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The historical trends in each legal tradition are outlined, as well as present day regulation, using a multitude of examples of how historic buildings and heritage sites are protected in each country. While the publication is intended to cover legal mechanisms established to conserve all types of historic building, we will pay special attention to the protection given to industrial heritage, giving examples wherever possible of how a particular legal technique has been used to protect industrial buildings. We will also examine how case law has effected heritage protection, sometimes in unexpected ways

As urban self-organization grows into a key concept in spatial planning—explaining spontaneous spatial transformations—the understandings and applications of the concept divert. This article turns to the ontological dimension of urban self-organization and scrutinizes how a critical realist and a post-structuralist ontology inspire theoretical practices, analytical tendencies, empirical readings, and subsequent planning interventions in relation to urban self-organization. This is illustrated with an example of the self-organized regeneration of a deprived street in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. With this contribution, we aim to create ontological self-awareness among planning scholars in studying urban self-organization and invite them to reflect on how their positions complement, deviate, and potentially challenge or inspire those of others. We argue that by clarifying ontological diversity in urban self-organization, theoretical practices and complexity-informed planning interventions can be further deepened and enriched.

In this brief Introduction we would discuss powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization in cities today, particularly as concern the relation with local governments as well as their transformative potential in local communities.

This article explores the mechanisms of urban self-organization and the role of formal institutions in shaping peri-urban areas. A case study of Gaobeidian, a former rural village that is now part of Beijing, examines the mechanisms of change and the interdependent relations between institutions and bottom-up initiatives that drive peri-urban transformations. The paper presents two main contributions: (1) it identifies the differences between government-controlled planning, shared governance, self-governance and self-organization and how these intertwine in urban transformations; (2) it proposes three distinct roles played by institutions in relation to self-organization: triggering, constraining and enabling. The empirical study of this Chinese case will enrich the current debate on planning for self-organizing cities by revealing the impact of, and the various responses to, self-organization dynamics in a hierarchical institutional environment.

Self-organization is a basic mechanism by which complex urban systems organize themselves. This mechanism emerges from individual agents' local interactions, often with unpredictable consequences at the regional level. These emergent patterns cannot be controlled by traditional hierarchical methods, but they can be steered and encouraged towards desirable goals. Self-organization is often used as an allegory for all 'unplanned' activity in cities. It is important to study the actual mechanisms of self-organization in cities to link the theory of self-organization to planning praxis. This work builds on ongoing work exploring novel complex planning tools and methods. Here I explore the key features of open dynamic systems identified in the literature as indicators of self-organizing capacity. I study their applicability in urban spatial planning, and propose three measurable characteristics for estimating the self-organization potential of urban activities. Flow reflects generic accessibility, and is measured using space syntax. Internal order refers to autonomously organizing entities, in this case the clustering tendencies of activities. Enriching rests upon increasing complexity and is measured as changes in degrees of entropy over time. The results indicate that (1) the study area meets the criteria for self-organization, and (2) these characteristics can be applied to discover nodes of higher potential for self-organization in a city.

Urban regeneration processes in which local stakeholders take the lead are interesting for realizing tailor made and sustainable urban regeneration, but are also faced with serious difficulties. We use the concept of self-organization from complexity theory to examine the relationship between local stakeholders' initiatives and vital urban regeneration processes. We conducted a two-case comparative research, Caterham Barracks and Broad Street Business Improvement Districts Birmingham (UK), in which local stakeholders take the lead. We analyse the evolution of these regeneration processes by using two different manifestations of self-organization: autopoietic and dissipative self-organization. We found that a balanced interplay between autopoietic and dissipative self-organization of local stakeholders is important for vital urban regeneration processes to establish. We elaborate four explanatory conditions for this interplay. These conditions provide at the one hand stability and identity development, but also the needed connections with established actors and institutions around urban regeneration and flexibility to adjust to evolving demands during the process of regeneration. However, consolidation of such initiatives does mean a challenge for existing structures for the government, market and society that will need to adapt and change their roles to new governance realities. In this way self-organizing processes become meaningful in the regeneration of urban areas.

In a growing number of small and large cities across Europe, citizens are engaging and mobilizing to demonstrate their ability in creating innovative solutions for important social and spatial challenges. We are witnessing a different set of micro-practices that are transforming cities 'from below', thus questioning not only the relation between active citizenship and the State (Uitermark, 2015) but also forms of urban activation themselves. In this paper we examine the politics of urban self organization with a particular focus on the implications for local governments and the transformative potential of these practices for local communities.

The intuitive difference between a system that choreographs the motion of its parts in the service of goals of its own formulation and a system composed of a collection of parts doing their own thing without coordination has been shaken by now familiar examples of self-organization. There is a broad and growing presumption in parts of philosophy and across the sciences that the appearance of centralized information-processing and control in the service of system-wide goals is mere appearance, i.e., an explanatory heuristic we have evolved to predict behavior, but one that will eventually get swept away in the advancing tide of self-organization. I argue that there is a distinction of central importance here, and that no adequate science of complex systems can dispense with it.

This article examines the confrontation between 'new urban migrants' and native urbanites who labor as co-workers in urban China for the first time, and its corresponding influence over the self-organizing strategies of 'new urban migrants' on the service work floor in urban centers. Drawing on data from 51 semi-structured interviews and three-months of ethnographic research in a retail work setting, the author identifies three mechanisms that contribute to new urban migrants' organizational strategies and boundary-drawing practices in the urban workplace in response to urban workers' domination, which include: Laoxiang-based (i.e. fellow-villager-based) recruitment and training to monopolize occupational niches disdained by urban workers; strategically coordinating conflicts by major figures in the Laoxiang network; and offering materialistic favors to members sharing the same Laoxiang network. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This article discusses the issue of social and cultural 'autotranscendence' - self-production, creativity - in the debates on self-organization. The point of departure is Cornelius Castoriadis's idea of 'self-creation'. First, a schisma between mechanical and ontological modeling is indicated and used to introduce the idea of a 'creative organization'. This is further discussed in relation to Jean-Pierre Dupuy's concept of social 'autotranscendence' by 'complex methodological individualism', with particular respect to the incomprehension of the social. Following Johann P. Arnason's treatment of the question of cultural articulation in Castoriadis, the article argues that the problem of autotranscendence presents a further problem of self-creation discernible in Castoriadis's notions of phusis/nomos, living being/human, and constraint/magma. The article closes with a consideration of Duncan Watts, Alberto-László Barabási and Bernardo Huberman's sketch of a network sociology.

This article discusses the issue of social & cultural 'autotranscendence' -- self-production, creativity -- in the debates on self-organization. The point of departure is Cornelius Castoriadis's idea of 'self-creation'. First, a schisma between mechanical & ontological modeling is indicated & used to introduce the idea of a 'creative organization'. This is further discussed in relation to Jean-Pierre Dupuy's concept of social 'autotranscendence' by 'complex methodological individualism', with particular respect to the incomprehension of the social. Following Johann P. Arnason's treatment of the question of cultural articulation in Castoriadis, the article argues that the problem of autotranscendence presents a further problem of self-creation discernible in Castoriadis's notions of phusis/nomos, living being/human, & constraint/magma. The article closes with a consideration of Duncan Watts, Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi & Bernardo Huberman's sketch of a network sociology. References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd, copyright 2007.]