The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is to suggest the potential of urban design through an integrated linkage between the social role of urban design and community engagement in urban regeneration as a response of the advocacy of participative urban design approach and the academic debate of community engagement. This thesis explores the social dimension of urban design in urban regeneration with the contexts of urban policies in England and South Korea. The thesis progresses a detailed empirical investigation of urban design in both countries’ urban regeneration practices, principally Scotswood and Walker Riverside in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and Singil in Seoul, South Korea. It illustrates that urban design plays various roles in urban regeneration in physical and social aspects, concerning improving physical environments, local resident’s liveability, and tackling social problems. It also identifies challenges for urban design in urban regeneration in relation to various tensions in the practice of urban regeneration. How local communities are engaged in the wider process of urban regeneration practices is illustrated in this thesis. The exploration of urban regeneration practices explains the mechanisms for identifying community views in relation to urban design. It identifies factors affecting community engagement and channels for community engagement in the process of urban design in urban regeneration and underlines community engagement in the management of end-products of urban design. The thesis concludes with a discussion about the social dimension and the potentials of urban design in urban regeneration. It highlights that urban design plays a role in community engagement, as a means of engendering community engagement in urban regeneration. It discusses the potential of urban design as a process of integration, as a responsible process to the social consequences of urban regeneration, and as proactive actions for the delivery of better urban design and as reactive actions for the iii management of the built environment. It also recommends actions in the process of urban design for local communities in Korean urban regeneration practices. Overall, this thesis highlights that there is a need to be a shift in the perspectives of urban design in urban regeneration towards urban design as a collaborative and an ongoing process of making better places, concerning not only improving existing urban environment and the quality of life for users, but also the management of the built environments the legacy of urban regeneration.

This thesis investigates some of the effects of locating offices near British Rail termini in central London, within the context of current strategic and local plans. A review is made of literature on theories of central area structure, office location, accessibility, development and transport interchanges, and pedestrian movement, including walking speed, distances, detour factors and mechanical aids. Previous studies of the relationship between home and central workplace location and sectorisation patterns are reassessed. Results from commuter travel surveys from other sources are re-analysed and a 1975 travel survey at the Shell Centre is processed and the results compared with earlier surveys. Central Area office growth between 1961 and 1976 is mapped and office floorspace/worker ratios discussed. A preliminary survey of types of offices clustering near the termini is reported. A spatial model for central London is formulated, the "transition zone nuclear growth theory". Greater London Transportation Survey and Census data are used to assess walking distances between workplaces and transport nodes, and to provide an input into a model, which attempts to predict the number of commuters who would use a nearby terminal or station. The relative accessibility of various locations for British Rail commuters is calculated. A case study compares the Victoria and Oxford Circus areas, in both land use and transport terms, including development opportunities, overcrowding on tube services, and costs in time and fares. Results are compared with those of travel surveys. An urban design case study examines redevelopment opportunities near the termini and suggests a pedestrian network to assist commuter walk trips, and link new development in the transition zones to the traditional business area. Conclusions compare the transport and land use advantages and disadvantages of the concept and list specific findings. Recommendations are made for changes in planning policies, further research, and immediate action.

This thesis approaches the problems of commercial redevelopment in commercial cores by examining the impact of redevelopment in Birmingham's City Centre between 1988 and 1991. The impact of redevelopment is considered not in terms of its social or economic consequences however, but in terms of its aesthetic impact on the townscape. This was investigated by studying the attitudes to fifteen redevelopments held by local citizens. These attitudes were contrasted to those of planners working for the local authority, and also student groups, in an attempt to study the effect of experience and expertise on aesthetic responses. These questions were considered in the light of a review of the various approaches to the study of architectural assessment emanating from environment-behaviour researchers. This review suggests that it is impossible to study the aesthetic quality of the built environment without reference to the meanings it symbolises, as townscape is functional, and aesthetic qualities cannot be abstracted without a consideration of these functional aspects. Thus it was argued that the assessment of the built environment is a function of people's cognitive representation of that environment and the meanings they attach to it. Therefore this was a study of attitudes in the broadest sense, being a study of how people looked at, made sense of and generally felt about these redevelopments. A research design was developed for the study of these issues based around the categorisation of photographic stimuli of fifteen redevelopments into groups in openended sorting procedures, and also through preference rankings. A total of one hundred and ten interviews were completed with five groups of respondents. The interview data was analysed through a combination of content analysis, inferential statistics and multiple dimensional scaling procedures. The results of the analysis revealed both commonalities and differences in the assessment of the redevelopments between respondent groups, with the differences particularly pronounced between the planning and lay public groups. These differences seemed to be caused by the fact that the groups tended to judge architecture according to different, but overlapping criteria. This was found to affect the way in which they conceptualised and categorised the redevelopments, which in turn affected their assessment. Planners tended to judge the redevelopments according to technical and design criteria, whereas non-experts appeared to be less concerned with physical criteria, instead emphasising the meanings and actions associated with the redevelopments, and more existential criteria, for example, whether a building created a 'sense of place'. These differences were related to differences in expertise and experience. In general the most successful designs in this study were found to be those redevelopments which were adjudged successful according to very different sets of criteria. It is argued that this study has increased our understanding of the relationship between expertise, attitude, assessment and decision-making in the context of townscapes. The implications of this research are discussed with reference to townscape management and the redevelopment of Birmingham city centre, and also in respect of theoretical issues in the study of environmental meaning and environment-behaviour research.

This thesis focuses on the creation of space as an activity. The argu¬ment draws not only on aspects of movement in time, but also on a cultural and specifically social context influencing the creation of the spatial habitus. The aim of this thesis is to reconsider existing theories of time and space in the field of urban planning and design and develop an updated account of spatial activity, experience and space-making based on time. Recent developments in spatial practice, specifi¬cally those related to the development and widespread use of new technologies such as hand-held devices, make this an important and timely task. Integrating spatial-temporal dynamics into the way we think about cities will aid the implementation of sustainable forms of urban planning and design by activating the individual urban context. Repetition and pattern are properties of such a time-based ur¬ban environment. These properties result from activities guided according to time windows. For instance, we all experience the syn¬chronised and collective activities of the morning or evening rush hour, the lunchtime run to the restaurant, or a walk in the park on a Sunday. This orchestration of thousands of fellow urban dwellers is a time-related and spatial phenomenon. Urban habitus, or these types of everyday repetitive cycles of activity, is interpreted in this thesis as the factor linking the social and spatial organisation of the urban environment. While such patterns have been understood to be an important factor for understanding urban existence, there have been few ef¬fective methods for activating such patterns at both the larger scale and the scale of the individual. This thesis develops an innovative methodology for the description of spatial narratives in the context of urban living. This telescoping methodology, moving between the general patterns of the macro-scale and the lived-experience at the micro-scale, is developed in tandem with a re-conceptualisation of the city in time and space. The study is composed of two parts using two different cases. The first case is based on fieldwork tracking individual movement and the spatial extension of everyday routines. GPS technology is deployed, together with interviews and mental maps as the main method of investigation into spatial experience, the creation of per¬sonal space, and the orientation and organisation of spatial practice. The second case utilises online social networking data mined from the micro-blogging platform Twitter. The data of thousands of users is analysed regarding temporal patterns across urban areas. This method is used as a complementary investigation of urban tempo-rality on the level of the collective. Along the shifting locations and moving patterns of activity, the temporal morphology of an urban centre, a city, is visualised, thus revealing the constitution of urban space as a product of the collective. One of the key elements in the conclusion to this thesis is the definition of temporality as a status rather than a transition. This proposition deviates from the usual approach of merging time and space as time-space, whilst preserving both spatial and temporal qualities. Temporality is defined as the dimension of activity that has its own comprehensiveness involving time and space. It is no longer just something ephemeral or fleeting. Nor is it simply a Kantian container for activity. Through repetitive practices, time has presence and agency in our everyday lives. KEYWORDS: time, space, rhythm, cycle, temporality, habitus, urban, city, GPS tracking, social networks, Twitter data

This thesis examines the development of the first offshore Marine Protected Area (MPA) on the UK Continental Shelf, the Darwin Mounds area of cold-water coral reefs discovered in 1998 off the North-West coast of Scotland. Following the 1999 Greenpeace High Court judgment and subsequent rulings by the European Court of Justice, the EC Habitats Directive is now deemed to apply throughout Member States' territories (i.e. out to 200 nautical mile limits of their Exclusive Economic/Fishery Zones). Damage to the Darwin Mounds area caused by deep-water trawling fishing activity has been observed and in 2003, at the UK's request, the European Commission imposed a ban on bottom trawling in the area, which became a permanent measure in 2004. This move was made possible by the revised Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and represents the first instance of a closure for nature conservation, rather than fish stocks, under the CFP. Through a detailed legal and policy analysis, a program of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, regulators and specialists in the field, and participant observation at regional workshops, this thesis explores the unique circumstances and sequence of events that led to the protection of the Darwin Mounds. A subsequent attempt to use the same legal mechanism to ban pair- trawling for sea bass in the English Channel (which results in the unintentional bycatch and mortality of dolphins and porpoises), met with less success. These two cases are explored within a theoretical framework derived from the social and natural sciences. The related issues of implementing a precautionary and ecosystem-based approach to marine conservation, and the role of science in policy-making are examined with regard to European initiatives currently under development. Eventually, networks of offshore MP As will be designated throughout European marine waters, including around the UK. This thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge concerning the rights and use of space in the offshore marine environment, tensions between different policy initiatives, and the challenges and prospects for offshore marine nature conservation.

No description available.

This thesis considers the potential of collaborative planning practice to effectively manage and develop sites within Northern Ireland, which are memorialised and sacralised by former conflict and tragic events of the past. It considers the extent to which collaborative methodologies are capable of dealing with the diverse discourses and interpretations that surround space and place. The research unpacks the understanding of space and place from a cultural geography perspective, alongside a consideration of theoretical planning approaches, understanding that techno-rational mechanisms, largely in operation by planning systems, are ineffective in understanding or facilitating the development of such sites which are sensitive to the past. As a result, the thesis deconstructs the key tenets of collaborative planning theory and reassembles it with these understandings of place as a conceptual mechanism to assess the development of three case study sites. All three of these sites are opportunities of strategic investment, delivered to the Northern Ireland Assembly under the Reinvestment and Reform Initiative. At present, rational mechanisms have not failed in facilitating development, despite political, economic and community optimism at the time of their transfer. The research also explores the inconsistencies and ethical challenges raised as a result of the commodification of sacralised sites for tourism or heritage products, seeking to understand the complexities of adding the 'tourist gaze' to these sites. The varied motivations and interpretations of such users are also explored, demonstrating a tourist market that is nuanced and diverse in its interests. Three case studies and a tourist survey are utilised in this research, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods underneath an interpretive epistemology to explore the 'layers of meaning' that contribute to the sacralisation of space. The thesis then provides recommendations regarding collaborative and agonistic structures which may more successfully engage with former sites of conflict, in the future.

Maputo City has a very high population density and sources of domestic energy such as electricity, gas or even kerosene are not yet available for the majority of the population. Demand for wood products is high both in the rural and urban areas for consumption and generation of income. Coupled with agricultural expansion, this raises concerns over the sustainability of use of natural forest resources. Nevertheless, the government has limited financial and human resources to establish plantations which can satisfy the increases in wood demand, especially in the urban areas. The 1991 Reforestation policy attempted to overcome this by adopting as strategy the involvement of the users, especially the rural community, in the replacement of exploited forest resources. However, reported failure in implementation of this strategy has suggested that there is need to elaborate a decision support tool, which would encapsulate the multidisciplinary nature of the problem, at both farm and regional levels. The underlying hypothesis of this research is, therefore, that despite data scarcity and/or unreliability, it is possible to develop a planning framework applying a relatively sophisticated planning tool such as Mathematical Programming. The aim of the thesis is to perform an <I>ex-ante</I> analysis of the impact of the strategy, stressing a bottom-up and integrated planning procedure and including decision makers at the two levels. Both single and multiobjective mathematical programming methods are applied, preceded by the use of Geographical Information Systems in the analysis of the spatial distribution of resources. The results show that by integrating agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry activities and constraints in the farm planning framework, it is possible to assess the individual potential responses to reforestation alternatives. Furthermore, conflicts among national goals are assessed using aggregation techniques. This provides policy makers with information on the opportunity cost that may be associated with changes in government priorities.

Title: Sustaining the cultural character and social fabric of a community through urban design: the case of Lisbon. Name: Francisco Antonio Ribeiro da Costa This research provides an important contribution to the sustainable maintenance and redevelopment of the cultural character of urban spaces and of associated communities. The prototype proposed defines a set of urban design criteria to serve as guidelines to urban interventions, using the case of Lisbon as the experimental context. The methodology used in the research is essentially qualitative, following a triangulation of methods (an adaptation of Hypothetic-deductive, survey and case study). The first phase explores historical and recent trends and concepts in urban design in order to provide a holistic vision of its dimensions. Subsequently two sets of criteria are proposed, one for spatial design and a set that encompasses the social/cultural aspects of the communities considered in Lisbon. The criteria, defined in this way, were analysed using a triangular methodology formed by a survey firstly to a range of actors in Lisbon society, secondly to a panel of experts (Portuguese and International) and finally by direct observation of spaces in the city. The key "part" of the prototype is constituted by a relation matrix that links together the two sets of criteria enabling comparison of design proposals with the impact the intervention can have on the communities' social aspects. This is supported by strategic guidelines for the application of the defined criteria. Testing with the groups showed that the prototype forms: • A useful tool, that facilitates the better practice in urban design. • A reference frame for academic reflections. • A methodological support for urban management. • A balancing factor in sustainable urban development. Thus, the prototype provides guidance to the main actors in the urban xiv planning and development process through a range of flexible rules that support decision-making.

The first part of this study shows that, although Iraq is fortunately endowed with a very rich and varied cultural heritage, efforts to protect it have been hitherto largely inadequate and unco-ordinated. While the official protective machinery centres its attention on single outstanding ancient and historic monuments and sites, the historic vernacular buildings, groups of buildings and areas - both rural and urban - remain not only badly neglected but are being rapidly demolished. The appalling and increasing destruction of this unique heritage is a serious loss and is, ironically, being caused mainly by official action. The study shows that over twenty per cent of Baghdad's historic fabric has been destroyed since World War 1 through new streets and clearance projects alone. This alarming loss is illustrated by an inventory of some 160 buildings of outstanding cultural interest demolished since 1917. The second part covers the history and morphological evolution of Baghdad and examines its recent planning and its four existing historic cores namely Rusafa, Karkh, Aadhamiya and Kadhimiya. A detailed conservation field survey was undertaken in the city between 1975 and 1976 which resulted in the identification of 53 archaeological sites and 47 zones of visual interest, in the proposal of 36 conservation areas, and in the selection, grading and documentation of 603 buildings of historic or architectural interest whose records, in Volumes II and III, form the first inventory ever produced for Baghdad. The thesis concludes, in Part Three, with general and specific recommendations on the need for greater action and a more systematic and comprehensive approach to protecting, documenting and enhancing the cultural heritage of the nation. An outline is also given on the necessary amendments to legislation, the introduction of listing, the creation of a conservation authority, the need for a greater allocation of funds and the training of staff for this specialist type of work. Finally, emphasis is given to the ten areas and seventy-one buildings in Baghdad which are under immediate threat and for which urgent action is vital.