Delimitación de algunas figuras de la Parte General

Overall, LSUPs with an urban focus aimed to enrich the public realm with new versatile elements, such as bridges, lookouts, paths, and other features, stimulate the existing city as a multiform place and can transform its historical and human logic. Those who employ LSUPs (as described by Solà-Morales) have transformed cities, ports and suburbs by thinking through connections, additions, and overlaps and articulating all those levels through modern architecture. For example, as Montaner (2008) points out, the naval complex Saint-Nazaire (1994-1998), an unused military base with substantial metallic structures and one of the largest harbours on the French Atlantic coast, was converted into a new place with boardwalks, apartments, supermarkets and public spaces.

Lynch observes that morphology provides stability to a city. Nevertheless, morphology is always changing and despite any plans or projects, it is difficult to have full control of its shape and form (Lynch 1960). His book was written in 1959, however his approach is still applicable and reveals a large variation in the quality of plans developed to transform cities. It is difficult to control how buildings shape space and how people will use public and private spaces. Lynch also notes that the city is ultimately a product of many builders and developers, who each have their own motivations in designing buildings. This could include costs, marketing, and sales (Lynch 1960).

Transformation projects proposed internationally from the 1970s onwards show that new theories were in line with the ‗urban acupuncture‘ concept of how to transform cities, which was, by that time, a change of thinking and paradigm. The new strategy, ‗urban acupuncture‘ was then to reconstruct underutilised or ‗sick‘ urban areas, in anticipation that this would trigger positive changes in surrounding areas. The term ‗urban acupuncture‘

was defined by the Brazilian architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner as the capability that people have to change their cities by focusing on punctual pressure points of cities.

From the last decade of the 19^th Century, governments and communities began to plan for continuity and modernity to cater for the technological needs of the 20^th century and the new conditions of global cities. For example, in the USA activists created the movement called ‗City Beautiful‘ to transform cities and remediate the country‘s social ‗deviations‘ that had arisen because of rapid urban growth (Wilson 1989). The City Beautiful activists advocated recovering cities through embellishment and in some instances, gentrification occurred with a purpose. They believed that poverty and social problems would damage the city‘s ‗beauty‘. They created inviting city centres that would at least bring the upper

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class to work and spend money there. According to Wilson, the movement aspired to bring cultural value similar to that enjoyed by European cities at that time (Wilson 1989).

The interventions which were put into practice from the mid-20th Century onwards had a distinct focus. In summary, these were not only urban interventions - they were strategic projects aiming to transform cities physically and economically. This was essentially opposite to the aims of the City Beautiful movement, which focused mostly on the aesthetics of the new city and purposeful gentrification.

Some examples of the urbanism-led approach are briefly explored below.

Baltimore

An example of a change in morphology from the United States is Baltimore‘s regeneration in the 1970s. The development of the once decaying and condemned Inner Harbor is often seen as a model for other cities undertaking urban renewal. Baltimore had been decimated after a fire in 1904, and the decline had reached alarming proportions when a vast majority of commercial establishments, residents, pedestrian and all sorts of social activities moved out of the area by 1950. In 1956, the local authority hired David Wallance as city planner and architect to develop the revitalisation plan. The project was considered successful in a number of spheres: commercial development, housing infill, population flow, crime reduction and creation of employment (Dannes 2003).

Overall, many of the urban regeneration implementation plans put into practice from the 1970s onwards in Baltimore contributed to valuable new discussions about contemporary urban design, cities‘ vocation and transformation of the built and unbuilt environment. Also, debates on urban culture contributed to new social, economic and space appropriation concepts. Baltimore‘s transformed urban morphology comprises elements that have been retained and integrated with a better public realm. Ultimately the regeneration contributed to the consolidation of the new urban form, increased value of assets and new trends in land use of high-quality density and high usage public realm around the Harbour.

Paris and Barcelona

Barcelona and Paris are cities that have needed constant redevelopment of their urban areas for two reasons: density control, and the creation of new centralities capable of absorbing social and economic needs at a local scale. They have transformed themselves continually like ‗live organisms‘ by renewing their ‗urbanscape‘ while abstracting the

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buildings‘ shape to create the new urban design as an overlay on the existing building mass.

The plans proposed far back in history by Cerdá and Haussmann for Barcelona and Paris were able to create new ‗urbanscapes‘ with long wide avenues, parks, squares, iconic buildings and monuments, reshaped regular street blocks and other urban elements, which have influenced urban planners, designers and authorities in many European cities and also cities in other continents (Cullen 1971). Those cities generally had, and still seem to have, the capacity of exploring not only their heterogeneities but also the whole set of attributes that contribute to urban changes from streets to squares and buildings. As Lynch (1960) advocates, the city should be an artificial world in a positive sense, created by art to serve human purposes.

Cities like Paris seem to be continually developing plans to transform and adjust the urban fabric. Recently, France President Nicolas Sarkozy (in office 2007-2012) invited ten renowned architects to prepare proposals for Paris of the 21^st Century, the European Metropolis of 2030, which aimed to be the first city to cater for the Kyoto Protocol as part of the Greater Paris Plan (The Guardian, 2009). Amongst the architects, were the British Richard Rogers, the Italians, Paola Vigano and Bernardo Secchi, the French Jean Nouvel, Roland Castro, Christian de Potzamparc, Djamel Kouche, Antoine Grumbach, and Yves Liot; the German Fin Geipel, and the Dutch MVRDV. (The Guardian, 2009)

As with Barcelona, a number of urban plans prepared in the 10^th Century had to overlap Cerdá‘s plan, such as the plan for the Olympic Games of 1992, 22@BCN, the Forum in 2004. All have all revisited the city‘s image and enabled the creation of new areas, elements, experienced and urbanscapes.

Roubaix: A suburban example

Roubaix, a suburb with approximately 100,000 residents, is located in the metropolitan area of Lille, 1 hour and 20 minutes commuting by train from Paris. Roubaix location is illustrated in Figure 4 below.

27 Figure 4: Roubaix on the map in relation to Lille and France, 2017.

Figure by author.

It was once a successful textile producer, which attracted migrants from Europe and Africa before it started to decline in the 1970s. The town rapidly collapsed, factories and shops closed, and people lost their jobs and moved out. Roubaix was then considered to be the worst town in France (Cadell, Falk et al. 2008). An integrated regeneration strategy has been developed by Lille‘s mayor, Pierre Mauroy, for the entire metropolitan area and it changed the scenario, perception and the city as a whole.

The plan intended to take advantage of the high-speed rail network that would better connect the city to other European cities and to a local new metro and tram system. Part of the scope of the plan was to attract businesses back to the city centre, improve existing dwellings, improve, beautify and make a safe public realm, develop a cultural program and action plan, attract new investment to the city with training and employment opportunities, and offer tax reduction and incentives they created new jobs. Regarding management, the LMCU (Lille Métropole Communauté Urbaine), a targeted authority overseen by some elected members from the metropolitan area, drove the project and its implementation.

The group worked on projects, enter into agreements, and sought funding for the regeneration project. Amongst factors that have contributed to what was considered a successful LSUP case, were the following:

● geographic location integrated with rapid transit system,

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● prioritisation of local people for new jobs;

● the economic transformation;

● the regional-scale management by LMCU;

● perseverance and partnerships in the implementation phase;

● sharing of income between municipalities to prioritise project actions; and

● consideration of culture (Cadell, Falk et al. 2008).

Type 2: Architecture-led transformations through development of an iconic building