Under de senaste decennierna har det pågått en urbanisering i världens storstäder. Allt fler människor väljer att bosätta sig i urbana miljöer och trenden är uppenbar. En tät, attraktiv och blandad stad med närhet till samhällsservice, arbetsplatser och övriga funktioner samt tillgång till hållbara transportsätt eftersträvas i många städers planering för en hållbar stadsutveckling i dagsläget. Ett sätt att uppnå hållbar stadsutveckling som förespråkas på många olika samhällsnivåer är genom förtätning som stadsbyggnadsstrategi. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om förtätning kan vara en tänkbar stadsbyggnadsstrategi för att uppnå hållbar stadsutveckling. För att undersöka relationen mellan förtätning samt hållbar stadsutveckling har även begreppen undersökts samt förklarats genom en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Studien utgörs av en fallstudiemetod av ett pågående stadsutvecklingsprojekt, Fokus Skärholmen, i Skärholmens stadsdelsområde i Stockholms kommun. Fallstudiemetoden undersöker alltså hur relationen mellan förtätning samt hållbar stadsutveckling ser ut i empirin med material från stadens plan-, mål- och strategidokument samt semistrukturerade intervjuer med kommunala tjänstepersoner involverade i projektet Fokus Skärholmen. Skärholmens stadsdelsområde har inte exploaterats i lika stor omfattning som projektet Fokus Skärholmen nu planerar för sedan färdigställandet av miljonprogrammet. Det har endast skett mindre kompletteringar av byggnader i stadsdelsområdet. Stadsbyggande kan ses som ett verktyg för att uppnå en hållbar stadsutveckling och projektet Fokus Skärholmen planerar för en förtätning som stadsbyggnadsstrategi för en hållbar stadsutveckling utifrån stadsdelsområdets lokala behov samt förutsättningar. Projektet Fokus Skärholmen betraktas därför som ett omfattande och intressant fall att undersöka för denna studie. Studiens resultat visar vid jämförelse av teoretiska samt empiriska studier att förtätning som stadsbyggnadsstrategi kan, enligt vissa forskare, innebära en hållbar stadsutveckling förutsatt att förtätningen sker på rätt sätt. Förtätning kan även på vissa platser betraktas som en olämplig stadsbyggnadsstrategi som istället kan motverka den hållbara stadsutvecklingen som samhället strävar efter. Både ”förtätning” samt ”hållbar stadsutveckling” är således kontextberoende begrepp och varierar beroende på platsens förutsättningar samt behov. Diskussionen om hur en förtätning bör ske är således mer komplex än vad vi tror och bör analyseras mer djupgående för att stadsbyggnadsstrategin ska bli framgångsrik och innebära positiva effekter för alla människor i samhället. Projektet Fokus Skärholmen har satts i denna kontext vid empiriska studier, slutsatsen beträffande projektet Fokus Skärholmen är att det kan bli ett framgångsrikt stadsutvecklingsprojekt förutsatt att allt som skrivs i plan-, mål- samt strategidokumenten uppfylls. Fokus Skärholmen är alltjämt långt ifrån ett färdigställt projekt och har en rad utmaningar framför sig att överkomma, det är således svårt att konstatera så tidigt i processen om förtätningen kan innebära en hållbar stadsutveckling i praktiken. / Urbanization has taken place in the world’s major cities in recent decades. The numbers of people that are settling in urban environments are increasing, therefore the trend is obvious. A compact, attractive and mixed city with proximity to community service, workplaces and further functions as well as access to sustainable transport (e.g. public transport, walking and cycling) is desirable and sought in many cities. The idea behind the compact and mixed city is occurring with increasing frequency in many cities’ planning for a sustainable urban development. A strategy to achieve sustainable urban development is through densification. The purpose of this study is to look into whether densification is could be an urban development strategy for achieving sustainable urban development. The relationship between densification and sustainable urban development has therefore been studied through qualitative research. This study consists of a case study method of an ongoing urban development project called “Fokus Skärholmen”, in Skärholmen administrative city district in Stockholm municipality. The case study method examines how the relationship between densification and sustainable urban development looks empirically. Skärholmen administrative city district’s land use has not been developed to the same extent as the project “Fokus Skärholmen” is now planning for since the completion of the Million Programme. Urban development strategy could be seen as a tool for achieving sustainable urban development and the project “Fokus Skärholmen” is planning for a densification as an urban development strategy for sustainable urban development based on the local district area’s needs and conditions. Since Skärhomen’s land use has not been developed to the same extent, the “Fokus Skärholmen” project is considered as extensive and interesting case to study. The results of this study show, when comparing theoretical and empirical studies, that densification as an urban development strategy could, according to some researchers, contribute to a sustainable urban development, given that the densification is done correctly. Densification could also in some places be regarded as an inappropriate urban development strategy and could instead counteract the sustainable urban development that the society strives for. Both “densification” and “sustainable urban development” are thus context-dependent concepts and vary depending on the area’s conditions and needs. The discussion on how densification should be done is therefore more complex than we think and should be further analyzed so the densification could contribute to positive effects and benefit all people. The project “Fokus Skärholmen” has been put into this context in empirical studies. The conclusion regarding “Fokus Skärholmen” is that it could become a successful urban development project, given that everything that is written in the plan and strategy documents is implemented. Fokus Skärholmen is still far from to be considered as a completed project and has a number of challenges ahead to overcome, thus it is difficult to state so early in the process if the densification could contribute to sustainable urban development in practice.

Med en kvalitativ metod undersöker studien det agila arbetssättet inom projektledning förstadsutvecklingsprojekt genom en fallstudie av Nacka kommuns projekt Nacka Stad. Studiensyftar till att identifiera och förtydliga problem och hinder en applicering av ett agilt arbetssättkan leda till och hur arbetssättet i praktiken skiljer sig från litteratur om det agila arbetssättet ihandböcker och vetenskapliga artiklar – med hopp om att ge en djupare förståelse för agilaarbetsmetoder inom projektledning av stadsutvecklingsprojekt.Studien beskriver det agila manifestet och dess kärnprinciper, tillvägagångssättet för Scrumoch Kanban samt tittar på vad det innebär att ha en agil mentalitet. Genom detta formulerasatt essensen av ett agilt arbetssätt är att arbetsfördelningen sker i korta, regelbundna ochfrekventa cykler av tydliga uppgifter, där deltagandet av kunden och medarbetarna iplaneringsprocessen är centralt och strukturen av organisationen är i ‘teams’.Fallstudien visade att även om vissa agila metoder appliceras görs detta utan tydlig struktur.Det som kunde identifieras som agilt var att projektresultat i form av tidplan levererades oftaoch det nya arbetssättet gav en bättre överblick av helheten för delprojektledare. En nymötesplan visade agila element av att ha mer möten med kommunikation face-to-face för attfå snabbare beslut. Användandet av en digital Kanban tavla och en form av Scrum-mötenobserverades där en ’backlog’ av uppgifter delades ut mellan samordningsteamet.Scrum-mötena hade dock låg energi och fundamentala agila metoder såsom ’stand-upmeetings’ och Sprints applicerades inte. Full applicering av agila metoder visade sig svårt dåbeslutsprocesser var tröga och organisationen fortfarande hade en tydlig hierarkisk struktur.Fyra semi-strukturerade intervjuer utfördes som bekräftade observationerna. Upplevda hindermed agila metoder och att applicera dem beskrevs som att det saknades motivation ochstruktur.Studien mynnar ut i att det agila arbetssättet behöver förvaltas och att det i praktiken intefungerar att applicera agila metoder på ett i agilt sätt utan det behöver ske strukturerat och konsekvent för att ge önskat resultat om högre engagemang och en effektivare organisation. / With a qualitative method, the study investigates the agile working methods within projectmanagement for urban development projects through a case study of Nacka municipality'sproject Nacka Stad. The study aims to identify and clarify problems and obstacles anapplication of an agile way of working can lead to and how the working method differs fromthe literature in manuals and scientific articles - with the hope of giving a deeperunderstanding of agile working methods within project management of urban developmentprojects.The study describes the agile manifesto and its core principles, the methods Scrum andKanban, and explores what it means to have an agile mentality. By this it is formulated thatthe essence of an agile working method is that the work is divided in short, regular andfrequent cycles of clear tasks, where the participation of the customer and the employees inthe planning process is fundamental and the structure of the organization is in teams.The case study showed that although some agile methods are applied, this is done withoutclear structure. What could be identified as agile was that project results in the form oftimetables were often delivered and the new way of working gave a better overview of theoverall picture for sub-project managers. A new meeting plan showed agile elements ofhaving more meetings with face-to-face communication to get faster decisions. The use of adigital Kanban board and a form of Scrum meetings was observed where a backlog ofinformation was distributed between the coordination team.However, the Scrum meetings had low energy and fundamental agile methods such as standupmeetings and Sprints were not applied. Full application of agile methods proved to bedifficult as decision processes were slow and the organization still had a clear hierarchicalstructure.Four semi-structured interviews were conducted which confirmed the observations.Experienced obstacles with agile methods and implementing them were described as thelacking of motivation and structure.The study concludes that the agile way of working needs to be managed and that it in practicedoes not work to apply agile methods in an agile way, that it instead needs to be structured and consistent in order to obtain the desired results of increased involvement from theemployees and a more efficient organization. The report is written in Swedish.

The aim of this thesis is to shed light on Post-Soviet urban renewal and people’s perceptions of changes that recently occurred in both the city of Riga and Latvian society more generally since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. More specifically, this study examines how these perceptions are manifest in Riga’s ongoing renewal. Through applying aspects of continuity and discontinuity, I illustrate how the urban renewal of Post-Soviet Riga uncovers imaginary and emotional aspects of the city and how these are interpreted in relation to the past, present and the future. This study introduces the concept “urban postperestroika” and one important difference between this concept and the more common concepts post-socialist, post-communist or post-Soviet is that the former highlights a process while the latter ones largely highlight the state. The starting point is how urban phantasmagorias – contemporary dreams of the future of the city – elucidate urban renewal processes in general and urban postperestroika in particular. In Riga’s ongoing renewal processes I identify three main trajectories in relation to aspects of the past, present and the future: de-Sovietization, globalization and Lettification. Together, these three trajectories constitute an engine that produces urban phantasmagorias. The dissolution of the Soviet Union has given rise to notions that everything is “back to normal” again, and these notions of normalcy have influenced urban renewal processes. The dilemmas, as shown in this thesis, concern the Soviet period and its remaining psychical structure which give the impression of being too conspicuous to eliminate and too contradictory to assimilate. The study illustrates the difficulties of building new urban and societal structures on the remains of pre-existing orders. Such difficulties of course lead to contradictory and ambiguous world views and to new dysfunctional situations that have to be managed in the future.

Thesis (M.Phil. (School of Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Water and sanitation is one of the key factors in the socio-economic development of a nation and people. Billions of people worldwide do not have access to clean water or basic sanitation leading to many health problems and developmental issues. This article discusses the challenges facing the world, South Africa and in particular the Western Cape and Cape Town in the provision of water and sanitation. For most people the desire is to have access to their own private portable water supply and their own private flush toilet connected via costly bulk water services to sewage treatment plants far away. The question posed is whether this model is sustainable into the future, given the water demands in many parts of the world affected by droughts and more violent weather cycles as a result of climate change and global warming. These factors will affect water supplies in South Africa and in particular the Western Cape and Cape Town. To answer some of the questions raised the Lynedoch EcoVillage development is discussed in detail in terms of sustainable neighbourhood planning and implementation. Sustainable Development is discussed, also various options in terms of applying ecological sanitation. The on-site water and sanitation system of the Lynedoch EcoVillage is discussed as a case study. The results of influent and effluent tests conducted by the CSIR are analysed to see whether the system is conforming to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry standards for the use of effluent water in irrigation and re-use of water in toilets. Localised models of water and sanitation provision might thus be a way forward to satisfy the increasing demand for such services made on national and local authorities as urban areas increase in size and population.

Architecture has been pushed towards the realms of theorization, conceptualization and design methodologies. It is apparent that design is becoming interrupted and more associated with the manufacturing of ideas. It has lost its essence as a phenomenon whose roots are embedded in history and man’s relationship with his specific habitat. Hence, the aim of the thesis is to redirect architectural attention to Ecology and its various implications on design. The study puts forward the notion that human achievements are an outcome of the interaction between ecology, Culture and Cognitive Structure. These relationships are thought to set the principles behind environmental qualities of stability, compatibility and fitness. Once designers arrive at an understanding of these principles, they will be able to manipulate their design ideas to accommodate ever changing circumstances of their physical and cultural environments. The title “Physical, cultural and cognitive interactions in the conception and the production of the built environment” implies a significant theme which could indicate major traits that characterize modern practices and theorisation within the area of Architectural and Environmental Design Studies. In this work, it will be seen why and how: First, a lack of consideration for the physical environment, its requirements and its role in producing diversified architectural forms. The most significant outcome of a such position lies in divorcing nature, its laws and the ecosystems on which man has spent the preceding history elaborating building patterns on the basis of utilising them for his interest free of charge and without consequences to his survival. The fact is that different cultures, ways of life and differentiated built environments, which can only be attributed to man’s adaptation to different ecological conditions, have been widely swept away under the mythical notion of “International style”. Second, because the architects and theorists of the contemporary architecture admire mental constructions and abstract philosophies of their own, they have advocated an alien and distorted meaning of the concept of culture. The most likely interpretation of this vital concept is that it is viewed as related to a kind of abstract intellectual capacity in the human brain that does not lend itself to variation in the physical setting. Tragically, the adoption of such view has resulted in sweeping away subcultures which have been developed in remote areas in accordance with their geographical setting. The most acceptable meaning of culture has been to imply the role of physical environment in shaping social relations, the modes of thought, norms, beliefs, ways of life, the ideologies and the total range of customary behaviour, all of which have been influenced by people’s adaptation to their environment. Therefore, building forms, patterns of growth, town morphology, in short, architectural phenomenon, has, like culture, evolved characteristics from its natural habitat. We now often observe that such an argument is totally diminishing in the present architecture and in the environmental activities of those in charge. Third, the interruption of continuity and flow of human cognitive knowledge by introducing techniques and thoughts whose practical values, aesthetical capacities and meanings do not correspond with people’s knowledge of the environment, building behaviour or activities associated with the history of people’s relation to their own habitat. This work is structured in two main parts; the first one will deal with the contribution of the different disciplines such as Ecology, Culture, Economy, Psychology, Architecture and Urban Design from the theoretical point of view in the development of the different concepts. In the second part, we will discuss the impact of these disciplines on the production of our built environment and we will end up by suggesting a model highlighting the interactions of these disciplines in the evaluation and the production of our built environment through a chosen case study which is Algiers. The main methods used in this study are: Descriptive for the first part which is dealing with the review of the current literature on Ecology, Culture and Cognition; Analytic for the proposed model and the case study; the third method is predictive and concerns the last part of this work.

published_or_final_version / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Urban Design

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Urban Design

Transportation planning and urban development in the United States have synchronously emerged over the past few decades to encompass goals associated with sustainability, improved connectivity, complete streets and mitigation of environmental impacts. These goals have evolved in tandem with some of the relatively more traditional objectives of supply-side improvements such as infrastructure and capacity expansion. Apart from the numerous federal regulations in the US transportation sector that reassert sustainability motivations, metropolitan planning organizations and civic societies face similar concerns in their decision-making and policy implementation. However, overall transportation planning to incorporate these wide-ranging objectives requires characterization of large-scale transportation systems and traffic flow through them, which is dynamic in nature, computationally intense and a non-trivial problem. Thus, these contemporary questions lie at the interface of transportation planning, urban development and sustainability planning. They have the potential of being effectively addressed through state-of-the-art transportation modeling tools, which is the main motivation and philosophy of this thesis. From the research standpoint, some of these issues have been addressed in the past typically from the urban design, built-environment, public health and vehicle technology and mostly qualitative perspectives, but not as much from the traffic engineering and transportation systems perspective---a gap in literature which the thesis aims to fill. Specifically, it makes use of simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) to develop modeling paradigms and integrated frameworks to seamlessly incorporate these in the transportation planning process. In addition to just incorporating them in the planning process, DTA-based paradigms are able to accommodate numerous spatial and temporal dynamics associated with system traffic, which more traditional static models are not able to. Besides, these features are critical in the context of the planning questions of this study. Specifically, systemic impacts of suburban and urban street pattern developments typically found in US cities in past decades of the 20th century have been investigated. While street connectivity and design evolution is mostly regulated through local codes and subdivision ordinances, its impacts on traffic and system congestion requires modeling and quantitative evidence which are explored in this thesis. On the environmental impact mitigation side, regional emission inventories from the traffic sector have also been quantified. Novel modeling approaches for the street connectivity-accessibility problem are proposed. An integrated framework using the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory MOVES model has been developed, combining it with mesoscopic-level DTA simulation. Model demonstrations and applications on real and large-sized study areas reveal that different levels of connectivity and accessibility have substantial impacts on system-wide traffic---as connectivity levels reduce, traffic and congestion metrics show a gradually increasing trend. As regards emissions, incorporation of dynamic features leads to more realistic emissions inventory generation compared to default databases and modules, owing to consideration of the added dynamic features of system traffic and region-specific conditions. Inter-dependencies among these sustainability planning questions through the common linkage of traffic dynamics are also highlighted. In summary, the modeling frameworks, analyses and findings in the thesis contribute to some ongoing debates in planning studies and practice regarding ideal urban designs, provisions of sustainability and complete streets. Furthermore, the integrated emissions modeling framework, in addition to sustainability-related contributions, provides important tools to aid MPOs and state agencies in preparation of state implementation plans for demonstrating conformity to national ambient air-quality standards in their regions and counties. This is a critical condition for them to receive federal transportation funding. / text