The methodology of historic town landscape preservation in China

This study tried to find a feasible methodology most fitting to historic town landscape preservation and town development in China. With the social, environmental, and economic development in China, historic small towns faded away gradually, either disappearing naturally or overwhelming by the unlimited commercial construction. This study explored a methodology to preserve and redevelop these kinds of town landscapes, as well as created a strategy hybriding the preserving methods based on the research comparisons between U.S. and China. The study was consisted of the two primary phases. The first phase studied and analyzed the preservation methodologies of the historic town landscape in U.S. and China. This phrase compared and concluded some existing solutions to the town landscape preservation. Different from the historic buildings conservation, this research only concentrated on the “landscape”, such as streetscape, town spatial organization, landmarks, outdoor material application, etc. The historic approaches were collected through evaluation of case studies and the analysis was completed by categorizing the national register system, significance evaluation and related treatments. The second phase applied the combination methodologies into historic site design - Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. It tested the feasible preservation methodology in a real site and explored the potential opportunity in Chinese developing process. The phase was consisted of site survey, collection of relative documentation, analysis of existing natural and cultural conditions, and guideline design for the site landscape.Department of Landscape ArchitectureStatement of the problem -- Definition of town landscape -- Historic preservation in U.S. -- Town landscape preservation approach -- Historic town landscape preservation in China -- Comparative conclusion -- Creative project -- Guoqing Road design guidelines and applications.Thesis (M.L.A.

From Landscape Atlas to Flemish Heritage Landscapes: using landscape inventories to formulate landscape quality objectives in a participative process

The European Landscape Convention recommends the realisation of landscape policy, meaning “an expression by the competent public authorities of general principles, strategies and guidelines that permit the taking of specific measures aimed at the protection, management and planning of landscapes”. Landscape quality objectives should be formulated by the competent public authorities, including the aspirations of the public with regard to the landscape features of their surroundings. The responsible authorities in Flanders faced many questions to achieve these tasks. Landscape entities to be management had to be defined, landscape qualities and values formulated, but according to what time horizon, who are the different stakeholders and who is the public to be involved? Only small adjustments were made to the existing legislation on the protection of monuments, sites and landscapes to meet the recommendations of the ELC. Two of the new approaches used today are analysed in this paper. First, there is the designation of heritage landscapes through a long process of spatial planning. Second, there is a faster thematic approach of protecting particular landscape elements as monuments. Two different legal procedures are used with different aspects of public’s participation. Examples of their application so far were analysed as case studies. The Landscape Atlas in Flanders (2000) forms a basic inventory for the current landscape policy, which aims to be more integrated an cover most policy domains. A process was set up to designate selected anchor places from the Atlas, defining specific landscape quality objectives which should be used in the procedure of spatial planning to become managed as heritage landscapes. About 29 anchor places have been subject to the first phase of this procedure, which engages mainly policy makers and administrations to realise the objectives. In this phase participation consists mainly of external expert judgment and the input by different administrations that take care of sector interests. The analysis shows that the landscape quality objectives are defined by the responsible administration and aim at conservation of the existing landscape values and character. The input of the public remains mainly indirect and has little influence on the final formulation of the landscape quality objectives and the decision of designating. The direct influence of landscape policy ends when procedures of spatial planning take over in a second phase. Thus monitoring of the real developments in these heritage landscapes will be essential to evaluate if the landscape quality objectives are realized. The second case consists in the protection of special vegetation forms which are representative for particular cultural practices such as pollarding. Here objects are proposed as protected monuments which engage landowners to maintain them and the participation procedure is more direct. The analysis shows a large indifference by the authorities concerned and some negative responses by the landowners which are mainly based on misinformation

Emergent Landscape: Urban Shadow Space, Illuminated

This study defines a new approach to the transformation of unmaintained land within cities, or urban shadow space. Although urban shadow space can offer a place of free expression for the community and spontaneous vegetative growth within a city, it is often dismissed as blighted land by public authority. This study maximizes existing opportunities of these spaces, illuminating a realm of the city that is currently dark to the public eye. A proposed set of guidelines is utilized in the creation of three alternative designs that illustrate the emergent landscape, a sensitively designed, evolving landscape that encourages user interaction with the site. These guidelines and the results of their application are intended to assist design professionals who wish to move beyond the typical “clean and green” strategy currently employed by many municipalities to embrace a site’s existing characteristics

Wild Bee Conservation within Urban Gardens and Nurseries: Effects of Local and Landscape Management

Across urban environments, vegetated habitats provide refuge for biodiversity. Gardens (designed for food crop production) and nurseries (designed for ornamental plant production) are both urban agricultural habitats characterized by high plant species richness but may vary in their ability to support wild pollinators, particularly bees. In gardens, pollinators are valued for crop production. In nurseries, ornamental plants rarely require pollination; thus, the potential of nurseries to support pollinators has not been examined. We asked how these habitats vary in their ability to support wild bees, and what habitat features relate to this variability. In 19 gardens and 11 nurseries in California, USA, we compared how local habitat and landscape features affected wild bee species abundance and richness. To assess local features, we estimated floral richness and measured ground cover as proxies for food and nesting resources, respectively. To assess landscape features, we measured impervious land cover surrounding each site. Our analyses showed that differences in floral richness, local habitat size, and the amount of urban land cover impacted garden wild bee species richness. In nurseries, floral richness and the proportion of native plant species impacted wild bee abundance and richness. We suggest management guidelines for supporting wild pollinators in both habitats.DFG, 414044773, Open Access Publizieren 2019 - 2020 / Technische Universität Berli

Land use and agriculture sustainability: does landscape matter?

In this paper, we focus on showing how landscape can play a role in the sustainability of agricultural activities and what conditions have to be required to consider landscape as a sustainable output in this way. Nowadays, agricultural policies in Europe attach a growing importance to the direct management by agricultural producers of the countryside. This actual trend emphasizes the role of non-commodity outputs in the production process, with respect to the multifunctional nature of agriculture. If the traditional function of the agricultural production process is to provide food, new functions of agriculture are taken into account and reveal the different attributes of land (use and non use values): agriculture may also produce rural amenities (hunting?), landscape, ecological services and habitat for wildlife, biodiversity. Here, a special emphasis is put on landscape. If several definitions exist (a non-market output, a public good, a positive externality of production, a joint production), all are concerned with the fact that landscape and other agricultural outputs are complements: they are often jointly produced. Our analysis is supported by the Georgescu-Roegen?s approach on funds and flows. Here, the dynamic property of landscape implies to consider it as a flow. An analytical representation of the agricultural production process lies upon two types of production factors: the funds -human labour, land and manufactured capital- and the flows -energy, natural resources, materials, pollution, waste and products (goods, landscape, amenities?)-. Funds and flows have the property to be complement in the process. In order to lay emphasis on the physical links between the agricultural production process and the natural environment, we follow a bioeconomic approach where the value of landscape can be appreciated through its physical foundations. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the sustainability of a production process depends upon the quality of all its flow components (inflows and outflows) during a period of time. Thus, the sustainability of any agricultural activity can be measured through the qualitative variation of the production process, i.e. through two major outflows: the waste production and the landscape production. On one hand, every time waste is produced, the irreversibility of the activity is growing and the style of farming is less sustainable (e.g. case of intensive farming). On the other hand, a growing production of landscape traduces an ability to reduce the irreversibility of the production process insofar as it is leading to more biodiversity. A relation between the level of sustainability of any agricultural production process and the landscape change in time may be established and may provide some useful guidelines for policy makers.

Simulating Nature for Elderly Users - A Design Approach for Recreational Virtual Environments

Recreational nature experiences are rehabilitative for humans. Nature-oriented virtual environments (VEs) might be able to provide similar experiences. A pilot study have shown to increase the enjoyment of an exercise experience for retirement home residents, by augmenting their everyday bike exercise with a custom made recreational VE. This paper proposed a set of guidelines with design considerations that should be considered essential when designing recreational VEs. The guidelines combine considerations from tourism, urban and landscape design, psychology and VE navigation guidelines

The difficulty of folding self-folding origami

Why is it difficult to refold a previously folded sheet of paper? We show that even crease patterns with only one designed folding motion inevitably contain an exponential number of `distractor' folding branches accessible from a bifurcation at the flat state. Consequently, refolding a sheet requires finding the ground state in a glassy energy landscape with an exponential number of other attractors of higher energy, much like in models of protein folding (Levinthal's paradox) and other NP-hard satisfiability (SAT) problems. As in these problems, we find that refolding a sheet requires actuation at multiple carefully chosen creases. We show that seeding successful folding in this way can be understood in terms of sub-patterns that fold when cut out (`folding islands'). Besides providing guidelines for the placement of active hinges in origami applications, our results point to fundamental limits on the programmability of energy landscapes in sheets.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Appraising Salinity Hazard to Landscape Plants and Soils Irrigated with Moderately Saline Water

Water planners and managers are faced with the increasing needs to utilize nonpotable water for irrigating urban landscapes in water-shortage areas of the arid West. However, existing guidelines for assessing suitability of water for irrigation is rather broad. This paper presents updated guidelines based on the experience in west Texas and southern New Mexico where water of relatively high salinity is used for landscape irrigation

Culture of Ornamental Proteas

Descriptions of selected proteas, as well as those suggested for landscape use and cut flowers, are included. Guidelines for propagation, cultivation and marketing are given