Friendship Village : Exploring the Critical Economic Development and Urban Design Link for Sustainable Development

Presented on December 3, 2008 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm in the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development 2nd floor classroom.Full report: Friendship Village Exploring the Critical Economic Development and Urban Design Link for Sustainable Development, January 2009Runtime: 77:11 minutes (Presentation)Runtime: 23:27 minutes (Q & A)The Friendship Village group had the charge of advising a large-scale land developer on directions for promoting sustainability in the plans for a 210 acre multi-use project in south Fulton County, Georgia. Their work included site design recommendations modeled after traditional town centers in ten case studies but also included innovative open space and stormwater management proposals and ideas about educational and health care facilities. The diverse professional audience expressed admiration and the developer’s lead representative indicated that results exceeded her expectations.Faculty Advisors: Nancey Green Leigh, Professor of City and Regional Planning ; Richard Dagenhart, Associate Professor of Architecture ; John Skach, Adjunct Professor; Senior Associate, Urban Collag

A portable, wireless inductive-loop vehicle counter

This thesis descries the evolution and testing of a fully portable, inductive loop vehicle counter system. As a component of the NFS Embedded Distributed Simulation for Transportation System Management project, the system's cellular modem transmits real-time data to servers at Georgia Institute of Technology. From there, the data can be fed into simulations predicting travel behavior. Researchers revised both the detector circuit, and the temporary, reusable loop pad several times over multiple rounds of field testing. The final tested version of this system demonstrates the efficacy of uncommonly small inductive loops. When paired with a reliable data transmission channel, the system was shown to capture nearly 96% of actual through traffic.M.S.Committee Chair: Hunter, Michael; Committee Member: Guensler, Randall; Committee Member: Rogers, Michae