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Diversity is embedded in the concept of cities and the urban way of life, and is an important issue in the planning and management of urban development. Urban diversity is usually manifested in Public space. This paper examines patterns of diversity in the public space of a traditional city, Zaria, with the goal of identifying general lessons for city design. The paper starts with a review on the application of diversity to public space, and then moves on to introduces Zaria's public space and historically explore patterns to arrive at findings regarding diversity. Material for the paper has been derived from a detailed study of Zaria's public space, in which a variety of methods and techniques was used (Garba, 2007). The paper in concluding notes that diversity is connected with centrality, and identifies three issues that facilitate the quest for urban diversity; place attractiveness, appropriateness of development scale and embedded settings for activities, and regime of access and participation. The paper notes that the study findings reinforce existing knowledge in the literature and points to the need for re-evaluating the system of urban production to better use available knowledge in the quest for urban diversity.

The paper discusses current trends and future developments in the study of people-urban environment relations, with an emphasis on the concept of diversity within the Gulf cities. This is explored in relation to: theoretical approaches, urban public spaces, people's lifestyles, social groups and inclusive urban environments. Contemporary Gulf cities are providing unique examples for research on urban diversity. Its demographic structure is distinctive for a minimum of 50% expatriates in overall population. Gulf cities are obliged to cope with such a compelling fact. The challenge is to move away from indifference and bring about better acceptance of others. On the relationship; city spaces and culture, the paper argues that traditional markets must be envisioned as spaces for cultural expressions. Traditional markets are a rich display of products and talents and a great opportunity to share and meet with people from same culture and others. Using comparative analysis approach juxtapositioning the selected cases, the paper confronts questions like what does Gulf urban diversity mean in the present. In addition, is diversity in urban spaces only a challenge to be dealt with or is there also economic potential that can be taken advantage of? How do we ensure that Gulf cities are indeed spaces of tolerance? How to give visibility to the spaces of marginalized groups, as these spaces are often ignored or worse, eliminated? How to preserve or regain spaces in the city for the expression of traditional cultures of those migrating from other regions or countries? The paper explores the socioeconomic and cultural mechanisms that can encourage inclusive pluralism in the Gulf cities' open spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other and underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.

Inspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.

Swedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.

The authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

As is the case internationally, there is also an increased focus on urban space diversity in South Africa. Is it appropriate to pursue place diversity in South Africa? If so, what are the design factors that support place diversity and can these be accommodated by the development of medium density mixed housing in the country? Furthermore, could these emerging trends be considered as part of a larger global trend moving towards greater place diversity in cities, or does it only offer local fragments and practices of fashionable international ideas? This paper explores the multiple meanings of place diversity in the country as evident in the development of medium density mixed housing developments and highlights a number of paradoxes that emerge as a result of the context-specific realities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of urbanicity on rural–urban migrants' dietary diversity and nutrition intake and whether its effect differs across various urban environments of migrants.

Using the individual- and time-invariant fixed effects (two-way FE) model and five-year panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this paper estimates a linear and nonlinear relationship between urbanicity and nutrition. The paper also explores the spatial heterogeneity between rural–urban migrants and rural–suburban migrants. Dietary diversity, total energy intake and the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat, respectively, are used to measure rural–urban migrants' nutrition on both quality and quantity aspects.

The study shows that rural–urban migrants have experienced access to more diverse, convenient and prepared foods, and the food variety consumed is positively associated with community urbanicity. Energy intake is positively and significantly affected by community urbanicity, and it also varies with per capita household income. The obvious inverse U-shaped relationship reveals that improving community urbanicity promotes an increase in the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat at a decreasing rate, until reaching the urbanicity index threshold of 66.69 and 54.26, respectively.

This paper focuses on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants, an important pillar for China's development, which is often neglected in the research. It examines the urbanicity and the nutrition of migrants in China, which provides a new perspective to understand the dietary and nutritional intake among migrants in the economic and social development. Moreover, the urbanicity index performs better at measuring urban feathers rather than the traditional rural/urban dichotomous classification.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a series of narratives by assessing a selection of the key literature generated by Open House International (OHI) over a period of 15 years. The paper also presents a brief review of the latest developments of the journal while introducing concise observations on the articles published in this edition – Volume 45, Issues 1 and 2.

Through a classification procedure of selected special issues published by OHI since 2006, 10 issues were identified based on the currency of the issues they generated. Following the review of the editorials, the key content of more than 100 articles within these special issues, the content of this edition and relevant seminal literature, the analysis engages, through critical reflection, with various themes that echo the polyphonic nature of built environment research.

The analysis conveys the plurality and diversity in built environment research where generic types of narratives are established to include three categories, namely, leitmotif, contextual/conceptual and open-ended narratives. Each of which includes sub-narrative classifications. The leitmotif narrative includes design studio pedagogy, sustainable environments for tourism, responsive learning environments, affordable housing environments, diversity in urban environments and urbanism in globalised environments. The contextual/conceptual narrative encompasses architecture and urbanism in the global south and the tripartite urban performance and transformation. The open-ended narrative embraces thematic reflections on the contributions of this edition of OHI.

Constructing polyphonic narratives in built environment research based on contemporary knowledge is original in the sense of capturing the crux of the themes within these narratives and articulating this in a pithy form. The elocution of the narratives stimulates a sustained quest for re-thinking concepts, notions and issues of concerns while invigorating research prospects and setting the future direction of OHI.

In the context of the European city, the regeneration of former industrial sites is a unique opportunity to actively steer urban development. These plots of land gain strategic importance in actively triggering development on the city scale. Ideally, these interventions radiate beyond the individual site and contribute to the strengthening of the location as a whole. International competition between locations is rising and prosperous development a precondition for wealth and wellbeing. This approach to the regeneration of inner city plots makes high demands on all those involved. Our framework suggests a stronger focus of the conceptualization and analysis of idiosyncratic resources, to enable innovative approaches in planning. On the one hand, we are discussing spatially restrained urban plots, which have the capacity and need to be reset. On the other hand, each plot is a knot in the web of relations on a multiplicity of scales. The material city is nested into a set of interrelated scale levels – the plot, the quarter, the city, the region, potentially even the polycentric megacity region. The immaterial relations however span a multicity of scale levels. The challenge is to combine these two perspectives for their mutual benefit. The underlying processes are constitutive to urban space diversity, as urban form shapes urban life and vice versa.

This study aims to identify the challenges of new urban housing zones in Algeria that have permitted the emergence of many habitat neighbourhoods deprived of all services. The objective is to promote social interaction by departing from the zoning and introducing the notion of urban mix.

This study tries to catch different elements that contribute to promote the degree of social interaction. This step ultimately has led to the need to improve the quality conditions of the living environment and focus the analysis on urban mix advantages. The latter aims to organize space by balancing functional, social and spatial magnitudes. Different methods have been adopted to assess each dimension. Starting with the assessment of the functional mix, the functional mix coefficient (C.Mix f) was calculated in a quantitative approach, and attendance rates of various targeted functions were determined in a second qualitative one. However, regarding the social mix, several evaluation criteria were selected. Finally, the spatial mix was evaluated via three modes of occupation; mix on the islet, mix on the parcel and mix on the building.

The results of this research confirm that urban mix is imperative to counteract problems generated by zoning. It also concludes that urban mix can be assessed through a grid of indicators. The case study of Ayouf-Jijel revealed that it benefits from good coverage of amenities and businesses; the authors also found that most indicators present some qualitative rather than quantitative deficiencies. This concerns the location of businesses in collective and individual housing. This phenomenon is scattered in the neighbourhood’s development.

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the argument on how to develop neighbourhoods in a city in general and particular to the city of Jijel through the urban mix by taking into account several indicators under three measurements: functional, social and spatial. In addition, the paper contributes to discuss new methods for the evaluation and implementation of urban mix. Finally, this paper reveals an opportunity to rethink neighbourhoods regarding new approaches and reflections of cosmopolite development versus zoning.

This paper explores a new type of housing in India and resulting urban dynamics in Nagpur, a Grade A city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The accelerating urban growth rate led to a dynamic housing market to accommodate the on-going migration. A new housing typology can be identified as clusters of residential towers, developed as gated communities and marketed as first-class neighbourhoods for emerging higher income groups. This research is a timely effort to address the occurring challenges of future urban patterns produced by this housing typology in India. Various urban qualities are needed to foster sustainable urbanism. Housing patterns have a major impact on how urban environments work efficiently, how they accommodate different user groups and how city images, perceptions and thus lifestyles are affected. The paper investigates these new urban sites in relation to their socio-spatial interactions and the resulting production of urban qualities to foster a new understanding of this particular housing typology and its impact on urbanism in India. Analysing through the lens of three major urban qualities of urban efficiency, diversity and identity the study identifies the complex socio-spatial dynamics fostered by vertical gated communities in Nagpur city. The paper concludes with an outlook on the distinctive roles of architects and urban designers to develop synergies between this urban typology and its surroundings

This paper aims to propose the concept of resilience as a way of aligning these disciplines. Theories of recovery planning and urban design theories have a common interest in providing for the health and safety of urban communities. However, the requirements of safe refuge and recovery after a disturbance, such as an earthquake, are sometimes at odds with theories of urbanism.

The paper analyses the data from two case studies: the earthquake and fire of 1906 in San Francisco and the Chile earthquake of 2010. It uses a set of resilience attributes already embedded in the discourse of urban theory to evaluate each city’s built environment and the way people have adapted to that built environment to recover following an earthquake.

The findings suggests that resilience attributes, when considered interdependently, can potentially assist in the design of resilient cities which have an enhanced capacity to recover following an earthquake.

They also suggest that the key to the successful integration of recovery planning and urban design lies in a shift of thinking that sees resilience as a framework for the design of cities that not only contributes significantly to the quality of everyday urban life but also can be adapted as essential life support and an agent of recovery in the event of an earthquake.