Ecological Landscape Planning : A Gaming Approach in Education

An understanding of the complex problems of land use competition requires an appreciation of natural processes, cultural values, economic imperatives and political agendas. This integrated understanding is an important component of the study program for tertiary students about to complete their professional qualification in landscape architecture at the Queensland University of Technology. This paper introduces a repertoire of game templates as an initial step in formulating a conceptual framework for the curriculum/games designer to explore the potential of play in ecological landscape planning. The concepts of social action space, permissible action space and motivational action space are used to investigate the qualities of each template for further game design development. The abstraction of these concepts may assist the designer to move beyond the usability of games into viewing their value as a learning method

Rhetoric of landscape architecture and interior design discourses: preparation for cross-disciplinary practice

In the current reform context, the uniqueness of local disciplinary practices is being forgotten in the race towards cross-disciplinary practice. The rhetoric of the pedagogic discourses of landscape architectural students and interior design students is described as part of a doctoral study undertaken to document practices and orientations prior to cross-disciplinary collaboration. We draw on the theoretical framework of Bernstein and the rhetorical method of Burke to study the grammars of 'landscape' representation employed within these disciplinary examples. We offer a method of investigating how prepared final year students may be for working in a cross-disciplinary manner. The discursive interactions of their work, as illustrated by four examples of drawn images and written text, are described. Comparisons of these examples show both similarities and differences in the students' grammars of representation within their disciplines. Furthermore, however, the findings suggest a progressive weakening of the grammars of the pedagogic discourses that apply to the concepts and procedures of both disciplines. This poses some key issues for educators. It is argued that while weak grammars foster students' deeper understanding of concepts, they also weaken the pedagogic identity and autonomy of their discipline. Strong grammars resist domination and subordination, ensuring the ongoing relative autonomy of a discipline

Between 2D and 3D: Studying structural complexity of urban fabric using voxels and LiDAR-derived DSMs

Cities are complex systems and their physical forms are the manifestation of cultural, social and economic processes shaped by the geometry of natural and man-made elements. Digital Surface Models (DSM) using LiDAR provide an efficient volumetric transformation of urban fabric including all built and natural elements which allows the study of urban complexity through the lens of fractal dimension (D). Founded on the “box-counting” method, we reveal a voxelization technique developed in GIS (Geographic Information System) to estimate D values of ten DSM samples across central Melbourne. Estimated D values of surface models (between 2 and 3) provide a measure to interpret the structural complexity of different urban characters defined by the pattern of developments and densities. The correlations between D values with other DSM properties such as elevation, volume, solar radiation and surface roughness, showed a strong relationship between DSM volume and mean elevation. Lower strength correlations were recorded with solar radiation and surface roughness. The proposed method provides opportunities for fractal research to study pressing issues in complex urban environments such as declining physical fitness, mental health and urban biodiversity

Evaluating capability of Green Stormwater Infrastructure on large properties toward adaptive flood mitigation: The HLCA+C methodology

Current flood protection capacities will become inadequate to protect many low-lying coastal cities from climate change-induced flooding in the future. Under climate change uncertainty, an adaptive strategy is required to provide supplemental flood mitigation. Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) in developed areas has the potential to provide substantial catchment runoff reduction. However, individual properties vary in their Flood Mitigation Capability (FMC) depending on their land characteristics. An effective methodology is needed to evaluate the FMC of properties to help urban planners determine which to target for GSI and when to implement GSI in light of increased climate change impacts. We advance the Hydrology-based Land Capability Assessment and Classification (HLCA+C) methodology for evaluating the FMC of large properties over the long term (80 to 100-year). It builds on the strengths of existing methodologies and uses a land unit analysis approach for assessing FMC, considering interdependent hydrological and geographical variables. The FMC classification system groups properties with similar flood mitigation characteristics, helping urban planners to understand their potentials and limitations for flood mitigation toward the development of adaptive strategies through time. Step-by-step instructions demonstrate how to apply the methodology to any low-lying coastal city

Effectiveness of strategically located Green Stormwater Infrastructure networks for adaptive flood mitigation in a context of climate change

Studies indicate Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) on industrial land can provide substantial adaptive flood mitigation within urban catchments under climate change. To identify a cost-effective adaptive GSI network, planners need to evaluate flood mitigation capabilities of industrial properties through time and understand key characteristics informing when, where, and how GSI should be implemented for maximum effect. We applied the Hydrology-based Land Capability Assessment and Classification (HLCA+C) methodology to a catchment in Christchurch, New Zealand, to evaluate the capabilities of industrial properties clustered into Storm Water Management (SWM) zones under different climate change scenarios. SWM zone potentials and limitations were assessed to develop the most capable adaptive flood mitigation network with climate change. We prioritised six of twenty SWM zones for inclusion in the network based on their substantial flood mitigation capabilities. To maximise their capabilities through time, we orchestrated, and implemented GSI in zones incrementally, using different implementation approaches based on key characteristics determining their capability. The results indicated that the most capable zone could mitigate climate change-induced flooding, by itself, up to the end of this century under the moderate climate change scenario. However, if its capability was combined with that of five others, together they could mitigate flooding just shy of that associated with the major climate change scenario up to the end of this century. The resulting adaptive industrial GSI network not only provides substantial flood protection for communities but allows costly investments in flood mitigation structures, such as barriers and levees, to be safely delayed until their cost-effectiveness has been confirmed under increased climate certainty

Marital Status and Sleeping Arrangements Predict Salivary Testosterone Levels in Rural Gambian Men

Variation in male testosterone has been hypothesized to reflect the evolved hormonal regulation of investment in mating versus parenting effort. Supporting this hypothesis, numerous studies have observed lower testosterone in married men and fathers compared with unpartnered and childless men, consistent with relatively elevated resource allocation to parenting as opposed to mating effort. Furthermore, lower testosterone has been reported among fathers more actively engaged in direct caregiving. However, it remains unclear whether these findings generalize cross-culturally. Most studies have been conducted in relatively urban, affluent, and low fertility settings where marriage is predominantly monogamous. We contribute new data on testosterone variation in 100 rural Gambian men from a polygynous, high fertility population, where cultural norms dictate that marriage and fatherhood occur in close succession. Married men (almost exclusively fathers) had lower average morning salivary testosterone than unmarried men (almost exclusively childless). This difference, however, could not be statistically differentiated from declines in testosterone observed with age. Independently of age differences and other potential confounds, we find that (i) among married men, polygynously married men had higher afternoon testosterone than monogamously married men; and (ii) fathers who sleep in the same room as their children had lower morning and afternoon testosterone than those who sleep apart from their children. We also document that body mass index was positively associated with afternoon testosterone. These findings, from a novel setting, provide additional support for the hypothesis that testosterone regulates human paternal care

Transitioning from face-to-face teaching to emergency remote teaching in landscape architecture

Landscape Architecture is a relatively young profession, and its pedagogy has evolved with time to keep up with technological advancements. Like Architecture and most design disciplines, Landscape Architecture is a project-based discipline with a focus on design process. It is based on experiential learning through field trips and site visits and is at the intersection of multiple disciplines while being site and context specific (location, culture, history, ecology, geomorphology, perception, seasonality, etc.). Today, teaching in Landscape Architecture mandates every school to graduate students with the required skills, knowledge, and values to form competent professionals. With COVID-19, the world confronted an unprecedented pandemic that affected the entire planet; more specifically, the education field had to continue delivering courses and classes remotely to make sure students could continue or finish their degrees. Being a site-centric program, Landscape Architecture faces new challenges when confronted to moving online. COVID-19 showed that traditional teaching methods lacked flexibility and needed to adapt to the fast-evolving digital world. This article reviews how an undergraduate landscape architecture program has addressed issues around remote teaching for its studios, theory, and practical courses with a direction to the future. We emphasize the difference between Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) and Online Teaching (OT). ERT has been applied in courses that were originally not designed to be taught online. In this paper, we report on how we managed the transition from Face-to-Face (F2F) to ERT. We analyze the challenges and opportunities that arose in the process and discuss their potential influence on shaping the future of our teaching Landscape Architecture programs. The results presented in the paper are based on one semester (semester 1, February to June 2020) that was characterized by a New Zealand wide COVID-19 lockdown, which forced all universities to discontinue F2F teaching. However, this is just the beginning of a reflective process. The aim of this article is to bring forward the discussion about whether there is an opportunity for design disciplines to evolve in a new pedagogical direction where blended teaching methods can promote more effective teaching

Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices

Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices is a speculative endeavor asking how we may represent, relay, and read worlds differently by seeing other species as protagonists in their own rights. What other stories are to be invented and told from within those many-tongued chatters of multispecies collectives? Could such stories teach us how to become human otherwise? Often, the human is defined as the sole creature who holds language, and consequently is capable of articulating, representing, and reflecting upon the world. And yet, the world is made and remade by ongoing and many-tongued conversations between various organisms reverberating with sound, movement, gestures, hormones, and electrical signals. Everywhere, life is making itself known, heard, and understood in a wide variety of media and modalities. Some of these registers are available to our human senses, while some are not. Facing a not-so-distant future catastrophe, which in many ways and for many of us is already here, it is becoming painstakingly clear that our imaginaries are in dire need of corrections and replacements. How do we cultivate and share other kinds of stories and visions of the world that may hold promises of modest, yet radical hope? If we keep reproducing the same kind of languages, the same kinds of scientific gatekeeping, the same kinds of stories about “our” place in nature, we remain numb in the face of collapse. Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices offers steps toward a (self)critical multispecies philosophy which interrogates and qualifies the broad and seemingly neutral concept of humanity utilized in and around conversations grounded within Western science and academia. Artists, activists, writers, and scientists give a myriad of different interpretations of how to tell our worlds using different media – and possibly gives hints as to how to change it, too

Global, local and focused geographic clustering for case-control data with residential histories

BACKGROUND: This paper introduces a new approach for evaluating clustering in case-control data that accounts for residential histories. Although many statistics have been proposed for assessing local, focused and global clustering in health outcomes, few, if any, exist for evaluating clusters when individuals are mobile. METHODS: Local, global and focused tests for residential histories are developed based on sets of matrices of nearest neighbor relationships that reflect the changing topology of cases and controls. Exposure traces are defined that account for the latency between exposure and disease manifestation, and that use exposure windows whose duration may vary. Several of the methods so derived are applied to evaluate clustering of residential histories in a case-control study of bladder cancer in south eastern Michigan. These data are still being collected and the analysis is conducted for demonstration purposes only. RESULTS: Statistically significant clustering of residential histories of cases was found but is likely due to delayed reporting of cases by one of the hospitals participating in the study. CONCLUSION: Data with residential histories are preferable when causative exposures and disease latencies occur on a long enough time span that human mobility matters. To analyze such data, methods are needed that take residential histories into account