Controlling Urban Expansion: Promote Social Integration

Limiting urban development through legal and governmental approach is one way to control land expansion. Schiappacasse et al. (2021) introduces another approach that can not only hinder urban expansion but also promote social integration. This approach shifts urban development from “high-speed” to “high-quality” and from “land-centred” to “people-centred”. This include comprehensive public participation and collaboration in the design and planning process, to ensure that their needs are met within their neighbourhood and communities. There are five ways this approach can take place:

1. People-based Design Codes and Zoning: Planners take up the role of facilitator to map the social infrastructure needs from the community that involves stakeholders from multiple sectors. This promotes communication and social interaction, as well as to foster favourable living conditions within a neighbourhood. A strategic vision can be created with goals and responsibility that are agreed upon between stakeholders in the community. 
2. Place-making: Encouraging the involvement of local residents to redesign particular social area or activity centre to cater the specific and unique physical, cultural and social identities of the community.
3. Area-based Community Development: Community members are seen as active change agents rather than passive beneficiaries or clients. Methods include community meetings, festivals and streets gatherings, conflict resolution, story dialogue, focus groups, future visioning, alliance building, and engaging with public bodies. This helped to increase the sense of ownership at an early stage of planning, which contributed to the wide acceptance of the project, both in the political realm and in the city district itself

Reference:

Schiappacasse, P., Müller, B., Cai, J., & Ma, E. (2021). Managing Urban Expansion in Europe: New Impulses for People-Centred Development in China?. In Towards Socially Integrative Cities (Vol. 13). MDPI, Basel.

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