The population of Greater Roanoke Area during the last decade grew by ten percent. The recent growth has changed the countryside. The agricultural lands in this area has been replaced by sprawling housing subdivisions and strip commercial development. Greater Roanoke Area and its surrounding areas now face problems of traffic congestion, visual and environmental degradation due to commercial and residential growth. Greater Roanoke Area will need an innovative open space plan which preserves the natural character and unique qualities of the place. Many other regions and counties in the United States share similar concerns and needs. There has been parallel progress in the field of landscape ecology and landscape planning for better understanding of our environment. The primary goal of this thesis is to use concepts from both of these fields with an intent of developing an approach which will help both planners and landscape architects to plan and design for open space in a way that meets long term ecological needs and concerns. This thesis develops a process whereby an optimum spatial pattern for Greater Roanoke Area (one that maintains biodiversity, protects natural and cultural resources, improves water quality, protects soils, and increases productivity) is derived. This open space planning approach can in turn be used to guide other regions and counties in developing ecologically grounded open space plans. Spatial attributes, functions and the change dynamics of the landscape are targeted and analyzed to provide a foundation for an open space plan. Management priorities are then established for protecting, enhancing, and restoring agricultural lands, forest lands, wetlands, streams, and special sites. The tools for preserving open space areas are education, community involvement and government regulations. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The intensification of land uses in the United States results from population growth, rapid expansion in the service sector, and residential land use growth. These trends cause diminishment of open space and increase sprawl-type land development. So-called "livability" issues are of growing importance in many metropolitan and rural areas across the country. Exasperating this transformation of land use, current demographic trends in the U.S. imply a near-future turnover of a large percentage of farmland and open space land in the form of estate transfer. Current U.S. estate tax policy could be accelerating the transfer of open spaces to developed land uses. Local zoning ordinances, as well as state and federal infrastructure subsidies are also compounding this trend. To date, no method exists which evaluates the economic feasibility of open space preservation. This thesis proposes to establish such a method. A landholder may conserve their land parcel in a non-developed use in perpetuity by placing a Conservation Easement on the property. This land value, the development rights of the land parcel, can be donated to a non-profit organization. The landowner may then deduct the development right value from their income tax as a charitable donation. This thesis compares the economic viability of a landholder that donates a Conservation Easement and invests the tax benefits, with that of a landholder that sells their land parcel to development interests. Further, this thesis explores the demographic profile for which preserving open space may be economically beneficial for the donor of a conservation easement. This thesis is the intersection of three literatures, drawing together three separate land preservation paradigms. First, the altruistic philanthropy landowners exhibit when donating development rights without economic impetus. Second, the thesis introduces the income tax benefits, and their investment potential, available in the Internal Revenue Code for charitable donations. Third, federal land preservation mandates and subsequent funding availability is examined. These tools function together to provide implications for facilitating the deterrence of sprawl-type development. Further, these tools will be compared to the current methods of land preservation, consisting of local zoning ordinances and the purchase of development rights by governmental agencies. These current policies possess serious shortcomings in ameliorating conflict between land uses, as well as diverting sub-urban development from prime farm and open space land. Conservation Easements are shown to have applications in the protection of land subject to estate turnover, control of land uses that cause nuisance externalities, and general local land policy. A spreadsheet algorithm in Microsoft Excel Solver format is included that determines the economic feasibility of performing an easement at the individual landholder level. / Master of Science

Chinese floating population residents' underprivileged living status and intensified social tension are becoming the two major issues inside their community living settlements. The thesis research holds the position that urban open space can enhance Chinese floating population's quality of life and also contribute to the social capital within their living settlement. It is critical to create the open space system that brings great social and health benefits to the group. Literature reviews reveal floating population's characteristics such as existing and potential leisure activities and leisure places. Contemporary thinking on urban open space qualities, benefits and typologies were reviewed to determine which types of open space are of value to this population. Specific qualities and corresponding benefits of floating population community open spaces, which are closely related to the group's characteristics, are identified. Findings from the literature reviews were used to develop open space design guidelines specific to government sponsored floating population settlement areas. Planning and site design level design guidelines address social and health benefits for the floating population residents. Types of open space and their spatial distributions are identified at the planning level. At the site design level, place-based design guidelines were developed for three major open space categories: the daily use spaces around dwelling units, the streets, and the plaza/squares. Under each category, design strategies were developed to promote desirable open space qualities inside the floating population settlement area, and descriptive design objectives are proposed to achieve these qualities. The design guidelines connect the group's demographic, leisure and work characteristics to open space typologies, qualities and respective benefits, and provide recommendations for the open space design of Chinese floating population community. These design guidelines offer planners and site designers a new tool to guide planning and site design decisions of floating population community open space. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Infrastructure and open space planning can be brought together to create a system of multiuse corridors that accommodate multiple types of infrastructure, recreation trails and open space, while protecting natural resources. Some of the potential benefits of this system is more efficient use of fewer utility easements, a more comprehensive open space system that can be paid for by utility users, and less environmental damage from utility placement. A multiuse corridor planning process is described that is meant to be used by a multiple disciplinary team to plan for infrastructure and open space in the context of town, city or region. This process inventories all human infrastructure such as roads, waterlines, and electric and natural infrastructure, such as streams, rivers, forests, wetlands, and geologic features. An assessment is made on what areas are most likely to need infrastructure in the future and a conceptual plan is put together to best serve those needs. A conceptual open space plan is created to serve the needs of future development areas. The infrastructure and the open space plans are woven together using routing guidelines and typical multiuse corridor sections to best design these multiuse corridors. This thesis brings together infrastructure and open space planning at the city and regional level. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Implicit in any urban design is a negotiation between public and private interests. Such a negotiation is articulated and made legible in the facades, fences and even more subtle edges separating this from that. A complex variety of spatial situations are produced depending on how spaces are framed, how interfaces are materialized. In the city, the interplay of open space, building and boundary produces a patchwork of subspaces, which we can consider as potential urban territories. Most of us are familiar with the results of territorial production and recognize that fences, furniture or plantings are claims to space by an individual or group. However, the reason to conceive of this process as a territorial production may not be immediately apparent. Consequences of territorial production on percep-tions and behavior are rather under-analyzed, especially in the context of the city. This thesis looks specifically at territorial responses to urban form in the potential social arenas of shared yards in multifamily housing schemes. Drawing on territoriality- and commons-theory as a basis for morphological studies using spatial analysis (e.g. GIS), the thesis proposes that territorial uses of space are in part connected to characteristics of urban form. The thesis explores these spatial underpinnings of claims on space, examining historical, sociological and architectural perspectives and implications on current planning praxis. Parallels are drawn with the role of excludability and rivalry in the production of goods as per commons-theory. Recognizing that even territories like yards perform differently depending on built form characteristics is a step to designing open space with greater social utility. Most notably, the findings that spatial enclosure supports sense of ownership while spaciousness and size support frequency of use is knowledge useful to the practitioner with a role in the production of urban environments, whether in planning, design or construction. With increasing focus on sustainability in urbanism, factoring in social sustainability in land use means recognizing what makes yards inviting to use and elicit feelings of stewardship. Moreover, the importance of legibility at the interface of public and private has implications for design of public space as well. What appears to have been insufficiently problematized in the past are the non-excludable, rivalrous yards which appear to be parks, but do not perform as such territorially. The thesis suggests how a theoretical basis may support design inter-ventions and even densification to resolve such “territorial instability.” / <p>QC 20160310</p>

<p>The prevailing urban planning strategy in the 21st century in many European cities is urbanisa-tion by densification. The strategy, which has obvious consequences for green and open space, has commonly been described as “Compact city” or “Smart growth”. Densification has mainly been initiated by large building companies, often in conflict with local lobby groups with strong social capital. This has frequently led to deadlocks in planning, especially concerning green space exploitation. This paper suggests new tools for understanding and measuring how urban structuring affects open space accessibility, not only because urban structure distributes open space to people, it also creates users and stakeholders.</p><p>Since the 1950:s Swedish urban planning has been led by normative open space guidelines developed by research and national ministries, guidelines that are still present but has lost in power. Generally these guidelines are based on either density, i.e. sqm green space/person within a defined area, or range, i.e. maximum metric distance to a minimum park size. Planning practice has essentially dealt with size and qualities, often confusing, in micro economic terms, use value and non-use value (e.g. the “ecological”). This paper introduces new ways of integrating use value (sociotop) and orientation (axial lines) into new measures of open space accessibility. A new GIS-application “The Place Syntax Tool” (PST), developed within the research project, makes it possible to calculate the ‘topological’ open space accessibility from every place (address or plot) in an urban area, current or planned. ‘Topological’ accessibility analyses handles the “modified area unit problem” (MAUP) discussed in geography.</p><p>A questionnaire from 2001 (TEMO) states that, citizens in some dense inner-city-districts experience higher park and nature accessibility than in some low-density “green” sub-urbs in Stockholm. This peculiar result was the starting point of testing old and new measures in ten different city districts, using PST. The conclusion is that a new measure, which take range, orientation, green space size and number of use values into account, correlates consid-erably better to the questionnaire (R2=0,75 p<0,001), than any conventional measures. It shows that the 19th century “deformed” inner city grid with defined urban parks connected by green boulevards more effectively distributes open space to many citizens compared with the “interrupted” grid and segregated green structure of the post war “modernist” suburbs.</p><p>Another finding is that axial lines seem to capture movement to and within open space better than any metric measure. Correlation was found when comparing observed pedes-trian flow and calculated population accessibility (Södermalm dij=3, R2=0,682, p<0,001; Hög-dalen dij=6, R2=0,442, p<0,001). Correlation was also found when comparing a questionnaire asking “How often do you go to your favourite green area?” (USK 2002) and axial line distance between all addresses in the study areas and the closest green area (R2=0,77, p=0,018). These results can also be explained by the Space syntax integration analysis which shows that the green spaces in the inner city grid is much more integrated than in the post war suburbs. This means that orientation plays a big part in determining if, and how often people visit open spaces.</p><p>Consequently, better measures could promote understanding of open space planning as an asset to city development, help overcome the deadlock in densification planning and change the common opinion of open space and “green” from a static to a dynamic urban entity.</p>

The first purpose of this study is to determine whether significant differences exist among the perceptions of principals, librarians, and teachers with respect to the following categorical practices or conditions relative to the learning-center concept in open-space elementary schools: (1) teacher preparation for use of the learning center; (2) student preparation for use of the learning center; (3) learning center personnel and their role; (4) operation of the learning center; (5) facilities, materials, and equipment in the learning center; (6) use of the learning center for individualizing learning; and (7) use of the learning center for developing independent learning skills. The second purpose of this study is to determine whether a significant correlation exists among specific categories. The third purpose of this study is to establish the degree of emphasis placed upon various practices or conditions relative to the learning-center concept in open-space elementary schools of Texas.

En bureaux ouverts, le bruit de parole des autres occupants représente un facteur de gêne important. L’objectif de ce travail est d’évaluer les outils de prédiction du pouvoir de nuisance de la parole et de proposer des voies d’amélioration. Ceci nécessite de détailler l’influence des caractéristiques d’un bruit de parole qui peuvent rendre le travail plus difficile. Pour ce faire, plusieurs expériences basées sur des exercices mentaux classiques sont menées. La surcharge cognitive engendrée par le bruit de parole ambiant y est mesurée de façon objective et subjective. Dans un premier temps, l’étude est centrée sur l’influence de l’intelligibilité de la parole. En effet, certains auteurs proposent d’utiliser un indicateur d’intelligibilité, le Speech Transmission Index (STI), pour prédire la nuisance dans un bureau ouvert. Les résultats obtenus confirment cette influence de l’intelligibilité. Cependant, les bruits de fond rencontrés en bureaux ouverts peuvent être fortement fluctuants. Ceci a un effet sur la nuisance dont le STI ne peut rendre compte. Dans un second temps, une alternative permettant de rendre compte de la variabilité temporelle de réelles ambiances sonores de bureaux est donc proposée. Le pouvoir prédictif de cet indicateur sur la perturbation au travail est évalué pour plusieurs types de tâches. Si les effets observés sont faibles, en particulier au regard des différences de sensibilité au bruit entre individus, la prise en compte des fluctuations de niveau pour un environnement sonore donné semble bel et bien essentielle à la prédiction chiffrée de la gêne sonore causée. De plus, l’évaluation subjective de la gêne s’avère être un complément essentiel à l’évaluation objective pour rendre compte de l’influence de certains facteurs. / Speech noise is a major cause of annoyance in open-plan offices. The purpose of this research was to assess the quality of existing tools for predicting the nuisance potential of speech and highlight possibilities for improvement. The ways in which speech sounds influence noise annoyance were thus investigated. To this end, experiments were carried out based on classical mental tasks, with concurrent objective and subjective measurements of the increase in mental workload caused by ambient speech. First, the effect of speech intelligibility was studied. Indeed, some argue for the use of a speech intelligibility measure, the Speech Transmission Index (STI), to predict noise annoyance in open-plan offices. Results confirmed the increase in disruption caused by speech made more intelligible. However, the STI was incapable of predicting noise annoyance for fluctuating background sounds, which are usual in open-plan offices. An alternative was then provided that accounted for the temporal variability seen in actual office sound environments. The predictive ability of this measure was assessed for varied tasks. The resulting effects were small when compared with individual differences in susceptibility to speech noise. However, they indicated that allowing for level fluctuations in the sound environment is essential to quantifying the induced noise annoyance. Moreover, it appeared that subjective measurements of noise annoyance were a critical complement to objective measurements for identifying certain causes of noise annoyance.

O trabalho reflete sobre a paisagem, o ambiente e os espaços livres de Suzano, município situado na bacia do Alto Tietê Cabeceiras, que faz parte da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Inicialmente, desenvolve-se a análise de conceitos voltados à ecologia de paisagens e do sistema de espaços livres públicos. Em seguida, faz-se uma aproximação da paisagem e do sistema de espaços livres do município, objetivando compreender a diversidade de suas paisagens, bem como do seu ambiente nos distritos que o compõem. Após esta compreensão retoma-se novamente o conceito voltado à ecologia de paisagens, para que este possa ser utilizado na constituição de uma proposta de sistema de espaços livres públicos para o território, buscando a valorização das suas paisagens, assim como do ambiente. Ao final, verifica-se quais são os entraves existentes na gestão pública, que dificultam a implementação de políticas ambientais no país. / The goal of this dissertation is to study the impact of landscape and open spaces on the environment in urban areas. The focus will be on the city of Suzano, which is located at the basin of Alto Tietê Cabeceiras and is part f the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil. The first part of the study will focus on ecological concepts of landscapes and open spaces of the city. After, we aim to better understand the diversity of the open spaces within these territories and how they shape and mold the terrain and effect the local environment. Once an informed and educated analysis is achieved, the goal is then to establish a proposal to implement an open space program for the surrounding Suzano area that would both bring better quality of life and value to the city and their inhabitants. Finally, we plan to point out what obstacles and barriers might exist in within the government for implementation of these policies.

Na recente história urbana, Palmas, a mais nova cidade planejada brasileira, se depara na atualidade com questões e conflitos que mesmo o planejamento urbano não conseguiu evitar. Este trabalho identifica a gênese urbana da Vila União, região de Palmas na qual o determinismo do plano confronta com formas espontâneas de apropriação, e cria uma nova face na conformação de lugares. Seu processo de ocupação construiu um espaço urbano específico, resultando em uma outra urbanidade. A contestação identitária configurou sua qualidade espacial, caracterizada pela esfera pública da vida cotidiana. A hipótese central que permeia este trabalho é que os lugares conformados nos limites entre o projeto urbano e os processos sociais, são os principais promotores dessa nova urbanidade. A dualidade entre urbanismo e urbanização proporcionou um caráter híbrido à cidade, evidenciando os processos culturais de construção do espaço. / In the recent urban history, Palmas, the newest Brazilian planned city, actually confront many questions that even the urban planning cannot avoid. This work aims identify the morphological genesis of Vila União, a neighborhood unity in Palmas, where the determinism of the plan confront with the spontaneous appropriations forms, and create a new face in the constitutions of places. Your occupation process built a specific urban space, resulting in urbanity. The identitary contestation configured your spatial quality, characterized by the public sphere of quotidian life. The central hypothesis that permeates this work is that places conformed between the urban design and the social process, are the principal urbanity promoters. The duality between urbanism and urbanization provides a hybrid character to the city, making evident the cultural process to built space.