scholarly journals Place-Making of Transit Towns in Qatar: The Case of Qatar National Museum-Souq Waqif Corridor

Designs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Khalida Marthya ◽  
Raffaello Furlan ◽  
Labeeb Ellath ◽  
Maha Esmat ◽  
Rashid Al-Matwi

Over the last two decades, Doha, the capital city of Qatar, has undergone rapid urbanization. The city has capitalized large-scale urban and infrastructural projects resulting in a loss of historical areas of heritage value to people. Recent construction of the Doha Metro is opening avenues for place-making of transit towns through a framework envisioned by the need to shape compact, livable and sustainable neighborhoods and to mitigate the effects of urbanization on valuable historical heritage sites. Due to its historic significance, the Qatar National Museum (QNM)-Souq Waqif corridor is the case study selected for exploring and defining a framework for a contextualized place-making transit-oriented development (TOD) model. The research design is structured by reviewing the literature about TODs and the need for place-making model in Qatar, followed by collecting visual data from municipal authorities, through site visits, and site observations. The data are then analyzed to propose a novel masterplan, rooted in key urban design components of place-making. The insights will contribute to proposals for context-driven design strategies to enhance livability of the site and to extend its application to other potential transit hubs in metropolitan Doha and in the Middle East.

Author(s):  
V. A. Girelli ◽  
L. Borgatti ◽  
M. Dellapasqua ◽  
E. Mandanici ◽  
M. C. Spreafico ◽  
...  

The research activities described in this contribution were carried out at San Leo (Italy). The town is located on the top of a quadrangular rock slab affected by a complex system of fractures and has a wealth of cultural heritage, as evidenced by the UNESCO’s nomination.<br><br> The management of this fragile set requires a comprehensive system of geometrical information to analyse and preserve all the geological and cultural features. In this perspective, the latest Geomatics techniques were used to perform some detailed surveys and to manage the great amount of acquired geometrical knowledge of both natural (the cliff) and historical heritage. All the data were also georeferenced in a unique reference system.<br><br> In particular, high accurate terrestrial laser scanner surveys were performed for the whole cliff, in order to obtain a dense point cloud useful for a large number of geological studies, among others the analyses of the last rockslide by comparing pre- and post-event data.<br><br> Moreover, the geometrical representation of the historical centre was performed using different approaches, in order to generate an accurate DTM and DSM of the site. For these purposes, a large scale numerical map was used, integrating the data with GNSS and laser surveys of the area.<br><br> Finally, many surveys were performed with different approaches on some of the most relevant monuments of the town. In fact, these surveys were performed by terrestrial laser scanner, light structured scanner and photogrammetry, the last mainly applied with the Structure from Motion approach.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-567
Author(s):  
Daniel Bergquist ◽  
Christine A. Hempel ◽  
John Lööf Green

Purpose This paper aims to describe an exploratory research and design process that uses illustrative techniques to bridge the gap between theoretical principles of systems ecology, stakeholder input and a workable physical planning strategy for Ultuna Campus in Uppsala, Sweden. Design/methodology/approach Stakeholder interviews provide the empirical basis for this exploratory design process, in conjunction with landscape analysis, and review of previous proposals for campus development. Central principles of self-organizing systems are selected and concretized as visionary hypotheses in a physical context. Preliminary design concepts and plans illustrate sustainable systems while supporting new functional programmatic requirements: housing, industry-research collaboration, transportation and community-integrated landscapes. Findings The result is a proposal based on regenerative landscape design, envisioning campus Ultuna as a coherent whole. Research limitations/implications A large-scale modern building program is already underway at Ultuna, and rapid urbanization in the surrounding region coupled with projected growth on campus suggests future intensification of university lands. A master plan to be implemented until 2040 is now in the preliminary design phase. Ultuna is home to significant cultural and ecological landscapes, and a holistic approach is called for. Practical implications Illustrative techniques suggest ways to synthesize knowledge by creating future scenarios that are workable in practice. Social implications Global challenges call for designs that enhance environmental and human resources and their capacity to regenerate over time. Sustainability objectives are particularly crucial when envisioning university campuses; the environment serves as a laboratory for researchers, teachers, students and residents of the surrounding community. Originality/value This paper describes an innovative process for bridging ecological principles, stakeholder perspectives and practical design strategies for sustainable campuses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-130
Author(s):  
Līva Garkāje

AbstractToday’s European historical city centre streetscapes, many of which are designated cultural heritage sites, consist of a mix of urban and architectural housing heritage of different periods, including post World War II period buildings. Nevertheless, knowledge of history of historical centre post-war housing and their artistic and cultural-historical values of this recent past is still insufficient, to a certain degree contradictory, and in some cases even incorrect. This is particularly accurate regarding Modern Movement serial or type Soviet housing in former Soviet republics. This paper presents an ongoing research intended to identify valuable housing streetscape architecture and urban layout traits of post-war period in Latvia (1945–1990) in the environment of historic centre. The goal is to provide specialists in planning and heritage fields with appropriate evaluation criteria and correct know-how material on the theme, as well as general public with cultural historical information considering post-war housing heritage. In this study an example of post-war Modern Movement serial Soviet housing in the historical centre of Riga, the capital city of Latvia, and its protection zone is drawn. The research is based on mapping and auditing streetscapes using Maryland Inventory with this housing typology in historical built environment to identify most common characteristics and qualities of these buildings. The main conclusions are that historical street-scapes do not have significant qualitative differences from historical mixed with post-war housing streetscapes, whereas the quality of streetscapes with dominating post-war modern housing tends to differ from historical streetscapes, as well as has similar shortcomings to those of the large-scale housing block streetscapes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki K. M. Tanaka ◽  
Kenji Sumiya ◽  
László Oláh

Abstract. Bidirectional muographic measurements were conducted at the Imashirozuka burial mound, Japan. The mound was built in the beginning of the 6th century as a megalithic tomb and was later collapsed after a landslide caused by the 1596 Fushimi Earthquake, one of the largest earthquakes that have occurred in Japan over last few centuries. The measurements were conducted in order to find evidence of this past disaster recorded in this historical heritage sites. As a result, the vertical low-density regions were found at the top of the mound. These regions were interpreted as large-scale vertical cracks that caused the translational collapse process behind the rotational landslide that was already found in the prior trench-survey-based works. These results indicate that there was an intrinsic problem with the stability of the basic foundation of the Imashirozuka mound before the 1596 Fushimi Earthquake.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5108
Author(s):  
Navin Ranjan ◽  
Sovit Bhandari ◽  
Pervez Khan ◽  
Youn-Sik Hong ◽  
Hoon Kim

The transportation system, especially the road network, is the backbone of any modern economy. However, with rapid urbanization, the congestion level has surged drastically, causing a direct effect on the quality of urban life, the environment, and the economy. In this paper, we propose (i) an inexpensive and efficient Traffic Congestion Pattern Analysis algorithm based on Image Processing, which identifies the group of roads in a network that suffers from reoccurring congestion; (ii) deep neural network architecture, formed from Convolutional Autoencoder, which learns both spatial and temporal relationships from the sequence of image data to predict the city-wide grid congestion index. Our experiment shows that both algorithms are efficient because the pattern analysis is based on the basic operations of arithmetic, whereas the prediction algorithm outperforms two other deep neural networks (Convolutional Recurrent Autoencoder and ConvLSTM) in terms of large-scale traffic network prediction performance. A case study was conducted on the dataset from Seoul city.


Author(s):  
Longbiao Chen ◽  
Chenhui Lu ◽  
Fangxu Yuan ◽  
Zhihan Jiang ◽  
Leye Wang ◽  
...  

Urban villages refer to the residential areas lagging behind the rapid urbanization process in many developing countries. These areas are usually with overcrowded buildings, high population density, and low living standards, bringing potential risks of public safety and hindering the urban development. Therefore, it is crucial for urban authorities to identify the boundaries of urban villages and estimate their resident and floating populations so as to better renovate and manage these areas. Traditional approaches, such as field surveys and demographic census, are time consuming and labor intensive, lacking a comprehensive understanding of urban villages. Against this background, we propose a two-phase framework for urban village boundary identification and population estimation. Specifically, based on heterogeneous open government data, the proposed framework can not only accurately identify the boundaries of urban villages from large-scale satellite imagery by fusing road networks guided patches with bike-sharing drop-off patterns, but also accurately estimate the resident and floating populations of urban villages with a proposed multi-view neural network model. We evaluate our method leveraging real-world datasets collected from Xiamen Island. Results show that our framework can accurately identify the urban village boundaries with an IoU of 0.827, and estimate the resident population and floating population with R2 of 0.92 and 0.94 respectively, outperforming the baseline methods. We also deploy our system on the Xiamen Open Government Data Platform to provide services to both urban authorities and citizens.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Pavel Domalewski ◽  
Jan Baxa

Abstract The factors that were crucial for the construction of administrative buildings in the regional capitals of the Czech Republic are subject to examination in this article. One primary question is whether the development of office construction reflects the qualitative importance of the cities, or whether there are some other regularities in the spatial distribution of construction. To identify the key factors, controlled interviews with experts professionally involved in the construction of administrative buildings were carried out, and these data were then extended as part of a large-scale questionnaire survey with other experts on the issue. The results have confirmed the dominant position of the capital city of Prague in terms of its qualitative importance, as the remaining regional capitals have less than one-tenth of the volume of modern office building areas. The greatest differences in the construction of administrative buildings have been noted in Brno and Ostrava, despite the fact that they exhibit similar characteristics when considered in the light of respondent-determined factors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1556
Author(s):  
Chuanhao Pu ◽  
Qiang Xu ◽  
Kuanyao Zhao ◽  
Yanan Jiang ◽  
Lina Hao ◽  
...  

A mega project, Mountain Excavation and City Construction (MECC), was launched in the hilly and gully region of the Chinese Loess Plateau in 2012, in order to address the shortage of available land and create new flat land for urban construction. However, large-scale land creation and urban expansion significantly alters the local geological environment, leading to severe ground deformation. This study investigated the topographic changes, ground deformation, and their interactions due to the MECC project in the Yan’an New District (YND). First, new surface elevations were generated using ZiYuan-3 (ZY-3) stereo images acquired after the construction in order to map the local topographic changes and the fill thickness associated with the MECC project. Then, the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) time series and 32 Sentinel-1A images were used to assess the spatial patterns of the ground deformation in the YND during the postconstruction period (2017–2018). By combining the InSAR-derived results and topographic change features, the relationship between the ground deformation and large-scale land creation was further analyzed. The results indicated that the MECC project in the YND has created over 22 km2 of flat land, including 10.8 km2 of filled area, with a maximum fill thickness of ~110 m. Significant uneven ground deformation was detected in the land-creation area, with a maximum subsidence rate of approximately 121 mm/year, which was consistent with the field survey. The strong correlation between the observed subsidence patterns and the land creation project suggested that this recorded uneven subsidence was primarily related to the spatial distribution of the filling works, along with the changes in the thickness and geotechnical properties of the filled loess; moreover, rapid urbanization, such as road construction, can accelerate the subsidence process. These findings can guide improvements in urban planning and the mitigation of geohazards in regions experiencing large-scale land construction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hang Xu ◽  
FuLong Chen

&lt;p&gt;Architectural heritage is cultural and spiritual symbol of our predecessors with immeasurable historical, artistic, and technological value. However, these heritages are exposed to long-term degradation due to the combination impacts from the natural erosion and anthropogenic activities. Consequently, it is important to establish an effective deformation monitoring system to support the sustainable conservation of those properties. In order to make complementary to conventional geodetic measurements such as global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and leveling in terms of spatial density, we propose a landscape-ontology scale multi-temporal InSAR (MTInSAR) solution for the preventive deformation monitoring of large-scale architectural heritage sites through the adaption of current MTInSAR approaches. We apply different solutions in Shanhaiguan section of the Great Wall in China and the Angkor Wat in Cambodia based on their onsite characteristics. At the cultural landscape scale, we improve the small baseline subset (SBAS) approach by the induced pseudo-baseline strategy in order to avoid the errors caused by inaccurate external DEM, resulting in a robust deformation estimation in mountainous areas where the architecture heritage of the Great Wall located; at the ontology scale, we integrate the differential SAR tomography (DTomoSAR) with the finite element method (FEM) for the structural instability detection of the Angkor Wat Temple, pinpointing the structural defects from the 3D deformation measurements and simulation. This study demonstrates the capability of adaptive MTInSAR approaches for the preventive monitoring the deformation of large-scale architectural heritage sites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keywords&lt;/strong&gt;: Architectural heritage; two-scale; deformation; MTInSAR&lt;/p&gt;


2018 ◽  
Vol 05 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 1850014
Author(s):  
Jasdeep Singh

The discourse on resilient cities encapsulates various analogies, which are further constructed through the work of researchers in creation of several resilience assessment methodologies and toolkits. Despite the presence of numerous resilience assessment tools, there is an apparent lack of participation of residents of the global south within the assessment and iterative transformation processes. The situation, hence, is not truly represented through application of these tools in certain socio-political climates such as of India. Consistent economic growth of India has resulted in rapid urbanization of major cities. But, this has not been supplemented with proper planning, resulting in imbalances in all spheres of city infrastructure. Delhi, capital city of India, has been one of the worst hit cities. The hot seasons have caused thousands of fatalities in the past few years. An attempt is made to review the application of current resilience tools in Delhi against the backdrop of the sustainable development goals. In an attempt to improve the approach of these existing tools, an initial iteration is conducted, hinging on qualitative data obtained through surveying a sample population of the city and accessible quantitative metric data. Possible intervention scenarios are further suggested in view of aforementioned stressors and resilience scores. Research question: Where are the current resilience tools found lacking in the case of the global south, specifically in Delhi? How can the applicability of these tools be improved without compromising the deliverables yet ensuring an all-inclusive approach? Key findings: (1) The city is found lacking in adequate infrastructure facilities to its residents especially within the ambits of basic water and sanitation provision and healthcare services. (2) The city is relatively unprepared to face unforeseen events, both at the administrative and the grassroots levels. The lack of knowledge transfer and cooperation are largely evident.


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