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Recent Submissions

A spotlight on Italian cities: urban change, governance and planning
(2023) Vinci; Yanar
Italy’s territorial organization is historically marked by the density of town and cities spread across the country. Italian cities were the places where new institutions and forms of government have been shaped over the centuries, and where main innovations in the social and cultural domains continue to take place. The country’s economy, itself, is rooted in a multitude of medium – and even small – urban areas, a factor that has helped Italy to limit the impact of the polarization process affecting other European countries (e.g. rural depopulation). Despite that leading role, it is only since the end of last century that urban areas started to be highly regarded within the national political agenda. Drivers of this process have been legal reforms to further empower local government, State initiatives to stimulate urban regeneration and, not least, the European Union, that especially in the Southern regions still plays a key role in supporting local projects and planning innovation.
Housing Challenges in African Cities
(2022) Yanar, Numan; Enns, Cherie
According to the report of the World Bank, rapid urbanization and an increasing number of slum dwellers have created a severe housing issue in African cities. Capacity, policy and governance weaknesses coupled with a lack of interorganizational collaboration for development solutions are halting progress in urban settings. In order to tackle these issues, new and focused approaches to affordable housing are required. Therefore, there is a need to re-examine current processes and policies to enable short-term and long-term solutions to in formal urban housing in African cities. By considering this, in this issue of IGLUS Quarterly having four unique articles, we will discuss the growing concern of providing equitable and accessible options for youth housing by also reviewing the current approaches, best practices and case studies currently being utilized with a focus in African cities within the urban realm. The perspectives shared in the articles will add value to what is currently published; very little published written by youth living in the global south.
Planning for Sustainability: A View from the Global South
(2021) Du Plessis, Danie; Yanar, Numan
The ideal of sustainable development has become increasingly prominent in global development discourse over the last half-century and is now firmly being embedded within global agreements such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda. This prominence is also reflected in the recent UN-Habitat World Cities Re port 2020 aptly titled ‘The value of sustainable urbanization’ and reaffirmed that sustainable urbanization remains central to the goal of overall sustainable development by creating social, economic, and environmental value in pursuance of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals. However, despite considerable progress in many dimensions, continued and rapid urbanization poses a particular challenge for urban planning in pursuit of sustainable development, especially in urban contexts in the Global South. The series of articles in this edition reflect on some of the challenges in planning for sustainability and provide some case studies of how cities in the South have responded to these challenges.
Smart Almaty City Special Issue
(2021) Yanar, Numan; Konirbayev, Bayan
Almaty is the largest metropolis, scientific and educational, cultural and historical, economic and financial, banking and industrial center of Kazakhstan. The city is also considered the economic center of the Central Asia region. Almaty is in the South-East of Kazakhstan, at the foot of the Northern Tien Shan Ridge - Zaili Alatau. T he urban territory of Almaty covers more than 782 km2 with about 2 million registered population. Since October 2020, Almaty City Government has initiated a 5-year Smart City strategy in collaboration with Innovative Governance of Large Urban Systems (IGLUS) action-research program. Almaty Smart City aims to create a technological architecture covering all the information systems and Information Technology (IT) infrastructure on the city level with the description of service, data and infrastructure layers. In this issue of IGLUS Quarterly, we will further investigate this technological architecture with the articles of the experts from Almaty City.
Population and Public Management in South African Cities
(2021) Drewes, J. Ernst; Yanar, Numan
South Africa, as developing country is still in an urbanization stage with less than 65 per cent being urbanized. This puts significant strain on the existing management and future planning of towns and cities, who according to the country’s constitution, is responsible for all housing and land use matters. Although local- and metropolitan municipalities are re sponsible for the aforementioned, they are also legally obliged to integrate principles of public participation, sustainability and urban integration in spatial planning matters. Regarding these, we will be focusing on the population and public management in South African cities in this issue of IGLUS Quarterly. As a collaborative work of IGLUS and the Urban and Regional Planning Department of North-West University, four articles from the experts of their field will be covered in this issue.