Relating Interface Type, Building Type, Street Type and Local Travel Activity in Taipei

As part of the current trend for sustainable transport systems and for lively cities, considerable research has been conducted into the relationship between urban form and travel activity. Related Taiwanese studies are relatively scarce, however, perhaps because there is a lack of research about Taiwanese urban morphology. Therefore, establishing a complete urban form catalogue (including building type, street type, and interface type in particular) is the first step and prime objective for this thesis to contribute to the omission in the current academia, and further identifying the urban form types with their travel activity characteristics (mostly mode choice and walking behaviour) to recognise which form types are more favourable under the contexts of sustainable and lively lifestyle. Throughout the study, interfaces, i.e. the connections between different urban form components, are given particular focus. This is done firstly because interface is almost entirely undocumented in existing Taiwanese urban morphology, and secondly because, although the transition between the private and public domain is seen as playing a vital role in pedestrian or public life studies, but little discussion about it as an integral factor in most transport related research. This thesis is based on the study of both the physical fabric and residents’ travel activity pattern of Da-An District. Therefore, a two-dimensional coordinate system (x-y matrix) and cluster methods (e.g. K-Means) were used to classify the urban form types, whilst a questionnaire was used to gain the travel activity data. As a result, the urban form of the selected study area was found to comprise 10 building types, 12 street types, and 24 interface types. Through Chi-square tests, certain street and interface types were then found to be associated with certain transport mode shares for local trips. A number of specific interface types were further recognised as favourable (e.g. arcades with shop windows, and large landscaped front setbacks) or unfavourable (e.g. overhang without setback) to a sustainable and lively environment

A Survey of Smart Parking Solutions

International audienceConsidering the increase of urban population and traffic congestion, smart parking is always a strategic issue to work on, not only in the research field but also from economic interests. Thanks to information and communication technology evolution, drivers can more efficiently find satisfying parking spaces with smart parking services. The existing and ongoing works on smart parking are complicated and transdisciplinary. While deploying a smart parking system, cities, as well as urban engineers, need to spend a very long time to survey and inspect all the possibilities. Moreover, many varied works involve multiple disciplines, which are closely linked and inseparable. To give a clear overview, we introduce a smart parking ecosystem and propose a comprehensive and thoughtful classification by identifying their functionalities and problematic focuses. We go through the literature over the period of 2000-2016 on parking solutions as they were applied to smart parking development and evolution, and propose three macro-themes: information collection, system deployment, and service dissemination. In each macro-theme, we explain and synthesize the main methodologies used in the existing works and summarize their common goals and visions to solve current parking difficulties. Lastly, we give our engineering insights and show some challenges and open issues. Our survey gives an exhaustive study and a prospect in a multidisciplinary approach. Besides, the main findings of the current state-of-the-art throw out recommendations for future research on smart cities and the Internet architecture

Enabling Hyperscale Web Services

Modern web services such as social media, online messaging, web search, video streaming, and online banking often support billions of users, requiring data centers that scale to hundreds of thousands of servers, i.e., hyperscale. In fact, the world continues to expect hyperscale computing to drive more futuristic applications such as virtual reality, self-driving cars, conversational AI, and the Internet of Things. This dissertation presents technologies that will enable tomorrow’s web services to meet the world’s expectations. The key challenge in enabling hyperscale web services arises from two important trends. First, over the past few years, there has been a radical shift in hyperscale computing due to an unprecedented growth in data, users, and web service software functionality. Second, modern hardware can no longer support this growth in hyperscale trends due to a decline in hardware performance scaling. To enable this new hyperscale era, hardware architects must become more aware of hyperscale software needs and software researchers can no longer expect unlimited hardware performance scaling. In short, systems researchers can no longer follow the traditional approach of building each layer of the systems stack separately. Instead, they must rethink the synergy between the software and hardware worlds from the ground up. This dissertation establishes such a synergy to enable futuristic hyperscale web services. This dissertation bridges the software and hardware worlds, demonstrating the importance of that bridge in realizing efficient hyperscale web services via solutions that span the systems stack. The specific goal is to design software that is aware of new hardware constraints and architect hardware that efficiently supports new hyperscale software requirements. This dissertation spans two broad thrusts: (1) a software and (2) a hardware thrust to analyze the complex hyperscale design space and use insights from these analyses to design efficient cross-stack solutions for hyperscale computation. In the software thrust, this dissertation contributes uSuite, the first open-source benchmark suite of web services built with a new hyperscale software paradigm, that is used in academia and industry to study hyperscale behaviors. Next, this dissertation uses uSuite to study software threading implications in light of today’s hardware reality, identifying new insights in the age-old research area of software threading. Driven by these insights, this dissertation demonstrates how threading models must be redesigned at hyperscale by presenting an automated approach and tool, uTune, that makes intelligent run-time threading decisions. In the hardware thrust, this dissertation architects both commodity and custom hardware to efficiently support hyperscale software requirements. First, this dissertation characterizes commodity hardware’s shortcomings, revealing insights that influenced commercial CPU designs. Based on these insights, this dissertation presents an approach and tool, SoftSKU, that enables cheap commodity hardware to efficiently support new hyperscale software paradigms, improving the efficiency of real-world web services that serve billions of users, saving millions of dollars, and meaningfully reducing the global carbon footprint. This dissertation also presents a hardware-software co-design, uNotify, that redesigns commodity hardware with minimal modifications by using existing hardware mechanisms more intelligently to overcome new hyperscale overheads. Next, this dissertation characterizes how custom hardware must be designed at hyperscale, resulting in industry-academia benchmarking efforts, commercial hardware changes, and improved software development. Based on this characterization’s insights, this dissertation presents Accelerometer, an analytical model that estimates gains from hardware customization. Multiple hyperscale enterprises and hardware vendors use Accelerometer to make well-informed hardware decisions.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169802/1/akshitha_1.pd

3 D analysis methods for supporting the design of walkable streets

Tese de Doutoramento em Arquitetura com a especialização em Desenho e Computação apresentada na Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de Lisboa para obtenção de grau de Doutor.Os aglomerados urbanos em rápido crescimento contribuem e enfrentam hoje, as consequências de crises globais, como a poluição, as alterações climáticas, a diminuição dos recursos naturais, conflitos sociais e migrações em massa. O planeamento e projecto do ambiente construído são essenciais para uma correcta organização da vida urbana, de modo a reduzir a poluição, distribuir recursos de maneira justa, fortalecer laços sociais e comunitários e prosperar economicamente. Projectar cidades incentivando a pedestrianização como meio de transporte constitui uma contribuição para esses objectivos, facilitando a mitigação da poluição, o acesso livre e democrático aos recursos urbanos, revitalizando as ruas e consequentemente apoiando as economias locais. Embora a investigação sobre a pedestrianização e caminhabilidade do ambiente construído já tenha décadas, temos hoje dados urbanos atualizados e ferramentas mais precisas do que nunca, que permitem uma análise detalhada dos factores que promovem a pedestrianização, podendo suportar decisões baseadas em evidências para o desenvolvimento de uma mobilidade mais sustentável. Tais ferramentas de planeamento viabilizam também uma melhor integração destes dados nos processos de projecto bem como a sua comunicação aos vários agentes participantes na decisão. Esta dissertação defende a necessidade de um método de análise 3D à escala da rua para informar soluções flexíveis de projecto urbano baseadas em dados urbanos rapidamente actualizáveis e acessíveis remotamente, obtidos sem a necessidade de pesquisas no local. Este método preenche uma lacuna existente na literatura propondo um fluxo de trabalho semi-automático. Este fluxo de trabalho propõe-se solucionar a desconexão entre a investigação no campo da pedestrianização, as ferramentas existentes e os processos de planeamento e projecto urbano. Argumenta-se que essa desconexão resulta da priorização de preocupações financeiras nos processos de planeamento e desenho urbano e da falta de métodos de avaliação rápidos e práticos aplicáveis nas várias etapas e escalas de projecto e de um modo fragmentado ou holístico. Além disso, os métodos existentes de avaliação da caminhabilidade que avaliam contextos urbanos nestas escalas e detalhe, não são capazes de avaliar ruas através de dados urbanos acedidos remotamente, recorrendo geralmente a auditorias ou pesquisas onerosas e morosas no local. O fluxo de trabalho proposto neste estudo visa responder a esta necessidade; combina um modelo 3D de uma unidade de vizinhança desenvolvido num ambiente de programação visual, SIG e códigos personalizados, e utiliza um modelo de análise morfológica chamado Convex e Solid-Void, combinado com técnicas de Web-scrapping e reconhecimento de imagem. A dissertação contribui para a investigação sobre caminhabilidade, propondo um fluxo de trabalho de análise de caminhabilidade em escala micro, em 3D, e remotamente aplicável, além de distinguir indicadores aplicáveis a ruas com diferentes formas e usos. O método promove o modelo computacional de análise urbana, Convex e Solid-Void, apresentando a sua primeira aplicação ao problema urbano da caminhabilidade. Também demonstra a integração de fontes de dados acessíveis remotamente, incluindo imagens de Street View obtidas de uma plataforma de mapas on-line e dados de redes sociais geo-localizados, para a avaliação quantitativa dos espaços urbanos. De futuro, pretende-se desenvolver o método para permitir o acesso remoto da avaliação a várias dessas fontes de dados. Tal é possível pelo uso combinado de SIG com representações espaciais 3D e ferramentas de programação integradas no mesmo fluxo de trabalho. Estes ambientes, que facilitam a associação de elementos espaciais com informações semânticas por meio de bases de dados, possibilitam a utilização de quaisquer dados que possam ser processados em análise espacial para alimentação de processos de projecto gerativo. O resultado desta pesquisa apresenta-se na forma de recomendações de planeamento e desenho urbano e também pretende ser um recurso prático a ser usado em projectos de reabilitação urbana. Como parte do modelo Convex e Solid-Void usado neste estudo, apresenta-se uma nova unidade espacial 3D "Street-Void", na qual todos os dados coletados são agregados para análise. Identificam-se indicadores específicos para avaliar com mais precisão os espaços das ruas, primeiro distinguindo entre ruas e praças e depois avaliando quantitativamente espaços semelhantes a ruas e espaços semelhantes a praças, e ainda espaços residenciais e de uso misto. Com base nos resultados da aplicação do método a quatro bairros estudados nas cidades de Istambul e Lisboa, e uma classificação das ruas usando os indicadores identificados, apresenta-se um conjunto de recomendações, que se atribuem a intervalos de valores próprios das tipologias específicas de ruas. Estas recomendações são formuladas para que possam ser aplicadas holisticamente ou de maneira fragmentada em diferentes fases de projecto ou cenários de melhoria urbana. Este estudo amplia o conhecimento sobre pedestrianização, sugerindo diferentes indicadores e faixas de valor para a avaliação de ruas, relacionando caminhabilidade com a variação das suas formas e usos. A tese está organizada da seguinte forma. No capítulo de introdução, são apresentados brevemente os objetivos da pesquisa, a contribuição e importância para o tema, metodologia, resultados e conclusão. No segundo capítulo, são apresentadas as questões de investigação a que a tese responde e a hipótese construída sobre essas questões. Estas questões podem ser listadas da seguinte maneira. Como podem a caminhabilidade e seus critérios serem integrados nos processos de desenho urbano (à escala do bairro)? Quais as qualidades do ambiente urbano construído que devem ser consideradas para a avaliação da caminhabilidade, para que as decisões de projecto possam ser informadas com mais eficácia? Como podemos avaliar a pedestrianização de um bairro num ambiente urbano complexo e em constante mudança? O terceiro capítulo apresenta uma revisão da literatura no tema da pesquisa, incluindo os temas do projecto urbano centrados no ser humano, investigação existente sobre a medição da caminhabilidade e sobre ferramentas de projecto algorítmico desenvolvidas para a escala urbana e em particular para a escala do bairro. No quarto capítulo, são explicados o método do estudo realizado e os princípios do fluxo de trabalho acima apresentados. Discute-se o processo de selecção utilizado para determinar os atributos quantitativos para a medição da caminhabilidade. As “características” sob as quais esses atributos são agrupados são a densidade, diversidade, conectividade, escala humana, complexidade, clausura (enclosure), forma, inclinação, permeabilidade e infraestrutura. Estas características e atributos são reduzidos posteriormente através de um processo de eliminação aos seus componentes principais. O quinto capítulo apresenta os estudos de caso dos bairros que são utilizados no desenvolvimento do fluxo de trabalho de medição, a interpretação dos atributos de caminhabilidade face aos dados medidos e uma análise inicial desses dados quantitativos. No sexto capítulo, o uso de dados de redes sociais e imagens street view como representantes de caminhabilidade são testados por métodos estatísticos e os espaços das ruas analisados são classificados com base nos atributos medidos (através de um método de clustering). Tipologias de rua com atributos específicos são identificadas nas várias classes (clusters) obtidas. Os atributos são avaliados com base na comparação de seus resultados quantitativos para cada tipologia de rua e são reduzidos através de um processo de filtragem. O sétimo capítulo inclui uma reclassificação das ruas com base em suas formas e usos e uma avaliação das medidas dos seus atributos com base na comparação dos seus resultados para essas classes. Através dessa avaliação, diferentes intervalos de valores foram determinados para serem aplicados aos diferentes atributos das ruas, e as descobertas obtidas por este método foram convertidas num guia destinado a informar os processos de desenho e planeamento urbano. O oitavo capítulo resume a produção geral da tese, a sua contribuição para o conhecimento, bem como para os processos de projecto e planeamento urbano. Partindo dos seus aspectos inovadores, fornece também uma visão geral dos estudos futuros que a tese pode proporcionar. No presente desenvolvimento, o método proposto nesta tese para a medição da caminhabilidade e respectivas recomendações para os processos de projecto e planeamento podem ser utilizadas como parte de serviços de consultoria a ser prestados a municípios, consultoria particular e a profissionais de projecto e planeamento. Em estudos futuros, pretende-se tornar o fluxo de trabalho apresentado numa ferramenta que pode ser utilizada diretamente por projectistas e planeadores. Prevê-se que tais estudos sejam desenvolvidos através da multiplicação dos contextos estudados, melhorando a qualidade e a precisão dos dados urbanos utilizados, aumentando o nível de detalhe capturado pelo modelo de análise e aplicando a análise a fenómenos urbanos que não sejam somente a caminhabilidade. Devido às semelhanças dos seus ambientes construídos, os bairros utilizados no presente estudo, que são Kadikoy e Hasanpasa em Istambul e Chiado e Ajuda em Lisboa, permitiram a avaliação de um conjunto consistente de ruas, oferecendo variedade suficiente. Mais especificamente, devido às semelhanças em termos de escala e uso, quando os espaços das ruas desses bairros foram classificados com base nos atributos utilizados, revelaram-se 6 tipologias diferentes de espaços de rua. Prevê-se que essas tipologias sejam multiplicadas pela aplicação do método a contextos diferentes em termos de escala, forma e uso. Devido à disponibilidade de dados detalhados e a uma variedade de espaços nas ruas em termos dos critérios mencionados, Nova York, Singapura e Amsterdão são exemplos de cidades que poderão ser estudadas como novos casos de estudo.ABSTRACT: Today, rapidly growing urban populations both contribute to global crises such as pollution, climate change, diminishing natural resources, social conflicts and mass migrations and face the consequences. The built environment, its planning and design are critical in organizing urban life so that we pollute less, distribute our resources fairly, strengthen social and communal ties and thrive economically. Designing our cities to support walking as a means of transport contributes in these goals through facilitating pollution free and democratic access to urban resources, supporting local economies and enlivening the street. While research on walkability of the built environment is decades old now, we have more up-to-date, accurate and large-scale urban data than ever and our developing tools make it possible to feed this data into design and management processes to create and sustain more walkable environments. This dissertation argues for the necessity of a street-scale, 3d analysis method to inform flexible urban design solutions based on rapidly updatable and remotely accessible urban data obtained without the necessity of on-site surveys, proposing a semi-automated workflow to fill this gap in existing literature. The workflow combines a 3d neighborhood model in a visual programming environment, GIS and custom codes, utilizing a morphological analysis model named Convex and Solid-Voids, together with web scraping and image recognition techniques. A 3d street space unit “Street-Void” is presented within the Convex and Solid-Void model in which all gathered data is aggregated for analysis. Specific indicators are identified to more accurately assess street spaces, first by distinguishing between and then quantitatively evaluating street-like and square-like, residential and mixed-use streets. Based on the findings from the application of the workflow to four neighborhoods studied in the cities of Istanbul and Lisbon and a classification of street spaces using the proposed attributes, a set of recommendations are presented, with value ranges applicable to specific street typologies. These recommendations are formulated so that they can be applied holistically or in a fragmented way at different stages of planning and urban improvement scenarios with their projected impact grouped under direct/physical or indirect/perceptual. The dissertation contributes to walkability research by proposing a micro-scale, 3d and remotely applicable walkability analysis workflow as well as distinguishing between indicators to be applied to street spaces of different shapes and uses. It furthers the computational urban analysis model Convex and Solid-Voids by presenting its first-time application to the tangible urban problem of walkability. It also demonstrates the integration of remotely accessible data sources including street view images from an online map platform and location based social network data to the quantitative evaluation of urban street spaces. With urban planning and design recommendations, it demonstrates the practical application of the findings to urban improvement scenarios. The study is envisioned to be developed by future work through multiplying the contexts that are studied, improving the quality and accuracy of urban data utilized, increasing the level of detail captured by the morphological analysis model and applying the analysis to other urban phenomena other than walkability.N/

(Re)ordering and (dis)ordering of street trade:the case of Recife, Brazil

Informal urban street trade is a prevalent feature across the Global South where much of the production and/or buying and selling of goods and services is unregulated. For this reason, local authorities have historically seen it as backward, inefficient and detrimental to the development of urban areas and have thus developed formalisation programmes aimed to control and ultimately make it disappear. Critics argue that the design and implementation of these programmes can marginalise and disempower informal traders as it acts against the traders’ livelihoods and long-established practices they have developed for decades. This research speaks to these concerns and aims to investigate how informal urban street trade manages to continuously reproduce itself despite formalising efforts to make it vanish. The study follows a post-structuralist approach informed by post-development sensibilities (Escobar, 2011). The purpose is two-fold. First, to critically investigate the implications of imposed power-knowledge essentialism inherent to formalisation processes (Foucault, 1980). Second, to analyse the ways in which cultural and socioeconomic development is enacted through the daily assembling of informal urban street trade (Farías and Bender, 2012; McFarlane, 2011). The research offers a thick ethnographic inquiry, conducted over a one year-long period (2014-2015) in the urban centre of Recife, Northeast capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil. Recife is a particularly rich site to investigate these issues as informal urban street trade has historically been pervasive of its squares and streets and the municipally has in place a formalisation programme aimed to gather information about traders, license them and relocate them into purposefully-built facilities. The ethnographic inquiry focused on the practices, knowledges, materials and technologies associated with the daily work of both informal traders, selling on the streets, and governing officials implementing the formalisation programme, both on the streets and on the City Council office. Primary data collection was gathered through ethnographic observations and fieldnote diaries enriched with pictures and audio recordings of the day-to-day sensorial experience of informal urban street trade. This was enhanced with informal conversations as well as semi-structured and unstructured interviews with governing bodies’ officials, licenced and unlicensed street traders, formal shop owners, and a diversified set of urban citizens. The thesis highlights that formalisation, through the introduction of regulations, classification schemes and practices of classifying traders through an information system, seeks to establish and expand an individualistic developmentality among all actors. Through this, formalisation aims to shape and normalise their everyday practices to focus on the City Council’s agenda of rendering informal street trade as problematic and turning the solution of formalised trade not only unquestionable, but desirable by all. More problematically, the formalisation programme’s overdetermination of what a socioeconomic order is to be and its imposition of individualising subjectivities to assist in its implementation acts against the traders’ collective and community-based understanding of work and livelihoods which, contrary to the formalisation discourse, greatly benefit the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities. This is achieved through the traders’ daily assembling of work, value and supply on the streets. The findings reveal that the collective organisation of traders’ work is strongly based on a ‘cooperative ethos’ that is not only efficient in taking advantage of and adapting to the challenging conditions of street markets, but also is key on the ongoing fostering and strengthening of the local community identity. The findings also show that traders, through their tacit knowledge of the best fits between products, services and sites, are key in shaping the valuation of both formal and informal enterprises as well as urban sites thus bolstering the local economy. Lastly, the findings also reveal that, through their interactions with formal and informal supply circuits, street traders are fundamental for the distribution and promotion of local artists and producers thus helping on the support and fostering of local culture. The main contribution of this research is it offers novel empirical and theoretical insights on the ways in which formalisation and informality are performed. It richly reveals the contested nature of development that is negotiated daily between the individualist developmentality imposed by formalisation and the communitarian- based development possibilities which are enacted through informal trading practices. These developmental possibilities are turned invisible by formalisation as classification enforces a strong reading of street trade which is ontologically distant and even contrary to the community-based values which make street trade not only resilient to formalising efforts but also adaptive to the challenging conditions and, more importantly, central to the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities

Sharing GPUs for Real-Time Autonomous-Driving Systems

Autonomous vehicles at mass-market scales are on the horizon. Cameras are the least expensive among common sensor types and can preserve features such as color and texture that other sensors cannot. Therefore, realizing full autonomy in vehicles at a reasonable cost is expected to entail computer-vision techniques. These computer-vision applications require massive parallelism provided by the underlying shared accelerators, such as graphics processing units, or GPUs, to function “in real time.” However, when computer-vision researchers and GPU vendors refer to “real time,” they usually mean “real fast”; in contrast, certifiable automotive systems must be “real time” in the sense of being predictable. This dissertation addresses the challenging problem of how GPUs can be shared predictably and efficiently for real-time autonomous-driving systems. We tackle this challenge in four steps. First, we investigate NVIDIA GPUs with respect to scheduling, synchronization, and execution. We conduct an extensive set of experiments to infer NVIDIA GPU scheduling rules, which are unfortunately undisclosed by NVIDIA and are beyond access owing to their closed-source software stack. We also expose a list of pitfalls pertaining to CPU-GPU synchronization that can result in unbounded response times of GPU-using applications. Lastly, we examine a fundamental trade-off for designing real-time tasks under different execution options. Overall, our investigation provides an essential understanding of NVIDIA GPUs, allowing us to further model and analyze GPU tasks. Second, we develop a new model and conduct schedulability analysis for GPU tasks. We extend the well-studied sporadic task model with additional parameters that characterize the parallel execution of GPU tasks. We show that NVIDIA scheduling rules are subject to fundamental capacity loss, which implies a necessary total utilization bound. We derive response-time bounds for GPU task systems that satisfy our schedulability conditions. Third, we address an industrial challenge of supplying the throughput performance of computer-vision frameworks to support adequate coverage and redundancy offered by an array of cameras. We re-think the design of convolution neural network (CNN) software to better utilize hardware resources and achieve increased throughput (number of simultaneous camera streams) without any appreciable increase in per-frame latency (camera to CNN output) or reduction of per-stream accuracy. Fourth, we apply our analysis to a finer-grained graph scheduling of a computer-vision standard, OpenVX, which explicitly targets embedded and real-time systems. We evaluate both the analytical and empirical real-time performance of our approach.Doctor of Philosoph

Mobile robots and vehicles motion systems: a unifying framework

Robots perform many different activities in order to accomplish their tasks. The robot motion capability is one of the most important ones for an autonomous be- havior in a typical indoor-outdoor mission (without it other tasks can not be done), since it drastically determines the global success of a robotic mission. In this thesis, we focus on the main methods for mobile robot and vehicle motion systems and we build a common framework, where similar components can be interchanged or even used together in order to increase the whole system performance

Sustainable Development of Real Estate

Research, theoretical and practical tasks of sustainable real estate development process are revised in detail in this monograph; particular examples are presented as well. The concept of modern real estate development model and a developer is discussed, peculiarities of the development of built environment and real estate objects are analyzed, as well as assessment methods, models and management of real estate and investments in order to increase the object value. Theoretical and practical analyses, presented in the monograph, prove that intelligent and augmented reality technologies allow business managers to reach higher results in work quality, organize a creative team of developers, which shall present more qualitative products for the society. The edition presents knowledge on economic, legal, technological, technical, organizational, social, cultural, ethical, psychological and environmental, as well as its management aspects, which are important for the development of real estate: publicly admitted sustainable development principles, urban development and aesthetic values, territory planning, participation of society and heritage protection. It is admitted that economical crises are inevitable, and the provided methods shall help to decrease possible loss. References to the most modern world scientific literature sources are presented in the monograph. The monograph is prepared for the researchers, MSc and PhD students of construction economics and real estate development. The book may be useful for other researchers, MSc and PhD students of economics, management and other specialities, as well as business specialist of real estate business. The publication of monograph was funded by European Social Fund according to project No. VP1-2.2-ŠMM-07-K-02-060 Development and Implementation of Joint Master’s Study Programme “Sustainable Development of the Built Environment”

Design for all Senses. Accessible Spaces for Visually Impaired Citizens

The central purpose of this study is to contribute to our knowledge of designing in a way that can be supported by the knowledge of the situation, and by the experience and expectations of those who are affected by design. In this case it means to enable us to find methods that can support the development of design actions to improve the accessibility of public open urban places for visually impaired persons, enhancing their perception and understanding of space, increasing their possibilities of orientating and taking independent decisions, and enabling them participate in the city life. To fully achieve this aim it is necessary to understand their rights as citizens, and also their particular needs and problems arising from the reduction or absence of vision.<p /> To achieve this aim three design projects for a central urban area in Brazil were developed involving different professionals working under different constraints. The specificity of each design situation brought the possibility of integrating and combining the different spheres of knowledge necessary to solve the problem from an Universal Design perspective. In this way, theoretical knowledge about spatial perception process, supported the understanding of the first-hand information given by visually impaired persons, and oriented the process of a differentiated spatial analysis based on a non-visual frame of reference. Consequently, the generated knowledge is essentially contextual, being the search not focused on the development of model solutions to be applied in different situations. What is searched is to support the analytical capacity and reflective attitude, which are necessary to solve complex problems such as designing for persons who have different needs and abilities. <p />The initial intentions evolved into a more general questioning about architectural practice. This practice usually focuses on the technical and visually aesthetic dimensions of space, often leaving aside its other sensory attributes, and the life that animates space. Studying space in a different light, brought reflections about the need to consider the 'invisible' and usually disregarded non-visual attributes to improve spatial quality, not only in the design of accessible spaces for the visually impaired, but for all persons and for all senses

SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION PATTERN DUE TO COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN KAMPONG HOUSE

ABSTRACT Kampung houses are houses in kampung area of the city. Kampung House oftenly transformed into others use as urban dynamics. One of the transfomation is related to the commercial activities addition by the house owner. It make house with full private space become into mixused house with more public spaces or completely changed into full public commercial building. This study investigate the spatial transformation pattern of the kampung houses due to their commercial activities addition. Site observations, interviews and questionnaires were performed to study the spatial transformation. This study found that in kampung houses, the spatial transformation pattern was depend on type of commercial activities and owner perceptions, and there are several steps of the spatial transformation related the commercial activity addition. Keywords: spatial transformation pattern; commercial activity; owner perception, kampung house; adaptabilit