TREE CROWN MAPPING BASED ON UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV) TOWARDS A GREEN-SUSTAINABLE RESIDENTIAL

Tree crown plays a crucial role in creating urban characters and spatial arrangements of living environment towards a green-sustainable city. It provides the fundamental needs for human’s living quality and health conditions such as improving water quality, preserving energy, minimising greenhouse gasses, and beautification and comfortable purposes. Therefore, there is a need for urban planners to recognise its importance and plan for it wisely. This paper attempts to demonstrate a mapping tree crowns for a case of the residential neighbourhood using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based GIS technologies. Four main stages involved in a mapping tree crown process namely: flight planning, data acquisition, data processing and analyses and results. As a result, this paper able to show the capabilities of the technologies in measuring and mapping tree crowns for the residential neighbourhood. Moreover, it provides urban planners with informative scenario of the tree planting and clarifies its importance for future planning and benefits – in creating and promoting a green-sustainable and healthy living environment.

Gerrard India Bazaar : an atypical ethnic economy in a residential neighbourhood

The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the thesis that ethnic economies development from a co-ethnic residential context. This paper presents the Gerrard India Bazaar located at Gerrard Street East and Coxwell Ave. in Toronto, Ontario, as a South Asian ethnic economy that has developed into an ethnic commercial district without a corresponding coethnic neighbourhood. This paper explores the process and challenges that have accompanied the development of the Gerrard India Bazaar with the use of newspaper documentation on the area and business information from 1971, 1982, 1991, 1996 and 2009 MIGHTS Business Directory and 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006 Census Data on the area. Findings from the research demonstrate that ethnic economics can be sustained without a co-ethnic neighborhood as long as there is co-occurring emergence of formal aspects of institutional completeness, accommodation to the residential environment and marketability to the mainstream market.

Gerrard India Bazaar : an atypical ethnic economy in a residential neighbourhood

The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the thesis that ethnic economies development from a co-ethnic residential context. This paper presents the Gerrard India Bazaar located at Gerrard Street East and Coxwell Ave. in Toronto, Ontario, as a South Asian ethnic economy that has developed into an ethnic commercial district without a corresponding coethnic neighbourhood. This paper explores the process and challenges that have accompanied the development of the Gerrard India Bazaar with the use of newspaper documentation on the area and business information from 1971, 1982, 1991, 1996 and 2009 MIGHTS Business Directory and 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006 Census Data on the area. Findings from the research demonstrate that ethnic economics can be sustained without a co-ethnic neighborhood as long as there is co-occurring emergence of formal aspects of institutional completeness, accommodation to the residential environment and marketability to the mainstream market.

A Case Study of Non-Violent Property Crime Victimisation in a South African Urban Residential Neighbourhood: Exploring the Excessive Use of Force and Destruction Caused by Burglars to Gain Entry to Victims' Properties

Commentators frequently report on the high prevalence of violent crime in South Africa and often label the country as one of the most violent in the world, with a subculture of violence and criminality. This paper focuses on a different perspective, reporting on the excessive use of force and destruction caused by offenders in South Africa to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes, in a particular residential burglary. Literature on property crimes has been considering the aggravating circumstances of violent property crimes. However, the use of excessive force and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties in the execution of residential burglary remains relatively untested in the literature. In this light, the purpose of this study is to describe the unprecedented levels of force used and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties during residential burglary victimisation in an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. A qualitative research approach is followed. A case study design was used to select an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg as a case study. A data set of (n = 1 431) crimes were purposively selected by means of non-probability sampling. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. This paper offers valuable insight into the forceful and destructive conduct of burglars in the selected neighbourhood and contributes to the body of knowledge by providing an improved understanding of target hardening as a preventive measure against residential burglary victimisation as well as on methods of entry used by burglars in incidents of residential burglary. The results of reported non-violent property crime victimisation incidences by this community's neighbourhood watch scheme suggest that residential burglars in the selected neighbourhood are uncharacteristically forceful and ravage in their actions since they frequently revert to extreme use of force and destruction, disproportionate to the crime perpetrated. It is concluded that this radical degree of force used and destruction caused by residential burglars to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes is not typically associated with residential burglary as compared to countries internationally.

Climatic Envelope as an Urban Planning Tool to Configure Urban Fabric of Guwahati City to Support Daylight and Natural Ventilation

Over the last decade, as a result of rapid urban growth and increasing human population, Guwahati city is witnessing multilayered transformation owing to socio-economic, geo-political and technological issues. This constant increase of built form is resulting haphazard urban growth pattern in down town city areas sacrificing the access to daylight and solar radiation inside residential buildings. Even though the development pattern of Guwahati is controlled by established GMDA building bye-laws; these building regulations and guidelines are unable to control the organic growth of the city since there is no climate-sensitive approach available in the existing GMDA bye-laws. This paper aims to discuss the likelihood of constructing a composite climatic envelope by using daylight spacing angle and solar elevation angle techniques within the residential zone of Guwahati city. This paper also analyses how climatic envelope technique helps to establish an efficient height-to-width (H/W) ratio in spatial arrangement of residential neighbourhood and ensures a higher levels of daylight factor (DF), permits solar access to the neighboring buildings and also enables better ventilation rate inside every rooms of residential buildings. This paper analyses further to discuss about the performance of natural ventilation inside building envelope and reviews the common energy code of openable window to floor area (WFRop) ratio in urban residential buildings. During this study, an existing urban spatial arrangement of residential neighbourhood under GMDA jurisdiction is studied, discussed and analysed. Results of this study, plotting H/W ratio against average daylight factor and ventilation rate can be used as a preliminary urban design tool to configure the urban fabric especially within the residential zone of GMDA area.

Activity locations, residential segregation and the significance of residential neighbourhood boundary perceptions

The inadequacies of residential census geography in capturing urban residents’ routine exposures have motivated efforts to more directly measure residents’ activity spaces. In turn, insights regarding urban activity patterns have been used to motivate alternative residential neighbourhood measurement strategies incorporating dimensions of activity space in the form of egocentric neighbourhoods – measurement approaches that place individuals at the centre of their own residential neighbourhood units. Unexamined, however, is the extent to which the boundaries of residents’ own self-defined residential neighbourhoods compare with census-based and egocentric neighbourhood measurement approaches in aligning with residents’ routine activity locations. We first assess this question, examining whether the boundaries of residents’ self-defined residential neighbourhoods are in closer proximity to the coordinates of a range of activity location types than are the boundaries of their census and egocentric residential neighbourhood measurement approaches. We find little evidence that egocentric or, crucially, self-defined residential neighbourhoods better align with activity locations, suggesting a division in residents’ activity locations and conceptions of their residential neighbourhoods. We then examine opposing hypotheses about how self-defined residential neighbourhoods and census tracts compare in socioeconomic and racial composition. Overall, our findings suggest that residents bound less segregated neighbourhoods than those produced by census geography, but self-defined residential neighbourhoods still reflect a preference towards homophily when considering areas beyond the immediate environment of their residence. These findings underscore the significance of individuals’ conceptions of residential neighbourhoods to understanding and measuring urban social processes such as residential segregation and social disorganisation.

Nearby Neighbourhood Influences on Adolescent Offending

This study extends recent research on the spatial dynamics of neighbourhood disadvantage and youth offending. Data include self-reported offences from 794 Dutch adolescents and the socio-economic status in their residential neighbourhood and the surrounding community. The findings reveal that youth engage in the highest levels of offending when they reside in disadvantaged neighbourhoods surrounded by neighbourhoods characterized by relative affluence. This spatial pattern is attributable to greater temptations to offend, reduced parental monitoring, and more frequent involvement in unstructured activities among youths who live in close proximity to neighbourhoods more affluent than their own. This study highlights the importance of criminogenic opportunities and parental monitoring for understanding the spatial dynamics of neighbourhood disadvantage on offending.