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Nowheresville, China. pop.5m.

Welcome to China's backwater - population five million

Hefei is nowheresville. Even in China, lots of people have never heard of it. China has witnessed such rapid growth in the last decade that even the cities you've never heard of are twice the size of Paris.

"As with so many Chinese cities, half of Hefei is a building site. So the drive from the airport will take you through rubble-strewn streets that, in the rains of last month, lay half submerged by great puddles of oily, brown water. [...]To say Hefei is nondescript is unfair not just its residents but to a hundred similar cities across China. "

 

Community engagement and community cohesion

Community engagement and community cohesion are both current public policy priorities. But there have been gaps in our understanding about how to promote community representation in ways that take account of diversity and population change. Latest report from Josesph Rowntree Foundation

 

The great ecotown land grab

Glancey and Greer in The Guardian

Whatever the government says, they will need to be served by even more cars and - this being England - out-of-town supermarkets. In any case, how can a town be called "eco" when its existence requires the loss of green land and a spread of new homes away from established towns, as so many of these proposals do?

Developers accused of pursuing gadgetry instead of saving planet

Architects and developers are ignoring the threat of climate change and failing to address concerns over sustainability, according to the government's watchdog on urban planning and design.

"There are some architects and developers who really get climate change, but most don't or choose not to. As a result we get a lot of greenwash, such as green gadgets and microtechnology stuck on to buildings, rather than a proper approach to sustainable design."

Octavia Hill revisited

Tristram Hunt considers the legacy of the social reformer

"And as ministers grapple with re-engineering the welfare state, it is not Keynes, Marx or Giddens who provide the inspiration, but Hill, the most versatile of late Victorian social entrepreneurs."

"As the era of Fordist bureaucracies crumbles, the space for pre-statist social enterprise is re-emerging. Yet the problem with this 1900s civic settlement is its dependence on a sense of Christian duty. Hill saw herself as a lonely, Puritan missionary toiling among the fallen. "

Migration and economic segregation reports from ippr

Floodgates or turnstiles? Post-EU enlargement migration flows to (and from) the UK

Fresh evidence on the scale and nature of migration from the eight new Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and, to a lesser extent, from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined in 2007.

A Tale of Two Cities: Neighbourhood segregation by income in two urban case studies

Policy and economic drivers interact with the processes of income segregation at different spatial scales. This research, from ippr, focuses on the processes at the local level. In particular, it explores the relationship between a neighbourhood’s income profile, and the housing market.

The renaissance is over

Dermot Finch of Centre for Cities speculates on a time of recession

"The slowdown will test Ministers' resolve on devolution. The Government will now need to deliver on its empowerment rhetoric, in a much tighter fiscal climate. Will Ministers agree to more financial powers for local government, or use the slowdown as an excuse not to devolve? "

See also 'The credit crunch and implications for the UK housing market'

America's housing projects 40 years on

Cockburn: 'Rogue Projects' in New Left Review

  "Forty years ago the topic of slums was a lot hotter in the United States than it is now."

"Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s vice president, advised a sense of distance from urban policy: ‘If you’ve seen one city slum you’ve seen them all’, he nonchalantly declared. Enlightened opinion duly looked the other way, and that is how it has been ever since. "

Dreams set in concrete

Forty years ago, work began on the construction of Thamesmead, 'a 21st century town'. But has it lived up to its promise, and what does its future hold? Michael Collins reports in The Guardian.

Cities are the new green

"It will not save life on Earth, but merely drive ever more people into hypermobility. "

The Housing Minister has announced a short list of locations for Brtian's eco-towns, and a period of consultation.

Simon Jenkins questions a strategy which ignores the eco-needs of existing towns and cities.

"Britain has plenty of potential eco-towns. They are called London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, to name a few. They conform to every one of Flint's declared objectives. They have an infrastructure of utilities, schools, clinics, libraries, welfare services and public transport already built. People have shown themselves ready to live, work and play in them without using cars. They are settled communities able to absorb immigration and high-density living, without tearing the bonds of local leadership. "