The Leslie Street Spit is a five kilometre rubble breakwater on the eastern waterfront of Toronto. Built during the mid-twentieth-century as an infrastructural add-on to the existing Port Lands Industrial District, the artificial peninsula was a lakefilling project made to realize the city???s ambitious desire for economic prosperity and world-class prestige by expanding its existing harbour facilities. With the decline of Toronto???s shipping industry, the Leslie Spit remained an active dump site for urban clean fill until it was unexpectedly colonized by flora and fauna during the 1970s. The site is now recognized as an important local and international environmental resource. Visitors to the Leslie Spit experience a diverse landscape of ecosystems and industrial rubble helded by the city as a symbol of environmental revival within a former industrial region undergoing another phase of urbanization. While the local aesthetic experience of the headland is pleasurable and aligns with the reinvention of Toronto as am environmentally conscious and sustainable city, human visitors remain psychologically and physically removed from the inhabiting non-human life. Occasionally, the desire to conserve and preserve the natural world requires a separation between humans and non-humans. This relationship is carried out in varying degrees on the Leslie Spit. This thesis documents events at the headland where the human/non-human divide is rigidly enforced or left ambiguous. The purpose of the thesis is not to treat the headland as an eccentric spectacle, but to investigate the unexpected coexistence between humans and non-humans.

In 2016 the Panama Canal expansion is set to open, allowing a new class of ships to call on east coast ports. The dredging involved in deepening navigation channels to ensure safe passage of these vessels will place an increased amount of pressure on containment facilities up and down the coast. With limited disposal space, and increasing volumes, many ports have begun to rethink the treatment of this excess material. This thesis explores the prospect of dredge material being more than engineered fill. It suggests that dredge processing can become the basis for a new form of productive recreational landscape, one that can engage the public in a conversation of the spatial and material operations that sustain our lives. It works blur and dissolve the boundaries that have been erected between working landscapes and the public realm, and seeks to create a landscape that establishes a new sense of place prepared to mark the future of the new working urban waterfront; one where industrial operations generate new ecological substrates, and where productive frameworks become recreation networks. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Nourrie par la rencontre spéculative des disciplines esthético-philosophiques et la démarche opérationnelle du Landscape Urbanism, cette étude part d'une lecture du paysage en termes de "constellation visible" voire de "trame de relations" matérielles et immatérielles entre éléments hétérogènes et contemporains, et, parallèlement, de l'acceptation étymologique du terme infrastructure en tant que "dispositif de support" des activités économiques, socio-culturelles et écologiques d'une communauté. A la lumière de ces définitions de paysage et d'infrastructure, la recherche essaie de répondre à la question principale formulée dans le cadre de la problématique, portant sur la possibilité d'accorder au paysage une "dimension infrastructurelle", propriété qui attribuerait à ce dernier la même connotation dynamique propre aux agents catalyseurs infrastructurels. L'étude de cette dimension infrastructurelle fait ressortir l'émergence d'une caractéristique ontologique du paysage définissable en termes de réseau multipolaire et donc par les relations horizontales et verticales entre ses éléments, liens physiques ou virtuels, matériels ou immatériels, qui lui donnent une cohérence unitaire et le transforment en un tout pourvu du sens (...) / Taking as a starting point on the one hand the consideration of the landscape as a "visible constellation" and a "network of material and immaterial connections" between a range of heterogeneous elements, and, on the other hand, the etymological meaning of the word infrastructure as a "support device" for the economic, socio-cultural and ecological activities of a community, this study is grounded on the interaction between the speculative approach of aesthetic-philosophical disciplines and the Landscape Urbanism operational stratedy (...)

This comparative study of two urban areas—Kolda, Senegal and the Historic Anacostia Neighborhood in Washington, D.C.—explores how landscape infrastructure can decrease the scalar disconnect between the global water crisis and local water use practices. By looking at one city in the Global North and one in the Global South with similar risk of water stress, I am able to compare cultural aesthetics and engage two different levels of infrastructural build out (World Resources Institute, Water Risk Atlas). The design approach draws inspiration from Lawrence Halprin's notion of "experiential equivalents," and proposes a suite of site scale water sources and seeps (Halprin, Ghirardelli Plaza). Unlike Halprin, whose designs primarily use, interpret, and express natural elements, cultural interactions with water as well as natural systems drive the designs in Kolda and Anacostia. Thus, the speculative designs I am presenting weave the experiences of sourcing water, filtering water, and water seeps into the existing urban and cultural fabric. By taking a systemic and episodic approach to public landscape development, not only will these infrastructural landscapes serve the community but the aesthetic experience of the designs also becomes part of daily life. Perhaps as Elizabeth Meyer theorizes in "Beyond 'Sustaining Beauty'", these designed landscapes "can contribute to…]a new ethos of a sustainable perception and living." Furthermore, this project presents a kit of parts for community-based development, suggesting the ability to extend the landscape infrastructure systems in Kolda and Anacostia and providing the tools for other communities. / Master of Landscape Architecture / In certain places the water supply is threatened by the build out of hard infrastructure designed to separate municipal water flows from the local water system. As globalization and urbanization increase these engineered solutions to water access are spreading to different cultures and climates. This study of two urban areas—Kolda, Senegal and the Historic Anacostia Neighborhood in Washington, D.C.—compares the application of landscape infrastructure in a city in a city in sub-Saharan Africa with one in the Eastern United States. Although Anacostia has abundant water resources and Senegal is in a semi-arid region, the World Resources Institute has determined that they have a similar risk of water stress. The goal of this research is to design culturally appropriate means of integrating landscape-based water infrastructure within the existing urban fabric in order to give residents and visitors a better understanding of the local water cycle. The application of such practices in cities across the world could improve the public understanding of global water issues. The result of this study is a set of tools that cities can use to increase the presence of water in their cities, supporting cultural activities and the local ecosystem, and examples of how to use that kit of parts in Kolda, Senegal and the Historic Anacostia Neighborhood.

<p>Рашка област налази се у јужном планинско-котлинском делу централне&nbsp;Србије. Њој припадају планински предели између планина Јавора и Голије на&nbsp;северу и Мокре горе на југу, реке Лима на западу и Ибра на истоку.&nbsp;<br />Истраживана територија износила је 1.408 km2, на којој су обављена&nbsp;физичко-географска и друштвено географска истраживања.<br />На морфолошки јако издиференцираном терену Рашке Области&nbsp;размештено је 160 насеља са 124 051 становником (по попису 2002). Највећа&nbsp;концентрација становништва је у градским насељима Новом Пазару са 61 179&nbsp;(49,3 %) и Рашки са 6740 (5,4 %) становника. У Новом Пазару је&nbsp;сконцентрисано 63% становника Општине, а у Рашки живи 24% ст. Општине.&nbsp;<br />На том простору прожимају се и сједињују различити културни утицаји,&nbsp;чији су трагови видљиви у културном пејзажу у виду типова кућа и окућница,&nbsp;архитектуре градова, положаја и типова села, начина искоришћавања&nbsp;земљишта, саобраћајне повезаности, изграђености инфраструктуре, односа&nbsp;према животној средини и слично.</p> / <p>Raška oblast nalazi se u južnom planinsko-kotlinskom delu centralne&nbsp;Srbije. NJoj pripadaju planinski predeli između planina Javora i Golije na&nbsp;severu i Mokre gore na jugu, reke Lima na zapadu i Ibra na istoku.&nbsp;<br />Istraživana teritorija iznosila je 1.408 km2, na kojoj su obavljena&nbsp;fizičko-geografska i društveno geografska istraživanja.<br />Na morfološki jako izdiferenciranom terenu Raške Oblasti&nbsp;razmešteno je 160 naselja sa 124 051 stanovnikom (po popisu 2002). Najveća&nbsp;koncentracija stanovništva je u gradskim naseljima Novom Pazaru sa 61 179&nbsp;(49,3 %) i Raški sa 6740 (5,4 %) stanovnika. U Novom Pazaru je&nbsp;skoncentrisano 63% stanovnika Opštine, a u Raški živi 24% st. Opštine.&nbsp;<br />Na tom prostoru prožimaju se i sjedinjuju različiti kulturni uticaji,&nbsp;čiji su tragovi vidljivi u kulturnom pejzažu u vidu tipova kuća i okućnica,&nbsp;arhitekture gradova, položaja i tipova sela, načina iskorišćavanja&nbsp;zemljišta, saobraćajne povezanosti, izgrađenosti infrastrukture, odnosa&nbsp;prema životnoj sredini i slično.</p> / <p>The district of Raska is situated in a southern mountainous and valley part of&nbsp;the central Serbia. This district also includes the mounainous parts between the&nbsp;following mountains and rivers: mountins Javor and Golija in the north, Mokra Gora in&nbsp;the southern part, river Lim in the west and river Ibar in the east.<br />The examined territory amounted 1408 square kilometres. Withint this territory&nbsp;a very important physical, geographic and social explorations have been performed.<br />At the morphologically very dirrerent terrains 160 settlements are situated with&nbsp;124 051 inhabitants (census of 2002). The greatest concentration of inhabitants is in&nbsp;urban areas of Novi Pazar with 61179 (49,3%) and Raska with 6740 (5,4%)&nbsp;inhabitants.<br />In this region the various cultural influences are merging and joining together,&nbsp;and their traces are visible in the cultural environment concerning the types of the&nbsp;houses and yards, urban architecture, the position and types of the villages as well in&nbsp;the ways of soil usage, traffic connections, building of infrastructure, relations towards&nbsp;the life environment ans so on.</p>