Urbanization is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity. To address this problem, landscape planners have increasingly adopted landscape ecology as a theoretical basis for planning. They use spatial concepts that express principles of landscape ecology in diagrammatic form to create frameworks for planning. This dissertation presents a quantitative approach to evaluate the application of spatial concepts developed to create an armature of open space in areas subject to urbanization. It focuses on the predicted urban expansion of Damascus, Oregon, as a case study. An alternative futures study was used to test three open space spatial concepts for patches, corridors and networks in combination with compact and dispersed urban development patterns. The resulting eight scenarios of land use and land cover were then modeled for the year 2060 to evaluate their effects on habitat quantity, quality and configuration and to identify tradeoffs between urban development and conservation for three focal wildlife species: Red-legged frog, Western meadowlark, and Douglas squirrel. Open space spatial concepts strongly influenced habitat quantity and quality differences among future scenarios. Development patterns showed less influence on those variables. Scenarios with no landscape ecological spatial concept provided the most land for urban development but reduced habitat quantity and quality. Greenway scenarios showed habitat increases but failed to provide sufficient habitat for Western meadowlark. Park system scenarios showed habitat increases, but high-quality habitats for Western meadowlark and Red-legged frog decreased. Network scenarios presented the best overall amount of habitats and high-quality habitats for the three species but constrained urban development options. Next, I used an individual-based wildlife model, HexSim, to simulate the effects of habitat configuration and to compare and contrast resulting wildlife population sizes among the eight future scenarios with the ca. 2010 baseline landscape. Network scenarios supported the largest number of Red-legged frog breeders. Park scenarios performed best for meadowlarks, while greenway scenarios showed the largest populations of squirrels. Four of the eight scenarios sustained viable populations of Western meadowlarks. Compact development scenarios performed best for most indicators, but dispersed development scenarios performed better for Western meadowlarks. This dissertation includes both previously published and unpublished material.

A democracia e as decisões oriundas das instituições públicas se realizam de forma legítima se os cidadãos conseguem participar e interagir, trocando argumentos dos prós e contras sobre determinada questão que envolve o bem comum da sociedade e da cidade. O modo de vida nas cidades, influenciados inclusive por variáveis relacionadas ao urbanismo e ao desenho urbano, acabam por transferir o momento deste encontro para os espaços públicos abertos – aí incluídos as vias públicas - por onde as pessoas inevitavelmente entram em contato. A preocupação com os espaços públicos abertos é tema recorrente na história da cidade de Porto Alegre há pelo menos quatro décadas, o que pode ser verificado pela análise do tratamento institucional dado ao tema. No entanto, mesmo com o passar do tempo, os problemas de mobilidade urbana persistem, e inclusive se acentuam, fruto das decisões do Poder Executivo local que acabam por inverter a prioridade, consolidando e incentivando a utilização do automóvel como modal de transporte preferencial, resultando no afastamento das pessoas e na dificuldade de interação. Movimentos sociais surgem em oposição a estas políticas, e a bicicleta se torna instrumento e símbolo para a retomada da escala humana da cidade como lugar do encontro, da interação, e da democracia. / Decisions taken by public institutions – as democracy itself – can be considered legitimate and function as such, when citizens are able to participate and interact, exchanging arguments of the pros and cons on an issue that involves the common good of society and the city. The urban way of life – influenced by Urbanism and urban design related factors – end up transferring that meeting point to the public spaces – including public thoroughfares – where people, inevitably, come in contact with each other. Dealing with open public spaces is a recurring subject and often reason for concern in Porto Alegre; it has been so for about four decades at least; this can de verified by analysing how public institutions have dealt with this issue. As a matter of fact, urban mobility related problems persist, and get even worse, as a consequence of decisions taken by the local government, which end up reverting priorities: the use of the automobile as a preferred mode of transportation is further encouraged and consolidated. People get more isolated, interaction is more difficult. Social movements arise, opposing such policies; the bicycle becomes a tool and a symbol for regaining the human scale of the city as a place of meeting, of interacting, and of democracy.

Urban densification is the current planning ideal today with arguments of social, economic and ecological sustainability. However, this way of exploiting the urban area seem to result in a decrease of the amount of open space and green area available for children. By examining the accessible open space in primary schools in Malmö, this study has tried to determine whether one can find geographic or socioeconomic patterns connected to this asset. The study has been carried out with the help of GIS after a literature review of necessary theory and legislation had been done. The outcome shows that schools in some districts, primarily the area surrounding the city center, are not as good as the others to provide for the child’s need for open space. Six of the schools don’t even manage to meet the required square meter (m2) of open space stipulated by the municipality of Malmö, Malmö Stad. This result describes an uneven distribution of open space depending on the child's geography. An unfair development from the child’s perspective, which in turn brings numerous negative effects both physical and psychological for their childhood.

A democracia e as decisões oriundas das instituições públicas se realizam de forma legítima se os cidadãos conseguem participar e interagir, trocando argumentos dos prós e contras sobre determinada questão que envolve o bem comum da sociedade e da cidade. O modo de vida nas cidades, influenciados inclusive por variáveis relacionadas ao urbanismo e ao desenho urbano, acabam por transferir o momento deste encontro para os espaços públicos abertos – aí incluídos as vias públicas - por onde as pessoas inevitavelmente entram em contato. A preocupação com os espaços públicos abertos é tema recorrente na história da cidade de Porto Alegre há pelo menos quatro décadas, o que pode ser verificado pela análise do tratamento institucional dado ao tema. No entanto, mesmo com o passar do tempo, os problemas de mobilidade urbana persistem, e inclusive se acentuam, fruto das decisões do Poder Executivo local que acabam por inverter a prioridade, consolidando e incentivando a utilização do automóvel como modal de transporte preferencial, resultando no afastamento das pessoas e na dificuldade de interação. Movimentos sociais surgem em oposição a estas políticas, e a bicicleta se torna instrumento e símbolo para a retomada da escala humana da cidade como lugar do encontro, da interação, e da democracia. / Decisions taken by public institutions – as democracy itself – can be considered legitimate and function as such, when citizens are able to participate and interact, exchanging arguments of the pros and cons on an issue that involves the common good of society and the city. The urban way of life – influenced by Urbanism and urban design related factors – end up transferring that meeting point to the public spaces – including public thoroughfares – where people, inevitably, come in contact with each other. Dealing with open public spaces is a recurring subject and often reason for concern in Porto Alegre; it has been so for about four decades at least; this can de verified by analysing how public institutions have dealt with this issue. As a matter of fact, urban mobility related problems persist, and get even worse, as a consequence of decisions taken by the local government, which end up reverting priorities: the use of the automobile as a preferred mode of transportation is further encouraged and consolidated. People get more isolated, interaction is more difficult. Social movements arise, opposing such policies; the bicycle becomes a tool and a symbol for regaining the human scale of the city as a place of meeting, of interacting, and of democracy.

Magister Scientiae (Biodiversity and Conservation Biology) / This thesis looks at aspects relating to vegetated open space in the quaternary catchment of the Lourens River, Cape Town, South Africa in 2005 and at GoogleEarth as a source of imagery for research. The research questions were: “Is GoogleEarth a suitable source of imagery for spatial analysis of landscapes?”; “What was the potential access (proximity) to vegetated open space of at least 900 m2 in the Lourens River quaternary catchment in 2005?”; “How many vegetated open spaces with an area of at least 900 m2 were present in the Lourens River quaternary catchment in 2005?” and “What spaces within the urban edge in the Lourens River quaternary catchment can be said to have some protection from development?” Open space has multiple benefits for humans in terms of health and social interaction.In urban areas, it is also important for biodiversity conservation. In Cape Town, this is critical since the city has critically endangered national vegetation types that only occur within its boundaries and 319 IUCN Red List species within its boundaries.Proximity does not reflect use of open space which is affected by the size of the open space, quality of the open space, neighbourhood attributes and individual and collective perceptions of the open space. Quality of vegetated open space is dependent on its facilities and maintenance which are largely determined by its management. In Cape Town, open space management is mainly mowing/brush cutting all spaces which has a negative impact on biodiversity retention. Mowing is continued because of popular demand so action needs to be taken to change popular perceptions.Google Earth is readily available and widely used. It is used for research in diverse disciplines. Local Internet connection problems complicated this study. Alignment and projection problems were encountered in this study. Thus Google Earth geospatial issues make it a poor choice of imagery source for large scale spatial analysis of landscapes.Open space was digitized in Google Earth and transferred to a propriety GIS for editing. Vegetated spaces with a minimum of 900 m2 and a width of at least 15 m were selected from the approximately 1025 digitised spaces. Google Earth imagery was used because it is readily available. Euclidean distances of 300 m, 500 m, 800 m and 900 m (taken from literature) were used to buffer the digitized vegetated open spaces and other data on schools, train stations, bus routes and taxi routes in and within 900 m of the catchment. Buffer analysis was carried out. Data from the City of Cape Town and a schools layer were used to determine the number of cemeteries,community parks, nature reserves and school grounds – space regarded as having some protection from development - within the urban edge of the city and what area they covered.Within or partially within the Lourens River quaternary catchment, 593 vegetated open spaces of at least 900 m2 were identified. The analysis showed that only two houses were beyond 300 m from a vegetated open space. There was vegetated open space within 300 m of all the schools, stations, bus and taxi routes within the catchment and in close proximity to the catchment. Within the urban edge, only 124 spaces were found to be protected, of which only one was a nature reserve.Most of the open spaces are not formally designated as open space and are vulnerable to development. Much development has taken place since 2005 in the Lourens River quaternary catchment so action is needed to ensure proximity to vegetated open space remains a positive feature of the area.Expanding the present research to cover a larger area would provide additional baseline data. Further research could consider the loss of open space over time and the impact of management on the quality of designated open space.

Il est aujourd’hui accepté que le bruit de parole représente la principale source de gêne pour les employés des bureaux ouverts. L’objectif de ce travail est d’évaluer les effets psychophysiologiques de la parole intelligible sur les salariés effectuant une ou plusieurs tâches. Pour répondre à cet objectif, deux expériences ont été réalisées. La première a pour but d’évaluer le décrément de performance (DP) lors d’une tâche de sériation pour de fortes valeurs d’intelligibilité. L’indicateur acoustique choisi est le STI (« Speech Transmission Index »). Les résultats de l’étude menée auprès de cinquante-cinq participants montrent un effet du STI sur le DP. Cependant, cette expérience a une validité écologique réduite puisqu’elle est de courte durée et qu’elle est limitée à une tâche très spécifique. La deuxième expérience a donc pour but d’élaborer des tests en laboratoire plus proches des conditions de travail en bureau ouvert et d’étudier l’effet de la parole intelligible sur des indicateurs psychologiques. Trente-neuf participants ont participé à cette expérimentation. Plusieurs mesures telles que la fatigue psychologique, la gêne sonore et la charge mentale de travail ont été réalisées. Les participants ont été soumis à trois conditions sonores différentes (bruit stationnaire, bruit modulé et parole) durant trois journées. Chaque jour, les participants ont réalisé leur travail en étant exposés à la même condition sonore pendant 6h45min. Les résultats montrent un effet de la parole sur l’état psychologique des participants. La parole semble être la source de bruit la plus fatigante et la plus gênante. Elle entraine également une charge mentale supplémentaire. Au-delà des résultats de ces expériences, les modèles psychologiques mobilisés lors de cette thèse peuvent être adaptés pour mener des enquêtes in-situ afin d’évaluer et prévenir les risques psychologiques liés aux bruits dans les bureaux ouverts. / It seems now accepted that speech noise in open-plan offices is the main source of annoyance for employees. This work aims to evaluate the psychophysiological effects of intelligible speech on the employees performing one or multiple tasks. For this purpose, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment evaluates the decrease in performance (DP) during a serial recall task for high values of speech intelligibility. The chosen acoustical indicator is the Speech Transmission Index (STI). Fifty-five subjects participated during this experiment. The results show a significant effect of the STI on the DP. However, this experiment does not reflect the reality of an open-plan office because of the specificity of the task performed during a brief period of time. The second experiment aims to elaborate on laboratory tests which are closer to work conditions in an open-plan office and to evaluate the effect of intelligible speech on the psychological indicators. Thirty-nine subjects participated to the experiment. Different measurements such as psychological fatigue, sound annoyance and the cognitive workload were performed. The subjects were subdued to three different sound conditions (stationary noise, ‘speech-like’ amplitude-modulated noise and intelligible speech) during three days. For each day, the subjects did their work while being exposed to the same sound condition during six hours and forty-five minutes. The results show a significant effect of the speech condition on the psychological state of the subjects. The speech seems to be the most tiring and the most annoying sound source out of the three conditions. It also induces a supplementary cognitive workload. Hereafter the results of these two experiments, the psychological models applied during this thesis could be adopted to conduct in-situ surveys for purposes of preventing the psychological hazards due to noise in open-plan offices.

The theme of my diplom thesis is to create the architectural study of a football stadium in Brno behind Lužánky. The proposed stadium is to create facilities for football , athletes and fans. Stadium capacity is 22 thousands audience. The football stadium is part of a sports complex, which dominates the area. The project responds to the sloping ground and is creating a single complex. Foyer (football stadium) is one open space, where the exterior continuously changes the interior. It was created direct view from the foyer on the playing surface.

The Irish Hills Natural Reserve Conservation Plan is a unique component of the Cityof San Luis Obispo’s green belt that provides a number of hiking and mountain bikingtrails within a short distance from the downtown core as well as ensures that valuablehabitat be preserved into the future. As the subject of my thesis project, IHNR presented the opportunity to pursue an aspect of city planning that can often be over-looked and, conservation planning. Conservation planning is an important element of the planning profession in that it incorporates such elements into the future growth of cities. With proper planning it is possible to foresee future development patterns and thus be able to designate and protect high value natural resource areas as open space, in order to preserve and protect their resources. In addition to setting the guidelines for preserving and protecting the natural resources and important habitats of Irish Hills, the conservation plan has a secondary effect of ensuring the future health of the surrounding habitats.

In South African Townships, socio economic activities of the second economy such as informal trading typically manifest themselves in low quality, left over open spaces along roadsides and transport interchanges. These left over spaces are characteristic of townships and especially low cost housing and Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) communities, due to the emphasis placed on the dwelling units with little regard for the quality of open space. These environments are, over-scaled and not suited to human scale and although used for informal trading, they are not conducive to human or environmental well-being. An entrance precinct with such left over spaces in Olievenhoubosch Township, Centurion, is selected to test the hypothesis of an informal market as a catalyst for quality open space that considers human scale and enables the socio-economic functions of the community. The research starts off by establishing guidelines firstly for quality open space; secondly for human scale and thirdly for socio economic functions. These guidelines are applied at framework level looking at the entire precinct, including an informal market, stream corridor and taxi rank. At masterplan level, the focus is on the informal market. To avoid a merely functional response, the market approach is divided into two aspects, the market development and the spatial or experiential development aspect. These are informed by the established theoretical guidelines, case studies and existing activities and uses onsite. An overarching concept “Indawo Yami” meaning “my place”, ties the two aspects together while expressing the unique character of the community. The concept is born out of the vision of the market as a multifunctional community space that expresses the unique character of the community. The sketchplan proposal suggests that human and environmental well-being could be prime objectives of open spaces in townships all over South Africa. / Dissertation (ML(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / ML(Prof) / Unrestricted

This dissertation explores the relationship between man, animal and architecture within the theoretical discourse of the liminal. This exploration comes to pass within the context of humanity’s on-going captivation with animals and the manifestation of this in typological architecture as Zoological Gardens. The National Zoological Gardens of Pretoria situated in within the Central Business District forms the proposed context of this dissertation. Potential manners in which the relationship between man and animal manifest as spatial construct or architecture are investigated, within the context of the Zoological Gardens. The strict boundary conditions that exist within this context are consequently criticised. The existing concrete palisade fence epitomises these strict boundaries; between man and animal, city and Zoological garden and observer and observed. The intervention considers the liminal space which is created due to these boundaries, and the possibilities of this liminal space, or third space, as a habitable threshold. The threshold is programmed as an urban intervention that addresses the boundary condition by facilitating public open space, public amenities, Zoo interface and a Gratis Observatory Route. The dissertation challenges conventional architectural typologies and proposes an intervention, a “third nature” that occupies this liminal space. The new condition attempts to blur the rigid boundaries between the existing conditions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the Zoo. The intervention takes on the program of functioning as a public dwelling for man, in the form of public open space, while simultaneously offering an urban habitat for animals. The proposed intervention manifests as a typological architecture that creates thresholds over which to renegotiate the relation between man and his understanding of “Nature”. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted