Asma Mehan

The ongoing refugee crisis is described as the most important concern since the Second World War, which has caused a great displacement of people. Many of these immigrants have been departing towards Mediterranean countries, as first-line states, seeking for a chance to enter Europe. This situation has created a challenging condition for many refugee accepting cities as well as for the migrants to get integrated within the new society. This fact has had a great influence on the sustainability condition while the rapid and uncontrolled inflows can overwhelm the host countries' capacities to integrate new arrivals. In this regard, some European countries including Germany and Italy are coming about with strategies for accommodation and integration of these refugees in their countries. This paper aims to study and analyze two of the current case studies reflecting adaptive reuse strategies in European context for providing refugees' temporary housing facilities. In the context of this research, using the existing building stock introduced as the dominant strategy which can provide refugees with a proper shelter and also while providing the chance for their urban integration can contribute to revitalization of urban areas with the newcomers' participation. By analyzing the Berlin's largest refugee shelter inside Tempelhof Airport as the first case study, the major policies in Germany for providing refugee housing in national and local levels have been investigated. However, the second case study -Ex-Moi in Turin, is characteristically different from the case of Tempelhof airport of Berlin; since the refugees occupied the abandoned facility of the Olympic Village and settled down there. Regarding the fact that there is an urgent need for long-term policies and sustainable approaches to cope with the current refugee crisis, this research tries to shed a light on the path towards providing temporary housings by analyzing the challenges and opportunities of two different current case studies in Germany and Italy.

The concept of Tabula Rasa, as a desire for sweeping renewal and creating a potential site for the construction of utopian dreams, is presupposition of Modern Architecture. Starting from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Iranian urban and architectural history has been integrated with modernization, and western-influenced modernity. The case of Tehran as the Middle Eastern political capital is the main scene for the manifestation of modernity within it’s urban projects that was associated with several changes to the social, political and spatial structure of the city. In this regard, the strategy of Tabula Rasa as a utopian blank slate upon which a new Iran could be conceived “over again” – was the dominant strategy of modernization during First Pahlavi era (1925–1941). This article explores the very concept of constructing a new image of Tehran through the processes of autocratic modernism and orientalist historicism that also influenced the discourse of national identity during First Pahlavi era.

This study examines the role of digital technologies in building resilient communities, focusing on data collected during the pandemic. This research aims to explore the impact of digital technologies on community development, assess their effectiveness in enhancing community resilience, and identify key success factors. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative data collected through interviews and focus groups, a review of existing literature and case studies. Preliminary findings indicate that digital technologies have been crucial in supporting community resilience, enabling virtual communication, remote access to resources, and community engagement. However, disparities in digital access and literacy have influenced their effectiveness. Addressing the digital divide and ensuring equitable access is crucial while providing ongoing support, capacity building, and community engagement. Digital technologies have demonstrated their potential to build resilient communities, particularly in times of crisis.

In recent years, the significance of industrial heritage has seemed to become a growing trend in international heritage studies. Concerning their attributed values and the crucial needs for urban development, this branch of cultural heritage has been considered the important grid of cities. This has caused a great acceptance of adaptive reuse practices especially among developing countries which is a smart response to an ongoing debate to reach sustainable development. The flexibility of these buildings and sites seems an important criterion, which can be improved through adaptive reuse practice. Therefore, this research aims to introduce the concept of flexibility in industrial heritage sites, evaluate its criteria among adaptive reuse practices, and make a comprehensive flexibility model for it. Indeed, the final goal is to determine the condition that based on the flexibility model, the adaptive reuse practice would be a proper way of encountering these sites. A historical-interpretation research method, analytical-description techniques, and questionnaire-based interviews are applied in this research. Results indicate that flexibility has genuinely been considered in this practice. Analysing flexibility techniques, this paper suggests a valuable framework to achieve the flexibility of industrial heritage as the presupposition of successful adaptive reuse in these sites.

In 1947, the U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall announced that the USA would provide development aid to help the recovery and reconstruction of the economies of Europe, which was widely known as the ‘Marshall Plan’. In Italy, this plan generated a resurgence of modern industrialization and remodeled Italian Industry based on American models of production. As the result of these transnational transfers, the systemic approach known as Fordism largely succeeded and allowed some Italian firms such as Fiat to flourish. During this period, Detroit and Turin, homes to the most powerful automobile corporations of the twentieth century, became intertwined in a web of common features such as industrial concentration, mass flows of immigrations, uneven urban sprawl, radical iconography and inner-city decay, which characterized Fordism in both cities. In the crucial decades of the postwar expansion of the automobile industries, both cities were hubs of labor battles and social movements. However, after the radical decline in their industries as previous auto cities, they experienced the radical shift toward post-Fordist urbanization and production of political urbanism. This research responds to the recent interest for a comparative (re)turn in urban studies by suggesting the conceptual theoretical baseline for the proposed comparative framework in post-Fordist cities. In better words, it develops a “theory” on the challenges of comparative urbanism in post-Fordist cities.

Collective imagination has traditionally associated architecture with political and economic power. As a result, when quoting Edward Said: «Modern Western culture is, in large part, the work of exiles, émigrés, refugees», the last people we typically consider are exiled architects. But is the heritage left by exiled architects truly insignificant? Can we find expressions of their spiritual quest, new life experiences, nostalgic feelings, and aesthetic shocks in their works? When does Modernism cease to be a universal language and instead becomes an existential language of the exile – and can they both coexist? The international conference Architects in Exile. Stories of New Spatial Experiences" aims to address these questions.

In this chapter, we evaluate the politically generative dynamic of urban space. Notably, we put forward the notion of the ‘multiplier effect’ of the urban, referring to its ingrained tendency to multiply resistance to oppression and violence being exerted against subaltern groups and minorities and, in doing so, to turn this multiplied resistance into an active force of social change. We, therefore, look at the twofold valence of ‘resistance’: negative and affirmative. Resistance initially takes form as a defensive response to oppression and violence. When this happens, the urban becomes the living platform for a multiplying dynamic of encounter and, potentially, of inter-group solidarity, thus laying the foundations for a cooperative – rather than competitive, as in neoliberal rationality, or inimical, as in national-populist reason – way of ‘being together’. After having developed this argument against the backdrop of the women’s movement in Tehran and the urban disobedience to anti-immigration policies in Italy, our chapter concludes by reflecting on the multiplier effect of urban resistance within the current context of national revanchism.

During the rapid process of deindustrialization in Iran, the term ‘industrial heritage’ has recently emerged as a new subject into public realm. In order to integrate the methodologies for the protection and adaptive reuse strategies, the ‘industrial heritage’ itself needs to be divided into various categories. UNESCO has begun inscribing increasing numbers of local industrial legacies such as railway, mines, factories, assembly plants, agricultural production and manufacturing production in its World Heritage List. However, in the process of their adaptive reuse the question of heritage meanings arises. Over the past century in Iran, powerful corporate and governmental actors have created a broad range of oil imaginaries that changed over time and in line with local cultures. Starting from 1920s and after the nationalization of oil industry in Iran, oil cities such as Abadan and Masjid Suleiman saw massive expansion to house labors and oil-industry specialists who had arrived from the United States, Europe, India, and the Persian Gulf states. This research aims to clarify how the oil industry, in close collaboration with national governments, has materially shaped the oil cities through oil-specific architecture like company headquarters, gas stations, retail and infrastructure buildings. The current legacy of oil industry continues to reshape the industry, society and politics as well. This research uses a critical and analytical problem-based approach to examine the current policies that build a new image and identity through adaptive reuse strategies to promote sustainable local development in Iran’s industrial heritage.

The diversity of multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic groups and communities within Britain has created cohesion and integration challenges for different community groups and authorities to adapt to the current diverse society. More recently, there has been an increased focus on Muslim segregation in Britain in official reports and reviews. Those documents mentioned the Muslims’ segregation (directly or indirectly) for various reasons, and some recommendations have aimed to improve “community cohesion” in general and Muslims’ “integration” in particular. However, community participation in the design or planning of regeneration and development projects has yet to be focused on, although these documents recommended promoting community cohesion and integration through these projects. Community participation in architecture—in its broader sense—is a crucial aspect that contributes towards fulfilling the tasks of serving communities with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims’ religious and cultural practices have been problematised in urban spaces and perceived as leading to social and spatial segregation. This paper intends to explore how secular urban spaces are used and perceived by Muslims through their religious and cultural practices. Therefore, the article aspires to inform the community participation in urban projects and demonstrates the role that Muslims’ inclusion in designing urban projects has in promoting cohesion and integration. The Ellesmere Green project in Burngreave, Sheffield, UK, is an empirical example of exploring this locally through semi-structured interviews with community members, leaders, and local authorities’ officials. The findings demonstrate that sacred and secular spaces are interconnected in Muslims’ everyday lives, and the boundaries between them are blurry. The data also show that having the ability to manifest their religious and cultural practices in secular urban spaces does not suggest the desire for segregation, nor does it reduce Muslims’ willingness to have social and spatial interactions with non-Muslims.

On 4th of August 2020, the Lebanese capital and port city, Beirut, was rocked by a massive explosion that has killed hundreds and injured thousands more, ravaging the heart of the city’s nearby downtown business district and neighbouring housing areas, where more than 750,000 people live. The waterfront neighbourhood and a number of dense residential neighbourhoods in the city’s eastern part were essentially flattened. Lebanese Government officials believe that the blast was caused by around 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored near the city’s cargo port without proper control for six years. The disaster devastating Beirut’s port and city shows the latent danger of safe storage of potentially dangerous goods in modern ports, particularly ones located close to the heart of the city. The huge blast tore through major grain silos, stoking fears of shortages in a nation that imports nearly all its food and is already reeling from economic crisis. As the WFP (World Food Programme) said in a statement: the blast will “exacerbate the grim economic and food-security situation.” The Beirut blast also reminds us of the importance of ports in the contemporary globalized world. It calls our attention to safety and security, of governance and collaboration between port and city or region and of accessibility to the hinterland. What do local governments and port cities need to do to enhance the safety and security issues in port terminals? Or, to put it differently, how do we reconcile this challenge between the ports we need to feed us, serve us, provide us with medicines, equipment, etc. and the ports that threatens us?

The technological revolution and appropriation of internet tools began to reshape the material basis of society and the urban space in collaborative, grassroots, leaderless, and participatory actions. The protest squares’ representation on Television screens and mainstream media has been broad. Various health, governmental, societal, and urban challenges have marked the advent of the Covid-19 virus. Inequalities have become more salient as poor people and minorities are more affected by the virus. Social distancing makes the typical forms of protest impossible to carry out. Under social distancing, some state-led policies took advantage of social media to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic to silence social and political activities, censor criticism, and control the press. However, during the pandemic era, the movements for social justice have been particularly active, focusing on defending workers’ rights, mutual aid and solidarity, monitoring policymakers, and popular education. These progressive movements combined concrete practices and experiences to confront the reactionary, capitalist, and governmental actors that sought to shape and envision the world. Through different case studies of protest movements during the pandemic in Europe, the UK, and Asia, this paper argues that at the time of rising racial, social, and economic inequalities, the social activities adapted to the circumstances determined by the social distancing and the impossibility of people gathering in physical spaces. Subsequently, the people in different countries had various individual and collective responses to the support of health workers, systemic inequalities, loss of jobs, and other societal and financial challenges imposed by the governments. It means that, rather than disappearing, the social movements have adapted to the unexpected situations during the pandemic outbreak. The pandemic broke the new digital global wave of protests in this sense.

In the last two decades, major cities in Malaysia have witnessed a spate of urban redevelopment including commercial and retail complexes, and residential estates. The current urban transformations taking place in Malaysian cities are mainly market-driven and characterized by fast-track development with a strong priority on the road infrastructure. This is a typical example of an intensive property-led development that is becoming a central driver of the national economy. This article provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of urban development in Malaysia. Here, the major aim is to understand the Malaysian cities' transitions in the trajectory of their colonial past, national identity, multi-cultural community, culture, and religion. Focusing on South East Asian urbanism, this article determines how internal and external forces and global trends such as neoliberalism and property-led development affect the transformation of urban landscapes and expansions in Malaysia. The outcomes of this paper will indicate how much property-led development and globalisation have affected the traditional and tropical climate-responsive urban environment in Malaysia. It will also identify sustainable design and planning measures that should be implemented in the cities of Malaysia to combat the ill-effects of globalisation.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain how abstract space of the State – universally and specifically within the context of Middle Eastern cities – aims to homogenise the city and eliminate any anomaly that threatens its power structure. Design/methodology/approach – Through a historical and discourse analysis of these policies and processes in the two case studies, this paper presents a contextualised reading of Lefebvre’s concept of abstract space and process of abstraction in relation to the alienation of political public spaces. Findings – The paper proposes that regardless of these homogenising strategies being applied universally, they fail to respond to contextual particularities and therefore they – in a contradictory manner – may themselves produce a space of resistance and difference. Originality/value – This paper focusses on Iran, the case of Tehran and Turkey, the case of Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul. Recent policies and strategies have been proposed and implemented to reduce, alienate and possibly neutralise the impacts of urban and political protests in these cities and socio-political contexts.

With rapid changes in urban living today, peoples’ behavioural patterns and spatial practices undergo a constant process of adaptation and negotiation. Using “house” as a laboratory and everyday life and spatial relations of residents as a framework of analysis, the paper examines the spatial planning concepts in traditional and contemporary Iranian architecture and the associated socio-cultural practices. Discussions are drawn upon from a pilot study conducted in the city of Kerman, to investigate ways in which contemporary housing solutions can better cater to the continually changing socio-cultural lifestyles of residents. Data collection for the study involved a series of participatory workshops and employed creative visual research methods, participant observation and semi structured interviews to examine the interlacing of everyday socio-spatial relations and changing perception of identity, belonging, socio-cultural and religious values and conflict. The inferences from the study showcases the emerging social and cultural needs and practices of people manifested through the complex relationship between residents, the places in which they live, and its spatial planning and organisation. For a better understanding of this complex relationship, the paper argues the need for resituating spatiality as a socio-cultural paradigm.

Materialization practices in the architecture and building industry have evolved with the advancement of manufacturing and information technologies. This evolution is evident across various design and production phases, with a pronounced impact on prototyping. Advances in design and fabrication tools have empowered prototypes, integral in any production cycle, to furnish a growing array of information and feedback for designers and manufacturers. In this context, prototypes have transformed from merely showcasing data-driven building solutions to presenting socio-environmentally conscious systems. Innovation in prototyping connects the initial design and construction stages to the operational phase, creating a seamless transition throughout the project lifecycle. This chapter provides a range of definitions and prototypical case studies for smart prototyping by identifying practiced approaches in integrated design to production workflows. This chapter introduces three paradigms for smart prototyping: Digital prototyping focuses on data-driven design for mass customization, phygital prototyping involves mixed-reality-enabled design and assembly, and thirdly collaborative prototyping explores human-machine hybrid intelligence and co-production in architectural and urban contexts. The chosen case studies in this chapter and how they are categorized aim to provide a comprehensive overview of smart prototyping, covering projects conducted in both research and practice. This chapter concludes with potential future trends and the role of emerging and evolving mediums of prototyping for smart design and construction.

Since the 1860s, petroleum companies, through their influence on local governments, port authorities, international actors and the general public gradually became more dominant in shaping the urban form of ports and cities. Under their development and pressure, the relationships between industrial and urban areas in port cities hosting oil facilities evolved in time. The borders limiting industrial and housing territories have continuously changed with industrial places moving progressively away from urban areas. Such a changing dynamic influenced the permeability of these borders. Port cities are nodes and logistic points where various flows of commodities, wealth, and knowledge gathered before further re‐distribution. These flows affected port cities by changing their spatial organization and the availabiity of space between borders. The main question here is: How did industrial and urban borders evolve through time in port cities? Through a historical analysis, the article explores the settlements of oil facilities and the influence of oil companies over local, regional, and national governments in creating borders and how it influenced the porosity of port cities. This article, through the petroleum narrative, illustrates the impacts of past borders on the contemporary urban form through the evolution of the French port city of Dunkirk, in the North of France. As a historical study, the article analyzes the changing relationships between petroleum industrial sites and housing areas in the city of Dunkirk, using aerial pictures, archival sources, and regulations of different periods. The importance of this analysis lies in knowing that former oil sites previously located on the periphery of Dunkirk, that were forgotten by the authorities are now located within the current urban tissue. This process demonstrates the importance of historical developments to understand current challenges in the urban planning of industrial port cities.

THE CONGRESS The infrastructure of the colonial territories obeyed the logic of economic exploitation, territorial domain and commercial dynamics among others that left deep marks in the constructed landscape. The rationales applied to the decisions behind the construction of infrastructures varied according to the historical period, the political model of colonial administration and the international conjuncture. This congress seeks to bring to the knowledge of the scientific community the dynamics of occupation and transformation of colonial territory, especially related to and resulting from the war effort, which involved not only the agency of architecture and urbanism but also of military apparatus, and its repercussions in the same territories as independent countries. Colonial infrastructures will be addressed to question, for instance, how housing production during armed conflict has conditioned future spatial models of the independent countries or what options taken by colonial administrations were abandoned or otherwise strengthened after independence. The congress is part of the ongoing research project entitled “ARCHWAR - Dominance and massviolence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars. The Portuguese case (GuineaBissau, Angola, Mozambique): colonial documentation and post independence critical assessment” funded by ‘Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia’ (FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology), ref. PTDC/ART-DAQ/0592/2020, in which Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) is a partner. The general goal of the congress is to debate on the repercussions of the decisions taken by the colonial states in the area of territorial infrastructures – in particular through the disciplines of architecture and urbanism – in post-independence spatial and urban models and the formation of independent countries with a colonial past.

Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter‐revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking.

This paper aims to analyze the square beyond an architectural element in the city, but weaves this blank slate, with its contemporary socio political atmosphere as a new paradigm. As a result, this research investigates the historical, social and political concept of Meydan – a term which has mostly applied for the Iranian and Islamic public squares. This interpretation, suggested the idea of Meydan as the core of the projects in the city, which historically exposed in formalization of power relations and religious ideologies. In this sense, studying the spatial transformation of Iranian public squares introduces the framework, which is adaptable to contemporary urban context.

field: Issue 8 Embodying an Anti-Racist Architecture comprises essays, articles, podcasts, drawings, designs, the cover image, and a film. ‘This Call to Action' is a document borne from dialogue, and as such derives its power from the activism that collaboration and cooperation engender. Asma Mehan, Carolina Lima, Faith Ng’eno, and Krzysztof Nawratek discuss white hegemony across different geopolitical and academic spaces, mindful of the nuances of using English as their shared yet borrowed language.

The relationship of public space to democracy is dominated by two competing, yet intertwined, theoretical bases: political philosophy and spatial theory. But how does the architect make political space? Can architectural practice create political space through design? In this book, Teresa Hoskyns theorizes that the converging point between theoretical foundations and democratic practices is “participation” within “social production of space.” Therefore, “participation” from joint perspectives of architecture and political philosophy has been studied in two different frameworks: the theoretical and the practical. Unlike most previous works on the relationship between architecture and democracy, Hoskyn’s book transcends the spatial and political interpretation of public space. By incorporating new theoretical approaches to representative democracy, it depicts a complex dialectic and multilayered picture of—“spaces of democracy” and the “democracy of space”—in her phrasing.

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development.

In recent years, we have been observing an increasing significance of industrial heritage in international heritage studies. Developed in response to urban development needs, industrial heritage is now considered a valuable part of the city. Such an approach has resulted in the adaptive reuse of industrial heritage in the developing countries. This is, indeed, a practical solution for sustainable development of cities and the subject matter of many academic discussions. In this respect Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) seems to be a useful tool. This paper aims to study the role of HIA in adaptive reuse practice in industrial heritage sites in Iran. For that purpose, the authors have used a combined research method including historic study, analytical-description techniques and questionnaire-based interviews (with heritage managers and planners). The results indicate that HIA guidelines play a useful role in preserving the significance of historic cultural heritage and should be observed in the adaptive reuse practice in respect of the industrial heritage sites in Iran. Based on the analysed examples of successfully converted sites, this paper advocates using HIA as a useful tool in determining the potential of a given industrial heritage site for a successful reuse.

Port Cities are historically the places for paradigm shifts, radical changes, and socio-economic transitions. In particular, the interaction zone between the port infrastructure and urban activities creates liminal spaces at the forefront of many contemporary challenges. In these liminal spaces, the port's flows, form, and function intertwine with urban contexts and conflict with the living conditions. Conceptualizing the portcityscape and harborscape as liminal space and urban thresholds leads to (re)thinking about innovative participatory methods and technologies for building community resilience in port cities. Additionally, inevitable constant development in port cities requires adaptability and resilience from the waterfronts to the hinterlands and city centers. Such confrontation of port infrastructures and urbanization is socio-politically and spatially challenging, specifically in historic port cities. Therefore, as the approach to exploiting energy and human resources changes over time, the physicality of the built environment in port cities and how we (re)use the resources need to be redefined. This research investigates key socio-spatial features and challenges of port cities by examining how the port's proximity to the city requires coordination, collaboration, transparency, and community dialogue. The introduction and background literature discuss three domains and notions of port city studies, building community resiliency through participatory frameworks, and parasitic architecture. By building upon this analytical framework, the paper presents case studies developed within the research-led design studio focusing on building resilient communities in four port cities, including Amsterdam, Constanta, Alexandria, and Rio De Janeiro. This research focus on the community-enabled application of emerging technologies, innovative approaches, and co-designing and co-building participatory methods. The selected case studies introduce an integrative and multi-scalar pedagogical framework for building resilient communities in liminal spaces of port cities.

Through analysing different case studies in the Middle East, this section uses rooted cosmopolitanism as a theoretical lens to explore exported modernism and architecture between socialist and capitalist countries during the Cold War. This research analyses the circulation and local applications of urban development and modernisation paradigms in so-called ‘Third World’ countries. For assessing the socialist and capitalist-inspired modernisation processes in the Middle East, this chapter studies the cosmopolitan and trans-cultural architecture created by global and local influences. Comparing two types of cosmopolitan architecture (socialist and capitalist) during the Cold War period in third-world contexts will help us to analyse and compare their relative rootedness and to learn from the interconnected, multifaceted, and multilayered planning transfers and architectural exportations.

This article argues against the concept of integration as the main mechanism allowing various sociocultural groups to live together and instead proposes ‘radical inclusivity’ as a better, less oppressive model of a pluralistic society. Through analytical and reflective research on the non-cohesion-based approach to integration or inclusion, this article is devoted to examining the affordances and limitations of integration through various forms of spatial interventions. As an example, we will discuss the Ellesmere Green Project in Sheffield (UK) as a typical small urban regeneration executed in a highly diverse part of Sheffield. This piece aims to bring forward the significance of moving beyond the community-as-cohesion model in urban politics and planning for integration.

This article studies the architectural design and cultural significance of Villa Namazee, a modernist building designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti in Tehran. The study explores how the building, once a symbol of modernity and progress, has been neglected, delisted from the national heritage, and fallen into disrepair. Focusing primarily on the case of Villa Namazee in Tehran, Iran, as an example of Ponti’s projects in the Middle Eastern context, the second part of this paper aims to reconsider and re-narrate Gio Ponti’s project in Tehran. In this context, the article sheds light on the nationally and internationally prominent concepts, ideas, collaborations, and design elements of Gio Ponti’s project in Tehran. The paper argues for reevaluating our understanding of heritage and recognizing the importance of preserving modern architectural masterpieces such as Villa Namazee.

Cinema acts as a significant mediator between urban reality and the imaginary sensory experience of the fictive world. Viewing the city through the lens of a camera enables us to build new narratives. Films have captured port cities within the flows of, goods, people, and ideas, making them ever-present in shared memories, historical narratives, and urban nostalgia. Cultural production plays a role in the on-going construction of local port cultures, whether films, festivals, music, literature, theater, advertisements, or events. Telling the story of the port city – it's past, present, and future; its buildings and its people – contributes strongly to the creation of port city cultures.[i] The big screen can help viewers to perceive complex port city regions, learning from their history, understanding cultural values and developing shared urban narratives to tackle the upcoming challenges. In a broader sense, port city’s ‘Cine-scape’—to use a term coined by Richard Koeck,[ii] puts the cinematic approach to port cities into the spotlight.

In 2020, TICCIH published its thematic study on oil heritage, the first global assessment of the heritage of petroleum production and the oil industry, and of the places, structures, sites, and landscapes that might be conserved for their historical, technical, social, or architectural attributes. In many cases, the petroleum production sites and historical infrastructures, situated in corrosive and fragile landscapes, are costly to conserve, challenging to re-use, and pre-function considering their contribution to climate change. TICCIH also included the proposals for criteria to evaluate this heritage and priorities for conserving the most important sites, ensembles, and landscapes, from regional inventories up to World Heritage sites. In this report, the heritage of the petroleum industry is defined as ‘the most significant fixed, tangible evidence for the discovery, exploitation, production, and consumption of petroleum products and their impact on human and natural landscapes’. While the importance of the historical evidence for the oil industry as a tangible cultural heritage is self-evident, it is also challenging to define an integrated and holistic strategy from a conversation point of view. For achieving holistic and methodological re-use strategies, it is required to reconsider various factors such as national policies and economic systems.