Self-organization in planned Danwei and Dayuan: A case study of the transitional Houzaimen neighborhood of Nanjing in urban China

[EN] The dualism of top-down planning versus self-organization has dominated the paradigm on the evolvement of urban morphology. However, the coexistence of the both can be observed in different scale phenomena, such as the locality of city, states, or even global contexts. In the network of the global economy, urban places as spatial effects of globalization result from negotiations between international capitals and local powers. At the same time, the transitional city form also responds to changing regulations under the state socio-economic regime. Due to economic competitiveness, the entrepreneurial turn in the municipal governance reflects the role shift of local authorities from passive regulation operators to active agents for investment attractiveness and high fiscal incomes. Those changes have particular impacts on city planning while self-organization emerges in urban places. Thus, we study the socioeconomic strata within contemporary urban China's territories to discover dynamics of urban morphology, interacting factors and quantitative signatures for self-orgtanization apart from top-down interventions and finally to reveal the place-shaping mechanism. In the well-reserved Houzaimen neighborhood of Nanjing, the extremely close system-danwei and dayuan has gradually changed into the new community-xiaoqu. By site surveys and measurement approaches, the recognized pattern in residential ownerships, the allocation of commercial activities, accessibility and connectivity of residential areas, and fractal distributions in urban fabrics can help to compare self-organizing xiaoqu with planned dayuan for systematic openness and complexity towards sustainability. Meanwhile, dimension spectrum of the fractal structure reveals the mechanism of city evolvement. The result shows the open system fostering self-organization has higher value of fractal dimensions than the segregated one, while it may not necessarily be highly connected small-world networks. In addition, the identical fractal structure discovered in dayuan proves selforganization can emerge from the planned systemZhao, Q. (2018). Self-organization in planned Danwei and Dayuan: A case study of the transitional Houzaimen neighborhood of Nanjing in urban China. En 24th ISUF International Conference. Book of Papers. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 353-364. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.6010OCS35336

Fractal Systems of Central Places Based on Intermittency of Space-filling

The central place models are fundamentally important in theoretical geography and city planning theory. The texture and structure of central place networks have been demonstrated to be self-similar in both theoretical and empirical studies. However, the underlying rationale of central place fractals in the real world has not yet been revealed so far. This paper is devoted to illustrating the mechanisms by which the fractal patterns can be generated from central place systems. The structural dimension of the traditional central place models is d=2 indicating no intermittency in the spatial distribution of human settlements. This dimension value is inconsistent with empirical observations. Substituting the complete space filling with the incomplete space filling, we can obtain central place models with fractional dimension D<d=2 indicative of spatial intermittency. Thus the conventional central place models are converted into fractal central place models. If we further integrate the chance factors into the improved central place fractals, the theory will be able to well explain the real patterns of urban places. As empirical analyses, the US cities and towns are employed to verify the fractal-based models of central places.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 5 table

Agenda-setting and The Political Ecology of Large Infrastructure Projects in Latin America

This paper analyses the complex interplay between the environmental acceptability of large infrastructure projects and other normative values that may influence policy decisions, such as 'social justice' and 'economic growth'. It explores how historical changes in policy ideas may determine if a project survives on the policy agenda, if it is moved up to the decision-agenda; and whether and how it is finally implemented. Two case studies are presented with more detail: the project for a new international airport in Mexico City (1964-2000) and the Misicuni Multipurpose Project, aimed at solving the problems of water scarcity in Cochabamba, Bolivia (1952-2000).

The Yamanote Loop: Unifying Rail Transportation and Disaster Resilience in Tokyo

As climate change and population growth persist, and as the world rapidly urbanizes, major cities across the globe will face unprecedented strains. The risk of devastating impact from natural disasters increases in areas with a growing concentration of people. Megacities in Asia are the most at-risk of natural disasters, given their geographic location and high population density. With the highest projected population growth in the world, Asian cities must quickly expand and adapt their existing infrastructure to accommodate the transforming global conditions. A remarkable anomaly amongst Asian megacities, Tokyo, Japan is effectively adapting to its earthquake-prone environment. Within the last century, Japan has implemented seismically reinforced buildings and educational resources for earthquake preparedness. Amongst other technological innovations, investments in railway transportation have permitted major cities like Tokyo to expand and adjust according to its changing needs. The Yamanote Line is the primary commuter rail line in Tokyo. Its antecedent originated in 1885 and has since undergone significant changes to evolve into the highly sophisticated system it is today. By examining the evolvement of the Yamanote line from its conception and into the 21st century, this study explores the correlation between local rail transportation networks and their city’s resilience to natural disasters. A descriptive analysis aligned with four constructs of transportation resilience—robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity—observes instances in which the Yamanote line potentially strengthens Tokyo’s comprehensive disaster preparedness. The following study intentionally circumvents normative-prescriptive conclusions and focuses primarily on the impact of transformations of railway transportation on its broader urban context over time respective to disaster resilience and with consideration of other relative factors

The Shaping Process of Urban Form Under a Socialist System: Townscape Diversity and its Formation in Sanlitun, Beijing

[EN] The difference between socio-economic systems is an important factor in the diversity of urban form. M. R. G. Conzen (1960) established a framework for urban morphology in the context of a British social system and culture. It was suggested that this did not necessarily apply to cities affected by revolutionary planning measures. China, which is markedly different in social system and culture from Britain by most standards qualifies as revolutionary, at least in the post-war period. Sanlitun in Beijing, China, is an interesting case for comparison with British cities. It was a site containing few buildings during the initial stage of new China, but subsequently became the ‘Second Embassy District’ where many embassies gathered. Now it has become a commercial core district and cultural meeting place of Westerners and Chinese. The townscape of Sanlitun, which has experienced a number of socialist construction periods reveals the process of changing urban form under a socialist system. Identifying morphological periods, the changing process of townscape development in Sanlitun is articulated. Morphological units are delimited. They clarify the variations in Sanlitun’s landscapes and their formation. Based on these, this paper reflects on the shaping process of townscape under different socio-cultural systems, and further considers the universality, applicability and particularities of Conzenian theory.Meng, Y.; Zeng, M.; Song, F. (2018). The Shaping Process of Urban Form Under a Socialist System: Townscape Diversity and its Formation in Sanlitun, Beijing. En 24th ISUF International Conference. Book of Papers. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 273-284. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.5690OCS27328

An Empirical Study on Android for Saving Non-shared Data on Public Storage

With millions of apps that can be downloaded from official or third-party market, Android has become one of the most popular mobile platforms today. These apps help people in all kinds of ways and thus have access to lots of user's data that in general fall into three categories: sensitive data, data to be shared with other apps, and non-sensitive data not to be shared with others. For the first and second type of data, Android has provided very good storage models: an app's private sensitive data are saved to its private folder that can only be access by the app itself, and the data to be shared are saved to public storage (either the external SD card or the emulated SD card area on internal FLASH memory). But for the last type, i.e., an app's non-sensitive and non-shared data, there is a big problem in Android's current storage model which essentially encourages an app to save its non-sensitive data to shared public storage that can be accessed by other apps. At first glance, it seems no problem to do so, as those data are non-sensitive after all, but it implicitly assumes that app developers could correctly identify all sensitive data and prevent all possible information leakage from private-but-non-sensitive data. In this paper, we will demonstrate that this is an invalid assumption with a thorough survey on information leaks of those apps that had followed Android's recommended storage model for non-sensitive data. Our studies showed that highly sensitive information from billions of users can be easily hacked by exploiting the mentioned problematic storage model. Although our empirical studies are based on a limited set of apps, the identified problems are never isolated or accidental bugs of those apps being investigated. On the contrary, the problem is rooted from the vulnerable storage model recommended by Android. To mitigate the threat, we also propose a defense framework

A research on the improvement of small and medium-sized city in early modern China (1895—1927) -- Taking Southern Jiangsu as an example

In 1895, the failure of Sino-Japanese prompted the trend of comprehensive and systematic study of western pattern in China. In urban planning and construction, urban reform movement sprang up slowly, which aimed at renovating and reconstructing the traditional cities into modern cities similar to the concessions. During the movement, Chinese traditional city initiated a process of modern urban planning for its modernization. Meanwhile, the traditional planning morphology and system started to disintegrate, on the contrary, western form and technology had become the paradigm. Therefore, the improvement of existing cities had become the prototype of urban planning of early modern China.Currently, researches of the movement mainly concentrate on large cities, concessions, railway hub cities and some special cities resembling those. However, the systematic research about the large number of traditional small and medium-sized cities is still blank, up to now. This paper takes the improvement constructions of small and medium-sized cities in Southern region of Jiangsu Province as the research object. First of all, the criteria of small and medium-sized cities are based on the administrative levels of general office and cities at the county level. Secondly, the suitability of taking the Southern Jiangsu as the research object. The southern area of Jiangsu province called Southern Jiangsu for short, was the most economically developed region in Jiangsu, and also one of the most economically developed and the highest urbanization regions in China. As the most developed agricultural areas in ancient China, Southern Jiangsu formed a large number of traditional small and medium-sized cities. In early modern times, with the help of the Shanghai economic radiation, geographical advantage and powerful economic foundation, Southern Jiangsu became an important birthplace of Chinese national industry. Furthermore, the strong business atmosphere promoted the widespread urban improvement practices, which were incomparable of other regions. Meanwhile, the demonstration of Shanghai, Zhenjiang, Suzhou and other port cities became the improvement pattern of small and medium-sized city in Southern Jiangsu.This paper analyzes the reform movement of the small and medium-sized cities in Southern Jiangsu (1895-1927), including the subjects, objects, laws, technologies and the influence factors of politic and society ,etc. At last, this paper reveals the formation mechanism and characteristics of urban improvement movement in early modern China. According to the paper, the improvement of small-medium city was a kind of gestation of the local city planning culture in early modern China，with a fusion of introduction and endophytism

The influence of trust on risk allocation in chinese PPP projects

In order to improve the performance of PPP project management, remarkable numbers of work has been done by theorists and practitioners. However, the incentive of PPP partners has not fully been interrogated. When looking for an incentive approach of project governance, we found proper risk allocation as a motivating factor. It suggests that proper risk allocation allows contractor control construction costs reasonably, and gain compensation from the contract status changes, to ensure the profits expected at the end of the construction process. Currently, despite the fact that proper risk allocation has been recognized by practitioners to have a positive impact on the performance of project management, however, due to the lack of trust and trust insufficient supplies from PPP partners when designing risk allocation. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore the impact mechanism of PPP partners’ trust on proper risk allocation scheme formation and mechanism chain in which contractor achieves compensation as the contract status changed to form "trust-PPP partners proper risk allocation-PPP partners act dutifully while obtaining compensation when contract status changed positive loop adaptive process has become an important key scientific problem. Specifically, this thesis is discussed in the following four areas: 1. Theoretical sort of trust and risk allocation in PPP project: we analyzed research progress of risk allocation in PPP project from the perspectives of technology, organization and contract paradigms. Based on the sorting existing literature of trust, we analyzed fit of trust and risk allocation with paradigm tension as foothold, and proposed the potential impact of trust on the formation of risk allocation scheme. 2. Research design employed qualitative and quantitative study for reliability: Trust in construction project involves characteristics of scenarios dependency and moral risk, where data reliability issue has become a bottleneck of development of trust research in PPP project. Therefore, by having focus groups to explore on the optimal projection and ‘scenario into’ semi-structured interview process design module, we designed targeting approaches for trust and risk allocation study. 3. Building of ‘trust, proper risk allocation and contract status changes compensation’ theoretical assumptions model based on exploratory analysis with grounded theory and interpretation of literature: due to the gap in the literature which explores the relationship between trust and risk allocation, initial exploratory analysis model along with grounded theory and the analysis of social exchange based on reciprocity, social capital, and incomplete contract theories, we build driver, moderating theoretical assumptions model between trust, proper risk allocation and contract status changes compensation. 4. Empirical Analysis from questionnaire: by fixing existing scales of trust and proper risk allocation, hypothesis testing were answered through questionnaire survey, where it revealed driving action of trust on the formation of proper risk allocation and risk-sharing non-moderating act of trust on the relationship between proper risk allocation and contract status changes compensation.Nos últimos anos temos assistido ao aparecimento de um grande número de trabalhos realizados quer por académicos quer por gestores sobre como melhorar o desempenho da gestão de projetos das PPPs. Contudo, somos da opinião que os incentivos dos parceiros não foram totalmente analisados em especial no que respeita à alocação do risco enquanto fator motivador. Apesar da alocação do risco ter sido reconhecida pelos gestores como tendo um impacto positivo no desempenho da gestão de projetos, aquando da definição da alocação existe uma falta de confiança ou esta é insuficiente entre os parceiros das PPPs, o que prejudica o resultado final. O propósito desta tese é pois investigar o mecanismo do impacto da confiança entre os parceiros das PPPs na formação do sistema de alocação do risco adequado e na cadeia de compensações para o contratante quando ocorrem mudanças contratuais. Mais especificamente, esta tese abordará as seguintes quatro áreas: 1. Tipo teórico de confiança e alocação do risco adequado em projetos de PPPs: analisamos a investigação realizada na alocação do risco nas perspetivas da tecnologia, organização e contrato. Com base nos tipos de confiança existentes na literatura, analisamos de que forma a confiança se adequa à alocação do risco. 2. A nossa pesquisa combina métodos qualitativos e quantitativos. Considerando que a confiança envolve cenários de dependência e de risco moral e que, em projetos PPPs, a fiabilidade dos dados é um problema para a investigação da variável confiança utilizámos um método qualitativo - a discussão em grupo - como método de aferição desta variável. 3. Com base numa análise exploratória e utilizando o modelo da teoria fundamentada investigámos a construção da “confiança, alocação de risco adequado e compensação derivada de mudanças contratuais”. Considerando a lacuna existente na literatura no que concerne à relação entre confiança e alocação de risco, realizamos uma análise exploratória com base na teoria fundamentada (grounded theory) relevando as questões relacionadas com o capital social. 4. Análise empírica com base em questionários: utilizando escalas de confiança e escalas de alocação de risco já existentes, testamos hipóteses através da recolha de dados provenientes de questionários. Com os questionários pretendemos estudar a relação entre a alocação de risco adequado e a compensação devido a mudanças contratuais

Tracking the Evolution of the Companionate Marriage Ideal in Early Modern Comedies

This thesis examines the socially constructed ideal of companionate marriage in Elizabethan and Jacobean England through four dramas by Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton. It probes the question of how these theatrical productions of early modern England fit within or defy the emerging social trends regarding companionate marriage. It uses socioeconomic statuses, religious affiliations, and emerging notions of race as lenses through which to analyze the romantic couples depicted in these plays. The results of this study indicate that, while exact authorial intentions remain unknown, these plays served as proponents of the companionate marriage while dually challenging the persisting restrictive social norms that prevented prospective unions between religiously, socioeconomically, and/or racially divergent individuals

Mechanical implementation of kinematic synergy for continual grasping generation of anthropomorphic hand

The synergy-based motion generation of current anthropomorphic hands generally employ the static posture synergy, which is extracted from quantities of joint trajectory, to design the mechanism or control strategy. Under this framework, the temporal weight sequences of each synergy from pregrasp phase to grasp phase are required for reproducing any grasping task. Moreover, the zero-offset posture has to be preset before starting any grasp. Thus, the whole grasp phase appears to be unlike natural human grasp. Up until now, no work in the literature addresses these issues toward simplifying the continual grasp by only inputting the grasp pattern. In this paper, the kinematic synergies observed in angular velocity profile are employed to design the motion generation mechanism. The kinematic synergy extracted from quantities of grasp tasks is implemented by the proposed eigen cam group in tendon space. The completely continual grasp from the fully extending posture only require averagely rotating the two eigen cam groups one cycle. The change of grasp pattern only depends on respecifying transmission ratio pair for the two eigen cam groups. An illustrated hand prototype is developed based on the proposed design principle and the grasping experiments demonstrate the feasibility of the design method. The potential applications include the prosthetic hand that is controlled by the classified pattern from the bio-signal