scholarly journals Bazaar in the 'Burbs: Infilling fine grain of activity in the course grain context of Paraparaumu

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yan Xin Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Spatial Network ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Modular Network ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Fine Grain ◽  
Spatial Hierarchy

<p>The regional townships of New Zealand are losing young people. The township of Paraparaumu, located along the Kapiti Coast, is no exception. As a sprawling, low-density suburban settlement with its town center being Coastlands Shopping Center - the local mall - there are few job opportunities available. As a result, many early career adults choose to settle elsewhere. Tasked with creating more opportunities, the Kapiti Coast District Council plans to build a new commercial district. To make space for it, this will be done by paving over a large expanse of wetland adjacent to the mall.  The premise of this thesis is that generating opportunities do not have to be large scale. In more dense urban areas where space is limited, many productive activities occur within the fine grain of a city. Wetlands are also recognized as a critical natural infrastructure and a valuable social amenity. Thus, instead of building large commercial facilities that have to occupy the wetland, the design in this thesis proposes a facility made up of a finer grain and infills the glut of car park spaces in front of Coastlands Mall. The parking spaces displaced will be relocated into a parking tower adjacent to the site.  The building type of the Bazaar was looked at in this thesis as a model, for it is fine-grained and also ingrained with its urban context. The spatial network of the Bazaar democratizes access. The spatial network of the Bazaar democratizes access, which is a direct contrast to the singular and hierarchical nature of the mall. The design adopts these ideas and expresses them through a network of modules on a tartan grid plan transforming the design into a rhythmic series of spaces that express compression and expansion, allowing it to be an interlinked network of interior and exterior spaces.  The grid is a powerful tool for organizing expanses of space though it is only useful in an architectural sense when accompanied by a fine-grained variation. Though the repetitive grid is suitable in plan, as a 3d form it quickly dissolves into monotony when repeated across a field. Similarly, the site itself is inherently charged with spatial hierarchy. Thus, localized adjustments of the roof and exterior details were made to break the monotony and rest the spatial hierarchy.  This thesis explores how fine grain activity can be integrated into a large-grained context through the use of an additive, modular network set on a grid. Though the research findings produced on expression of this in the design outcome, the idea of a dense, fine-grained modular network is applicable in any context that has large inactive open space to be filled.</p>

scholarly journals Bazaar in the 'Burbs: Infilling fine grain of activity in the course grain context of Paraparaumu

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yan Xin Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Spatial Network ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Modular Network ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Fine Grain ◽  
Spatial Hierarchy

<p>The regional townships of New Zealand are losing young people. The township of Paraparaumu, located along the Kapiti Coast, is no exception. As a sprawling, low-density suburban settlement with its town center being Coastlands Shopping Center - the local mall - there are few job opportunities available. As a result, many early career adults choose to settle elsewhere. Tasked with creating more opportunities, the Kapiti Coast District Council plans to build a new commercial district. To make space for it, this will be done by paving over a large expanse of wetland adjacent to the mall.  The premise of this thesis is that generating opportunities do not have to be large scale. In more dense urban areas where space is limited, many productive activities occur within the fine grain of a city. Wetlands are also recognized as a critical natural infrastructure and a valuable social amenity. Thus, instead of building large commercial facilities that have to occupy the wetland, the design in this thesis proposes a facility made up of a finer grain and infills the glut of car park spaces in front of Coastlands Mall. The parking spaces displaced will be relocated into a parking tower adjacent to the site.  The building type of the Bazaar was looked at in this thesis as a model, for it is fine-grained and also ingrained with its urban context. The spatial network of the Bazaar democratizes access. The spatial network of the Bazaar democratizes access, which is a direct contrast to the singular and hierarchical nature of the mall. The design adopts these ideas and expresses them through a network of modules on a tartan grid plan transforming the design into a rhythmic series of spaces that express compression and expansion, allowing it to be an interlinked network of interior and exterior spaces.  The grid is a powerful tool for organizing expanses of space though it is only useful in an architectural sense when accompanied by a fine-grained variation. Though the repetitive grid is suitable in plan, as a 3d form it quickly dissolves into monotony when repeated across a field. Similarly, the site itself is inherently charged with spatial hierarchy. Thus, localized adjustments of the roof and exterior details were made to break the monotony and rest the spatial hierarchy.  This thesis explores how fine grain activity can be integrated into a large-grained context through the use of an additive, modular network set on a grid. Though the research findings produced on expression of this in the design outcome, the idea of a dense, fine-grained modular network is applicable in any context that has large inactive open space to be filled.</p>

Barriers and levers for implementing sustainable Nature-Based Solutions in cities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloé Duffaut ◽  
Nathalie Frascaria-Lacoste ◽  
Pierre-Antoine Versini
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Project Managers ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Plan ◽  
Education And Awareness ◽  
Awareness Raising ◽  
The City

&lt;p&gt;Hydro-meteorological risks are increasing and this could be due to global changes. These risks are particularly important in the urban context where most human beings live. Indeed, the impervious surfaces present in cities increase the risk of flooding, for example. Nature-Based Solutions can help to reduce these risks by creating permeable soils or storing water while promoting biodiversity. In this context, it is essential to understand what hinders the development and sustainability of these Nature-based Solutions in the city and what could help to deploy them on a large scale. For this purpose, various professionals working on Nature-Based Solutions in the city in France, were interviewed between 2020 and 2021, both in the academic and operational sectors, or even at the interface between the two: researchers in ecology or hydrology, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) project manager, project managers at the Regional Biodiversity Agency, director and natural environment manager of a watershed union, agro-economists engineer among others. They were asked what are the barriers and potential opportunities for Nature-Based Solutions implementation and sustainability in city. By analysing their answers, it emerges that the obstacles are more often cultural, political or financial than technical. The potential levers often mentioned are education and awareness-raising at all levels, especially for elected officials and the general public. Regulations such as the PLU (Local Urban Plan) and new funding for more natural spaces in the city also seem to be means of promoting Nature-based Solutions in urban areas. These interviews with diverse professionals directly involved in Nature-Based Solutions in cities allow to give real courses of action to be taken to democratize these Solutions throughout the French territory, or even internationally, and therefore ultimately reduce the risks of hydro-meteorology. This is one of the objectives of the French ANR project EVNATURB (Assessment of ecosystem performance of a renaturation of the urban environment), in which this study has been carried out.&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals CITYWIDE ESTIMATION OF PARKING SPACE USING AERIAL IMAGERY AND OSM DATA FUSION WITH DEEP LEARNING AND FINE-GRAINED ANNOTATION

2021 ◽  
Vol XLIII-B2-2021 ◽  
pp. 479-485
Author(s):  
C. Henry ◽  
J. Hellekes ◽  
N. Merkle ◽  
S. M. Azimi ◽  
F. Kurz
Keyword(s):  
Data Fusion ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Traffic Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Aerial Imagery ◽  
Parking Space ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Actual Use

Abstract. Emerging traffic management technologies, smart parking applications, together with transport researchers and urban planners are interested in fine-grained data on parking space in cities. However, there are no standardized, complete and up-to-date databases for many urban areas. Moreover, manual data collection is expensive and time-consuming. Aerial imagery of entire cities can be used to inventory not only publicly accessible and dedicated parking lots, but also roadside parking areas and those on private property. For a realistic estimation of the total parking space, the observed use of multi-functional traffic areas is taken into account by segmenting not only parking areas but also roads according to their purpose. In this paper, different U-Net based architectures are tested for detecting all these types of visible traffic areas. A new large-scale, high-quality dataset of manual annotations is used in combination with selected contextual information from OpenStreetMap (OSM) to depict the actual use as parking space. Our models achieve a good performance on parking area segmentation, and we show the significant impact of OSM data fusion in deep neural networks on the simultaneous extraction of multiple traffic areas compared to using aerial imagery alone.

Crowdsensing in Smart Cities

2019 ◽  
pp. 893-915
Author(s):  
Paolo Bellavista ◽  
Giuseppe Cardone ◽  
Antonio Corradi ◽  
Luca Foschini ◽  
Raffaele Ianniello
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Technical Data ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Living Lab ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
One Year ◽  
The University

The widespread availability of smartphones with on-board sensors has recently enabled the possibility of harvesting large quantities of monitoring data in urban areas, thus enabling so-called crowdsensing solutions, which make it possible to achieve very large-scale and fine-grained sensing by exploiting all personal resources and mobile activities in Smart Cities. In fact, the information gathered from people, systems, and things, including both social and technical data, is one of the most valuable resources available to a city's stakeholders, but its huge volume makes its integration and processing, especially in a real-time and scalable manner, very difficult. This chapter presents and discusses currently available crowdsensing and participatory solutions. After presenting the current state-of-the-art crowdsensing management infrastructures, by carefully considering the related and primary design guidelines/choices and implementation issues/opportunities, it provides an in-depth presentation of the related work in the field. Moreover, it presents some novel experimental results collected in the ParticipAct Crowdsensing Living Lab testbed, an ongoing experiment at the University of Bologna that involves 150 students for one year in a very large-scale crowdsensing campaign.

Crowdsensing in Smart Cities

2015 ◽  
pp. 316-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Bellavista ◽  
Giuseppe Cardone ◽  
Antonio Corradi ◽  
Luca Foschini ◽  
Raffaele Ianniello
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Technical Data ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Living Lab ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
One Year ◽  
The University

The widespread availability of smartphones with on-board sensors has recently enabled the possibility of harvesting large quantities of monitoring data in urban areas, thus enabling so-called crowdsensing solutions, which make it possible to achieve very large-scale and fine-grained sensing by exploiting all personal resources and mobile activities in Smart Cities. In fact, the information gathered from people, systems, and things, including both social and technical data, is one of the most valuable resources available to a city's stakeholders, but its huge volume makes its integration and processing, especially in a real-time and scalable manner, very difficult. This chapter presents and discusses currently available crowdsensing and participatory solutions. After presenting the current state-of-the-art crowdsensing management infrastructures, by carefully considering the related and primary design guidelines/choices and implementation issues/opportunities, it provides an in-depth presentation of the related work in the field. Moreover, it presents some novel experimental results collected in the ParticipAct Crowdsensing Living Lab testbed, an ongoing experiment at the University of Bologna that involves 150 students for one year in a very large-scale crowdsensing campaign.

scholarly journals Urban Open Space as a Place for Social and Physical Well-being: Narratives from two Different Urban Settings of Kathmandu, Nepal

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishna Prasad Timalsina
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Urban Open Space ◽  
Urban Greenery ◽  
Conversational Interviews

Increasing population and densification of the cities lead to increasing land value by the high demand of land for housing and other infrastructure developments are the reasons that tend to decreasing open spaces in Kathmandu Valley in general, and Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) in particular.  Urban open space has been considered as a place that is accessible to all residents and is important in the urban context as such space provides an opportunity as a place for social interaction, networking, recreation, and various physical health exercises. However, different social and economic contexts of the society reflect different patterns of its uses. Two different urban settings (core urban area having indigenous dominant population and fringe urban areas having migrants’ dominant population) have been taken as a basis for analysis in this paper to look at how different urban societies use open spaces differently. Open spaces are not only important for maintaining urban greenery and beauty but are valued for accumulating social capital and enhancing physical well-being to the urban communities. These issues are analyzed through the interpretative research methodology by collecting the data through in-depth interviews, key informants’ interviews, informal conversational interviews, and non-participatory observation from two different urban settings of KMC. 

scholarly journals Is Deployment of Charging Station the Barrier to Electric Vehicle Fleet Development in EU Urban Areas? An Analytical Assessment Model for Large-Scale Municipality-Level EV Charging Infrastructures

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (21) ◽  
pp. 4704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talluri ◽  
Grasso ◽  
Chiaramonti
Keyword(s):  
Electric Vehicle ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Hybrid Electric Vehicle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Maximum Energy ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Charging Infrastructure

This work investigates minimum charging infrastructure size and cost for two typical EU urban areas and given passenger car electric vehicle (EV) fleets. Published forecasts sources were analyzed and compared with actual EU renewal fleet rate, deriving realistic EV growth figures. An analytical model, accounting for battery electric vehicle-plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (BEV-PHEV) fleets and publicly accessible and private residential charging stations (CS) were developed, with a novel data sorting method and EV fleet forecasts. Through a discrete-time Markov chain, the average daily distribution of charging events and related energy demand were estimated. The model was applied to simulated Florence and Bruxelles scenarios between 2020 and 2030, with a 1-year timestep resolution and a multiple scenario approach. EV fleet at 2030 ranged from 2.3% to 17.8% of total fleet for Florence, 4.6% to 16.5% for Bruxelles. Up to 2053 CS could be deployed in Florence and 5537 CS in Bruxelles, at estimated costs of ~8.3 and 21.4 M€ respectively. Maximum energy demand of 130 and 400 MWh was calculated for Florence and Bruxelles (10.3 MW and 31.7 MW respectively). The analysis shows some policy implications, especially as regards the distribution of fast vs. slow/medium CS, and the associated costs. The critical barrier for CS development in the two urban areas is thus likely to become the time needed to install CS in the urban context, rather than the related additional electric power and costs.

Species protection in areas conserved through community-driven direct democracy as compared with a large private land trust in California

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Benjamin J Crain ◽  
James N Sanchirico ◽  
Kailin Kroetz ◽  
Amy E Benefield ◽  
Paul R Armsworth
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Habitat Diversity ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Natural Diversity

SummaryProtected area systems include sites preserved by various institutions and mechanisms, but the benefits to biodiversity provided by different types of sites are poorly understood. Protected areas established by local communities for various reasons may provide complementary benefits to those established by large-scale agencies and organizations. Local communities are geographically constrained, however, and it remains unclear how effectively they protect biodiversity. We explored this issue by focusing on protected areas established through direct democracy via local ballot initiatives whereby communities vote to tax themselves for open space preservation. We compared the effectiveness of local ballot-protected areas to areas protected by a large-scale conservation actor, The Nature Conservancy (TNC). We evaluated how well the two protected area types correspond with amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and special status elements of natural diversity. Local ballot-protected areas differed from those of TNC in terms of size, location, proximity to urban areas and habitat diversity. In terms of potential habitat coverage, local ballot-protected areas outperformed TNC sites for all species groups with the exception of special status elements of natural diversity. While not necessarily targeting wildlife and habitats, we conclude that locally established protected areas can make an important contribution to biodiversity conservation.

scholarly journals MCS-RF: mobile crowdsensing–based air quality estimation with random forest

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 155014771880470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Feng ◽  
Ye Tian ◽  
Xiangyang Gong ◽  
Xirong Que ◽  
Wendong Wang
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
False Positive Rate ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
True Positive Rate ◽  
Mobile Crowdsensing ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Positive Rate

It is a great challenge to offer a fine-grained and accurate PM2.5 monitoring service in urban areas as required facilities are very expensive and huge. Since PM2.5 has a significant scattering effect on visible light, large-scale user-contributed image data collected by the mobile crowdsensing bring a new opportunity for understanding the urban PM2.5. In this article, we propose a fine-grained PM2.5 estimation method based on random forest with data announced by meteorological departments and collected from smartphone users without any PM2.5 measurement devices. We design and implement a platform to collect data in the real world including the image provided by users. By combining online learning and offline learning, the method based on random forest performs well in terms of time complexity and accuracy. We compare our method with two kinds of baselines: subsets of the whole data sets and six classical models (such as logistic, naive Bayes). Six kinds of evaluation indexes (precision, recall, true-positive rate, false-positive rate, F-measure, and receiver operating characteristic curve area) are used in the evaluation. The experimental results show that our method achieves high accuracy (precision: 0.875, recall: 0.872) on PM2.5 estimation, which outperforms the other methods.

scholarly journals Urban Densification of Large Housing Estates in the Context of Privatisation of Public Open Space: the Case of Imanta, Riga

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-110
Author(s):  
Sandra Treija ◽  
Uģis Bratuškins ◽  
Alisa Koroļova
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Housing Area ◽  
New Development ◽  
Large Housing Estates ◽  
City Model ◽  
Housing Estates

Abstract Urban regeneration with a view to efficient use of urban areas has been a strategy for urban development for decades. Densification is used as a planning approach to promote the implementation of the compact city model and to discourage urban sprawl. The central parts of the city are usually of high density, so the areas outside the city’s historic centre are seen as potential sites for urban densification. In many European cities large-scale residential areas built after the Second World War occupy a significant part of the territory outside of the city’s historic centres. Today, these housing areas are in most cases sleeping areas with great potential for development. Densification of urban areas outside of urban nuclei is not an easy task, and deals with a whole series of challenges. The paper examines the existing approaches focused on densification in large housing estates. In order to define the typical challenges of this process, the examples of infill developments in large housing area Imanta in Riga are analysed. The analysis of infill development in Imanta showed four possible approaches. Some approaches contribute to the improvement of public space for neighbourhood inhabitants in general, still some approaches tend to isolate the new development and inhabitants from the surrounding territory.

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