Increasing anti-eviction social movements in Taipei are raising the question of the right to housing and the right to the city, Toad Hill settlement conservation movement is one of the focuses. Toad Hill settlement is an informal/squatter settlement that combines Huan-Min military dependent village and informal settlement in the margin of Taipei basin. Along the hill-shaped landform, it remains pre-modern lifestyle, architecture form, and history layers, which could also regard as a historical settlement. The formation of Toad Hill settlement lies in the post-war urban development context, playing the role of social housing provision. This study aims to bring out the publicness debate of urban renewal in the informal settlement. Another concern of the study is to identify the boundary dialectics when the settlement is on the way to transgress into urban life.    The first part of the paper is framed with discussion on the publicness debate of the possible revitalization in the historical settlement. In the name of public interest, the land management authority tended to implement new development plan in 2013, putting the settlement into demolition crisis. For this reason, a group of citizen initiated to conserve the overall informal settlement and fight against the forced eviction. From the public participation of citizen, the publicness of heritage, the publicness in urban planning, to the right to housing, the conservation movement opens up the publicness and legitimacy debate of the informal settlement. In addition, the intervention of the conservation movement put the settlement, both the internal social structure and the relation between the settlement and the city, into the process of re-territorializing. For this reason, the second part of the paper focuses on identity and sense of place to examine the boundary dialectics of the settlement. With the method of participatory observation and qualitative research, researcher has engaged in Toad Hill settlement conservation movement for two years starting from June 2013. The tendency shows that the boundary dialectics of an informal urban settlement may develop alternative renewal routes for a historical area. And the conservation movement, especially the process of proposing the citizen version planning vision, lay the foundation for a social sustainable city.

Since 2000, with the elaboration of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), a general agreement was achieved at the European level for implementing sustainable urban water management (SUWM) practices. However, there is criticism on the applicability of the WFD at the local level leading to disparities between administrative units of the same region or state (Andersson, Petersson, and Jarsjö 2012). Even so, research based on Australian cases shown that, regardless the regional or national legislation, discrepancies between administrative units have a local origin. In effect, they rest on the capacity for local governance systems to accept innovative ideas, to have a leading actor in SUWM practices and, to enhance interdisciplinary approaches (Brown and Libeman 2004). A recent concept, adaptive governance, aims to create similar conditions by combining top-down and bottom-up initiatives (Folke et al. 2005). The fit-for-purpose governance framework proposes a tool to evaluate the transition towards adaptive governance based on three steps: identifying the purpose, mapping the context and evaluating the outcome of governance strategies (Rijke et al. 2012).A similar discrepancy, at a smaller scale, in Brussels’ Capital Region, is perceived. Each commune has a different attitude towards disseminating SWUM practices. Among them, the commune of Forest proves to be one of the most advanced in this aspect by turning constraints into opportunities. For example, the lack of coordination between the communal and regional departments allowed the emergence of two key actors: the commune’s water service and an active non-governmental association. They maintained the dissemination and implementation of SWUM practices by organising working groups based on SWUM objectives. This paper investigates the conditions specific to the commune of Forest at the level of the local governance that allowed a faster dissemination of SUWM practices. The data gathered on site (semi-structured interviews with the main stakeholders, urban regulations and on-going SWUM projects) is analysed through fit-for-purpose governance framework. On the one hand, the paper draws conclusions about the level of development of the local governance and the current constraints on moving towards adaptive governance. On the other hand, it tests the limits of the fit-for-purpose framework in the case of Forest.Andersson, Ingela, Mona Petersson, and Jerker Jarsjö. 2012. “Impact of the European Water Framework Directive on Local-Level Water Management: Case Study Oxunda Catchment, Sweden.” Land Use Policy 29 (1): 73–82. Brown, M, and M Libeman. 2004. “Bringing Water Sensitive Design into Mainstream.” http://www.sustainabilityworkshop.com/publications/enviro_04_wsudintomainstream.pdf.Folke, Carl, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg. 2005. “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30 (1): 441–73Rijke, Jeroen, Rebekah Brown, Chris Zevenbergen, Richard Ashley, Megan Farrelly, Peter Morison, and Sebastiaan van Herk. 2012. “Fit-for-Purpose Governance: A Framework to Make Adaptive Governance Operational.” Environmental Science & Policy 22 (October). Elsevier Ltd: 73–84.

The importance of creative places to promote human creative activity in the knowledge-based society. Leading to the creation of high value-added innovation by creative ideas are being continuously expanded. Facilitating the flow of creative places contributes to the expression of creative innovation and industry. Thus, the composition of the creative place is the core competitiveness of enterprises and cities. In the world's major companies and cities have a work space that can maximize creativity, places, and focuses on the composition of the city. In particular, creating an environment that promotes the creative activities of employees through the creation of a new workplace in the center of a knowledge-based businesses contributes to induce the development of innovative technologies and products has continued. Theoretical Background and place to lead the world in patent production on the basis of international trends, the world's leading companies are selected in each sector of the creative knowledge industries. They are a representative of the Institute, including basic science into practice, non-physical environment. The study proceeds to an analysis of cases divided by the physical environment of the workplace. In the case of non-physical environment, to research and analyze the industry-supported environmental aspects related infrastructure. In the case of the physical environment, they are analyzed the location and place enemy infrastructure to support the exchange of creative class. Through the analysis of case studies to create a business environment that emphasis on education, culture, communication, exchange and integration for creative composition, derived the common features that create a place that is not my plan to induce cooperative building.

Buildings account for about 40% of total energy consumption worldwide. This consumed energy is usually as a result of the HVAC systems installed in the building which are delegated with the task of providing thermal comfort or a high quality indoor environment as humans spend about 90% of their time in buildings. With energy sources depleting at an unsustainable rate and contributing significantly to climate change, calls are intensifying for greener and more resource efficient systems.To support the drive towards a sustainable society, 4-way cassette air-conditioners are commonly deployed in offices in Eastern China. However, without optimal control of these systems, potential energy saving is lost while high level of indoor comfort is also not achieved.  The work in this paper presents a numerical investigation of thermal comfort in an office room with 4-way cassette air-conditioner. In this study, parameters such as supply air temperature and air velocity were varied to observe their effects on the comfort level in the room.The results show that the ability to control these parameters provides promising benefits for use to optimise the control of similar HVAC systems, resulting in building energy efficiency and improved occupant comfort or indoor environment quality.

In 2012, Beijing was designated as UNESCO City of Design, which promotes further development of city’s design industries. Architecture always makes an important part in the design industries in Beijing. With decrease urban land able to develop and build, how to reuse old building has been a focused issue. In recent years, increasing well-known private architecture firms/studios, founded by well-known Chinese architects with domestic and foreign education background and working experience in international firms, renovate old buildings into their new workspaces. According to the different features of structures, spaces and forms, architects create comfortable working environments for their employees to interact and communicate, and identify their personal architectural styles and values. Furthermore, a number of abandoned factories and warehouse, outdated multistory offices and hotels, and dilapidated siheyuan buildings were successfully activated by various reuse strategies and renovation approaches. The old buildings reuse as architects’ workspaces not only redevelop Beijing’s urban land use and urban landscapes, but also successfully converted some of the disorder and bad area into creative cluster with rich art and culture atmosphere, which attracts more creative talents and even become a well-known tourism site.

Transformed from the Western countries, the so called ‘area-based urban governance’ is an innovative planning strategy in China. In general, it means the establishment of an urban planning and governance system by introducing differentiated spatial policies and institutions for different city areas. This paper focuses on a case study on the implementation of this strategy in inner-city areas, for which public participation was involved in order to achieve the area-based, differentiated urban governance. For Luochuan County, Shaanxi Province, the planners proposed to divide the existing built-up areas into several specified zones for differentiated governance policies. Aiming to improve its feasibility and sustainability, the proposal was discussed, revised and optimized through a 3-phase public participation. A model of area-based and participatory urban governance was thus developed in order to balance efficiency and equity in policy making. This model can be regarded as a pilot project to explore a new approach to urban governance and planning implementation in comparable cities.

Rapid urbanisation in Asia has led to substantial economic growth and development. The region's highly dynamic urban areas form thriving economic centres and are constantly expanding. At the same time, they are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Increased river discharge, extreme weather conditions, subsidence and an increasingly limited access to resources pose significant risks to the inhabitants of these regions. Demographic and socio-economic pressures add to the challenge. Building resilience to these uncertain but urgent threats is necessary to ensure sustainable, future-proof urban development in light of climate change and thus create true smart and green cities. At the same time, this necessitates a paradigm shift in planning and action towards a focus on integration of the climate resilience agenda into everyday planning and decision-making, with a strong involvement of local policy- and decision-makers. However, realisation of this integration requires institutional capacity– which is currently often lacking. Capacity building of local actors- and decision-makers therefore needs to become an inherent part of climate-resilient action planning and development, as this involvement is necessary to not only obtain the relevant local data and knowledge for climate-resilient action plans but also to ensure effective and efficient implementation and monitoring of these plans. In addition, stakeholders' commitment to embrace the paradigm change is essential to ensure successful implementation. Building on previous research on the assessment of cities' sustainability, this paper gleans on urban governance aspects of climate resilience planning. It particularly focuses on the importance of integrating the climate change agenda into the local planning vision, and the evaluation of climate resilience-focused urban governance.  The paper proposes a number of indicators as a starting point to assess  institutional capacity and support necessary for this integration. To illustrate the discussion, this paper will highlight some case studies which reflect the urgency and challenges of implementing climate resilience strategies, as well as best practices that demonstrate effective implementations.

Within smart urbanism, green spaces and parks in the city are important factors to improve the urban environment and citizen's quality of life. In the past, urban parks had functions of environmental conservation, citizen recreation and/or identity (memorials), and they were usually planned for, funded and maintained by local governments. Increasingly, however, urban parks are subject to changes in meaning, identity, functions and governance, liked to urban regeneration, climate change adaptation and mitigation and wider sustainability goals. Thus, this article discusses from a transition perspective 'how the social-ecological system of urban district parks in Seoul Metropolitan Area has fundamentally changed in the past decade.' It examines how innovations in local green space provision have emerged, and how these have triggered shifts in the relations between local government, civil society organizations, private businesses and citizens. It analyzes how different social needs and objectives, including education, improved health and physical recreation, food provision and community building, have provided new domains of interaction in this. It also recognizes the related shifts in urban ecosystems, infrastructures, regulation and society, fostering a wider awareness of climate change and urban regeneration issues, while also enhancing local quality of life through ecological place making for citizens. From this research, we will identify the key drivers and barriers of the observed transition, and suggest how cities should consider these in their planning for sustainable urban regeneration.

International bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the United Nations agree in seeing the built environment as one of the key sectors to mitigate emissions. Cost abatement curves as generated by McKinsey list a number of technologies in the building sector, which are already cost effective and are together potentially allowing for carbon mitigations of 2,0-3,0 Gtons of CO₂eq per annum. Despite being economically attractive as well as desirable from a climate change mitigation viewpoint, almost none of these technologies are massively upscaling. The lack of or wrong policy frameworks are often named as the key barrier. Therefore, a favorable policy framework in combination with economic feasibility should result in massive upscaling of the implementation.

This paper showcases the overestimation of the effect of economic stimulation and policy change on refurbishment rates by analyzing the change in refurbishment rates after the implementation of major policy schemes for different European countries. It therefore follows that in addition to policy frameworks and economic feasibility other barriers are to be taken into account.

Cases in which despite an increase in economic stimulation or a favorable policy change the refurbishment rate was actually going down are analyzed in detail as exemplary case studies. The analysis of these cases is based on expert interviews with key stakeholders in the respective markets.

The identified barriers are clustered and categorized. Common barriers were found to be the lack of information flow between product and technology suppliers and the demand side, the competition of different technologies within systemic building solutions, general uncertainty as a result of the complexity of systemic solutions, production and workforce limits and the stakeholder setup.

 

Landlocked parcels are frequently produced by subdividing larger parcels of land before the land planning and Building Act were established to limit the building development and construction with public road frontage. Due to lack of public access, public services, police and fire protection, landlocked parcels are neglected in real estate investment and urban development, causing deterioration and isolation of center parcels without road frontage in urban blocks and increasing the exposure to the risk of crime and slumism. Although an easement agreement is sometimes permitted for a new construction, validity of the easement pending upon the land ownership changes make the development of landlocked parcels unstable and unsustainable. However, building on landlocked parcels permitted before establishment of Building Act can be remodeled to accommodate new programs and improve the environment quality as long as building occupancy classifications don't need to be changed. Landlocked parcels can be discovered in dense residential districts without large-scale development, which might be underdeveloped and lagging in community and cultural services. Sometimes landlocked parcels also are found in over-developed districts, making the block privatized and gated. In this paper, typologies of landlocked parcels with existing building in Seoul are described to categorize landlocked parcels, its urban block and district as well as to examine its urban conditions and problems. This categorization allows evaluating the effectiveness of regeneration. Also programs possible to landlocked parcels are explored depending on various lot sizes, frontage conditions, and construction types of existing buildings, from the viewpoint of public investment to lead the development of landlocked parcels for more public and community values. Public investment on remodeling of a building on landlocked parcels in Seoul would contribute to regenerating the parcel, the block and the community, enhancing the value of parcel and driving the sustainable urban transformation.