The Letan Bossier, Haiti community is in need of continued investment from international agencies, in an effort to improve conditions for locals, along with shaping the experience of the tourist, at and around an attractive natural basin, three miles north-west of Cayes-Jacmel, Haiti, at about 187 meters above sea level. In order to improve ones journey through this mountainside community to the Grand Basin, capital investments must be made. The goal of the proposed design solutions is to solve for the locals first, in turn, attracting tourists to experience a space thats supported by its own people. The goal of this report is to educate involved government entities, local stakeholders, and outside investors of physical and socio-economic needs within the Letan Bossier community, for the purpose of practical design application and administrative changes necessary to sustain local well-being, social balance, and structural integrity throughout the research and design development process. Local accountability, water management, safe access, and reforestation have been identified in the qualitative research process as top issues to address in order to make Letan Bossier an economically competitive agricultural tourism attraction, as its being envisioned by investors at this time. Reporting issues highlighted by the local community will promote cultural and environmental sustainability at the forefront of a government backed effort. Here, local and international visitors are invited to experience natural wonders like the Grand Basin of Letan Bossier, the breathtaking views of the Caribbean on the way, the natural mango grove and sugarcane surrounding the basin, and a cutting-edge agricultural education from community leaders, addressing maintenance, nutritional and medicinal farming issues. The locals of Letan Bossier are the keepers of the community and specifying that role will strengthen the sustainability of the site. This sense of ownership is believed to be the first and most important step in the making of a socially, economically, and structurally sustainable community.

The significance of this site lies in its location. It is three miles away from French Quarter, the heart and origin of the city, and eight miles away from Lake Borgne, as well as the Gulf. Regardless of the size, it distinguishes itself on the map as a wedge of green space inserted sharply into densely developed urban space. The site was prosperous cypress swamp six decades ago, too dense to identify lands and water underneath. However, after the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet was dug in the 1960s, it took less than 30 years for it to transformed into brackish open water. The transformation was disastrous. First of all, the eco-system has been severely damaged. According to a group of researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison, the fresher the water is, the more diverse the eco-system will be. Besides the irreversible damage done to the ecosystem, loss of vegetation resulted in a huge loss of joyous space for the neighborhood. Senior residents still keep the memories of a cypress swamp as a place for recreation and production. Unfortunately, as the vegetation degraded, the role of BBTW changed from protection to the opposite. The force of surge aggregated in this open water pond, posing threats to the vulnerable low-lying neighborhood. After 1960s, a six-feet still wall has been put between BBTW and the neighborhood. reversed its protective function in the face of surges from the Gulf. To protect the neighborhood, Bayou Bienvenue Triangle Wetlands is a creation of men and nature. It was developed as the citys drainage outlet into the Gulf of Mexico, to carry excessive amount of water due to the unique location of New Orleans. The city, New Orleans, once thrived as the confluence of the Mississippi River, one of the most extensive water systems in the world, and the ocean. The rapid growth in New Orleans shipping activities resulted in extensive dredging and canalling activities in the area between the city and the Gulf. When more and more heavy-loaded ships managed to get to the river, the water from the ocean intruding further and further into coastal wetlands systems, transforming enormous amount of marshes and swamps into open water. According to surveys conducted by USGS, Louisiana's 3 million acres of wetlands are lost at the rate about 75 square kilometers annually, but reducing these losses is proving to be difficult and costly. In this huge devastation of coastal wetlands, 472-acre Bayou Bienvenue Triangle Wetlands(BBTW), the site of this thesis, is a small patch on the map. But is big enough to make a difference.

The thesis intends to introduce tactical urbanism as a way to expand the toolkit for designers to communicate with theirs audiences from the public. Lessons from the post-Katrina planning processes urges for better communication tool that invites broader conversation while providing more direct physical outcome from the process. Tactical urbanism is introduced to the city and the discipline of landscape architecture in order to provide a fresh solution to the communication by changing the speech between the authority figure and the residents into a more personal conversation with an invitation through on-site installation. At the same time, it is a powerful tool to achieve instant physical outcome from the process and to provide important feedback for design. The article documented two on-site projects that the team did in order to invite conversations on the issue of New Orleans landscape. Through the process of installation, some interesting interaction with the local residents are recorded which exemplify the potential of this methodology and they provides insights for the future interventions. In the end, the thesis suggested that the design and planning professionals in New Orleans to add tactical urbanism into their toolkit, for a better future of the city.

Since nineteen century, Chinese immigrants in the United States had a great contribution to the economy and transformation of landscape by gold mining, transcontinental railroad construction and agriculture cultivation, applying techniques that were learned from ancestors thousands years ago in China. And Chinatown as the first destination of continuing Chinese immigrants transformed from a ghetto to the top tourist attraction of the city in San Francisco with commercial-oriented development in more than a hundred years. This paper will explore the transformation of the image and representation of Chinatown by analyzing Chinese culture influences, American confinement, and pop culture impact, to have a better understanding of culture identity, how places are planned and designed in a complex global economical and racial context, and immigrants influences on urban design. Combined with historic background and current urban problems, this study provides a great opportunity to rethink open space in Chinatown and recognize Chinese culture influences in the overall transformation of the city, with growing culture diversity and desire for a more sustainable and equitable environment. To make Chinatown more than a tourist destination, the paper comes out specific design strategies to celebrate Chinese community in Chinatown, San Francisco, by designing sustainable open space, reinforcing Chinese culture and culture influenced architecture design, and reaching community congregation.

The issue of Shikumen is the confliction between urban development and historical value preservation. And the historical value can be better understood with Chinese modern history behind, especially the concession part (an area ruled by foreign countries and don't have the independent rights on economy, politics and military (18, Li)). Because of the historic reason, the residents were made of three main streams, which were international stream, national stream and local movement. Those residences brought their culture into the concession and created a melting pot. This melting pot cultural phenomenon was shown in building design of Shikumen. However, with the intensive urban development, the current state of Shikumen is becoming affordable residential area and gradually demolished due to low economical value. With the disappearance of Shikumen, some people start realizing the historical value of the Shikumen. Many solutions were proposed to save the trace of historical path. Two representative solutions were Xintiandi and Tianzifang. Xintiandi is a government-­‐driven mix-­‐use project, which re-­‐modified the buildings with similar architecture style. Tianzifang residents-­‐driven project and was developed into a commercial tourism site. Both solution share similarity by redefining the function of Shikumen in historical perspective to enhance the economical value and follow urban development. However, in the process of commercialization, Xintiandi lost its authenticity because of removing Shikumnes original residential life. Tianzifang initially remained its identities of original residential life, which attracted lots of tourists. However, the high dense tourist activities interruption causes the loss of residences, which used to be the most attractive part of this place. In the other word, it lost its sustainability. In order to maintain authenticity and sustainability, a new model about Shikumens preservation and development is proposed.

This project was designed to extend the principles of natural categorization to the classification of landscapes for visual quality assessment. In the first study, 20 lay people named and outlined distinct geographic units on USGS topographic maps. Six of the units identified were selected for further study on the basis of ratings of overall environmental quality, familiarity, and naturalness. Consensual names and boundaries of the units were determined. In the second study, the same 20 subjects rated 15 scenes from each of the 6 units for representativeness (typicality) and visual quality. The ratings of representativeness and visual quality were highly reliable, with coefficients ranging from.98 to.84. The correlations between representativeness and visual quality were variable. The correlations were positive for the two high environmental quality units (r =.78 and r =.83, p<.05). Representativeness and visual quality were positively related for one of the two moderate quality environments (r =.53, p<.05). In the two low quality environments, the correlations were non-significant, but for one of these units there was a negative trend (r = -.45), and this relationship was significantly different from the other five correlations. Overall, these results suggest that the principles of natural categorization are active in the conceptual analysis of environments, judgements of representativeness and visual quality are reliable, and judgements of representativeness and visual quality are not the same. Judgements of representativeness can be used in resource decision making to provide reliable information about what is characteristic of an environment and to determine how development proposals relate to the existing character of an area. In addition, the principles of natural categorization are used in connectionist models to explain how humans identify objects and develop concepts. The principles of natural categorization are active in environmental perception, but it remains to be seen whether the connectionist approach can provide adequate models of environmental perception. This research provides a method which can be used to study how environmental perception relates to natural categorization.

Since 1992, Tucson, Arizona has installed seventy-eight traffic circles in residential areas as part of a Neighborhood Traffic Management Program and sixty-seven of these circles contain plants. Plants are included in traffic calming installations because they generally improve visibility and visual quality of these installations. Species selection may directly influence effectiveness of plants in these functions. The intent of this study was to evaluate plant selection in established traffic circles, in Tucson, Arizona to determine their success relating to safety, visual quality and maintenance criteria. The total population was inventoried and each circle was ranked according to how well criteria were met. The results of this study indicate that plant selection met maintenance criteria in most cases but often did not meet criteria for safety and visual quality.

No description available.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 178-180)

Signs are prominent elements of the urban landscape; they display messages to the public, orient people in complex environments, act as social landmarks, and serve as a means of cultural expression. Despite the omnipresence of signs, designers have yet to capitalize on their potential urban spaces as creative design tools for enhancing a sense of place. Using literature and urban case studies, this thesis explores several quantitative methods to learn about effects produced by signs in the urban landscape. Case studies in New Orleans, Louisiana locate every sign in defined areas on Bourbon, Royal, and Canal Street to compare and contrast multiple views through four processes: site, linear, volumetric, and sequential. These processes use statistics, drawings, and photographs to analyze the data by combining traditional means of sign discussion with an exploration of designers methods for site analysis. Comparing the results of the three sites exposes differences in sign distribution due to street character and street width. Signs are integral in creating place identity and defining spatial relationships. While this study reveals several interesting results about effects of signs in the urban landscape, it primarily discusses new methods for analyzing signs in existing urban landscapes. The literature review exposes six topics concerning signs in the landscape. While most writings focus only on one topic, this thesis includes elements from each. The ultimate goal is for designers to produce individual identities for places through creative design recommendations.