Lukas Höller, Rodrigo Cardoso (p)

Joanna Bach-Głowińska

This paper presents a critique and a conceptual advancement of urban-centric health and wellbeing planning approaches, e.g. the Healthy City, and takes the first steps in operationalizing an alternative framework that operates across larger territorial regions. First, we argue that focusing on the capacities of individual cities limits the possibilities of health and wellbeing planning, as it neglects that the crises affecting health and wellbeing are spatially unbounded, that there is a diverse urban world beyond the handful of frontrunner cities, and that spatially just health and wellbeing planning requires cooperation across polycentric regions. We then explore the ‘natural planning region’ of the Rhine watershed as a territory where our approach can be tested, due to its socio-environmental interdependencies, polycentric diversity of interconnected cities, and history of cooperation and complementarity across regional port city networks. Finally, we move beyond merely upscaling planning approaches designed for the city scale and discuss to what extent Manfred Max-Neef’s Fundamental Human Needs framework can address territorial wellbeing, arguing for allowing multiple dimensions and spaces of need satisfaction, examining relations between needs and satisfiers, non-hierarchical need structures and promoting active participation across places and communities as a basis for health and wellbeing planning.

Evert Meijers (p)

Rodrigo Cardoso

Governmental investments are far from equally distributed (Jones, 1997; Omstedt, 2016; Meijers, 2022). In recent decades, larger metropolitan regions in particular have benefited from their privileged status as perceived national trump cards in the global economy (Crouch and LeGalès, 2012; Cardoso and Meijers, 2016), at the expense of increasingly neglected cities and regions (Brenner, 2004; Dijkstra, 2013; Parkinson et al., 2015). The consequence of persistent spatial bias in government spending towards larger metropolitan regions is that inhabitants of peripheral regions feel neglected; they take ‘revenge through the ballot box’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). While voting patterns have been used to proxy ‘left-behindness’, this paper exploits a novel database in which the attention given to all Dutch places and regions in Dutch parliament is accounted for in an objective way. By analysing over 10,000 questions posed by Members of Parliament in parliamentary debates between the 2017 and 2021 elections, an exact measure of left-behindness is obtained. Primary interest is in analysing the spatial orientation of Dutch political parties and their Members of Parliament in detail. It allows to precisely answer the question which places and regions are overlooked indeed and which ones get relatively more attention. This will be linked to voting patterns. Particular attention will be paid to second-tier cities, and we compare them to the primary, or ‘first’ Dutch cities. In doing so, we consider not just how large a potential gap in attention is between second- and first-tier cities, but also whether there is a gap in how well represented these cities are. Interestingly, in response to the fear of being neglected, especially second-tier cities have tried in many ways to gain political weight and attention, e.g. through better political representation, by building alliances, forming city-regions, etc. We will examine whether these are successful. Finally, we end with a thorough reflection on proxying ‘left-behindness’ through the frequency of being mentioned in parliamentary debates, and list pros and cons of such an approach, leading to recommendations for further research.

Bindong Sun (p), Mengying Yu

Evert Meijers

Small cities could either benefit from“borrowed size”or suffer from “agglomeration shadow”when they locate next to large cities. To explain the complex formation mechanism of the two disparate development contexts, the existing research mainly focuses on the single perspective of the large cities or the conditions of small cities, and neglect the combined effect. This study proposes an interaction framework of “small city development attraction and central city spillover ability”, and expounds the interaction process between the natural and institutional contexts of small cities and the characteristics of central cities, aiming at exploring the internal mechanism of borrowed size and agglomeration shadow phenomenon. A comparative study of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration is then conducted to examine the theoretical framework. The research results show that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megaregion has formed a huge poverty belt around the central city, showing a single-center polarized spatial development model, which is opposite to the highly integrated spatial development model in the Yangtze River Delta megaregion. The difference in spatial development model between the two megaregions could be attributed to the institutional environment of small cities and the industrial structure of central cities. Specifically, as the birthplace of modern Chinese national capitalist industry and commerce, the small cities in the Yangtze River Delta megaregion are characterized by strong market awareness and entrepreneurial culture. Moreover, Shanghai as the central city of the Yangtze River Delta megaregion has a strong manufacturing base, and its spillover effect on neighboring cities is lager. Therefore, the small cities in the Yangtze River Delta megaregion can borrow size from large cities. In contrast, within highly politicized environment, the small cities in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megaregion are marked by weak market awareness, incapable of receiving the spillover of Beijing 's industrialization. Furthermore, Beijing is a service-oriented city, and its spillover effect on neighboring cities is smaller. Thus, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megaregion shows agglomeration shadow and tends to form a relatively polarized regional city system. The comparative results of the two megaregions suppors the interaction framework of “small city development attraction and central city spillover ability”.

Joanna Bach-Głowińska (p)

Bindong Sun

The three second-tier cities, namely Gdansk, Dublin and Glasgow are presented according to their urban transformation in specific time frames and contexts. The comparative studies first undertaken to analyze the main stressors of urban changes from 1990 to 2010 were revisited in 2024. The Gdansk Dublin study (2010) concluded with the smart city approaches in city planning. The Gdansk Glasgow study (2013) explored the spotted difference between place-oriented and people-oriented planning. Therefore, the selected second-tier cities are perceived as the characteristics to depict familiar real-world phenomena.
The second-tier cities' logic of transformative change observed through the model scenarios explains the spectrum differences in transform/transition capacity in Gdansk, Dublin and Glasgow. Neoliberal placemaking complements contextual and processual human creativity and affects the urban transformation capacity. The simulation-based studies required building a mathematical model representing the theory that could depict empirical observations.
The theoretical Creativity Action Probability model presents the approach to understanding the creation by analyzing the decision-making process in the urban environment. The objective was to define the theoretical chances of creativity to >exist< through a logical model.
Built upon the 4 C concept by Kaufman, the CAP model rethinks the identified interactions between the creative process and the external stimuli sourcing from, among others, a socioeconomic space with a specific value system that shapes and motivates individuals and communities to act. The representative sampling method adopted for the distribution of potentials at the beginning makes it possible to differentiate the flows of potentials through the creative process, their mutual interactions, certain deviations, non-evident issues, and changes, which results in the Creative Action Probability with specific potentials. Moreover, a mathematical model (or a whole family of such models) illustrates the creative process and calculates the probability based on the interactions between the creative process and the urban environment. Such insight into the process permits a better understanding of the phenomena, followed by interpreting the urban transformation capacity scenarios in selected cities.