Striving for subsistence, the growing population of Caracas has radically transformed the city in the course of the past fifty years. The inability of the city to respond to the accelerated growth that resulted from mass rural migrations left millions to provide land, shelter and basic services for themselves. The barrios, once thought to be a provisional solution to the housing shortage, are now home to more than half the population of the city. The urban poor now live—out of necessity and through improvisation—on steep slopes, unstable soil and in flood plains. Overcrowded and remote, this very dense urban fabric receives sporadic or no basic services. Without land titles or addresses, and until recently omitted from most census data and official maps, the barrio’s population is excluded from the civic life of Caracas. Sitting between remediation and anticipation, three asynchronous projects elaborate pragmatic responses to the prevailing scarcity of resources while concurrently attempting to reduce the current cycle of poverty, violence and exclusion. In their ability to be informally adapted, the schemes test the capacity of popular manifestations of civic life to transform basic infrastructure into collective space. To overcome the precariousness that characterizes the barrios and incorporate them into the existing political mechanisms of the city, the projects are conceived as incremental frameworks that contribute to the physical integration of the ‘informal’ barrios to the ‘formal’ city. Working with water and waste infrastructure, I argue through these projects that architecture can build on the universal nature of necessity to frame a model of civic space­ generated out of the complexity of the barrios and on the auspice of promises.

Ce travail étudie le potentiel des RNA pour l'estimation détaillée des coûts de projet dans le domaine des infrastructures municipales. En général, pour l'entrepreneur en construction civile, l'obtention d'un contrat se joue lors des soumissions publiques. Subséquemment, l'estimation des coûts de travaux constitue la pierre angulaire de ce processus de soumission. Cette tâche s'avère vite laborieuse considérant le nombre élevé d'éléments dont il faut tenir compte, et de plus, la valeur de chacun de ces éléments est fonction de plusieurs variables difficilement contrôlables. Il a été démontré que l'attribution du taux de productivité d'une équipe de travail est la source majeure d'erreur lors de la préparation des estimations détaillées. Nous avons bâti un modèle de prédiction du taux de productivité d'une équipe d'installation de réseaux d'aqueduc et d'égouts. Les données qui ont servi à valider empiriquement le modèle proposé émanent de projets exécutés dans la région de Laval et des Basses-Laurentides. Un historique de données est construit à partir des rapports journaliers de surveillance des travaux de 43 projets de génie urbain. Afin d'explorer la capacité des RNA à imiter le jugement et l'expérience d'un estimateur chevronné. Deux forums de discussion ont eu lieu avec trois estimateurs du domaine pour déterminer les facteurs qui influencent le taux de productivité de l'équipe d'excavation de tranchées. Ces discussions ont permis de déterminer le jeu optimal des données d'entrée des RNA. Trois estimateurs chevronnés ont également calculé manuellement le taux de productivité à partir des plans et devis de chacun des deux projets testés. Pour ces deux projets, les résultats de prédiction des RNA sont comparés aux résultats des trois estimateurs ainsi qu'au taux de productivité réel obtenu au chantier. Les RNA obtiennent des résultats supérieurs au niveau de la précision par rapport aux résultats des estimateurs. Des recommandations sont faites pour la préparation des futurs rapports journaliers de surveillance de travaux afin de rendre les données plus accessibles aux RNA. Ainsi, d'autres recommandations sont faites pour des recherches futures qui permettraient d'introduire le processus de prédiction dans les logiciels commerciaux d'estimation détaillée du coût de projet. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Réseau de neurones artificiels (RNA), Estimation, Génie civil, Prédiction.

Place branding has in previous research been studied mostly from the perspective of an individual stakeholder, for example the tourism sector or the state authority. Furthermore, there is a limited amount of prior studies concerning the potential effect infrastructure improvements have on place branding. This thesis aims to address these research gaps and make a theoretical contribution to research on place branding. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding about how different stakeholders perceive the place brand identity of Nyköping as well as how they collaborate within the place branding process. This understanding will be viewed in the context of future improvements of infrastructure, more specifically the construction of Ostlänken. The findings of this thesis are based upon a theoretical framework consisting of four foundations, place branding and its conceptualisations, place brand identity, multiple stakeholders, and place brand management and infrastructure. The theoretical framework includes general theories as well as more elaborate models specific to research on place branding. In order to fulfil the purpose of this thesis, organisations belonging to different stakeholder groups with interests within a specific place have been interviewed. By adopting an inductive approach of the study, the interviews have been held using a semi-structured interview technique with the intention to gain elaborated data. A thematic network analysis has been applied for analysing the collected data.  The data have been coded resulting in four global themes: place brand identity, multiple stakeholders, infrastructure and place brand management. By applying these themes to the empirical data and previous research, the findings of the study have been developed.

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.

In support of a modal shift towards rail for goods movement, a reconceptualization of urban and interurban mobility frameworks leads to the proposed infrastructural fitting for the urban periphery. Keller Easterling’s notion of Situating serves as a tool for engaging the serial aspects of the project territory in order to leverage widespread change. The intervention is born of the premise that while the ‘last mile’ of the supply chain must remain predominantly road based, the ‘second-last mile’ between concentrated distribution clusters is an opportune target for modal shifting initiatives. Towards this end the thesis envisions alternative, elaborated templates for distribution cluster design which optimize instrumental capacity as well as generate new performative possibilities through the conflation of productive, consumptive, and logistical activities. The hybridized type is demonstrated on a greenfield, industrial zoned site in the outer fringes of the Greater Toronto Area. Standard warehouse morphologies are retooled to serve the unfolding trends of agglomeration and just-in-time delivery while functioning as revolutionized, streamlined terminals of inland intermodal exchange. A unique urban condition is created where the freight-intensive logistics cluster interfaces a transit-supportive arterial corridor in the surrounding suburban fabric. Here, a thickened seam is developed to engage pedestrian-scaled experience, offer richness through surprising functional juxtaposition, and capitalize on the potentials for efficient local connections to regional distribution agents.

The INSPIRE initiative requires that every European member state establishes a national SDI and related web services. Among these a WFS must be implemented to query spatial data. Therefore several Quality of Service specifications must be fullled by this web service, among these are performance, capacity and availability. In this study work a WFS will be implemented for Nature SDI plus. In this European project the WFS will provide spatial data from several data specications of ANNEX I and III. The main object is to test the conformance to the INSPIRE specification. Therefore load and performance tests will be performed.

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In support of a modal shift towards rail for goods movement, a reconceptualization of urban and interurban mobility frameworks leads to the proposed infrastructural fitting for the urban periphery. Keller Easterling’s notion of Situating serves as a tool for engaging the serial aspects of the project territory in order to leverage widespread change. The intervention is born of the premise that while the ‘last mile’ of the supply chain must remain predominantly road based, the ‘second-last mile’ between concentrated distribution clusters is an opportune target for modal shifting initiatives. Towards this end the thesis envisions alternative, elaborated templates for distribution cluster design which optimize instrumental capacity as well as generate new performative possibilities through the conflation of productive, consumptive, and logistical activities. The hybridized type is demonstrated on a greenfield, industrial zoned site in the outer fringes of the Greater Toronto Area. Standard warehouse morphologies are retooled to serve the unfolding trends of agglomeration and just-in-time delivery while functioning as revolutionized, streamlined terminals of inland intermodal exchange. A unique urban condition is created where the freight-intensive logistics cluster interfaces a transit-supportive arterial corridor in the surrounding suburban fabric. Here, a thickened seam is developed to engage pedestrian-scaled experience, offer richness through surprising functional juxtaposition, and capitalize on the potentials for efficient local connections to regional distribution agents.

The current model of suburban development in Canadian cities has serious consequences for the natural environment. The ubiquitous landscape of sprawl consumes excessive amounts of greenfield land and natural resources, while maintaining an artificial relationship with nature that is more concerned with the aesthetics of lawns and trees than with natural ecosystems. This thesis proposes a new planning paradigm that is derived from the ideals of the Garden City, but is steeped in the notion of green infrastructure as the foundation for ecological health. It makes use of greenbelts and greenways as circulation systems for people, plants, wildlife, water, and natural processes. The towns of Newmarket and Aurora, which are situated within a pocket of developable land amid the Greater Toronto Area Greenbelt, are selected as a case study area. An in-depth analysis of the cultural and natural ecosystems that function at various scales across the region provides the framework upon which the design is structure. The design is twofold. First, it is primarily a planning thesis with an ecological approach to design. It provides a working methodology for green infrastructure at the regional scale, and illustrates a schematic plan for a sustainable metropolitan village, “Leslie Village”, that is tied to Newmarket and Aurora’s existing suburban fabric. Secondly, it illustrates the schematic design response to the planning thesis, by providing nominal visualizations of key areas where the proposed greenway intersects public space. Leslie Village challenges the traditional model of development and provides a new planning system whose methods and principles can be transferred to other communities in the GTA, and across the country.

This thesis addresses the future of sustainable energy distribution and transportation in the United States. Predictions of future energy and transportation demands promote localized energy as the most likely situation. Existing proposals outlining the benefits of decentralized energy production fail to engage architecture. Cities will require new architectural typologies that can integrate new energy infrastructure in the city. Los Angeles, the archetype of the decentralized American city, is introduced as a case study. The city is examined at multiple scales for the integration of a decentralized electricity network and an efficient transportation infrastructure. Siting the proposed facilities capitalizes on new and existing transportation infrastructures and local energy resources. The new electricity-transportation infrastructure is adapted to a decentralized network functioning on principles of ecosystems and energy economics at an urban scale. Energy storage is paired with multi-modal transportation to develop new architectural and urban typologies. This enables the decentralized urban proposal to function as a network exhibiting mutually beneficial characteristics.