Unification and Planning of Urban Public Spaces With Bioclimatic Conditions. Case Study Drama, Greece

The green spaces in the urban environment facilitate the movement of air masses that act as air refreshment in the wider region. The unification of urban open spaces and their enrichment with vegetation affect the micro-climate positively and act as a decisive factor for the increasing of urban thermal comfort, via the shading and the phenomenon of evapotranspiration. The planning of urban public spaces can support a habitat network encouraging the connectivity of the man-made environments with the surrounding natural ecosystems. The present paper aims to promote the unification of urban open spaces, with bioclimatic criteria by emphasizing the role of vegetation aiming the enhancement of living conditions in settlements. In particular is analysed the data collection like the proportion of building height with road width H/W, the road orientation and the solar access, the paving materials, the existent vegetation and concludes to an urban unification in a central part of Drama city in Northern Greece, by creating walkways and green corridors. The issue of solar access outdoors has been briefly discussed as an additional criterion in landscape designing the street. Design recommendations are also outlined for designing comfortable urban spaces.

Planning and designing public open spaces as a strategy for disaster resilient cities: a review of literature

Public open spaces are often used as a mode to make cities sustainable from all its three counts; economic, environmental and social. Most of contemporary urban planners, designers, and landscape architects use the public open spaces as a mode to increase the urban quality of life, improve aesthetic attractiveness, improve the environmental health, growth of economy, and to increase the walkability, liveability and vitality of a city which direct towards the sustainability. However, sustainable development should also encompass the enhancements of disaster resilience. Yet, the use of public open spaces as a strategy for disaster resilience, still remains largely unrehearsed when planning and designing sustainable cities. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to emphasize the need of planning and designing public open spaces with a focus on disaster resilience; as an agent of recovery, to provide essential life support, as a primary place to rescue and for shelters and potential for adaptive response. Further, this ongoing research study analyses the current literature and presents the significance of combination of disaster management strategies with urban planning and designing strategies in order to make cities resilience to disasters. Finally, the analysis suggests a framework to plan and design public open spaces for sustainable disaster resilience cities, proposing set of concepts; loose space concept, Urban Sponge Park, Network of Open Spaces, which can be potentially used when planning and designing public open spaces for disaster resilient citie

Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design

Networked learning environments

This chapter introduces the idea of networked learning environments and argues that these environments provide the totality of surrounding conditions for learning in digital networks. It provides illustrative vignettes of the ways that students appropriate networked environments for learning. The chapter then examines the notion of networked learning environments in relation to the idea of infrastructure and infrastructures for learning and sets out some issues arising from this perspective. The chapter suggests that students and teachers selectively constitute their own contexts and that design can only have an indirect effect on learning. The chapter goes on to argue that design needs to be located at the meso level of the institution and that a solution to the problem of indirect design lies in refocusing design at the meso level and on the design of infrastructures for learning