Reprogramming Pittsburgh's post-industrial riverfront: an open space vision for the south side

As Pittsburgh strives to revive its image as a river city it must contend with its dilapidated urban riverfronts along the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the river was considered solely as an economic engine that fueled the growth of America. Once the world’s largest producer of glass and steel, Pittsburgh’s popular South Side district has become disconnected from the river, despite its close proximity. The purpose of this thesis is to generate a new vision plan for the South Side by reprogramming the neglected margin with the intention of providing public access and activating the life-less boundary between the community and the riverfront. In response to the inadequacies of some recent projects completed within the city, this project suggests a new model for the South Side that aims to integrate the riverfront with the urban fabric. The process focuses on the neglected riverfront by extending programs from the surrounding context to pollinate the marginal spaces. An exploratory method is developed to create an open space framework that is capable of supporting the diverse social and cultural demands of Pittsburgh’s South Side. It demonstrates that strategic urban design can effectively create new viable connections with the river by creating spaces that are flexible enough to facilitate the changing demands on the urban riverfront

Exploring how Residential Communities in the Rural Southern Appalachian Mountains are Branded as \u27Green:\u27 A Qualitative Analysis

As environmental issues have gained media prominence, a majority of Americans now consider themselves to be environmentalists. Producers of real estate development have responded with communities, branded to differentiate themselves from their competition through sagas, imagery, and symbols that communicate the values and identities that align with those of their targeted consumers. Host to a rapidly expanding population, the Southern Appalachians are home to a wealth of new communities, many of them branded as \u27green.\u27 Building on theoretical foundations in visual design, environmental rhetoric, and landscape interpretation, this research utilizes a collective case study analysis to illustrate how texts, images, and the built environment are used to appeal to consumers\u27 green identities. Secondarily, challenges to implementation of sustainable development are identified, within the social, economic, and environmental context in which rural mountain development occurs. Data sources include documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, and physical artifacts. Selected cases located in the Southern Appalachian Mountains include communities located in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Selected cases were chosen for detailed study based on their ability to provide interesting and meaningful variations of several dimensions, grouped into primary and secondary contrasts. Primary contrasts, include the following dimensions: inclusion of golf, adjacency to public or other protected lands, lot sizes, apparent partnership with conservation or other \u27green\u27 organization, and inclusion of significant waterfront. Secondary contrasts include: project size and number of units, diversity of housing types, and price. Included in the systematic examination of printed promotional materials, are concurrent inventories and analyses of image and textual content and meanings. Additionally, textual analysis of environmental rhetoric related to deep, preservation, integrative, and ecological environmentalism is conducted. Supplementing data collected through examination of promotional materials, site visits to each case include documentation of the built environment and structured interviews with the producers of each community. In addition to illustrating how communities are branded as \u27green,\u27 challenges to implementation of sustainable development are identified, providing a foundation on which future research into the actual sustainability of \u27green\u27 branded developments can be constructed

Layering landscapes: Linguistic commodification and semiotic layering in United States’ recreational spaces

In the process of linguistic landscaping, spaces are transformed into textual and semiotic representations linked to particular social uses, cultural meanings, and historic narratives. Recently, digital technology has been used to create additional layers of semiotic representation in linguistic landscapes. This dissertation investigates multiple layers of digital and physical representation at six United States’ park spaces, with a particular focus on heritage tourism sites, and analyzes the social meaning and narratives of tourism constructed both by individual layers and within their relationships. Photo-based methods are used to collect data, both by documenting the representations of sites as filtered through the AR platform, Niantic’s Pokémon GO, as well as through photographing the physical sites in-person. This process of ground truthing revealed the erasure of Indigenous histories, as well as amplification of eurocentric histories, which was perpetuated by both the physical and digital layer. The results also revealed a simplification of representations via the digital layer, as well as the role of corporate mediation in regulating space representation. These results are significant in revealing the role of augmented reality in portraying a particular sanitized and gamified version of the spaces. This project also suggests a need within linguistic landscaping research for more engagement with the interdisciplinarity of landscape studies as a whole, particularly, in a US parks context, for gaining a more precise and holistic view of the complex histories and contexts that are obscured by both physical and digital representations

Hadrian’s Wall

Through the voices of over 20 Hadrian's Wall enthusiasts – chosen amongst prominent frontier scholars and archaeologists, re-enactors, curators, walkers and site managers – this volume celebrates the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian’s visit to Britain and the building of the Wall. Together, the authors explore issues such as the impact of environmental changes on archaeology and the innovative technologies used in monitoring and managing the Wall and its collections. The book highlights not only the ways in which Hadrian’s Wall can be protected for future generations, but also the ways in which it affects the identities of those who work and travel along it. Rather than a retrospective of work undertaken so far, or an attempt to impose theoretical frameworks onto a living landscape, it offers a realistic discussion of current issues and solutions in the exploration, management and protection of Hadrian’s Wall, from the point of view of those living, visiting, researching and working along it