Thesis (M.U.S.)--Portland State University. Urban Studies, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 25, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-104).

Urban growth is one type of urban development. Many Canadian cities have dramatically evolved over the past twenty years. Along with the rapid growth of urban region, urban sprawl has become one of the most significant issues challenging most cities. Remote sensing techniques are frequently used to analyse urban growth and sprawl. In this study, three temporal satellite images, which were taken at 1990, 2000, 2010 respectively, are classified using software ENVI to determine the urban extent and growth pattern of the city of London, Ontario, Canada. Statistical models including Shannon‘s entropy and Pearson‘s chi-square are applied to calculate the degree of sprawl and degree of freedom of London. Moreover, the overall degree of goodness of the urban growth is calculated as a promotion of the former two statistic models towards the analysis of urban growth. The results shows London is sprawled in the past 20 years (from 1990 to 2010) with a decreasing degree of freedom and a moderate degree of goodness of urban growth. Apart from mathematical analysis, policies that have been implemented since 1990s to curb urban sprawl in London are reviewed. Key factors that impact the urban growth pattern of London are identified through reviewing. It is found that 1993‘s annexation, the creation of Urban Growth Boundary and changed political intentions are the main factors. By analyze these factors, it also help to explain the results derived from mathematical models. Brownfield redevelopment, residential intensification, smart moves are regarded as the most important strategies to deal with urban sprawl carried out by London‘s local government. It also witnesses a great impact of policies initiated by the province on a mid-sized municipality such as London. It is argued that municipalities gain only limited political autonomy and administrative capacity. Recommendations are addressed specifically for the related strategies for further promotions. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

China has experienced unprecedented growth since the open door policy began at the end of the 1970s and is currently in position as the world’s second largest economy in terms of gross domestic product. Much of the academic community already considers China a dominant economic power and potentially the most important nation state in terms of its current and future role in the global economy. In addition, the last 50 years has produced a plethora of research on the importance of cities and on their profound economic contribution under persistent international trends of globalization. One prime example of the culmination and prominence of this research, Saskia Sassen’s The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, delineates specific characteristics of true global cities, citing the three titled cities as the only prime examples in existence. Based on the economic prominence of China as a nation-state, this dissertation aims to view China’s prominent contemporary cities through the lens of Sassen’s global city alongside other relevant and related theories and data in order to determine whether a true global city exists today within Mainland China. It then evaluates the current status of Chinese cities with respect to the observed effects of globalization and on the hypothetical path to true global city status. A number of theories relating to Chinese cities are developed in this respect, including the ‘shared spotlight’ theory and the ‘polarity of global city functions’ theory. Finally, an attempt is made to directly associate the distinct global economic roles and developmental paths of Beijing and Shanghai to the unique political and economic policy and action demonstrated by the Chinese Communist Party. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, the conclusion is drawn that Chinese cities, specifically Beijing and Shanghai, have taken divergent paths and play very distinct economic roles, as opposed to showing the natural agglomeration of global city functions one would expect to find in a world economic power under an increasingly globalizing world economy. Additionally, an associated conclusion is drawn that the unique developmental paths and the resulting distinct roles can be directly associated with actions and policies of the Chinese Communist Party. / published_or_final_version / China Development Studies / Master / Master of Arts in China Development Studies

Shek Wu Hui (石湖墟) is the traditional market town area of Sheung Shui. Its history can be dated back to over 300 years ago.1 After its re-establishment after the complete fire destruction in the 1950s, its new market town layout arrangement has more or less been retained since then. For a long time, Shek Wu Hui was where small businesses clustered. Due to its location far away from the city centre of Hong Kong, these businesses mainly served the local residents in the neighbourhood. The small retail businesses underwent fairly gradual changes. But that was the case until mid-2000s. In 2003, Individual Visit Scheme was implemented, allowing citizens from selected cities in Mainland China to visit Hong Kong. Since Sheung Shui is the first town to come across in Hong Kong after crossing the Lo Wu border control point, it has become an increasingly popular place for mainlanders to purchase commodities, and later the parallel trading activities start to soar. With the influx of visitors and the increase in parallel trading activities, itis observed that the retail businessesin Shek Wu Hui have undergone rapid changes. This leads to the key research questions for this dissertation: what is the historicalidentity of Shek Wu Hui as a market town, and has it been able to retain this historical identity despite the changes in the retail businesses? In conservation, the heritage significance of a place includes its social value, which is measured by the collective attachment to the place by people, especially the stakeholders. As someone who grew up in the Shek Wu Hui neighbourhood, the author has much attachment to the place. This is the personal reason behind the motivation to carry out this research. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ / published_or_final_version / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

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This thesis examines the deeply layered genre of crime and detective fiction together with academic texts dealing, broadly, with urban geography. These apparently separated writings are read together and against one another in order to reveal answers to important questions of how the city is organized and arranged in its texts. In particular, this thesis analyzes certain structures in place in forms of textual representation, structures which have deep implications for the writing of the city. Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin stories appear alongside Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen novels, and Christopher Prendergast's study of Paris in the nineteenth century. Walter Mosley's series of Los Angeles mysteries are discussed in the context of particularly prominent academic representations of L.A. Reading such a diverse collection of texts together and against one another is a deliberate tactic, intended to draw out the similar structures in place in very different forms of writing. Those structures are the critical issue here, specifically with regard to the need for examinations of the city that consider not merely which components of the city appear in texts about the city, but also how the city appears in text. How the city appears in text has a good deal to do with the demands exercised by the medium of representation, and a key concern here is to draw out the need for doing away with an often unquestioned separation between places—cities—and their texts. Instead what is studied and ultimately proposed here is a focus on the intersection between subject and textual structure, and how that intersection actively produces the city.

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The present thesis is concerned with the study of the grid structure of Arab towns found across North Africa. Studies on this kind of towns have stressed the idea of a single city form based on a threefold hierarchical organisation of space with a specific emphasis on the cul-de-sacs; and the division of the town into a central public core and more private residential quarters. This spatial model has often provided the rationale for the design of new housing layouts. Ground plans of Arab towns, however, often show great variation in the grid structure, ranging from a very regular pattern to a strongly deformed and labyrinthine type, suggesting then that the idea of a single city type is unsatisfying. It also seems to be the case that plans of modern housing layouts based on concepts derived from this model bear little resemblance, when built, to traditional urban forms. On both counts, therefore, the model seems too abstract and too generalized to give a satisfactory account on Arab cities. The study examines these issues in the light of a descriptive theory of urban space and argues that grid structures of Arab towns present typological tendencies and morphological individualities as well as generic properties. More particularly, it suggests that: i- underlying the grid structure of Arab towns, there are generic similarities, in that the urban fabric is highly segregated, and presents a strong regionalization of the integrating spatial structure; ii- there are strong typological differences mainly in the degree of deformation of the urban grid, in that some towns have some degree of regular structure imposed on the plan, while others clearly lack regularity; differences in the overall pattern of the integrating structures; and the degree to which the spatial structure of the quarters links to each other and to the whole fabric to form a connected structure. The study suggests that both the fundamental similarities and the deep differences in the structure of these towns arise from a single dominant factor: the degree to which the grid structure is deformed to produce firstly, a certain type and degree of movement interface between the most permanent users, i.e. the inhabitants, and visitors of the towns; and secondly a certain type and degree of movement interface among the inhabitants of the separate quarters of the town. These conclusions are then used as a basis for reconsidering some recent typical 'traditionalist' design concepts, such as the clustering of dwelling units adopted in the modern layouts. Finally, the study argues that the regulation of the overall grid deformation can itself be used as a basic design concept to re-produce these types of movement interface. For this, the study explores the possibility of using a computer-based generative process of grid patterns, in which spatial properties of the grid of Arab towns have been introduced as an eventual basis for the design of housing layouts.

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Thesis (M.U.R.P.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Planning, 1977.