed emergent model for urban design (behaviour driven approach) using a simulation-based methodology to test how New Delhi’s various demographics can diversely interact to invoke an inclusive future city in response. The speculative design investigation of this research will highlight the potential of bottom-up urban design and the merit of using behaviour-based, emergent methodologies for urban planning, creating diverse interaction and an alternative to contemporary top-down urban planning. The aim of the research is to develop a methodology for simulating how agent behaviour can be utilised to inform urban design. The methodology will simulate an urban population by utilising individual and collective behaviour to inform the organisation of density within an urban scale. The data will form a “pre-geometry state” in which typology, infrastructure and other key nodes can be instanced to create an emergent, urban ecology informed by agent interactions.</p>

Patterns of self-organization in the context of urban planning: Reconsidering venues of participation

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efrat Eizenberg
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Power And Agency

This article unpacks the relations that exist between the planning institution and urban residents by examining processes of self-organization in planning. Approaching self-organization with the lens of assemblage, the article proposes three categories or patterns of self-organization of different urban actors and portrays how they act in different forms to induce urban change. The three self-organization categories are as follows: (1) self-organization by the disenfranchised for basic rights, (2) self-organization by the ordinary for community interests, and (3) self-organization by the powerful for economic gains. In these different forms of self-organization, power and agency are differentially constituted by the relations between the residents, the planning institution, and the physical space. Moreover, the impacts of these actions on the urban space vary. Nevertheless, there are also some resemblances between groups and actions that are commonly dissociated. Unpacking different manifestations of self-organization in urban planning proposes a more relational interpretation that emphasizes the inextricable and overlapping relations of formal and informal planning and of top-down and bottom-up planning, and surfaces a different understanding of urban power relations.

Symbolic Post-Conflict Recovery in the Rwenzori Sub-Region of Uganda

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 699-715
Author(s):  
Muhumuza William
Keyword(s):  
Conventional Approach ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War ◽  
Taking Action

Whereas there is a consensus on the significance of rebuilding conflict-torn states and societies, there is no agreement on how it should be done. The dominant framework of post-war rebuilding is clearly biased to rebuilding the ‘hardware’. This article argues that the government’s attempt to rebuild the Rwenzori sub-region in the aftermath of the Allied Democratic Forces war adopted the conventional approach that pays less attention to rebuilding ‘software’. It further asserts that the recovery programme was symbolic given that government wished to avoid the political consequences of not taking action at all. Symbolism not only led to flawed performance of the recovery programme but also negatively affected peace building in the sub-region. The article advocates not only for a synergy of rebuilding ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ but also for a nuanced approach that triangulates top-down and bottom-up approaches at all stages of post-conflict recovery.

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