Place making in Sub-Saharan Africa: an investigation towards a contextually appropriate urban design approach

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Urban Design to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017African cities are rapidly developing, and current planning approaches are often based on theory derived from the global North as opposed to research on the developing cities of the South. These approaches are often limited in relevance when planning and policy-making decisions have to be made in a much more diverse and dynamic urban environment of the developing South. The research on particular cities of the South, in this case Maputo, produced new layers of creative planning ideas with new shared theories as contribution to global planning. The research investigates place making through contextually appropriate urban design approaches within the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Alternative approaches towards planning for (designing in) an African city were compared and reviewed to determine how contextually appropriate theory can be applied to develop a precinct plan for the upgrading and future development of the Bullring site in Maputo. The conclusion is a desk based urban design project for the selected siteXL201

Northeastern University Housing Project, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55).This design thesis studies the potential of urban design and urban housing to weave vacant lands, their urban context and the urban communities surrounding them. It focuses on an urban housing project adjacent to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The theoretical background of this thesis partially comes from Aldo Rossi's observation that cities are composed of many distinct districts that were formed as smaller cities. According to Rossi, designers should operate on these districts as the first step toward designing cities as a whole. Boston is one of the case studies in Kevin Lynch's image theory. The image map he provided is very crucial for my urban design. The thesis proposes a city subcenter based on the image map of the South End. Moreover, the site is located in one of the low income residential districts in Boston. Social polarization is very obvious between the site, the South End - Harrison Lenox neighborhood, and other residential districts, such as Beacon Hill and Back Bay. Therefore, this thesis also focuses on defensible space design. An effort is made to reduce social polarization, blur the physical boundary of public housing, and make the neighborhood a desirable place to live. The first half of this thesis focuses on a background study and provides precedents of university- community tension and affordable housing in Boston. Also included is a site study encompassing the university, the communities and the surrounding area in general. The second half of the thesis provides design guidelines for future development and an urban design for the site area.by Jing Yu.S.M

Biophilic urban developments following dynamic flows of tree-shaped architectures

Latest theories and practices in Biophilic designs of the urban space regard the urban fabric as being composed of several interrelated layers of energetic structure influencing each other in a non-linear manner primarily. The interaction between two or more interfaces of the urban space layers evolves into new and non-predictable properties. Evolution and creation of new boundaries/interfaces follows laws related to fractal growth; most of the times this particular evolution is defined by laws of physics, such as Thermodynamics and Constructal Law. Designs that do not follow these laws may produce anti-natural and hostile environments, which do not fit into human beings’ evolution, and thus, fail to enhance life by all means. The author of this paper should like to illustrate how new developments of urbanism worldwide currently work upon conceptual and town planning models based not only upon cutting-edge technology, but also upon natural laws and patterns of life and human behaviours strictly related to flaws and movement dictated by natural phenomena. When abrupt interruption of the urban structure has occurred, a consequent design solution does not even guarantee flowing and freedom to morph. It is impossible to create harmonic designs which naturally “unite the animate with the inanimate”, as Adrian Bejan and Sylvie Lorente affirm, whenever urban sprawl fails to encompass Biophilic solutions related to tree-shaped architectures. The author argues that Constructal invasion into the urban space “as fundamental problems of access to flow: volume to point, area to point, line to point, and the respective reverse flow directions” can only guarantee high standard quality of life in either contemporary or future cities developments

The fractal urban coherence in biourbanism: the factual elements of urban fabric

This article is available online and will be inserted in also printed format in the Journal in October 2013.During the last few decades, modern urban fabric lost some very important elements, only because urban design and planning turned out to be stylistic aerial views or new landscapes of iconic technological landmarks. Biourbanism attempts to re-establish lost values and balance, not only in urban fabric, but also in reinforcing human-oriented design principles in either micro or macro scale. Biourbanism operates as a catalyst of theories and practices in both architecture and urban design to guarantee high standards in services, which are currently fundamental to the survival of communities worldwide. Human life in cities emerges during connectivity via geometrical continuity of grids and fractals, via path connectivity among highly active nodes, via exchange/movement of people and, finally via exchange of information (networks). In most human activities taking place in central areas of cities, people often feel excluded from design processes in the built environment. This paper aims at exploring the reasons for which, fractal cities, which have being conceived as symmetries and patterns, can have scientifically proven and beneficial impact on human fitness of body and mind; research has found that, brain traumas caused by visual agnosia become evident when patterns disappear from either 2D or 3D emergences in architectural and urban design.ADT Fund

ANALYZING WORLD EVOLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON URBAN DESIGNING

Our society's modalities of communication and hence our cities have been rapidly changed due to emergence of several revolutions most lately the digital one. In fact, recently with emergence of the fluid, responsive, kinetic, data-driven worlds of infoscape and its combination with urban landscape, urban designing faces a radical reshuffling of a number of its principal underpinnings. It seems that once again we as urban designers in order to catch up with the current world's situation need to evolve or in better words to re-ontologize concepts of urban designing for twenty-first century. Therefore; in this paper for better understanding of the main characteristics of current changes we try to identify the effects of new actors on urban structures trough analysis of different evolution phases of our cities. To do so we make a diagram called "Evolutionary Trend" trough which we can trace world's evolution history to help us know where we are and what may happen in coming decades. This "evolutionary trend" can be used as a guideline for urban designers to help them navigate better in future.Evolutionary Trend, Urban Evolution, Infospherization, Softerial Era, Digital revolution

Design smart city apps using activity theory.

In this paper we describe an innovative approach to the design process of Smart City interventions. We tested it with participants enrolled in the Master\u2019s Degree program in \u201cInnovators in enterprise and public administration\u201d: the objective of the Master was to stimulate the acquisition of technical and methodological skills useful in designing and implementing specific Smart City actions. During the "project work" phase, participants learned about a design method named SAM \u2013 Smart City Model - based on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). We present an overview of design criteria for Smart City projects, the description of the theoretical framework of Activity Theory, and our proposal of the SAM design model. We also present some examples of student\u2019s \u201cprojects\u201d and a more extensive description of one case study about the full design process of an App planned using SAM, for \u201csmart health\u201d vaccine management and monitoring services. The App was later published and made available to the citizens and was successful in attracting thousands of users. All the participants considered the model very useful in particular because it made possible to understand the interaction and solve contradictions between different stakeholders and systems involved

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

Constants in Future Cities and Regions

The paper resumes some of the conversations the authors had in three years of research, based on the review of best participatory planning practices worldwide. The case projects are selected and discussed with the protagonists across four leading issues: Simulation, Scenario and Visioning, Government and Governance, and Scale. The case-oriented discussion is a peculiarity of the book , contributing to give shape to future cities or regions. The aim is to build a critical thinking on how urban planning, policy and design issues are faced differently or similarly throughout every cases studied. The book include the description of computer models and media, socio-political experiments and professional practices which help communicating the future effects of different design, policy and planning strategies and schemes with a wide range of aims: from information, through consultation, towards active participation. The cases have confirmed that simulation tools can impact on local government and can drive new forms of "glocal" governance, shaping and implementing future plans and projects at different scale and time span. The following paragraphs will point at some of the constant thoughts the authors had around the selection and editing of the book's case studied and related issue