Project report. A subtropical urban community, investigating medium to high density residential typologies by Design Charrette

The Centre for Subtropical Design at QUT, in partnership with the Queensland Government and Brisbane City Council, conducts research focused on 'best practice' outcomes for higher density urban living environments in the subtropics through the study of typical urban residential typologies, and urban design. The aim of the research is to inform and illustrate best practice subtropical design principles to policy makers and development industry professionals to stimulate climate-responsive outcomes. The Centre for Subtropical Design recently sought project-specific funding from the Queensland Department of Infrastructure and Planning (DIP) to investigate residential typologies for sustainable subtropical urban communities, based on transit orientated development principles and outcomes for areas around public transport nodes. A development site within the Fitzgibbon Urban Development Area, and close to a rail and bsu transport corridor, provided a case study location for this project. Four design-led multi-disciplinary creative teams participated in a Design Charrette and have produced concept drawings and propositions on a range of options, or prototypes. Analysis of selected prototypes has been undertaken to determine their environmental, economic and social performance. This Project Report discusses the scope of the project funded by DIP in terms of activities undertaken to date, and deliverables achieved. A subsequent Research Report will discuss the detailed findings of the analysis

Development of multi-functional streetscape green infrastructure using a performance index approach

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This paper presents a performance evaluation framework for streetscape vegetation. A performance index (PI) is conceived using the following seven traits, specific to the street environments – Pollution Flux Potential (PFP), Carbon Sequestration Potential (CSP), Thermal Comfort Potential (TCP), Noise Attenuation Potential (NAP), Biomass Energy Potential (BEP), Environmental Stress Tolerance (EST) and Crown Projection Factor (CPF). Its application is demonstrated through a case study using fifteen street vegetation species from the UK, utilising a combination of direct field measurements and inventoried literature data. Our results indicate greater preference to small-to-medium size trees and evergreen shrubs over larger trees for streetscaping. The proposed PI approach can be potentially applied two-fold: one, for evaluation of the performance of the existing street vegetation, facilitating the prospects for further improving them through management strategies and better species selection; two, for planning new streetscapes and multi-functional biomass as part of extending the green urban infrastructure

Finding headspace in green workplaces : the restorative value of science park open space

Person-environment relationships in five urban-fringe science parks in central Scotland were investigated through the application of a mixed method case study design. The study sought to explore the impact of greenspace at these knowledge-sector workplaces on employee wellbeing, with particular focus on restorative effects of viewing and spending time in green environments. The thesis also aims to develop understanding of how workers at these sites engage with, and relate to, the outdoor environment at their workplace. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected; the former through an online questionnaire (n=366), and the latter through in-depth semi-structured walking interviews (n=16) conducted on and around the sites. This research is the first to provide evidence of wellbeing benefits of greenspace in the context of UK workplaces. Its focus on the landscape of science parks is of particular relevance given the prominence of this development model in planning policy to promote regional economic growth, as well as the central role of employee functioning in the productivity of innovative knowledge-sector businesses. The insights gained through the research point to a number of conclusions for the planning and design of future business sites at the urban fringe. The research also makes an original contribution to the international research on restorative environments in its exploration of how different types and designs of open space impact on the wellbeing of workers and, in particular, how individual factors influence responses to elements of open space design and management in the workplace context

How to integrate the soundscape resource into landscape planning? A perspective from ecosystem services

In landscape planning and policy-making, environmental sounds have only negative impacts on human health. The natural sounds that promote healthy and supportive environments remain neglected. Although the soundscape concept and approach have considered natural sounds as a resource, the related knowledge has not been employed in landscape planning yet. The purpose of this study is to advance existing state of knowledge to synthesize common preferences for soundscape resources, and then to propose an assessment method for landscape planning. We introduce a planning-oriented soundscape resource evaluation framework to guide a PRISMA systematic literature review. The review includes an in-depth analysis of 74 peer-reviewed journal articles and a meta-analysis for 21 of them. We find that (1) current research has under-explored the soundscape with regard to spatiotemporal evolution, health benefits, and preferences and values; (2) in green spaces, people from different sociocultural contexts exhibit common preferences for soundscape resources. According to these, soundscape formal characters tend towards naturalness, diversity, and appropriateness; (3) exposure to natural sounds does have positive effects on human health and well-being, but the degree of the effects was varied. In addition to birdsongs and water sounds, wind-induced vegetation sounds also have high values. Based on these findings, we suggest basic natural sound scores and categorized indicators for evaluating NSES. It can be implemented in Geographic Information System to produce place-based and comparable results under uncertainty. The results can help landscape planners better consider the contribution of the acoustic environment to human health, well-being, and quality of life, protect the areas of high-quality soundscape resources without actual human uses, and reveal the differences between the actual provision of aesthetic values and demands for nature-based recreation. © 202

New technologies for urban designers: the VENUE project

In this report, we first outline the basic idea of VENUE. This involves developing digital tools froma foundation of geographic information systems (GIS) software which we then apply to urbandesign, a subject area and profession which has little tradition in using such tools. Our project wasto develop two types of tool, namely functional analysis based on embedding models of movementin local environments into GIS based on ideas from the field of space syntax; and secondlyfashioning these ideas in a wider digital context in which the entire range of GIS technologies werebrought to bear at the local scale. By local scale, we mean the representation of urban environmentsfrom about 1: 500 to around 1: 2500

How to integrate the soundscape resource into landscape planning? A perspective from ecosystem services

In landscape planning and policy-making, environmental sounds have only negative impacts on human health. The natural sounds that promote healthy and supportive environments remain neglected. Although the soundscape concept and approach have considered natural sounds as a resource, the related knowledge has not been employed in landscape planning yet. The purpose of this study is to advance existing state of knowledge to synthesize common preferences for soundscape resources, and then to propose an assessment method for landscape planning. We introduce a planning-oriented soundscape resource evaluation framework to guide a PRISMA systematic literature review. The review includes an in-depth analysis of 74 peer-reviewed journal articles and a meta-analysis for 21 of them. We find that (1) current research has under-explored the soundscape with regard to spatiotemporal evolution, health benefits, and preferences and values; (2) in green spaces, people from different sociocultural contexts exhibit common preferences for soundscape resources. According to these, soundscape formal characters tend towards naturalness, diversity, and appropriateness; (3) exposure to natural sounds does have positive effects on human health and well-being, but the degree of the effects was varied. In addition to birdsongs and water sounds, wind-induced vegetation sounds also have high values. Based on these findings, we suggest basic natural sound scores and categorized indicators for evaluating NSES. It can be implemented in Geographic Information System to produce place-based and comparable results under uncertainty. The results can help landscape planners better consider the contribution of the acoustic environment to human health, well-being, and quality of life, protect the areas of high-quality soundscape resources without actual human uses, and reveal the differences between the actual provision of aesthetic values and demands for nature-based recreation

Sky View Factors from Synthetic Fisheye Photos for Thermal Comfort Routing—A Case Study in Phoenix, Arizona

abstract: The Sky View Factor (SVF) is a dimension-reduced representation of urban form and one of the major variables in radiation models that estimate outdoor thermal comfort. Common ways of retrieving SVFs in urban environments include capturing fisheye photographs or creating a digital 3D city or elevation model of the environment. Such techniques have previously been limited due to a lack of imagery or lack of full scale detailed models of urban areas. We developed a web based tool that automatically generates synthetic hemispherical fisheye views from Google Earth at arbitrary spatial resolution and calculates the corresponding SVFs through equiangular projection. SVF results were validated using Google Maps Street View and compared to results from other SVF calculation tools. We generated 5-meter resolution SVF maps for two neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona to illustrate fine-scale variations of intra-urban horizon limitations due to urban form and vegetation. To demonstrate the utility of our synthetic fisheye approach for heat stress applications, we automated a radiation model to generate outdoor thermal comfort maps for Arizona State University’s Tempe campus for a hot summer day using synthetic fisheye photos and on-site meteorological data. Model output was tested against mobile transect measurements of the six-directional radiant flux density. Based on the thermal comfort maps, we implemented a pedestrian routing algorithm that is optimized for distance and thermal comfort preferences. Our synthetic fisheye approach can help planners assess urban design and tree planting strategies to maximize thermal comfort outcomes and can support heat hazard mitigation in urban areas

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented