This paper asks how the livability of socially disadvantaged urban neighborhoods can be improved with the help of publicly funded area-based urban regeneration. It builds on the history of area-based regeneration policies in Germany aiming at upgrading and resolving urban problems at the neighborhood level. Its main argument is as follows. First, the fate of conventional physical upgrading policies focusing on the livability of deprived urban areas depends on the development environment. While successful upgrading sometimes makes inner-city neighborhoods so attractive that they run into a trend towards gentrification and displacement of the urban poor, the stabilization of less privileged areas cannot always be guaranteed. Second, alternative approaches are needed, linking limited physical upgrading with socially oriented policies, building on strategies like neighborhood management and empowerment. Third, they can make a substantial contribution to stabilizing deprived neighborhoods, thereby improving the general living conditions and the opportunities of the urban poor. However, they require at least some permanent intervention. Thus, they transcend the logic of area-based regeneration normally limited to restoring faith into the private real estate market and thereby directing inward investment into them that improves the quality of the physical environment. Fourth, they are hardly able to overcome significant negative stigmatization in cities that are severely hit by economic downturn and population decline. This is especially true when they act as arrival areas for consecutive waves of migrants, making it necessary to redefine the role of those areas in cities and accepting their high concentration of urban problems as a starting point for different area-based policies dealing with them. The key empirical background of the paper is the German system of urban development grants and an evaluation of the so-called program of „socially integrative city”.
Dramatic changes in the economic systems and land rights in the recent history of China yielded unique but complex urban forms for many cities. The complexity of urban form is mostly manifested as ambiguous relations between elements of the physical form and between the physical form and human behavior. Currently, these ambiguities become obstacles that increasingly hinder urban regeneration. However, despite the fast-growing research on the morphology of Chinese cities, our understanding of the complexity of their built form is still in its infancy. Taking the city of Nanjing as the case study, this study attempts to decipher the complexity of its built form by investigating its plot patterns. Six samples, dating back to different development periods, are selected and analyzed in terms of both a physical entity and a unit of property. The results show that the complexity of plots is largely attributable to the inconsistency between their spatial boundaries as physical entities and as units of property. Accordingly, the plots of all six samples are re-recognized and two generic types of plot sub-series, co-inflection and embeddedness, are developed as a prism to decipher the built form complexity. The findings contribute to the theory on the compositional hierarchy of urban forms and may shed light on the urban regeneration of Chinese cities as well.
Urban spatial identity, as the core content of a distinctive urban image and the representation of urban competitiveness and attraction, is critical to cities in the rapid development process. In view of maintaining and strengthening the spatial identity in a historic urban area, which is the key issue of urban construction in China at present, based on the literature review of Chinese urban spatial identity studies, three research paradigms are summarized: landscape, culture, and economy. Although the traditional evaluation method of spatial identity in historic urban areas has focused on the scarcity of characteristic resources, the relation-ship between characteristic resources and human beings has been ignored. Therefore, based on the declaration of the fundamental mechanism of urban spatial identity in historic urban areas, a new evaluation method was proposed considering four aspects, including object, subject, content, and indicators. The results indicated that the framework of evaluation and design, which is based on the assessment of the relationship between characteristic resources and human beings, is an effective strategy to improve the scientific evaluation of urban spatial identity. Our study has substantial implications for urban planners and managers in solving the urban identity crisis issue in historic urban areas.
Events can bring important impetus to urban development. In addition to hardware investments, such as infrastructure, events also have important potential in the development of knowledge cities. Nanjing is a typical city where China’s knowledge industry is rapidly growing. Since the end of the last century, Nanjing has been promoting new district development on the city’s periphery and has hosted a series of events, including the 10th National Games in 2005 and the 2nd Youth Olympic Games in 2014. In this process, the city government also hopes to explore the potential of the knowledge economy and is committed to providing a new direction for urban development.
This work reviews the history of Nanjing’s knowledge city development from two different dimensions (land development and knowledge development) and summarises the related achievements and lessons in different periods. The authors aim to identify the diverse effects of events in urban social and economic development based on the analysis of the differences in governance structure between land development and knowledge development. This work contributes to the literature on events and provides insights into the potential uses of events as a mechanism for knowledge-driven urban development.
Against the backdrop of a healthy city initiative in helping encourage and facilitate walking behavior, this study first elaborates the fitness function of the ladder trails, which largely form the daily living spaces for the people in mountainous cities or areas. It then analyses the existing research on the elements and guidelines of environmental design from the perspective of their pedestrian friendliness while discussing their suitability to the needs of the elderly. With the research framework set up in the first part, empirical research focusing on the walking behavior of the elderly has been carried out based on two comparable cases of Chongqing Mountain trails. Observing, survey, and interviews have been applied to collect the data. This study concludes with a summary of the elements and principles for designing ladder trails, which are walking-friendly for the elderly.
A proper location is one of the most influential factors in shelter performance. Although considerable research focuses on finding a suitable site for temporary shelters, only a few address the effect of post-disaster circumstances on discovering the optimal location. This study primarily aims to investigate the influential factors in determining a suitable place for temporary shelters after a crisis. Therefore, an algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is achieved by analyzing and computing the post-crisis urban route and facility accessibility based on photogrammetric photographs taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle/satellite.
The authenticity of architectural heritage is interpreted differently in diverse cultural traditions. Can this inspire the conservation and contemporary regeneration of architectural heritage to adapt to the changing needs of modern life and society, rather than static exhibits in museums? This research focuses on Ganlan (pile-built timber construction) architecture to demonstrate how adaptive conservation and regeneration can keep traditional construction systems living and sustainable. Ganlan, a vernacular architectural archetype in the humid subtropical regions of Asia, has the following common features: free plans with an assembling frame structure, open and interactive envelopes to cope with the hot and damp climate, and stilts to deal with the rugged terrain. This research employed a threefold method of field investigation, topological deformation, and experimental design in examining Lianghekou, a historic Tujia village in Western Hubei, China. The findings reveal that Tujia people build their stilt houses with adaptable features to meet the changing functional requirements and variable topographies. These traditions can be transmitted into the contemporary design, as our experimental design illustrates. The self-adaptability and topological deformation of Ganlan architectural heritage demonstrate a unique perspective of understanding authenticity, and contribute toward innovative application in the conservation and regeneration of vernacular architecture.
Environment psychologically affects individuals. According to the base of cognitive psychology, there is a direct relationship between human behavior, environment, and emotional process. Assuming that pleasantness and unpleasantness are associated with peripheral nervous system activation, the current study aims to explore if the pleasant or unpleasant architectural places can stimulate the brain regions engaged in emotions or not. As the main contribution, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measuring blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) changes to effectively detect the brain’s region that mainly responds to the emotional-perceptual processes. Based on the results of examining the emotional assessment model of „Pleasure-Arousal” applied to 140 students, 30 most-rated images representing 15 pleasant and 15 unpleasant places were shown to 32 participants in a 1.5-T MRI scanner. After applying standard preprocessing steps (re-alignment, slice-timing, coregistration, segmentation, normalization, and smoothing) to functional MR images, first-level analysis was applied to each subject. The results were evaluated using statistical corrections at different levels for female and male participants with the second-level analysis. In conclusion, it has been shown that there is a significant linkage between environmental experience and brain activation so that the architectural qualities can change blood flow in specific brain regions.
This paper aims to contribute to the development of spatial criteria for adaptive capacity, which is identified as one important factor for the transition towards more circular housing design. The paper focuses on the kitchen, as an important function of the home which is connected to large resource flows and is exposed to frequent renovations and replacements. This paper identifies spatial characteristics of the kitchen and evaluates their potential to accommodate circular solutions focusing on adaptive capacity. As a first step, previous literature on the spatial characteristics of kitchens and indicators that support adaptability is reviewed. These are then used to develop an analytical framework to assess the adaptive capacity and circularity potential of 3624 kitchens in contemporary Swedish apartments. A qualitative approach in combination with quantitative methods is employed to analyse the selected sample. The main contributions of this paper include its spatial analytical framework, its descriptive presentation of contemporary kitchen and apartment designs, and its adaptive capacity assessment of the studied kitchens. The results point out that although the overcapacity of the floor area of kitchens and apartments can have significance for adaptability, it is not the only determinative spatial characteristics. The windows’ location and distribution, the number of door openings and traffic zones, the shafts’ location and accessibility from multiple rooms, the room typology and the kitchen typology can improve the adaptive capacity and circularity potential of kitchens and dwellings. The findings show that in contemporary floorplans advantageous design solutions connected to the identified spatial characteristics are not applied in a systematic way. Further research is necessary to define the exact measures of the individual spatial characteristics and their combined application in multiresidential floorplan design.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the context of an extensive project to reform opera, German composer Richard Wagner began to envision a new kind of theater building that finally saw the light in 1876 in Bayreuth as the Festspielhaus. In the following century, Italian architect Aldo Rossi evoked its characteristic features in his reconstruction project of the Carlo Felice Opera House in Genoa, a building that had been partially destroyed during World War II and was reopened to the public in 1991. At the same time, he restored the relationship between architecture and the city that Wagnerian precepts had more or less consciously eliminated. By revisiting the time that separates the two buildings, and specifically the changes that the most important playhouses underwent, this essay attempts to capture the distinctive elements of the Wagnerian playhouse in order to evaluate what remains of them, what was omitted, and what was subtracted from later buildings that either exist only as projects or that were in fact actualized.
Urban peninsulas are an important category with distinctive geographical characteristics in the history of human settlements. Despite their time-honored development, abundant cultural accumulation, and developed water transportation, a considerable number of world-famous urban peninsulas demonstrate a remarkable feature of high-density development because of their limited space for expansion. Based on the in-depth analysis of the connotation and features of urban peninsulas, this study summarizes five basic elements concerning the space of urban peninsulas, namely, capes, boundaries, networks, nodes, and cores. On the basis of these five elements, different high-density developmental modes of urban peninsulas are construed to provide a reference model for the location, density control, and urban structure of high-rise building clusters in peninsulas and further reveal the significance and value of high-rise buildings in shaping the special urban form of peninsulas.
Streets are one of the major elements that make-up the urban environment. Urban commercial and mixed-use street types occur as public spaces in every town and city all around the world. With the paucity of such spaces, streets have taken up to solve the problem. Hence, this study assesses the key physical, visual, and aesthetical characteristics and examines the influence of aesthetical attributes over the activity pattern, user behavioral responses, and the color palette observed. Moreover, this research has been carried out in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. Four significant commercial streets were identified and featured in the main study. The research method comprehends a structured questionnaire and multiple interviews to amass data, photo elicitation, and video corroboration to identify the key visual characteristics to study and scrutinize the aesthetical responses to various attributes that make good-looking urban commercial and mixed-use street types. The results of the study indicate that the diversity and perceived pleasantness of the environment, which includes elements such as facades, colors, aspect ratios, maintenance, and vegetation, has a very close association with walking preferences. The outcome of the study would also help architects, urban designers and planners, and policy makers to create positive spaces to foster urban commercial street types as place-making and aesthetically pleasing streets.
A courtyard is an architectural design element which is often known as microclimate modifiers and is responsible to increase the indoor occupant comfort in traditional architecture. The aim of this study is to conduct a parametric evaluation of courtyard design variants in a residential building of different climates with a focus on indoor thermal comfort and utility costs. A brute-force approach is applied to generate a wide range of design alternatives and the simulation workflow is conducted by Grasshopper together with the environmental plugins Ladybug and Honeybee. The main study objective is the evaluation of the occupant thermal comfort in an air-conditioned residential building, energy load, and cost analysis, derived from different design variables including courtyard geometry, window-to-wall ratio, envelope materials, heating, and cooling set-point dead-bands, and building geographical location. Furthermore, a Deep Learning model is developed using the inputs and outputs of the simulation and analysis to transform the outcomes into the algorithmic and tangible environment feasible for predictive applications. The results suggest that regarding the thermal loads, costs, and indoor thermal comfort index (PMV), there are high correlations between the outdoor weather variation and dead-band ranges, while in extreme climates such as Singapore, courtyard spaces might not be efficient enough as expected. Finally, the highly accurate deep learning model is also developed, delivering superior predictive capabilities for the thermal comfort and utility costs of the courtyard designs.
The ocean is a crucial area for future economic development. The marine environment has high energy-efficient and ecological requirements for building construction. Meteorological parameters are the key basis for the analysis and design of building energy efficiency. The lack of meteorological parameters for energy efficiency, particularly hourly data, under oceanic climatic conditions is a universal problem. The appropriate calculation methods of hourly meteorological parameters under oceanic climatic conditions are explored in this study. The impact of the calculation errors of the hourly meteorological parameters on building energy consumption is also analyzed. Three key meteorological parameters are selected: temperature, humidity, and wind speed. Five hourly calculations methods, including linear interpolation, cubic spline interpolation, pieceated three-Hermite interpolation, Akima interpolation, and radial basis function interpolation, are selected to calculate the error of the difference method, with Xiamen, Haikou, and Sanya as the locations of meteorological research. Appropriate interpolation methods are selected for the three parameters, and the seasonal and regional characteristics of the errors of each parameter are compared. Different interpolation methods should be selected for different meteorological parameters in different seasons. The error data of the three parameters of different magnitudes are constructed. A quantitative relationship between the sum of squares due to error of the three meteorological parameters and the rate of change of cooling energy consumption is established. The hourly calculation errors of meteorological parameters have an important impact on the calculation of dynamic energy consumption. The energy consumption differences caused by the errors of different parameters are significant. Obvious regional and seasonal differences also exist. This research strengthens the research foundation of building energy consumption calculation under oceanic climate conditions.