Urban and Regional Planning

This paper proposes a new theoretical perspective for understanding urban social spaces and their interrelations. In an effort to understand these multifaceted, complex relations, an inquiry committed to a flat ontology was deployed. Accordingly, we draw our theorization on the Lacanian ontological lack, Harman's object-oriented ontology, and Laclau and Mouffe's discursivity of social reality. Thus, we propose that urban social spaces are discursive and real entities with real and sensual qualities and constituted through specific relations. They are located within discursive social relations, where each urban social space has a "differential position" in an urban system of relations. Each urban social space has an "identity," defined by its specific mixture of social groups and its specific real and sensual qualities. These qualities construct a sensual object with a specific sensual identity within the web of different urban social spaces. Therefore, urban social spaces are being made through multiple interrelations and are constituted through their location in a nexus of positions. The proposed framework that captures the interrelations among urban social spaces is based on three interrelated logics: the logic of difference, the logic of equivalence, and the fantasmatic logic. Understanding the relations of urban social spaces through these logics offers multifaceted social, political, psychological, and spatial illumination, details, and a more nuanced and flexible investigation of the formation and change of these spaces. Hereby, the city is conceived as comprised of spatiotemporal configurations where social spaces have social and political relations ranging from harshly antagonistic to inclusive and equivalent. This proposed framework informs both sociological and political realms of planning theory. It provides planning theory with new perspectives for understanding the city as a web of interrelated social spaces. Furthermore, it allows a more critical understanding of urban reality by illuminating inequality, injustice, antagonism, and the formulation of "otherness."

For the first time in history, states and governments almost worldwide have issued two national orders, which are spatially oriented practices aimed at combating the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The first is the 'stay-at-home', 'shelter-at-home', or 'shelter-in-place' order, which aims to slow the spread of the coronavirus by enclosing most everyday practices within the premise of the home, except for a few essential purposes. The second is the related social-distancing order; leaving home for essential purposes, such as buying food or dog walking, requires keeping a social distance of at least six feet from other people. This order entails the elimination of different social gatherings and activities such as celebrations, sports games and, in some places, religious activities. These two orders together reshape our everyday practices altogether, from the simple gesture of shaking hands or touching a doorknob to working at home and avoiding public transport. Unquestionably, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting mandatory socio-spatial practices trigger and pose some critical questions on the prevailing conventions of spatial planning approaches and the ways they shape our cities. Most salient in this regard, though not exclusive, are the dominant planning approaches and movements of recent decades, such as New Urbanism and the various sustainability-related spatial-planning paradigms. These approaches rely on the spatial aspects of density and compactness as mitigation and adaptation measures, aiming to achieve better social experiences in cities and to cope with climate change and its uncertainties. Therefore, in the context of the current pandemic, we raise questions about the functioning, flexibility, structure, physical typologies and crisis-adaptation capacities of the existing urban form in cities around the world. The main argument is twofold. First, we propose that the current situation of the COVID-19 epidemic and its related spatial practices construct a new socio-spatial urban order with far-reaching implications also to post-coronavirus life. Second, we suggest that the prevailing urban form holds some major deficiencies that impede its functioning and its adaptation to the new conditions. In order infuse the rethinking of the prevailing planning conventions and spatial assumptions and inspire the

This article suggests that the domination of the scale of the neighborhood in planning distorts our understanding of urban phenomena and that a multiscalar approach is required. It examines the association of perceived scales with residential satisfaction. The findings suggest that the neighborhood is not the dominant scale with which people perceive and define their residential area, rather they consider smaller than the neighborhood scales. Moreover, we found that the perceived scale is a significant predictor of residential satisfaction. We conclude that scale matters for understanding urban issues, and become even more significant in a time of crisis such as the coronavirus epidemic, and that urban planning should consider and be informed by smaller than the neighborhood scales.

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to filling the theoretical and practical gaps of city resilience literature, which lacks multifaceted theorizing and typically overlooks the multidisciplinary and complex nature of urban resilience. Furthermore, most studies on the subject make use of general, vague, and confusing terminology. This paper suggests a new innovative conceptual framework (the Resilient City Planning Framework or RCPF) that addresses the critical question of what cities and their urban communities should do in order to move towards a more resilient state in the future. Accordingly, the RCPF takes complexity and uncertainty into account. It is affected by a multiplicity of economic, social, spatial, and physical factors and its planning involves a wide range of stakeholders. RCPF is a network of four interlinked concepts that together, provide a comprehensive understanding of City Resilience.

ABSTRACT Based on a critical revision of Lefebvre's right to the city, this paper proposes a conceptual framework for a right to the city that is made up of several rights. The study uses this framework to assess the right to the city held by the Arab minority in Israel. The study indicates that inhabitants of cities in Israel, both Jews and Arabs, are to a large extent denied the right to the city, although unequally. Significantly, this paper reveals that the rights to the cities held by Palestinians in Israel are deficient and incomplete. This problem is a structural and deeply political and ethnic one that could not be solved at the city level. The right to the city has a political agenda that aims to enhance the political conditions of urban life and its inhabitants in the face of the economic processes and the hegemony of the central state. A crucial insight regarding the right to the city regards city–state relationships, suggesting that the right to the city represents a framework that aims to protect the city from state tyranny and technocrats and to provide adequate human shelter with a strong political status. The absence of the right to the city has the potential to intensify conflicts between the inhabitants and the state; conversely, it suggests that a progressive right to the city might mitigate ethnic conflict.

This article identifies sustainable urban forms and their design concepts. In addition, it addresses the question of whether certain urban forms contribute more than others to sustainability. A thematic analysis has been used to coop with the vast body of sustainable development and environmental planning literature. The analysis identifies seven design concepts related to sustainable urban forms: compactness, sustainable transport, density, mixed land uses, diversity, passive solar design, and greening. Moreover, it identifies four types of sustainable urban forms: the neotraditional development, the urban containment, the compact city, and the eco-city. Finally, this article proposes a Matrix of Sustainable Urban Form to help planners in assessing the contribution of different urban forms to sustainability.

This paper introduces a new concept, Space of Risk, which aims to help planners and scholars to analyze risks and conflicts that planning might create. The definition of Space of Risk draws upon the terms trust and risk, and the tripartite conceptualization of space proposed by Lefebvre. Space of Risk is a perceived, conceived, and lived space that has low