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The Capitol Mall is a very complex urban area adjacent to downtown Phoenix, where Governmental buildings exist side by side with a historic residential neighborhood, warehouse buildings, an under-construction human services campus, vacant lots, and many homeless people on the streets. This area has been 'forgotten' in recent efforts to revitalize downtown Phoenix. The Capitol Mall project involved two studios - Architecture and Planning - conducted simultaneously during spring 2005. The planning studio was intended to develop a revitalization plan and the architecture studio was charged with developing specific programs and projects of urban design and architecture.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) to introduce our studios as examples of community embeddedness, 2) to discuss our pedagogical approaches and the project's outcomes, and 3) to present a set of lessons learned that can be valuable to others teaching similar joint studio arrangements. In brief the five lessons are: a) joint studios can have different approaches to reality, b) interdisciplinary studios can benefit from different methodologies and outcomes, c) planning and architecture studios use classroom resources differently, d) joint studios display creativity in different ways, 5) interdisciplinary studios can lead to joint discovery and re-enforcement of learning experiences.

In cities with high density, heat is often trapped between buildings which increases the frequency and intensity of heat events. Researchers have focused on developing strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of heat in cities. Adopting green infrastructure and cooling pavements are some of the many ways to promote thermal comfort against heat. The purpose of this study is to improve microclimate conditions and thermal comfort levels in high-density living conditions in Seoul, South Korea.

This study compares six design alternatives of an apartment complex with different paving and planting systems. It also examines the thermal outcome of the alternatives under normal and extreme heat conditions to suggest strategies to secure acceptable thermal comfort levels for the inhabitants. Each alternative is analyzed using ENVI-met, a software program that simulates microclimate conditions and thermal comfort features based on relationships among buildings, vegetation and pavements.

The results indicate that grass paving was more effective than stone paving in lowering air temperature and improving thermal comfort at the near-surface level. Coniferous trees were found to be more effective than broadleaf trees in reducing temperature. Thermal comfort levels were most improved when coniferous trees were planted in paired settings.

Landscape elements show promise for the improvement of thermal conditions because it is much easier to redesign landscape elements, such as paving or planting, than to change fixed urban elements like buildings and roads. The results identified the potential of landscape design for improving microclimate and thermal comfort in urban residential complexes.

The results contribute to the literature by examining the effect of tree species and layout on thermal comfort levels, which has been rarely investigated in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of emerging “megaregions” in the USA and the challenges they present to planning for large‐scale systems of transportation infrastructure, environmental resources, and economic growth, and their implications for developing a national growth strategy.

The paper examines the existing research on megaregions and their applications in addressing specific challenges in large geographical areas. It also discusses the efforts of a privately led initiative to create a national growth strategy and how megaregions may provide an interim scale toward national planning.

The paper finds that while ad hoc megaregional partnerships and governance will help lay the groundwork for large‐scale investments and policies needed to address the expanding spatial dynamics of the twenty‐first century economy, ultimately the USA requires a national plan to prepare for future growth.

The recognition and study of US megaregions is relatively new. The contribution of this paper is that it discusses how megaregions might shape a national strategy for growth in the USA in the next half century.

Land use change in the Alpine Regions is dominated by two main factors: a process of re-naturalization and a process of expansion for settlements with the relevant occupation of low-valley areas. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of land take measures in the Lombardy Alpine context and the recent proposals of spatial planning instruments for land resource management. New solutions to limit soil sealing have to be confronted with qualitative proposals at local scale.

The paper collects different research outputs regarding land take in the Italian Alpine context and carried out by GIS software and tries to show the new methodologies available for limiting and mitigating soil sealing, in accordance with DIAMONT aims.

The paper argues that the data are now available to analyze the problem and new operative methods have to be settled in the recent context of European Union (Soil Sealing Guidelines) to support decision making in planning, suggesting land use allocation and possible ecological compensation.

The new qualitative decision models have to be assessed for a better ecological integration in supporting land use decisions.

An evaluation of land take at local scale caused by land use changes is a good support in the decision-making process of planning.

In this paper a method based on a local scale is reported, which can be used for the specific assessment of land take in order to support land-use decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine green university initiatives in the context of China, using Tsinghua University, which is China’s green university pioneer, as a case study.

The research method used for this paper is a case study based on participant observation and document analysis. The approach to data collection includes the examination of archive records, yearbooks and statistical information regarding Tsinghua University.

This paper finds that Tsinghua’s green university initiative is a response to Tsinghua’s strategy of establishing a word-class university, with a goal of bearing more responsibility in promoting a sustainable society. Tsinghua employs one principle (green university) and three dimensions (green education, green research and green campus) to frame its green university initiative. Tsinghua’s green university initiative has earned many achievements, but it has also faced many challenges, such as ignoring social justice, fragmented coordination efforts and the lack of effective communication and assessment mechanisms.

As a leading university and the pioneering green university in the country, Tsinghua University is very influential with regard to the development of green universities in China. Many other universities have designed their own programs based on Tsinghua’s experiences in the green university initiative. As such, Tsinghua’s experiences provide reference values to other universities in China.

This paper comprehensively examines the evolution, framework, achievements and challenges of the green university initiative of Tsinghua University. It helps the audience to know how China’s universities understand and practice education for sustainable development.

Urban design has historically occupied the gap between architecture and planning. Although there have long been calls for the discipline to bridge this gap, urban design has continued to lean more heavily on design than planning. The efforts to revitalize downtown Toledo, a mid-western U.S. town experiencing steep economic decline, present a classic example of the potentially unfortunate results of this approach. Over the past three decades, there have been many attempts to revitalize the city, especially its downtown, by constructing several large public buildings, all within a few blocks of each other, all designed with little attention to each other or to the surrounding public spaces, and with a remarkable lack of civic engagement.

Responding to calls in the literature for inter-disciplinarity in urban design, and to the city's experience with urban design, the authors created a collaborative studio for architects and planners from two neighboring universities with two purposes: first, to establish a collaborative work environment where any design interventions would be firmly rooted in the planning context (i.e., to erase boundaries between architects and planners); second, to draw lessons from this experience for the practice and teaching of urban design.

Despite the difficulties of collaborating, architects and planners benefited from exposure to each other, learning about each other's work, as well as learning to collaborate. The interdisciplinary teams developed richer proposals than the architect-only teams. Finally, critical engagement with the community is essential to shaping downtown development.

Cities are defined by historical, geographical, sociological, cultural, economic and administrative aspects; each concept exposes different characteristics of cities as social structure and architecture from the others. The differentiating characteristics also form the identity of cities/settlements. While the physical fabric of cities makes it necessary to analyse in a morphological way, the ontological structure which is affective on the formation of this morphological structure and searches background of “existence” is seen as an unknown aspect of space. In fact, morphological and ontological space calls into being and affects each other. In this study, urban fabric changing with the existence of new dwelling types is accepted as a factor affecting the urban change. The ontology of the new one is investigated and the negation brought to the context is handled morphologically and sociologically. Konya is selected as site area; it is focused on Meram region as one of the main districts. Differentiating life conditions and the reasons of that is various in Meram regions like any other area; the existence of new dwelling typologies deteriorates the fabric pattern. This negative situation is investigated in this study not only morphologically but also sociologically because of different user profiles. In last 10-15 years, high rise buildings with security, private buildings with security, studio type dwelling applications started to exterminate the original one. Especially studio dwelling applications and designs disowning the social dimension have the potential of exterminating and changing the morphological and ontological sustainability of the neighbourhoods defined as sub-public area.

The paper aims to present a pedagogical model tailored to the development of key competences in the urban planning profession in post-socialist transitional countries that is based on the creation of an integrated platform for dialogue and the development of professional competences as part of the process, whereby students produce their final projects.

The pedagogical model is based on the principles of education for sustainable development and focuses on the establishment of a repeatable platform for dialogue between students and mentors, members of the mentoring team, the local community, external members of the consulting team of experts and foreign master’s degree programmes, in the process of producing students’ projects. The proposed method addresses several dimensions, including: the education of students, teachers, professionals and local experts, the establishment of a network for cooperation and collaboration and the delivery of practical and usable results.

The paper provides a comparative overview of the pedagogical model’s application in producing the final master’s degree projects of three generations of students, as well as its alignment with the needs of re-defining the role and reach of the profession of urban planner in an environment of post-socialist transition. The model was improved, enhanced and optimised through this process and then corroborated with its practical implementation.

The innovative pedagogical model comprises an instrument to enhance the professional capacities of all participants in the production of final master’s projects: academics, practitioners and future professionals/students, through discussions of topical issues, innovative modes of work and new professional responses grounded in the local context and tested by a broad range of stakeholders. It is of particular importance for countries in transition experiencing a shift in the paradigm of professional action, especially as the proposed pedagogical model establishes a problem-solving platform that surpasses academia.

Learning from traditional miniature painting and from recent studies on their modern and creative applications, the purpose of this paper is to identify the key qualifications of miniature and possible ways for using miniature in urban design studios. Following discussions on the pedagogical and professional effects of using miniature in a design studio, the paper introduces De-Urban Design Studio’s philosophy and its experience in employing miniature as a way of representation as the case study.

Different from the urban design’s professional role which materialized in conventional architectural presentation, miniature appears as a representation way in the search for the appropriate media for the de-urban design’s activist model.

Expressing the philosophy of transition design and de-urbanization, and studying some of the miniatures produced in the De-Urban Design studio, this paper sheds light on the possibilities created by the usage of miniature in urban design studio as a communication medium in making the processes of design more inclusiveness, participatory and democratic.

The term miniatecture is used for the first time as a representation technique developed in the De-Urban Design Studio co-instructed by the authors of this paper.

This paper aims to explore the effects of collaborative innovation (CI) in urban planning practice by investigating the influence of a platform for collaboration between academia and external partners (practitioners and community groups). Unlike previous research on learning outcomes from the perspective of students (Fokdal et al., 2020), the aim of this article is to investigate the transformative learning (TL) experience from the perspective of the external partners.

The outcomes of the TL experience were assessed through four elements: disorienting dilemma; critical reflection; engagement in discourse; and reflective and critical taking action.

The claim that collaboration with multiple actors through TL processes can help promote innovative ways to view and practice planning outside of academia has to a certain extent been confirmed. This paper provides evidence that such transformative processes can have an impact on the individuals involved and shows the importance of individuals acting as change agents – or drivers of innovation. In addition, the importance of a collaborative platform – acting as an intermediary – in facilitating TL processes in planning practices is highlighted in the context of Serbia.

This paper is a continuation of existing research on educational initiatives that attempt to integrate sustainability into the curricula and bring innovation to urban planning practice; showcase outcomes of the TL experience for sustainable development, especially when addressing the innovative ways that planning is practiced outside of academia; and push for change toward a more sustainable future not only within and but also outside of academia.