Second life of great American parking garages: Exploring the potential of adaptive reuse of urban parking structures in the American cities

[EN] The structure of American cities has been greatly influenced and transformed with the onset of the car culture and its ever evolving impacts to the everyday life of American people. The early 1900’s experienced a noticeable growth in the demand and need for automobiles resulting in the increasing need for parking spaces in the city. However, better public transit options in downtown cores; growing public awareness of reducing automobile dependence in order to address issues of sustainability; advancement in autonomous vehicles and demand-based traffic management, all are making existing parking garages obsolete and useless. The era of designing cities as if car access alone was sufficient appears to have ended. An opportunity lies where the existing underused parking garages can be repurposed into residential, entertainment, or work spaces. This paper examines three past projects that have converted existing urban parking garages to other uses around the world. It then analyzes their design and construction approaches and discusses the implications of this type of conversion to the urban form of the areas surrounding these projects.Lee, M.; Bapat, M. (2018). Second life of great American parking garages: Exploring the potential of adaptive reuse of urban parking structures in the American cities. En 24th ISUF International Conference. Book of Papers. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 823-831. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.5908OCS82383

Spinal anesthesia using Taylor′s approach helps avoid general anesthesia in short stature asthmatic patient

The case history of a 35-year-old female patient with short stature is presented. She was posted for rectopexy in view of rectal prolapse. She was a known case of bronchial asthma. She had crowding of intervertebral spaces, which made administration of spinal anesthesia via the normal route very difficult. Taylor′s approach for administration of the same was tried and proved successful, thus saving the patient from receiving general anesthesia in the presence of bronchial asthma, for a perineal surgery. The possible cause for the difficulty in administration of spinal anesthesia and the Taylor′s approach are discussed, and reports of similar cases reviewed