With apartment living on the rise, how do families and their noisy children fit in?

A growing number of Australians live in apartments. The compact city model presents many benefits. However, living close to each other also presents challenges. Rapid growth in apartment developments in recent decades has led to a rise in noise-related complaints and disputes across urban Australia. Households with children are on the front line of such tensions. They are one of the fastest-growing demographics living in apartments. Analysis of the latest census data show, for instance, that families with children under the age of 15 comprise 25% of Sydney\u27s apartment population. Apartment design and cultural acceptance of families in the vertical city have not kept pace with this shift in housing forms. Cultural expectations that families with children ought to live in detached houses are persistent. Apartment planners and developers reproduce these expectations by neglecting children in building design and marketing. With children\u27s sounds being difficult to predict or control, changing apartment demographics are an issue for planners and residents alike

Model-based groupware solution for distributed real-time collaborative 4D planning via teamwork

Construction planning plays a fundamental role in construction project management that requires team working among planners from a diverse range of disciplines and in geographically dispersed working situations. Model-based four-dimensional (4D) computer-aided design (CAD) groupware, though considered a possible approach to supporting collaborative planning, is still short of effective collaborative mechanisms for teamwork due to methodological, technological and social challenges. Targeting this problem, this paper proposes a model-based groupware solution to enable a group of multidisciplinary planners to perform real-time collaborative 4D planning across the Internet. In the light of the interactive definition method, and its computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) design analysis, the paper discusses the realization of interactive collaborative mechanisms from software architecture, application mode, and data exchange protocol. These mechanisms have been integrated into a groupware solution, which was validated by a planning team in a truly geographically dispersed condition. Analysis of the validation results revealed that the proposed solution is feasible for real-time collaborative 4D planning to gain a robust construction plan through collaborative teamwork. The realization of this solution triggers further considerations about its enhancement for wider groupware applications

Failure matters: Reassembling eco-urbanism in a globalizing China

This paper is an attempt to reassess the role of failure in policy mobilities. Empirically, this paper examines the various aftermaths of, and the continuing trans-local connections originating from, the prominent but un-materialized Sino-British Shanghai-Dongtan eco-city—with a particular consideration on its relation with a subsequently realized project—the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city. The findings reveal that despite its apparent failure, Dongtan eco-city established a set of urban planning procedures adopted by many, including those who designed and delivered the Tianjin eco-city. Meanwhile, Dongtan’s failure to materialize motivated the Chinese government to pursue collaboration with the Singaporean government over the increased involvement of private Western partners. The intent to avoid association with Dongtan’s failure also fostered a new eco-urbanism model based on rebranding the planning practices of Singapore’s public housing. Parts of Dongtan eco-city have also lived on through the international circulation of a piece of planning software that was first developed for the failed project. This paper contributes to the policy mobilities literature by challenging its dominant focus on successful exemplars and exploring how a project fails in implementation yet parts of it remain mobile, influential and present in other developments. This paper also advances the understanding of contemporary urban sustainability by revealing how eco-urbanism models are co-produced in this globalizing era between the global North and South, as well as within the global South. </jats:p

Developing a 3D geometry for Urban energy modelling of Indian cities

The advancement in the field of Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) is assisting urban planners and managers to design and operate cities to meet environmental emission targets. The usefulness of the UBEM depends upon the quality and level of details (LoD) of the inputs to the model. The inadequacy and quality of relevant input data pose challenges. This paper analyses the usefulness of different methodologies for developing a 3D building stock model of Ahmedabad, India, recognizing data gaps and heterogenous development of the city over time. It evaluates the potentials, limitations, and challenges of remote sensing techniques namely (a) Satellite imagery (b) LiDAR and (c) Photogrammetry for this application. Further, the details and benefits of data capturing through UAV assisted Photogrammetry technique for the development of the 3D city model are discussed. The research develops potential techniques for feature detection and model reconstruction using Computer vision on the Photogrammetry reality mesh. Preliminary results indicate that the use of supervised learning for Image based segmentation on the reality mesh detects building footprints with higher accuracy as compared to geometrybased segmentation of the point cloud. This methodology has the potential to detect complex building features and remove redundant objects to develop the semantic model at different LoDs for urban simulations. The framework deployed and demonstrated for the part of Ahmedabad has a potential for scaling up to other parts of the city and other Indian cities having similar urban morphology and no previous data for developing a UBEM

It's About How and Where We Build: Connecting Energy and Smart Growth

In recent years, energy issues have become a growing concern for Americans. Largely missing from present energy discussions, however, is the role that land-use practices have on energy consumption and the use of alternative energy resources. By efficiently locating development, we can reduce the amount of energy needed for transportation and for other infrastructure as compared with spread-out, suburban development. Moreover, by including greater use of energy efficient design, these "smart growth" land-use practices could become even smarter -- and better achieve their goals of environmental protection, economic prosperity, and community livability. The smart growth land-use and energy efficiency movements are intrinsically linked, yet these two fields have mostly operated in separate worlds. Greater coordination between these two professions is warranted, yet substantial barriers exist. A recent survey reveals that planners' technical knowledge of energy issues is limited, as is their inclusion of energy factors in comprehensive planning, zoning, and development review. Heightened concern about foreign oil dependence, climate change, and the other ill effects of fossil fuel usage makes the energy-land-use collaboration especially important. Recently, there have been some hopeful signs of collaboration between energy professionals and community developers

Financial Coaching: A New Approach for Asset Building?

Through a literature review and interviews with nonprofit financial coaches, examines the concepts, training, and capacity building involved in financial coaching for low-income families, as well as critiques of existing models and their implications

Participatory process management

Although the process of public and stakeholder participation continues to be intensively investigated and discussed in academic circles, the implementation of participatory methods in practice remains problematic. This can be attributed to the lack of knowledge transfer on the one hand, and the general underestimation of participatory approaches in planning processes on the other.\ud A possible solution - participatory processmanagement - is introduced in this article. Participatory process management means that all participatory activities are embedded in the overall planning activities of a project. The most significant criteria for a participatory process are identified as ’objectives’, ’constraints’ and ’process’which together forma framework for combining generally applicablemethodswith local constraints and the objectives of a project. Themain elements of the participatory management framework introduced here are levels and classes of participation and a generic process scheme includingmonitoring and evaluation of participatory processes. This work is based upon long-term experiences of consultants and scientists. However, the insights from the InterReg project TRUST are particularly valuable and confirm the hypotheses that different water management projects are comparable in terms of their participatory process performance. The participatory management framework is a step forward in closing the gap between scientific knowledge about participatory methods and their applicability in practice

Visual communication in urban planning and urban design

This report documents the current status of visual communication in urban design and planning. Visual communication is examined through discussion of standalone and network media, specifically concentrating on visualisation on the World Wide Web(WWW).Firstly, we examine the use of Solid and Geometric Modelling for visualising urban planning and urban design. This report documents and compares examples of the use of Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) and proprietary WWW based Virtual Reality modelling software. Examples include the modelling of Bath and Glasgow using both VRML 1.0 and 2.0. A review is carried out on the use of Virtual Worldsand their role in visualising urban form within multi-user environments. The use of Virtual Worlds is developed into a case study of the possibilities and limitations of Virtual Internet Design Arenas (ViDAs), an initiative undertaken at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. The use of Virtual Worlds and their development towards ViDAs is seen as one of the most important developments in visual communication for urban planning and urban design since the development plan.Secondly, photorealistic media in the process of communicating plans is examined.The process of creating photorealistic media is documented, examples of the Virtual Streetscape and Wired Whitehall Virtual Urban Interface System are provided. The conclusion is drawn that although the use of photo-realistic media on the WWW provides a way to visually communicate planning information, its use is limited. The merging of photorealistic media and solid geometric modelling is reviewed in the creation of Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is seen to provide an important step forward in the ability to quickly and easily visualise urban planning and urban design information.Thirdly, the role of visual communication of planning data through GIS is examined interms of desktop, three dimensional and Internet based GIS systems. The evolution to Internet GIS is seen as a critical component in the development of virtual cities which will allow urban planners and urban designers to visualise and model the complexity of the built environment in networked virtual reality.Finally a viewpoint is put forward of the Virtual City, linking Internet GIS with photorealistic multi-user Virtual Worlds. At present there are constraints on how far virtual cities can be developed, but a view is provided on how these networked virtual worlds are developing to aid visual communication in urban planning and urban design