Sara Santos Cruz

Urban Resilience and Spatial Dynamics

Cities, as complex systems, present different urban patterns and spatial dynamics with diverse and multiple characteristics. Urban systems change and reorganise according to the diverse outcomes of economic globalisation, based primarily on population data, but with secondary reference to trends in economic growth and restructuring, and to the various roles played by governments in shaping the urbanisation process (Bourne 1995). Thus, economic growth and restructuring resulting from globalisation creates certain population dynamics and mobility patterns that influence the reorganisation of urban spaces (drivers of the economic globalisation are discussed in detail in Chap. 5 for the case study areas introduced in this book). The reorganisation of urban space, which is strongly influenced by the adaptation strategies of cities to global processes and endogenous capacities, takes various forms. This chapter intends to explore these spatial forms and dynamics and their implications on the resilience of cities. It is argued in Chap. 1 that certain spatial patterns may provide capacity to the system to absorb disturbances and reorganise itself. In this chapter, in order to understand the extent of the spatial dynamics to address social and spatial challenges, both the inner city and peri-urbanised areas, first of all, these spatial dynamics are identified, and secondly, their relation to the attributes of resilience is clarified. In this respect this chapter aims to provide an umbrella conceptual framework for the relationship between spatial change and resilience.

Assessing the Magnitude of Creative Employment: A Comprehensive Mapping and Estimation of Existing Methodologies

Abstract The present study surveys and maps the existing methodological approaches for measuring creative employment. Based on a unique matched employer–employee data-set which encompasses over three million Portuguese workers, we found that the magnitude of the creative class varies considerably between approaches, ranging from 2.5%, using the conventional industry-based taxonomy and 30.8%, using Floridas occupational proposal. The disparities are justified on the basis of the departure definition of what creative employment is and operationalization issues regarding which industries and occupations should be included. Interestingly, when we focus on “core” creative employment, the figures conveyed by the distinct approaches are strikingly similar (around 6%), suggesting that, at least where core creative employment is concerned, the distinct approaches converge. The diversity of approaches and measurements are not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but has to be adequately acknowledged in order to accomplish adequate public-policy guidance.

Closed Condominiums as Urban Fragments of the Contemporary City

Contemporary cities have witnessed the emergence of new real-estate products in which gated communities and closed condominiums (CCs) can be included. The proliferation of these urban products is worldwide, with similar patterns that are analysed in this paper according to five perspectives of analysis: physical, economic, social, political and cultural. These perspectives cross-cut some of the main issues of discussion of the contemporary urban debate associated with private residential developments. These developments seem to appeal to an increasing number of social groups and have been able to adapt to different planning systems. With a smaller scale, these developments emerged in Portugal in the form of CCs, and are analysed in a case study in Greater Oporto. The purpose of this paper is to present the Portuguese singularities of this phenomenon in comparison with the worldwide dimension. In our case study we find some important particularities strongly associated with the Portuguese planning system. Some of these particularities have negative impacts on the surrounding urban landscape. As a result, CCs demand specific planning policies to counteract the negative consequences they are likely to generate in local social and urban fabrics. In the absence of these policies, CCs, as well as other private residential developments, are likely to contribute further to an increasingly fragmented and divided urban landscape.

The magnitude of creative industries in Portugal: what do the distinct industry-based approaches tell us?

There is a generalized lack of clear definitions and estimations as to what represents cultural activities and creative industries. This paper critically reviews the growing corpus of literature on approaches to the measurement of creative industries and presents a detailed mapping of the creative sectors according to relevant industry-based methodologies. Using a unique official database, Quadros de Pessoal/ Matched Employer-Employee Dataset, which includes over 3 million workers, we found that, for Portugal, depending on the approach used, the size of creative industries differs considerably, ranging from 2.5% (DCMS model) to 4.6% (WIPO copyright model). We further propose a distinct industry-based approach focusing on core creative industries. Accordingly, core creative industries represent 3.5% of Portuguese employment, in which ‘software publishing’/‘computer consultancy’ (1.0%), ‘publishing’ (1.0%) and ‘advertising and marketing’ (0.4%) are the most relevant sub-segments.

Metabolic Impact Assessment for urban planning

The functioning of urban systems involves high levels of resource consumption and a complex web of energy, water and material flows. The fundamental aim of this paper is to understand how future urban systems could be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment. Its main contribution is the proposal of a methodology for evaluating the urban development process from ametabolic perspective, the Metabolic Impact Assessment (MIA). After a brief introduction to evaluation in environmental planning, the paper describes the main influences of MIA, presents a set of principles for a metabolic assessment, and describes in detail the methodologys evaluation procedure.

Creative industries in Brazil: on the measurement of their size and relative importance

ABSTRACT Creative industries have raised increasing interest in political and academic fields, with greater necessity of universal measures and methodologies to assess and compare their dimension across countries and regions. This paper critically reviews the existing measurement models of creative industries in literature, presenting a thorough mapping according to relevant worldwide industry-based approaches: DCMS, WIPO, Concentric Circles and UNCTAD. Then a measurement analysis is undertaken on the creative industries’ employment in Brazil and for each Brazilian state, with the latest data available (year 2013). These estimates are confronted with results from other countries that used comparable approaches, in order to provide a critical assessment of methodologies and results. The outcomes for the creative industries’ employment revealed to be contrasting, depending on the emphasis of each approach, varying from 0.82% of total Brazilian employment (DCMS approach) to 2.80% (WIPO model). According to the Concentric Circles model, the estimates achieved 2.20% of the national employment, while using the UNCTAD model, a more modest outcome of 1.46% was obtained. These variations suggest the importance of pondering which model(s) can better describe the creative economy of each country, region or state, taking into account the specificities of regions and the focus of each approach.