Like other harbour cities in Europe, Lisbon has an axial development anchored in pre-existing confi gurations which dot from east, more industrial areas, to the west, a more monumental and urban type. The diversity of fabrics and the overlapping of various time layers become decoded through a functional specialization infrastructural line, which, from rural, becomes increasingly infrastructured as part of the on-going reinvention of the city of Lisbon.

The range and scope of an architect’s tasks has shifted: from that of a designer burdened with responsibility for the shape and effectiveness of architecture, to that of a director (animator) of urban space, responsible for the smooth and undisturbed direction of the spectacle taking place within the urban space, of the incessant, simultaneous and unbroken continuum of the mutually interactive scenes from the life of the City. Architecture, or rather urban space, has become a scenography for the synergistic holistic/multidirectional activities sustaining the life of the residents and making the uses and functions of architecture more effective. Programmers, directors, animators of culture, city mayors, grassroots initiatives of the residents, wealthy investors – all of these organizers of urban space should have equal rights and prerogatives in the process of ARRANGING URBAN SPACE. Does a present-day city still need architects?

The reminiscences about prof. Tadeusz Bartkowicz focus on the figure of the significant founder of the Kraków school of urban design and spatial planning as well as environment protection. The synthetic presentation of his considerable accomplishments in this field has been based on the review of his scientific and urban planning work, personal contacts with Professor and the works of other scholars, friends and students.

Waterfront regeneration of port districts emerge as a tool for prestigious development of cities in urban re-imaging and growth. Creation of prestigious housing in these areas are part of a broader strategy of mixed-use and property-led development, but in absence of a holistic approach in planning and design, the urban landscapes may be developed merely on basis of the real estate frameworks. This article looks at how development trends of port cities can take an unintended stance in property-led regeneration of port districts, creating gated communities and failing to succeed in achieving the pre-determined objectives in urban planning. The discussion, which will address to issues of place-making, commodification of public space and planning policies, will take the port city of Izmir as the case. It is suggested that the adoption of a holistic approach to urban planning should guide the regeneration processes and design should take place-making into consideration.

The article undertakes quastion of urban design in a context of urban sprawl linking it to the German debate on suburbanisation, conducted under the slogan of Zwischenstadt – a concept created by Th. Sieverts in 1997. The Ladenburger Kolleg „Zwischenstadt” (LKZ) developed 2002-2006 the interdisciplinary research titled: „Amidst the Edge: Zwischenstadt – towards the qualification of the urbanised landscape” The spatial effects of the dispersion processes were considered to be the manifestation of the creation of a new model of the city. The traditional image of urbanism does not fit its logic. Zwischenstadt (in-beetwen-city) recognized as a phase of the urbanization process, uncoordinated by any imposed urban vision, requires a innovative urban design leitmotives. This new planning tool is necessary to obtain the parameters needed to strengthen internal socio-economic development capabilities. The concept of the efficiency of urban design covered the issue of the character of a city›s image. The morphological studies on a megalopolis structure by Frankfurt a. Main, made a creative use of the Lynch research on the image of the city. Their main goal was to understand the characteristics of the dispersion meant as an urbanized landscape and to determine its susceptibility to the process of improving spatial quality – recognition of the endogenous potentials of generating a Zwischenstadt image.

The subject of this paper is the study of the specificity of the transformation of the urban public spaces of the Western world and the problem of the multi form nature of this phenomenon. The Author uses such concepts as that of the "hybrid" and of "hybridization" borrowed from the field of natural sciences and explains the reasons for their introduction within this specific scope of research in a broad manner.

In and around the 13th century, two eastern authors describe the island of Sicily from different perspectives but with the common purpose of linking it to the Arab and Islamic world it had belonged to. Both describe the place with varied images which combine the real physical aspects with fantasy, and which show natural landscapes, both urban and rural, dominated by the presence of the great volcano. The study of this island using its landscapes as a key allows us to investigate the ideological processes of the authors who describe it. Al-Qazwīnī and Al-Harawī undertake a literary itinerary in which the images of idealization and Islamization or sanctification of the island are crystallised.