Plot-based urbanism : towards time-consciousness in place-making

Some of us have recently argued that what we still miss is the serious consideration of the factor of time in urbanism, or, in other words, a deeper "time conscious" approach (Thwaites, Porta, Romice, & Greaves, 2008). Inevitably, that means focusing on change as the essential dynamic of evolution in the built environment, which in turn leads to re-addressing concepts like control, self-organization and community participation. After time and change have been finally firmly placed at the centre stage, the whole discipline of urban planning and design, its conceptual equipment as well as its operational toolbox, reveals its weaknesses under a new light and calls for the construction of a different scenario. This paper poses the problem of this scenario in disciplinary terms, it argues about its premises and outlines its essential features. The scope of this paper is not to deliver a comprehensive model for a new approach to urban planning and design, but to set the right framework and rise the right questions so that we can start thinking of issues such as urban regeneration, informal settlements and massive urbanization, community participation and representation, beauty and humanity in space, in a different way

Metamaterial window glass for adaptable energy efficiency

textA computational analysis of a metamaterial window design is presented for the purpose of increasing the energy efficiency of buildings in seasonal or cold climates. Commercial low-emissivity windows use nanometer-scale Ag films to reflect infrared energy, while retaining most transmission of optical wavelengths for functionality. An opportunity exists to further increase efficiency through a variable emissivity implementation of Ag thin-film structures. 3-D finite-difference time-domain simulations predict non-linear absorption of near-infrared energy, providing the means to capture a substantial portion of solar energy during cold periods. The effect of various configuration parameters is quantified, with prediction of the net sustainability advantage. Metamaterial window glass technology can be realized as a modification to current, commercial low-emissivity windows through the application of nano-manufactured films, creating the opportunity for both new and after-market sustainable construction.Mechanical Engineerin

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

Environmental enrichment for Killer whales Orcinus orca at zoological institutions: untried and untested

Despite a history in zoological institutions stretching back more than 50 years, with associated improvements in husbandry and breeding, the keeping of Killer whales Orcinus orca in zoos and aquariums has become highly controversial. The recent decision to stop the current breeding programme in the USA does not obviate the need to continue to improve husbandry as the whales in zoological institutions today will survive for decades to come. In this paper we outline several novel ideas for enriching the lives of Killer whales through provision of intergroup communication, and enhancement of feeding methods, health and fitness, and the ambient environment, all of which are aimed at eliciting natural behaviours seen in the wild. The enrichments proposed here may require adaptation for use with Killer whales and many could be modified for use with other cetacean species. We believe that by providing species-appropriate enrichment, both the welfare and educational value of Killer whales and other cetaceans can be greatly enhanced in the future

Learning more effectively from experience

Developing the capacity for individuals to learn effectively from their experiences is an important part of building the knowledge and skills in organizations to do good adaptive management. This paper reviews some of the research from cognitive psychology and phenomenography to present a way of thinking about learning to assist individuals to make better use of their personal experiences to develop understanding of environmental systems. We suggest that adaptive expertise (an individual’s ability to deal flexibly with new situations) is particularly relevant for environmental researchers and practitioners. To develop adaptive expertise, individuals need to: (1) vary and reflect on their experiences and become adept at seeking out and taking different perspectives; and (2) become proficient at making balanced judgements about how or if an experience will change their current perspective or working representation of a social, economic, and biophysical system by applying principles of “good thinking.” Such principles include those that assist individuals to be open to the possibility of changing their current way of thinking (e.g., the disposition to be adventurous) and those that reduce the likelihood of making erroneous interpretations (e.g., the disposition to be intellectually careful). An example of applying some of the principles to assist individuals develop their understanding of a dynamically complex wetland system (the Macquarie Marshes in Australia) is provided. The broader implications of individual learning are also discussed in relation to organizational learning, the role of experiential knowledge for conservation, and for achieving greater awareness of the need for ecologically sustainable activity

The Future of Institutional Repositories at Small Academic Institutions: Analysis and Insights

Institutional repositories (IRs) established at universities and academic libraries over a decade ago, large and small, have encountered challenges along the way in keeping faith with their original objective: to collect, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of an institution in digital form. While all institutional repositories have experienced the same obstacles relating to a lack of faculty participation, those at small universities face unique challenges. This article examines causes of low faculty contribution to IR content growth, particularly at small academic institutions. It also offers a first-hand account of building and developing an institutional repository at a small university. The article concludes by suggesting how institutional repositories at small academic institutions can thrive by focusing on classroom teaching and student experiential learning, strategic priorities of their parent institutions

Genetic Programming for Smart Phone Personalisation

Personalisation in smart phones requires adaptability to dynamic context based on user mobility, application usage and sensor inputs. Current personalisation approaches, which rely on static logic that is developed a priori, do not provide sufficient adaptability to dynamic and unexpected context. This paper proposes genetic programming (GP), which can evolve program logic in realtime, as an online learning method to deal with the highly dynamic context in smart phone personalisation. We introduce the concept of collaborative smart phone personalisation through the GP Island Model, in order to exploit shared context among co-located phone users and reduce convergence time. We implement these concepts on real smartphones to demonstrate the capability of personalisation through GP and to explore the benefits of the Island Model. Our empirical evaluations on two example applications confirm that the Island Model can reduce convergence time by up to two-thirds over standalone GP personalisation.Comment: 43 pages, 11 figure

Plot-based urbanism and urban morphometrics : measuring the evolution of blocks, street fronts and plots in cities

Generative urban design has been always conceived as a creation-centered process, i.e. a process mainly concerned with the creation phase of a spatial transformation. We argue that, though the way we create a space is important, how that space evolves in time is ways more important when it comes to providing livable places gifted by identity and sense of attachment. We are presenting in this paper this idea and its major consequences for urban design under the title of “Plot-Based Urbanism”. We will argue that however, in order for a place to be adaptable in time, the right structure must be provided “by design” from the outset. We conceive urban design as the activity aimed at designing that structure. The force that shapes (has always shaped) the adaptability in time of livable urban places is the restless activity of ordinary people doing their own ordinary business, a kind of participation to the common good, which has hardly been acknowledged as such, that we term “informal participation”. Investigating what spatial components belong to the spatial structure and how they relate to each other is of crucial importance for urban design and that is the scope of our research. In this paper a methodology to represent and measure form-related properties of streets, blocks, plots and buildings in cities is presented. Several dozens of urban blocks of different historic formation in Milan (IT) and Glasgow (UK) are surveyed and analyzed. Effort is posed to identify those spatial properties that are shared by clusters of cases in history and therefore constitute the set of spatial relationships that determine the morphological identity of places. To do so, we investigate the analogy that links the evolution of urban form as a cultural construct to that of living organisms, outlining a conceptual framework of reference for the further investigation of “the DNA of places”. In this sense, we identify in the year 1950 the nominal watershed that marks the first “speciation” in urban history and we find that factors of location/centrality, scale and street permeability are the main drivers of that transition towards the entirely new urban forms of contemporary cities

Dartmouth Outward Bound Center and the rise of experiential education 1957-1976

Purpose: The article discusses Outward Bound’s participation in the human potential movement through its incorporation of T-group practices and the reform language of experiential education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Design/methodology/approach: The article reports on original research conducted using materials from Dartmouth College and other Outward Bound collections from 1957-1976. It follows a case study approach to illustrate themes pertaining to Outward Bound’s creation and evolution in the United States, and the establishment of experiential education more broadly. Findings: Building on prior research (Freeman, 2011; Millikan, 2006), the present article elaborates on the conditions under which Outward Bound abandoned muscular Christianity in favor of humanistic psychology. Experiential education provided both a set of practices and a reform language that helped Outward Bound expand into the educational mainstream, which also helped to extend self-expressive pedagogies into formal and nonformal settings. Research implications: The Dartmouth Outward Bound Center’s tenure coincided with and reflected broader cultural changes, from the cold war motif of spiritual warfare, frontier masculinity, and national service to the rise of self-expression in education. Future scholars can situate specific curricular initiatives in the context of these paradigms, particularly in outdoor education. Originality/value: The article draws attention to one of the forms that the human potential movement took in education – experiential education – and the reasons for its adoption. It also reinforces emerging understandings of post-WWII American outdoor education as a product of the cold war and reflective of subsequent changes in the wider culture to a narrower focus on the self

Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems as foundation for sustainable agriculture – Critical reviews of environmental assessment tools, key findings and questions from a course process

With increasing demands on limited resources worldwide, there is a growing interest in sustainable patterns of utilisation and production. Ecological agriculture is a response to these concerns. To assess progress and compliance, standard and comprehensive measures of resource requirements, impacts and agro-ecological health are needed. Assessment tools should also be rapid, standardized, userfriendly, meaningful to public policy and applicable to management. Fully considering these requirements confounds the development of integrated methods. Currently, there are many methodologies for monitoring performance, each with its own foundations, assumptions, goals, and outcomes, dependent upon agency agenda or academic orientation. Clearly, a concept of sustainability must address biophysical, ecological, economic, and sociocultural foundations. Assessment indicators and criteria, however, are generally limited, lacking integration, and at times in conflict with one another. A result is that certification criteria, indicators, and assessment methods are not based on a consistent, underlying conceptual framework and often lack a management focus. Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems, including self-organisation, renewal, embeddedness, emergence and commensurate response provide foundation for sustainability assessments and may be appropriate focal points for critical thinking in an evaluation of current methods and standards. A systems framework may also help facilitate a comprehensive approach and promote a context for meaningful discourse. Without holistic accounts, sustainable progress remains an illdefined concept and an elusive goal. Our intent, in the work with this report, was to use systems ecology as a pedagogic basis for learning and discussion to: - Articulate general and common characteristics of living systems. - Identify principles, properties and patterns inherent in natural ecosystems. - Use these findings as foci in a dialogue about attributes of sustainability to: a. develop a model for communicating scientific rationale. b. critically evaluate environmental assessment tools for application in land-use. c. propose appropriate criteria for a comprehensive assessment and expanded definition of ecological land use