Liveability and Its Implication in Comparative Spatial Planning

This chapter discusses the concept of liveability, particularly liveable streets and the implications in comparative planning. It suggests that liveability as an umbrella concept cannot be captured through a uniform set of parameters like those often employed by international organisations for city ranking and comparison. Instead, liveability should be interpreted and firmly rooted in the local context and capture the specifics of how the locals perceive, change and adapt to the built environment in their daily lives. The chapter presents a method and process through which a conceptual framework of liveable streets in Shanghai has been established and argues that this method has the highest transferability to other contexts, allowing an understanding of what liveability entails in those contexts in order to inform targeted planning actions. The chapter also recommends that special attention should be paid to local informality, transient uses and the needs of marginalised groups which are often invisible in the formal governance structure. Their tactics and responses to crises provide important lessons for achieving liveability locally.