Tactical urbanism initiatives have been interpreted as an alternative and a challenge to formal spatial planning tools to the need for a more responsive planning system. Short-term implementation, scarce resources and citizens’ involvement are said to be the key characteristics of this emerging movement in urbanism. In tactical urbanism, everything seems focussed on one thing: action. This paper analyses tactical urbanism initiatives in the United States considering three main aspects: the process, its interaction with planning institutions and the respective urban design outcomes. For this, the relation between tactical urbanism and complexity theory (in which self-organisation and evolution play an important role) is addressed. Findings suggest some contributions that tactical urbanism can make to urban design and spatial planning, in evolutionary terms and possible role for tactical urbanism in alternative to traditional division between plan making and plan implementation.

Academics have been devoting a growing attention to different matters involving public-private partnerships (PPPs), and, as the use of PPPs for delivering infrastructure evolves worldwide, so does the number and type of papers addressing this procurement model. The objective of this paper is to undertake a comprehensive literature review of papers relating to PPPs and private finance initiatives (PFIs), using a bibliometric analysis. More than 600 papers published between 1990 and 2014 were examined. None of the previously existing studies analyzed such a large sample of papers. The research found that PPP studies appear to have a steady momentum toward growth. Engineering journals (and engineering as a research area) have been particularly active in this field. Authors based in Europe and Asia had written almost two-thirds of the papers, with transportation and health sectors at the top of sector-based papers. Most of the existing work is focused on aspects of contract design, risk sharing, and a...

This paper investigates how planning institutions and informal settlements are interrelated elements of the urban system, suggesting that this interrelation can be the result of self-organisation and co-evolutionary processes. It examines the Portuguese planning responses to informal settlements, showing that they can trigger the emergence of new institutional structures, which influence plans, planning processes and legal frameworks. This process suggests the importance of experimentation, long-term relations and short chains in planning. Without analysing this process through the lens of self-organisation, it would risk being seen simply as an unrepeatable process that occurred in a turbulent period of Portuguese history.

Governments have used public–private partnership (PPP) units to ensure that PPP programs and projects are successfully delivered. These units frequently are understaffed and vulnerable to political and economic pressure to deliver. Few researchers have examined the organization, size, and transparency of these units. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of 27 Brazilian federative units. The research has been focused more on identifying governance characteristics, and this study includes indicators of success, such as project implemented and transparency level. The research concluded the following: (1) Brazilian PPP units still have to significantly improve PPP public transparency; (2) a reduced number of PPP projects is actually implemented, but the more transparent PPP units are those with the ability to successfully implement more projects; and (3) size matters in terms of staff—the larger the units are, the more projects are implemented and the better the conversion ratio (projects appraised versus projects in operation).

This paper addresses the challenges faced by planning and design education programmes when focusing on more sustainable ways of dealing with global changes. While the dominant discourse addresses the fact that planning programmes discuss the Global South through the lens of planning theory and practice from the Global North, the proposal is to shift the debate and recognise that, from a complexity perspective, planning problems are not so different from region to region. The argument is that, although the theory has moved on, when discussing conceptual aspects of planning, spatial planning practice is still focused on objects rather than the relationship between them (be they buildings, streets, neighbourhoods or even cities). Assuming that urban territories are not objects and do not develop in a linear way, but rather evolve, the proposal is to reflect on how planning and design education addresses urban evolution. This paper suggests a revision of planning and design approaches to informality, given the participation in recent years of a joint studio in Bandung, Indonesia. The alternative perspective offered here involves a re-examination of concepts and deconstruction of dichotomies. The main findings rely on the interpretation of formalisation processes (in the Global North) through the lens of complexity theory, which has facilitated understanding of today’s informal settlements (in the Global South). It suggests the deconstruction of dichotomies, such as informal versus formal, thus, positing the need for a major shift on planning and design rules that focus less on objects and more on the relationship between them.