Professional Documents
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Introduction
Leading urban theorists' agree that most countries around the world are passing
through their own particular period of discontinuity; where the institutions and
established practices of one urban epoch have begun to fail and before new
institutions and practices have become established. In light of this, urbanists tend to
fall into two camps, those who are actively engaged in the deconstruction of the old
institutions and in the building of new ones and those who either deny these claims
about discontinuity or who insist that it is the job of urbanism to resist it. While this
paper comes down firmly in the first camp, it accepts the relevance of attempting to
build new kinds of practice around the management of the way land is used; the
original role of urbanism. The paper answers the questions- What new practices are
emerging and how successful are they?
Introduccin
Destacados tericos urbanos estn de acuerdo
en que la mayora de los pases del mundo estn
atravesando un perodo de discontinuidad
propio y particular en el que las instituciones y las
practicas establecidas en la primera era urbana
han empezado a fallar antes del establecimiento
de otras nuevas instituciones y prcticas. A la
vista de este, los urbanistas se encuentran
divididos en dos campos: aquellos relacionados
activamente en la deconstruccin de las viejas
instituciones y en la construccin de otras nuevas
y aquellos que o bien deniegan estas demandas
sobre discontinuidad o bien insisten en que la
tarea del urbanismo es resistir dicho perodo. Este
estudio apoya firmemente el primer modelo, y
acepta la relevancia de intentar construir nuevos
modelos de prcticas sobre la gestin del uso del
suelo; la funcin original del urbanismo. El
estudio contesta las preguntas acerca de las
nuevas prcticas emergentes y sobre el xito que
han obtenido.
La capacidad de reconstruir su prctica, a la vista
de los cambios econmicos y sociales, es lo que
decidira si el urbanismo va a sobrevivir como una
disciplina profesional o si va a convertirse en un
tema secundario de las ciencias sociales. Por lo
tanto, el estudio debe centrarse en los nuevos
instrumentos, los sistemas diferentes de
urbanismo que se estn usando en la actualidad
en el mundo. El estudio descubre algunas
tendencias comunes y a la vista de ellas, saca
conclusiones sobre el futuro del urbanismo como
prctica, resaltando el relativo declive en
importancia del instrumento legislacin y la
i mportancia creciente del instrumento
informacin.
La informacin sobre los instrumentos usados se
ha obtenido a partir de dos tipos de practicas del
gobierno local: prcticas en la gestin del uso del
suelo por los Ayuntamientos y por el creciente
nmero de gobiernos de Ciudades Regin o lo
que se conoca por Gobiernos Metropolitanos 2 .
Los datos sobre las prcticas en las Ciudades
Regin se han obtenido principalmente de un
Consorcio de Investigacin formado por 12
Ciudades Regin repartidas por todo el mundo 3 .
Este Consorcio ha estudiado el cambio de su
forma y gestin a lo largo de los ltimos 35 aos.
It is the ability to reconstruct its practice, in light of social and economic change,
which will decide if urbanism is to survive as a professional discipline or if it is to
decline into being a minor topic of the social sciences. The focus of the paper is
thus on the new instruments, which different systems of urbanism around the
World are using today. The paper discovers some common trends and, in light of
these, it draws conclusions about the future of urbanism as practice, emphasizing
the relative decline in importance of the instrument of legislation and the
growing importance of the information instrument.
Data on the instruments used is drawn from two levels of local government
practice- land use management practices by Municipalities and by the growing
number of governments of City Regions, or what used to be called Metropolitan
Governments 2 . Data on practice in City Regions is mainly drawn from a Research
Consortium of 12 Global City Regions around the World 3 . This Consortium has
been studying how their form and management has been changing over the last 35
years. Data on the instruments of urbanism used by municipalities is drawn from
many different sources.
The claimed period of discontinuity between urban epochs is already 25 years old
in those countries around the World which industrialised early. In these countries,
the 1973 Oil Crisis is often taken as the end of the previous urban epoch. Their
economies were hit the hardest by dramatic changes in the World economy and
their urban institutions were the most obsolete, locked as they had been into late
19th and early 20th Century forms of industrial and government organization, often
called Fordism. In this sense the period of discontinuity for the old industrialised
countries has been quite different from the discontinuities which a country like
Spain has been confronting. Indeed all the evidence from the
Consortium is that, while there are many features of the changing World
which all institutions of urbanism are having to confront and while there
are some common trends in the way they are transforming, systems are
not converging into a single world model. The evidence is that while
each country is at some stage of deconstructing its old system of
urbanism, each is, at the same time, in the process of constructing a new
one, which is in many respects unique to itself.
Los datos sobre los instrumentos de urbanismo usados por los
ayuntamientos se han conseguido de fuentes muy diversas.
El pretendido periodo de discontinuidad entre las pocas
urbanas se remonta a 25 aos en aquellas ciudades de todo el
mundo con una temprana industrializacin. En dichas ciudades,
la Crisis del Petrleo de 1973 se ha considerado a menudo
como el fin de la poca urbana anterior. Sus economas se
vieron fuertemente afectadas como consecuencia de los
dramticos cambios en la economa mundial y sus instituciones
urbanas se encontraban realmente obsoletas, inmovilizadas en
una organizacin industrial y de gobierno propias de finales del
siglo XIX y principios del XX, a menudo conocida por
Fordismo. En este sentido, el periodo de discontinuidad de
las ciudades con una industrializacin obsoleta ha sido bastante
diferente de las discontinuidades que ha afrontado un pas
como Espaa. Sin lugar a dudas, los datos aportados por el
Consorcio son que aunque existen muchos indicadores de un
mundo en pleno cambio que las instituciones urbansticas
tienen que afrontar, y aunque existen algunas tendencias
comunes sobre su modo de transformacin, los sistemas no
estn convergiendo hacia un modelo nico mundial. El hecho
es que mientras que cada nacin se encuentra en alguna etapa
de deconstruccin de su viejo sistema urbanstico, cada una de
ellas se encuentra al mismo tiempo en pleno proceso de
construccin de uno nuevo, que en muchos aspectos es nico
en si mismo.
46
Parte 1
Antecedentes
Los nuevos y coherentes asentamientos actuales son regionales
en su mbito. La regin se ha convertido en ciudad,
constituyendo la vieja ciudad una parte especializada de ella.
Esta Ciudad Regin es diferente de la Metrpolis de la
poca anterior. Apoya unas prcticas econmicas y sociales
muy diferentes. Genera nuevas lites (la lite Transnacional),
nuevos tipos de pobreza y una nueva clase (el Trabajador de
la informacin). Origina presiones muy diferentes sobre el
suelo y su uso y por parte de la sociedad se producen diferentes
demandas sobre cmo deberan gestionarse dichos usos. Esta
nueva poca urbana comenz a emerger con la ayuda de
tecnologas como el coche, la televisin y el telfono. No
obstante, las fuerzas de globalizacin ayudadas por nuevas
telecomunicaciones y la tecnologa del proceso de la
informacin, estn reforzando considerablemente muchas de
estas tendencias. Existen diversas y bien conocidas
explicaciones sobre cmo est sucediendo esta consolidacin.
La globalizacin tambin parece estar produciendo nuevas
tendencias, nuevas formas de concentracin, as como de
dispersin.
La forma de construccin del nuevo asentamiento urbano a
escala regional es bastante diferente, en la que el empleo se ha
dispersado por toda la regin, especialmente por los corredores
de transporte ms importantes, agrupndose en los principales
cruces entre los nuevos sistemas de transportes y los viejos
sistemas de carreteras principales. Todo ello resulta ms
destacable en los aeropuertos y en los cruces de las autopistas
de circunvalacin y el viejo sistema de carreteras radial. En
este sentido, todas las Ciudades Regin actuales son
polinucleares. Este dispersamiento del empleo urbano, junto
con la industrializacin de la agricultura ha producido un nuevo
modelo de paisaje que hace imposible sostener la vieja
Part 1
Background
The new coherent settlements of today are regional in scope. The region
has become the city with the old city just a specialist part of it. This
City Region is different from the Metropolis of the earlier epoch. It
supports quite different social and economic practices. It generates new
elites (the Transnational Elite), new kinds of poverty, and a new class
(the Information Worker). It generates quite different pressures on
land and the way it is used and there are different demands from society
about how these uses should be managed. The new urban epoch began
to emerge with the aid of technologies like the car, the television, and
telephone. The forces of globalization however, aided by new
telecommunications and information processing technology, are greatly
reinforcing many of these trends. There are a number of well known
explanations for how this reinforcement is taking place. Globalization
also appears to be creating new trends, like new forms of concentration
as well as dispersal.
The new regional scale urban settlement has a quite different built form,
in that employment has become dispersed into all parts of the region,
especially along major transportation corridors, clustering at major
junctions between the new transport systems and the old main road
systems. This is most noticeable at airports and at the junctions of
orbital motorways and the old radial road system. In this sense, all city
regions today are polynuclear. This dispersal of urban employment,
coupled with the industrialization of agriculture, has produced a new
kind of landscape which renders the old distinction between town and
country impossible to sustain. In attempts to do so however, the old
rural landscapes, based as they were on craft based farming, are now
the object of vigorous conservation campaigns along with those for
traditional urban centers. In the process both landscapes become
`commodified; turned into theme parks for recreational and tourist
consumption. As homes begin to become places of work, other than
domestic work, we can expect quite new pressures to be placed on land
and its management.
Much more important for urbanism and its practices, and closer to the
focus of this paper, a redistribution of power and resources at the local
level is leading to quite different procedures for managing the urban
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48
about what ends land use management should seek to achieve. It also
recognizes the emergence of the Shared Power Society in some
countries where local, private, and non-governmental agencies share the
role of developing and carrying out urban programs with local
5.
government Under these circumstances land use legislation, standing
as the sole instrument of urbanism, has limited value in many of the
occasions in which land use management is required. The major task is
to develop new instruments to complement and in some cases to replace
land use legislation. Once the reliance of urbanism on legislation has
been broken, it will be possible to draw into its operational sphere new
areas of concern which more directly impinge on contemporary uses of
land and the ends society seeks to achieve through their management.
Most countries around the World have been experimenting with new
instruments which complement and, on occasion, replace land use
legislation . The rest of the paper seeks to outline what these
experiments are and how effective they have been.
Part 2
A Typology of possible instruments
We begin with the assumption that the management of how land in a
municipality or city region is used is bound to be the responsibility of
local government, though other agencies may take an increasingly
i mportant share of the task. There are only five instruments which
6
government can use in this process. Own and operate
Legislate
Use incentives/disincentives
Change the legal rights and privileges of those who own
land and property
Use information
If we take the five instruments, we can distinguish between two crude
government or management types: Strong and Weak. Strong
systems are typified by most Municipal Governments in the West and
by Regional Governments such as those in Madrid and Lyon in the
Consortium, discussed previously. They are usually democratically
elected and they have their own independent sources of income or, at
least, they have discretion about how their resources are used. They
have the power to acquire land and property by compulsory purchase.
They have the power to legislate, though this is usually strictly limited
to certain issues. In terms of urbanism, this means that they can and, in
many cases, are required to make and enforce various kinds of land use
plan. They can use incentives by offering the opportunity to join
programmes on condition that certain actions are carried out. In some
countries they can offer release from legislative restrictions in exchange
for certain actions being taken. It is unlikely that even a regional
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government will have the power to change the legal rights and privileges
of the owners of land or property but they can use their influence with
Central Government or the courts to get them changed. They can and do
use information, but usually as a back up to the more powerful
instruments open to them.
so that public open spaces could be built. It was a period when the
amount of land in public ownership increased dramatically.
land and property portfolios. Manchester. for example, with the highest
percentage of housing in public ownership also had the highest vacancy
rate in Britain. Land donated by developers became badly maintained
waste land littering the fringe of cities. This may have been due to
familiar problems of bureaucracy in government. It may relate to the
sheer quantity of property which had to be managed, or to the fact that,
as ownership increased, the public were not willing to vote extra money
for its management and maintenance. Whatever the reasons this
instrument fell out of public favor and money which had previously
been spent on property acquisitions was diverted to other programmes.
This discrediting of the own and operate instrument in city and
metropolitan agencies was certainly not the case with central
government departments. In most of the 12 regions of the Consortium
they still supply most of the infrastructure and own and operate has
been their instrument. The main problem has not been with bad
management of programmes, though this has now become an issue in
the USA, Holland, and the UK. The great problem has been a lack of
coordination between one programme and another. All 12 city regions
Un gobierno metropolitano Fuerte se define como el que tiene la capacidad potencial de utilizar los
cinco instrumentos: Asumir la Propiedad
50
Roger Simmonds
Un gobierno metropolitano Dbil se define corno el que slo tiene la capacidad potencial de utilizar
un instrumento.
51
The second problem, most clearly evident in the case of Ankara, is that
land use plans. particularly at a regional scale, tend to put up land prices.
These work against the policy which the plan was trying to implement in
the first place. This can lead to one region being uncompetitive with
others and it was one of the main reasons given by the Thatcher
Government for abolishing the Metropolitan Counties (Including the
52
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54
El Instrumento: Incentivos/Desincentivos
Aunque los gobiernos han usado informalmente este
instrumento en el transcurso de su historia, alguna vez se ha
usado de manera formal. En 1216. la Ciudad de Londres us
una estrategia de incentivos prometiendo que toda persona que
blanqueara su tejado de paja. previniendo de esta forma la
expansin del fuego, podra sentarse en los bancos delanteros
de la iglesia el domingo. La primera versin moderna en
Occidente. parece haber sido el instrumento de la
Zonificacin por Incentivos del Plan para Manhattan de
1975 (ver figura 1). A los promotores se les ofreci flexibilizar
el coeficiente de edificabilidad del Plan de Ordenacin, a
cambio de ofrecer ciertos beneficios pblicos. La construccin
de un teatro en un edificio podra suponer un mayor coeficiente
de construccin. La construccin de un enlace peatonal entre
dos calles podra suponer incluso uno mayor y as
sucesivamente. Este instrumento se ha usado extensamente en
zonas de la periferia para fomentar la conservacin de zonas de
bosques o granjas dentro de las subdivisiones urbanas en los
EE.UU. (ver figura 2)
Una gran ventaja de este instrumento es que. mientras que el
uso del instrumento legislar se encuentra tan circunscrito, el
instrumento incentivar puede usarse para casi todo lo que el
gobierno desee. Esta falta de barreras en este instrumento se
deba presumiblemente a que los individuos pueden elegir si
desean participar o no en los esquemas de incentivos. En los
esquemas legislativos no tienen otra eleccin que su
cumplimiento. Por supuesto, esta caracterstica de poder elegir
es otra de las razones por la yue el instrumento incentivar>
resulta tan popular en los gobiernos de la Derecha Liberal. Sin
embargo. una estrategia popular. es disfrazar la coaccin del
gobierno como incentivos, pretendiendo que una autoridad
local o un individuo puede elegir cuando. de hecho, no tienen
otra opcin que la de aceptar el incentivo y de este modo
cumplir con los requisitos.
Otra ventaja de este instrumento, es que a menos que se haga
uso del incentivo de disminucin de las restricciones
legislativas (como en el ejemplo de Manhattan). un gobierno
no tiene que involucrarse en el costoso, largo y complejo
proceso de crear una legislacin formal. Su gran popularidad
Roger Simmonds
Figura 2. Zonificacin Perifrica Agrupada de Guia de Diseo- Housing Design and Regional
Character: A Primer for New England Towns. Roger Simmonds, Mark Schuster y Dennis
Frenchman. Fundado por The National Endowment for the Arts, Washington D.C. La conservacin
de unas caractersticas del paisaje pero teniendo una densidad ms alta que la zonificacin en la
perifria de Boston.
Instead of the State having to buy up and run these facilities, as a last
resort, this instrument allows them to remain in the private sector.
Supporters of TDR claim that it can produce three benefits for the
public. It raises the necessary private funds to keep these buildings and
landscapes in good condition, in that a percentage of the money received
in selling development rights must go into land and building
conservation. It removes the incentive, which the current owners of
listed buildings and preserved landscapes have, to let them fall into
decay or to actively destroy them so that the land can become available
for development. The incentive is removed because, once the
development rights have been sold, no development rights remain on a
given property. All an owner can do is run the building or land in their
present state as efficiently as possible. Finally, because it makes no call
on public funds, there is in theory no limit to how much of the building
stock or land of a given region can be put into conservation. At a time
when local communities are calling to have more and more land
conserved, this instrument seems to protect the public from having to
pay for it.
Though the TDR version of this instrument has often proved to be a
difficult strategy to work with up until now, it is easy to see why it is
popular with the Liberal Right. It removes the need for ownership by the
State and it actually increases the rights and privileges associated with
land and property ownership. There are, of course, many more reverse
example of this instrument in use, where rights of ownership have been
decreased. For example in the Community Land Act of the UK,
discussed above, and in the rights acquired by governments all over the
world, through land use legislation, to decide what private owners can
do with their land.
The Information Instrument
Strong forms of local and regional government have tended, as might
be expected, to see the information instrument as back up to the more
powerful instruments of legislate, own and operate or use incentives.
The public has been informed about these programmes, they have been
explained and justified in the hope that the public will be encouraged to
participate in or, at least, support them.
The best example of an information instrument being used in its own
right can be found in the Design Guides (or Design Guidelines), which
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58
take a formal role in the way these are managed. National Governments
everywhere are nervous about the burgeoning power of Capital City
Regions. The Randstad as a form of COG has existed, with variations on
this structural theme, for 60 years now. It is most clearly a creature of
National Government but then it contains something like 65 percent of
national economic activity and it involves participating sub regions not
Roger Simmonds
60
Roger Simmonds
New instruments of
urbanism
in
n..
f
pueden usar directamente el instrumento i
pueden usar indirectamente los dems instrumentos a travs
de sus municipios fuertes participantes.
La segunda es que. cuando se deben adoptar decisiones de
mayor envergadura para una ciudad regin. la falta de
instrumentos directamente disponibles para los sistemas
dbiles conduce a procedimientos lentos y voluminosos y a
programas de accin cargados de compromisos.
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Roger Simmonds
The first is that, while these systems can only directly use the
instrument of information, they use all the other instruments
indirectly through the activities of their participating strong
municipalities and towns.
RS/ 12. 96
Trad.: AB
land use patterns and practices of the previous urban epoch, the
term City Region is, thus. preferred here.
2. El trmino Metropolitano est demasiado asociado con las prcticas y modelos
del uso de la tierra de la poca urbana anterior, por tanto aqu preferimos el trmino
Ciudad Regin'.
mismo y patrocinado por el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Abril 94 - 97). Las
Ciudades Regin son: Tokio, Bangkok, Yakarta. Taipei, Lyon, Ankara. Madrid.
Randstad, San Diego, Toronto. Santiago (Chile), Sao Paulo, y Birmingham (RLU.
4.
Bibliografa
Beck, Ulrick; 92. Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity,
(English Language Edition) Sage Publications. Londres
Castells, Manuel; 90, The Informational City: Informational
Technology, Restructuring and the Urban Regional Process,
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