Esta pesquisa apresenta um retrato da dispersão urbana que ocorre na região da Macrometrópole de São Paulo sobre a ótica da apropriação do relevo. Quais são os compartimentos de relevo que estão sendo ocupados pelas peças urbanas que se dispersam sobre a área anteriormente utilizada pelos usos relativos ao mundo rural, e em que medida essas peças urbanas residenciais, industriais ou mistas, diferem da morfologia de suas congêneres da cidade compacta, e as consequências ambientais decorrentes dessa forma de apropriação. A partir de uma proposta metodológica de abordagem estratégica do relevo na escala regional, e tendo como base categorias de análise da geomorfologia, este trabalho identifica no processo de dispersão, além de uma tendência de ocupação indiscriminada, e sem critérios ambientalmente claros, de todos os tipos de compartimento de relevo, inclusive daqueles que se pode considerar como compartimentos ambientais estruturantes da paisagem regional para a regulação dos processos naturais e de sua ocorrência não conflituosa com os usos urbanos. Essa ocupação dispersa, que impacta esses compartimentos ambientais estruturantes, é realizada tanto pelas camadas de alta e de baixa renda, como também pelos usos industriais e de comércio atacadista, embora esses grupos apresentem predominância em vetores de dispersão diferentes. / This research presents a portrait of the urban sprawl that occurs in the large metropolitan area of São Paulo, in view of the allocation of relief. Which relief sectors are occupied by urban works that disperse over the region formerly used by the rural area, and to what extent these residential, industrial or mixed urban works differ from the morphology of its equivalents in a compact city, and the environmental consequences resulting from this form of allocation. From a methodological proposal for a strategic approach to relief on a regional scale, and based on analytical categories of geomorphology, this paper identifies the dispersion process and a trend of indiscriminate occupation, without clear environmental criteria, of all types of relief sectors, including those that can be considered as environmental zones of regional landscape designated for the regulation of natural processes and their occurrence without conflict with urban uses. This dispersed occupation, which impacts these environmental zones is performed by both levels of high and low income, but also by industrial uses and wholesale trade, although these groups predominate in different dispersal vectors.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta pesquisa parte da Carta das Cidades Educadoras para avaliar como o espaço urbano das periferias pode também ser usado como espaço para a educação e construção crítica dos alunos para não se configurar, no imaginário construído, apenas como espaços de exclusão e violência. O estudo aborda duas iniciativas no estado do Rio de Janeiro como paradigma: uma, anterior ao conceito de? Cidades Educadoras?, os Centros Integrados de Educação Pública, e outra, posterior e atual, o PEU Bairro-Escola de Nova Iguaçu. Os CIEPs foram utilizados como paradigma arquitetônico, principalmente por terem sido espaços diretamente pensados para o Programa Político Pedagógico da época e também por terem, ao longo de todos esses anos após sua criação, passado por sérias modificações em seu estado físico e em seu PPP, o que possibilitou uma reavaliação de sua posição como equipamento educacional e cultural. O PEU Bairro-Escola, e seus respectivos projetos, em aplicação no município de Nova Iguaçu, revelam uma iniciativa pública de reestruturação e requalificação urbanística de periferia, avaliando a relação ensino-aprendizagem dos discentes, dentro e fora dos edifícios escolares, procurando elencar os principais novos territórios onde estão acontecendo as ações educativas nas periferias.

This thesis reinterprets the architectural implications of Heidegger’s concept of dwelling. In particular it stresses the importance of the concept of poetry on dwelling that was outlined in ‘ ... Poetically Man Dwells ... ’. This essay from Heidegger’s late period has been less frequently quoted in the literature of the architectural profession than some of Heidegger’s more well known essays. The importance of poetry is developed in this thesis through creative practice explorations of Heidegger’s philosophy supplemented by deep textual analysis. By developing Heidegger’s concept of poetic dwelling, it is possible to reinterpret his ideas about building in richer ways than have previously been carried out in architecture. We will discover that space has a particular kind of emptiness that allows for poetic experience. Ways of building that manifest this emptiness can be considered building for dwelling. The focus on poetic dwelling unravels previous architectural interpretations of Heidegger’s concept of dwelling. These interpretations tend to focus on the creation of a certain type of product rather than on enabling the poetic dwelling process. Consequently, by shifting this understanding of dwelling new links can be suggested to the work of architectural writers and practitioners who hitherto have not been considered to be Heideggerian.

Downtown Clearwater has grown to be disconnected from its surroundings due to an adjacent buffer area and the lack of a transit system to bring people into the city. The downtown core is also separated from its neighboring residential areas by an area of vacant land that holds in it the potential to become a gateway into the city. On a macro scale the city has grown to be separated from the Tampa Bay area due to the lack of a mass transit system. The goal of this project is to create a new "new urbanism" in which transit and natural ecology are introduced in order to link a city with its surrounding neighborhoods and with the rest of its context. The new development will provide the area with a centralized place of commerce and social interaction, while reducing the reliance on the automobile. Utilizing a light rail station and a central bus terminal, the transit oriented development or TOD will bring people into Clearwater's downtown core, bringing economic, social and environmental benefits to the area. Introduction of a natural ecosystem into the downtown fabric will attribute to the development's sustainability. The natural greenway will run through the urban fabric and also use the Pinellas Trail as an ecological corridor linking the different greenspaces of Pinellas County. New York City's High Line project provides a prime example of the introduction of a natural greenway into an urban core. The High Line brought a new life to an area that once served only the purpose of industry. Ian McHarg and Richard T. T. Forman provide examples and guidelines of how to bring the natural and built environments together as a cohesive whole. The design will look at Peter Calthorpe's ideas of transit-oriented development. Calthorpe's The Next American Metropolis will provide a set of guidelines for the design of the development. The project will create an opportunity for downtown Clearwater to be linked within its surrounding context. Transit oriented development has been proven successful throughout the country and Clearwater will benefit from its implementation.

This thesis aims to comprehend and analyze the urbanistic development of the Linecká district in the southern part of České Budějovice. This district underwent major development both during and after the 1960's, and many historical houses were demolished and substituted with houses comprised of prefabricated concrete panels. Those buildings are part of the first generation of prefabricated houses in the country of Czechoslovakia. The main street of this area is Lidická třída, where the collective house "Experiment" was built according a design by J. Benda, who also participated the reconstruction of the rest of Lidická třída. An evaluation of its urban concept with regard to the contemporary tendencies of Europe and world architecture is one of the goals of this thesis.

The archaeological landscape of Upper Burma from the middle of the first millennium BC to the Bagan period in the 13th-14th century AD is a landscape of continuity. Finds of polished stone and bronze artifacts suggest the existence of early metal-using cultures in the Chindwin and Samon River Valleys, and along parts of the Ayeyarwady plain. Increasing technological and settlement complexity in the Samon Valley suggests that a distinctive culture whose agricultural and trade success can be read in the archaeological record of the Late Prehistoric period developed there. The appearance of the early urban �Pyu� system of walled central places during the early first millennium AD seems to have involved a spread of agricultural and management skills and population from the Samon. The leaders of the urban centres adopted Indic symbols and Sanskrit modes of kingship to enhance and extend their authority. The early urban system was subject over time to a range of stresses including siltation of water systems, external disruption and social changes as Buddhist notions of leadership eclipsed Brahmanical ones. The archaeological evidence indicates that a settlement was forming at Bagan during the last centuries of the first millennium AD. By the mid 11th century Bagan began to dominate Upper Burma, and the region began a transition from a system of largely autonomous city states to a centralised kingdom. Inscriptions of the 11th to 13th centuries indicate that as the Bagan Empire expanded it subsumed the agricultural lands that had been developed by the Pyu.

The suggestion that cities “speak” has become a growing interest in communication scholarship, yet the particular ways city spaces communicate remains under theorized. I argue that the intersection of people with spaces, the networks between texts, objects, and movement are all implicated in the rhetorical process of place-making in which individuals are both shaped by and shaping space. I envision this process to involve three interdependent modes of symbolization: textual constructions about place, symbolic activities of place, and movement and action in space. The mode of inquiry proposed here contributes to a body of scholarship interested in exploring the multiple ways cities “speak” by forwarding a reading of space as text. Focusing on the new urbanist community Atlantic Station in Atlanta, GA, this analysis reveals the dynamic tensions between the community’s textual representations, the structural symbolization of the development, and the uses of the space.

In a context of rapid urbanization and increasingly standardized built environments, urbanism must find new methods of creating appropriate conditions for the variability of contemporary urban life. The city, understood as a system of interconnected processes in constant change, offers a relational way of thinking about urban design. This thesis explores the concept of Relational Urbanism through a strategic design approach that engages the complexity of the site to create variability in the built environment by relating built form to landscape elements. This relational approach has particular potential in post-industrial sites, where challenging existing conditions and processes of remediation resist conventional methods of redevelopment. The thesis focuses on the Toronto Port Lands as a testing ground for this design approach, drawing on the site's industrial heritage to develop a landscape framework and a set of relational rules that will guide the emergence of a diverse urban environment able to change over time. A series of design strategies—remediation parks, urban delta, adapted industry, and differentiated fabric—rethink the challenges of the site as opportunities for public benefit, creating a variegated landscape for built form to respond to. In contrast to a singular static master plan, this method favours multiple flexible strategies that can be deployed incrementally, breaking down the scale of development and allowing it to be realized by a wide variety of stakeholders. Through this approach the thesis seeks to enable the city to intentionally but subtly guide its urban landscape toward diversity and allow its citizens to participate in its continued adaptation.

This thesis researches the perception of our surroundings while in motion. The bicycle is the primary focus and is conceptualized as an apparatus, once activated by its rider. New measure is applied to the city through the spatiality of the bicycle from which new mappings and experiences emerge. Liberated from the restrictions of the urban grid, the rider constructs new forms of judgement enabling him to navigate the “diagonal.” The architectural project is sited in the “vehicular shadows” of Houston and proposes the Veloduct as a new strategy for occupying and experiencing a new velo-centric landscape. A traversable canopy structure stitches together the shards of unclaimed ground acting as a megastructure under which formalized program and event spaces are distributed. The Veloduct simultaneously creates new spatial experiences and recasts old ones from a new perspective, that of the bicycle.

Lagos, Nigeria is a city of rapidly shifting conditions and perpetual crises with issues of over population, pollution, limited circulation, waste management, density, poverty, and social disparity. These conditions have resulted in the proliferation of slum settlements along the coastal edges of the megacity. However, the radical conditions of Lagos promote new solutions for the city. Waste provides the mass for coastal expansion, and defense from sea-rise. Expansion of the coastline provides new territories for the growth of slums. Geometry can maximize efficiency and minimize contamination. P.L.A.T.F.O.R.M., makes use of the processes associated with Lagos waste management and the expansion of the slums, while mitigating the harmful effects of contamination and providing a defensive barrier against sea-level rise.