The aim of this study is to enhance the strength and the durability of adobe bricks by introducing bio-inspired stabilisers. This research was inspired by the high strength and durability of the termite mounds. The study investigates the stabiliser behind such strong natural constructions. The termite builds its mounds by incorporating a glycoprotein from its saliva to cement the sub-soil particles together. Biomimicry has been used as an approach to investigate the potential for the use of the termites’ construction stabiliser in adobe bricks. Three different glycoproteins sourced from the waste of the meat industry were identified as potential stabilisers in adobe bricks. Bovine serum albumin from cows’ blood, mucin from porcine stomach and gelatine from cold-water fish skin were the three stabilisers used in this study. A fourth stabiliser was made up of several chemicals which together aimed to mimic the termites’ saliva glycoprotein. Two soils were used to prepare adobe bricks for testing. The main soil used in this study was sourced from Devon in the UK. The second soil was sourced from Mayo neighbourhood in Khartoum, Sudan and it was only used in key tests. Adobe bricks were made and stabilised with different concentrations of these bio-inspired stabilisers. Controlled unstabilised adobe bricks were used for comparison. The bricks were tested for their unconfined compressive strength and erosion resistance. The main conclusion in this study is that, bovine serum albumin which is a glycoprotein derived from cows’ blood and considered as a by-product of the beef industry, has proved its potential to be used as stabiliser in earth construction. The use of 0.5 by weight percent of bovine serum albumin resulted in 41% and 17% increase in the compressive strength of the Sudanese and the British adobe bricks respectively. In addition, the use of 5 by weight percent of bovine serum albumin resulted in 202% and 97% increase in the compressive strength of the British and Sudanese adobe bricks respectively. Furthermore, the use of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 by weight percent of the bovine serum albumin resulted in 30%, 48% and 70% reduction in the erosion rate of the British adobe bricks respectively. The use of 0.5 by weight percent of the bovine serum albumin resulted in 97% reduction in the erosion rate of the Sudanese adobe bricks. The other stabilisers tested did not result in a significant improvement in unconfined compressive strength of the adobe bricks. However, the use of 0.1and 0.2 by weight percent of mucin from porcine stomach resulted in 28% and 55% reduction in the erosion rate of the British adobe bricks respectively.

The residential sector accounts for 24% of electricity conswnption in Botswana. This is significant and warrants a comprehensive understanding of the energy characteristics of the sector. This would not only inform occupants, but it would also inform the utility providers and hence policymakers. The comprehensive understanding of household electricity conswnption requires detailed data which is virtually non-existent in Botswana. In this research, data that was collated to address this shortfall has been achieved through the use of questionnaires, appliance use diaries and electricity monitoring. The data collection was in two phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 covered three location while Phase 2 focused on a locality in Gaborone. The questionnaire resulted in a comprehensive dataset of 73 households for Phase 1 and 310 households for Phase 2 while three and fourteen houses were monitored for Phase 1 and 2 respectively. The research, therefore, makes use of a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) approach all of which complement each other. The data collated was used for statistical analysis to discover the existing trends in the data and to determine household typologies. Two statistical models; General Linear Model (GLM) and Linear Mixed Model (LMM) were developed to determine the most influential factors; dwelling, socio-economic and appliance on electricity conswnption. In addition, identification of household typologies was carried out using the k-means clustering method. From the analysis, it was observed that dwelling, socio-economic and appliance factors account for 44%, 33% and 45% of the variation in electricity conswnption respectively. A combination of all the factors, however, accounted for 57% of the variance in electricity conswnption, hence a better predictor of household electricity use. The analysis also indicated other significant factors such as the time of the day, the day of the week and occupancy trends amongst others have a significant influence on household electricity use. From the cluster analysis, four independent groups were identified based on selected characteristics (features) that is, dwelling type, tenure, the nwnber of rooms, the number bedrooms, annual electricity conswnption and the number of appliances. The clusters identified provide a potential to better understand the underlying electricity conswnption characteristics provided by different household segments. In this way, it is possible to ensure that interventions (such as the demand side management strategy already in place) will encompass as much of the population as possible, and certainly, those groups which offer the greatest potential for beneficial impact together with the building and appliance factors that underpin these potentials. Whereas at the onset of this research there were limited information/data, the fmdings presented in this research provides significant data and analyses for further research, which is underpinned by, detailed methods and modelling techniques.

Significance: Through the medium of a pilot study on the Garden Cities Wolfson Economics Prize (UK) and the three main case studies (Catalonia/Netherlands/UK), the thesis investigates the key ideas of each project, evaluating their effectiveness related to sustainability and quality concepts. The exploration of European and UK large-scale projects is interpreted on a journey to innovative and successful landscape schemes, giving the opportunity to this thesis to evaluate their effectiveness and delivery with regards to low carbon and spatial quality. Rigour: The examination of the state of the art in regional landscape design concepts was based on the identification of the key ideas by current theory, the communication methods, and their impact to large-scale project development. Establishing collaborations with pioneer projects in Catalonia, the Netherlands and the UK, the study has developed a specific methodology that allows the identification of key issues, such as low carbon and quality of space, as well as the evaluation of their dissemination and interpretation through the landscape project process. A pilot study (Garden cities – Wolfson economics prize) followed by three case studies (Landscape Observatory, the Netherlands and HS2/HS2LV) are the main steps to evaluate the effectiveness of the processes followed and the best practices towards a sustainable and quality landscape design. Originality: The contribution to knowledge of this thesis lies upon the identification and creation of sustainable strategic schemes that work effectively at the scale of landscape projects, affecting positively the way regions are conceptualized and addressed. The need for a project framework supported by policies and legislation that will secure the early integration of ideas such as low carbon, spatial quality and drawings, is identified as a significant step towards successful project implementation and impacts on the extent to which key issues will be delivered in strategic schemes. The recognition of drawings and visuals as communication tools, through the landscape project process, improves the understanding of the land and acts significantly in the interpretation of the landscape vision as well as the integration of key issues in strategic schemes. Evidence collected during the study indicates that innovative projects can form theory and therefore that the key issues of low carbon and spatial quality can be interpreted differently across Europe, playing distinct roles, and gaining significant importance to the landscape project process. Impact: The proposal for a common European and UK agenda related to strategic landscape schemes will share lessons of good practice suggesting ways to strengthen the areas of sustainable landscape development and it will improve understanding, communication, and implementation of low carbon and spatial quality, by sharing knowledge and adopting best practices, creating a sustainable environment.

Public space is an intrinsic element in our cities reflecting our everyday life. It contains various types of social, cultural, economic, and other relations. These relations continually change their ways of agglomeration in the space. In this regard, it has been pointed out that this manifoldness and changeability is one of the barriers making difficult for the public space studies to examine public space. This research seeks an empirical method to capture this multiple and ever-changing aspect of public space. It examined user activities in public spaces to address how public space performs multiple roles, how the behind-the-scenes dynamic relations make them different public spaces, and what the role of materiality in the performances of public space is. To look at the multiple production process of human activities, the concept of affordances (Gibson, 1979) was applied to examine the relations between the human and physical environments and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) was applied to investigate the characteristics of public space through the user activity networks. Data on user behaviour were gathered by observations, short interviews, and questionnaires from Fortune Street Park and Kingston Ancient Market Place, both small public spaces in London. The ANT framework of material relations recognised that the stabilisation (Callon, 1992; Bijker, 1997) of user activity networks are achieved through a fluid process (Law, 2002) and that this fluidity is based on the multiple affordances in the space. Using the term multiplicity (Mol & Law, 2002), this research describes the ways in which the multiple activities interfere and overlap with each other along with the actants involved. This research found the two cases perform multiple roles, which was verified by multiple enactments of user activity networks. However, the two cases showed differences in generating user activity stabilisations and in holding the multiple activity networks together in the space. These network differences were identified as the main causes to generate different publicness, which are constantly changing. Based on these findings, this research argues that the cases under study transform their network relations in multiple ways to be stabilised as public spaces, and finally suggests a new empirical tool to examine the multiple and ever-changing aspect of public space.

This thesis explores whether mega event-driven development can achieve socially just planning outcomes by investigating how the development in London’s Olympic Park regeneration masterplan - the Legacy Communities Scheme (LCS) planning application - was rationalised by the actors involved (particularly planners), and assesses whether the LCS’s planning outcomes were socially just. The thesis firstly critically reviews conceptualisations of social justice within the planning and urban studies literature, thus informing a normative framework of ‘socially just planning outcomes’, adapted from Fainstein’s three ‘Just City’ principles, against which to assess the LCS. This theoretical framing is accompanied by an examination into the functioning of power in the planning decision-making process, drawing from analytical concepts relating to agency, agenda setting, and rationality. Through analysis of the LCS application’s documentation and in-depth stakeholder interviews, the main planning outcomes of the LCS are established, focusing on housing, employment, open space, and education land uses. How actors engaged in the LCS’s planning decision-making process reflected on and rationalised their support/objections to these outcomes is then examined. Subsequently, the role of power in shaping the LCS is discussed, with consideration to the exceptional governance arrangements, technical expertise, agenda setting, and the consensual, ‘closed-door’ approach to decision making. The thesis concludes that the LCS only partially provides outcomes that meet the ‘Legacy promises’ and the ‘socially just planning outcomes’ criteria. These outcomes closely align with national government objectives to ensure the delivery of the ‘Legacy’ development and recoup Olympic expenditure. This was primarily secured by the LCS applicant’s technical viability rationalisations, premised on maximising financial returns, which were largely accepted by the planners within the Olympic planning authority when assessing the LCS. This constrained the application of local planning policy and development objectives, and thus the influence of rationalisations advanced by the Boroughs’ planners and councillors.

In the late 1980s, Tehran municipality became financially independent from central government. As a result, the municipality utilised innovative tools to finance the city, such as granting excess construction density to developers, which enabled them to construct taller buildings in exchange for a fee. This financing tool has generated a significant amount of money for the municipality and boosted the housing construction sector but it was the first step towards relaxing planning regulations and giving power to developers to pursue their agendas. The aim of this research is to investigate the impacts of municipal fiscal decentralisation on the development process and planning system of Tehran. The general orientation of this research is qualitative strategy. Primary data was collected by conducting 47 semi-structured interviews with housing developers and planners within both the public and private sectors in Tehran. In order to understand the interest and strategies of housing developers, interviews were conducted with developers working as individual developers or as construction companies. To collect data on various aspects of planning and financing the city, interviews were carried out with key informants who are, or used to be, members or officers of relevant departments in the government or other institutions. By careful analysis of the collected data on the behind the scenes of development and planning process in Tehran, this study argues that the financial dependence of Tehran Municipality on incomes generated from construction density charges, payable by housing construction developers, has resulted in the occurrence of a certain type of market-led growth in specific areas of the city. Although attempts have been made to harness this market-led growth by introducing a new plan for the city this has led to massive alterations and interventions intended to secure the benefit of developers and the municipality's income. Without providing an alternative source of income for the Tehran Municipality it is unlikely to have much success in planning for Tehran.

The latest processes of globalisation have brought major changes in the world’s social fabric. Today, places are connected by an intricate web of relations and flows, determining their development possibilities. The natural resource rich countries and regions have been plugged into these global production networks, but despite their natural wealth, they have not successfully reached a sustainable development path. Orthodox economic theories have assuming positive externalities from FDI flows fail to capture this outcome. However, recent developments in the Economic Geography literature provide an analysis of uneven development in the guise of the Global Production Networks approach. This literature acknowledges the decisive role of power in producing a strategic coupling between the host region/country interests and the extractive multinational enterprises, something crucial in the extractive industries. This research focuses on the mining industry, as a way to advancing a better understanding of the relationship between the extractive industry and sustainable development of host regions. For this, it uses the Chilean copper mining as a case study. Hence, this research tries to contribute to the general question of how the mining industry affects uneven regional and national development in the context of the latest globalisation process by: first, incorporating the GPN in analysing the extractives industries; second, unpacking the concept of bargaining power, to explain issues related to value capture; third, providing empirical evidence about the successive bargains taking place between the mining MNEs and Chilean State in different nodes, and their implications for sustainable development; and fourthly, establishing the role of the State in the successive bargains taking place with the mining MNEs in the current Chilean copper mining GPN.

Urban sprawl has been largely discussed as a multifaceted phenomenon mainly driven by the housing debate. Nevertheless, this debate has been strongly determined by the focus on the ‘built-up realm’ leaving aside a crucial less addressed dimension defined by the wide spectrum of undeveloped (or less developed) lands and open tracts. Indeed, these lands determine the fragmented and disperse character of sprawl, and define a parallel unbuilt geography. Pieces of countryside, farmlands, landfills, brownfields, geographical accidents, speculative lands, infrastructural areas, military facilities, buffers of security and others appear as different but nevertheless as interstitial spaces – not clearly considered as ‘urban’ – that take part in suburban transformations. Thus, the emergence of these interstitial spaces deserves a closer inspection in order to unveil their origins, role and implications in planning, and to improve the comprehension of urban sprawl and its unbuilt geography. In this vein, this thesis inspects three research questions. First, what are the interstitial spaces of urban sprawl? Second, how they emerge and participate in suburban transformations? and finally, what are their implications in planning? To answer these questions, the thesis develops the concept of ‘interstitial space’ based on a critical revision of current literature, and focused on the different interpretations of institutional actors, their relational character, impacts at different scales and implications in planning. To do so, the capital city of Chile, Santiago, is used as a context of study. Here, various interstitial spaces are analysed using a mixed methodological approach that implies secondary research, fieldwork that involved 56 semi-structured interviews, site visits, revision of representative documentation and data analysis. Evidence found suggests that interstitial spaces are active components of suburban transformations; they emerge as contested spaces and imply major revisions in planning policies aimed to accommodate population and employment growth.

Land contamination is an issue of concern in land regeneration and the built environment. To ensure the sustainability of the built environment, it is important that the risk to human health due to land contamination is addressed adequately. Current generic assessment criteria (GAC) values used in the assessment of contaminated land in the United Kingdom (UK) are very conservative. Although this is protective of human health, it may lead to un-necessary and costly remediation of land or result in land being left un-used. This highlights the need for improved understanding of human exposure to soil contaminants, which this work sought to promote. This thesis presents findings from our assessment of human exposure to five toxic elements; arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), lead (Pb) and nickel (Ni), carried out using individuals who grow and consume their allotment produce. The primary exposure pathway investigated was oral ingestion through the consumption of produce. Concentrations of these elements were measured in samples of soil and produce. Site-specific risk assessment carried out using element concentrations and participants’ produce consumption data indicated no significant health risk to the participants. During the risk assessment process, it is necessary that element bioaccessibility values are determined and considered in the assessment to ensure that the risk is not over-estimated. To improve our understanding of actual human exposure to these elements though the oral ingestion pathway, we carried out biomonitoring and produced human physiologically-based kinetic models to assess internal exposure to these elements. Measured concentrations of blood Pb and urinary As, Cd, Cr and Ni were similar to the corresponding levels in the general (nonoccupationally exposed) populations in the UK; indicating that the participants were not exposed to these elements at levels importantly higher than other adults in the UK. In addition, this indicates that participants’ consumption of allotment produce did not result in them having significant additional exposure to the elements. The models, implemented in MATLAB, predicted the literature data and our biomonitoring data well. Because these models are capable of predicting internal exposure to these elements, they improve our understanding of exposure to the elements, which is important in the sustainable management of land contamination. To our knowledge, it is the first time combined biomonitoring and physiologically-based models for the five toxic elements have been used to assess exposure among allotment users.

User behaviour and perception are key drivers for lighting energy efficiency and performance gap reduction in higher education. Changing the way we conduct post occupancy evaluation to include retrofits and understanding users' needs more thoroughly will ultimately lead to a greater reduction in CO, emissions. A pilot interview study was carried out with University of Reading Whiteknights campus with a total of 6 staff and students in 2014 and developed into a main interview study with 9 academic staff in 2015. During 2014 to 2016 data loggers were deployed for six months to 10 single occupancy offices, 13 classrooms and 14 corridor areas in 3 buildings on campus that were used for both teaching and office space. The data from the loggers was used to calculate hours of lighting use and occupancy, time of day analysis and a prompt study. The findings from interviews revealed that lighting control design in classrooms lacked consistency across the real estate portfolio; office occupants felt their spaces were neglected and; the piecemeal upgrades contributed to their frustrations of being unable to control their lighting effectively. Post occupancy evaluation in single occupancy offices, classrooms and corridors was carried out using environmental loggers to quantify the levels of hours of wasted lighting use for performance gap analysis relating this to external factor. and CO, emission savings. Significant hours of wasted lighting were found in all three task areas in the three study buildings. Interesting findings in the office study found that lighting use and occupancy patterns varied by both building and size of office. To combat this prevalent lighting waste continuous commissioning and verification were suggested as practical measures to reduce the CO, emissions and energy consumption and improve user satisfaction. Finally the prompt study exploring office occupant's habits was found to link light switching behaviours on exit to the time of day and suggested the corridor lights being off influenced the action of switching off lights in the office. This thesis contributes to knowledge by providing new significant findings in both post occupancy evaluation and human behaviour in light switching.