Goal 11 of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed to ‘Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ (United Nations, 2015)[1]. In 2017, this endorsement was confirmed at the Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development where The New Urban Agenda (NUA)[2] was adopted. NUA brings the form of places closer to resilience, stating that ‘urban form, infrastructure, and building design are among the greatest drivers of cost and resource efficiencies, through the benefits of economy of scale and agglomeration, and fostering energy efficiency, renewable energy, resilience, productivity, environmental protection, and sustainable growth in the urban economy.
An interdisciplinary, international group of researchers is working on the comparison of distinct urban spaces in Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Vienna to compare their adaptive cycle. The analysis will be based on several theoretic impulses. Combining Holling and Gunderson’s adaptive cycle (2001)[3] with M.R.G. Conzen’s burgage cycle (1960)[4] and the territorial development cycle by Caniggia and Maffei (1979)[5], Romice, Porta & Feliciotti proposing panarchy, as a model of change in urban form, as an intersect approach from urban morphology, urban design and urban ecology (2020)[6]. It is this dynamic relationship between fast and slow, changeable and permanent, that has always enabled cities to respond to challenges of different nature and that makes places resilient and sustainable.
This research is conducted within the framework of teaching at the three participating universities from two countries. Staff and students working in collaborative meetings in the class at TU Wien, Austria, at Universitas Trisakti, Jakarta, and Universitas Atama Jaya, Yogyakarta Indonesia. For the comparative research spaces with similar context in each city will be selected: traffic, gathering and green urban infrastructure are used as criteria for the choice of the study areas. This allows to adapt the panarchy model from Romice, Porta & Feliciotti (2020) through a cross-cultural comparative studies approach. The research aims to reveal adaptation cycle patterns from time to time in different social, geographical, political and economic circumstances. By focusing on the historical part of the cities one objective is to find distinguished adaptation patterns. The findings can be very useful not only for the benefit of urban design practices in implementing NUA but also for the enrichment of cross-cultural context methods in the discipline of urban morphology.
[1] UN General Assembly. „Transforming Our World : The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“. United Nations, 21. Oktober 2015.
[2] United Nations. New Urban Agenda. Habitat III : Quito 17-20 October 2016: UN, 2017.
[3] Gunderson, Lance H., und Crawford Stanley Holling. Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Washington, DC: Island press, 2001.
[4] Conzen, Michael Robert Gunter. „Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town-plan analysis“. Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), Nr. 27 (1960): iii–122.
[5] Caniggia, Gianfranco, und Gian Luigi Maffei. Composizione architettonica e tipologia edilizia. Marsilio Venezia, 1979.
[6] Rómice, Ombretta, Sergio Porta, und Alessandra Feliciotti. Masterplanning for change: designing the resilient city. Routledge, 2020.
