Flexible urbanism

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-96).This thesis seeks to find a new approach/method towards urbanization in existing low density neighborhoods in major metropolitan cities in the United States. The near South side of the city of Chicago (a city that carries a history as the most modern city in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) will be taken as a site for development. The site of the Illinois Institute of Technology has an associated history dating back to the nineteenth century as well as an extensive housing development built as a post world war two response to a lack of housing in major metropolitan cities. Today, the area stands deserted, with a few housing tower blocks that remain occupied. The idea of flexible urbanism that would benefit the Chicago neighborhood can be traced back in history to the eighteenth century, a period during which rationality created a new type of society. Rationality is fundamental to this thesis, taken to its hilt with the idea that extreme rationality could lead to a sense of madness and diversity in options and ways of living in order to organize society today.(cont.) The idea of extreme rationality can be seen through history with the development of the prisons and asylums in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and later in the design of the microraion, the unit of neighborhood development in the Constructivist period of the Soviet Planning process. During that period the garden city movement grew in the United Kingdom propagating the return of nature in the design of cities. A comparison to the garden city would be another new Town in England: Milton Keynes, a city where land was distinguished as separately zoned areas. These ideas of rationality and rule based zoning systems are fundamental to this thesis, and taken to its extreme to understand the city parametrically, in three dimensions. Finally, the application of this new approach towards densification shows that this strategy is one that can be used universally to revitalize, reinvigorate, and re-emphasize the use of extreme rationality in order to create vitality in cities, and diversity in use.by Anahita Anandam.S.M

Graduate Catalog, 1996-1999, New Jersey Institute of Technology

https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/coursecatalogs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Non-destructive assessment and health monitoring of railway infrastructures

A continuous increase of the demand for high-speed traffic, freight tonnage as well as of the train operating frequency is worsening the decay conditions of many railway infrastructures. This occurrence affects economy-related business as well as it contributes to raise maintenance cost. It is known that a failure of a railway track may result in tremendous economic losses, law liabilities, service interruptions and, eventually, fatalities. Parallel to this, requirements to maintain acceptable operational standards are very demanding. In addition to the above, a main issue nowadays in railway engineering is a general lack of funds to allow safety and comfort of the operations as well as a proper maintenance of the infrastructures. This is mostly the result of a traditional approach that, on average, tends to invest on high-priority cost, such as safety-related cost, compromising lower-priority cost (e.g., quality and comfort of the operations). A solution to correct this trend can be to move from a reactive to a proactive action planning approach in order to limit more effectively the likelihood of progressive track decay. Within this context, this paper reports a review on the use of traditional and non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for assessment and health monitoring of railway infrastructures. State-of-the-art research on a stand-alone use of NDT methods or a combination of them for specific maintenance tasks in railways is discussed

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 256)

This bibliography lists 426 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in August 1990. Subject coverage includes: design, construction and testing of aircraft and aircraft engines; aircraft components, equipment and systems; ground support systems; and theoretical and applied aspects of aerodynamics and general fluid dynamics