Lam Tak Him. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 1998-99, design report." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-99). / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS / PROLOGUE / CONTENT / Chapter 1.0 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Project Vision / Chapter 1.2 --- Hypothesis / Chapter 1.3 --- Issues and Goals / Chapter 1.4 --- Outline of Process / Chapter 2.0 --- SITE --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1 --- Background / Chapter 2.2 --- Site Boundary / Chapter 2.3 --- Streets / Chapter 2.4 --- Vehicular Circulation / Chapter 2.5 --- Pedestrian Circulation / Chapter 2.6 --- Building Height and Density / Chapter 2.7 --- Open Space / Chapter 3.0 --- CONTEXT --- p.16 / Chapter 3.1 --- Historical / Chapter 3.2 --- Cultural / Chapter 3.3 --- Social / Chapter 3.4 --- Economic / Chapter 4.0 --- CODES --- p.20 / Chapter 4.1 --- Outline Zoning Plan / Chapter 4.2 --- Outline Master Development Plan / Chapter 4.3 --- Airport Height Restriction Plan / Chapter 5.0 --- PEOPLE --- p.23 / Chapter 5.1 --- Demography / Chapter 5.2 --- Inhabitants / Chapter 5.3 --- Shop/Restaurant Owners / Chapter 5.4 --- Customers / Chapter 6.0 --- PROBLEMS & OPPORTUNTIES --- p.28 / Chapter 6.1 --- Traffic & Parking / Chapter 6.2 --- Drainage & Hygiene / Chapter 6.3 --- Open Space & Elderly / Chapter 6.4 --- Economy & Business / Chapter 7.0 --- MISSION --- p.32 / Chapter 8.0 --- STREET --- p.33 / Chapter 8.1 --- Selection / Chapter 8.2 --- Use / Chapter 8.3 --- Restaurants / Chapter 8.4 --- Building Typology / Chapter 8.5 --- Layering of Publicity / Chapter 8.6 --- Facade / Chapter 8.7 --- Constraints / Chapter 9.0 --- CLIENTS --- p.42 / Chapter 9.1 --- Profile / Chapter 9.2 --- Organization Analysis / Chapter 9.3 --- Preferences/Value / Chapter 9.4 --- Client Combinations / Chapter 10.0 --- STREET STRATEGIES --- p.46 / Chapter 10.1 --- Conceptualization / Chapter 10.2 --- Development / Chapter 10.3 --- Final Strategies / Chapter 11.0 --- PROGRAMME --- p.61 / Chapter 11.1 --- Preliminary Scheme / Chapter 11.2 --- Final Programme / Chapter 12.0 --- BUILDING DESIGN --- p.70 / Chapter 12.1 --- Concept / Chapter 12.2 --- Plans / Chapter 12.3 --- Longitudinal Section & Elevation / Chapter 12.4 --- Axonometric Illustrations / Chapter 12.5 --- Sections & Perspective Views / Chapter 12.6 --- Details / Chapter 13.0 --- PRECEDENT STUDIES --- p.90 / Chapter 13.1 --- "Beursplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands" / Chapter 13.2 --- "Shinsaibashi Shopping Mall, Osaka, Japan" / Chapter 13.3 --- "Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, U.S.A." / Chapter 13.4 --- "Horton Plaza, San Diego, U.S.A." / Chapter 14.0 --- BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.94 / Chapter 14.1 --- Books / Chapter 14.2 --- Periodicals / Chapter 14.3 --- Government Publications / Chapter 14.4 --- Interviews

The research focuses on the transfer of European urban ideas into Caracas, from Antonio Guzman Blanco's urban reforms in the 1870s to the proposal of the 1939 Plan Monumental de Caracas, devised under the guidance of the French urbanist Maurice Rotival. Considering that the emergence of urbanism cannot be reduced to its mere technical contents - especially in the backward context of the Venezuela of that period - the research traces not only the transfer of urbanistic ideas, but also the importation which took place in the domains related to the Caraquenians' urban culture and urbanity. At the same time, that urban transfer is not reduced to a deterministic effect of economic dependence, but is rather regarded as a component of the cultural relationship maintained by the Venezuelan elite with the most advanced countries of North Atlantic capitalism. By tracing the transfer of urban ideas from Europe into Caracas - which remains the core issue of the research -a parallel question is explored: the reconstruction of the primary stages which articulated the urban debate in Venezuela and underpinned modern urbanism as a discipline, a process which apparently occurred against that European background. This reconstruction involves three episodes - the urban art of the Guzmanian city, the hygiene and progress of the belle Opoque and the monumental urbanism of the democratic capital - which are presented as components of a European-oriented cycle in the history of Caracas. In order to trace that transfer and reconstruct those episodes, the research combines four types of urban discourse: the legal, political and administrative texts, the urban literature, the travel chronicles and general descriptions, and technical literature about urbanism. The interlacement of such a catalogue of specialized and non-specialized sources claims to be an innovation of the research.

To Yeuk Lun. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2006-2007, design report."

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2009. / Author also earned an Urban Design Certificate from the Program in Urban Design; a joint graduate program with the Dept. of Architecture and the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-179). / As currently conceived, the contemporary city will not advance beyond its present level of achievement. This research frames the city within three root values upon which all decisions made in the city are based. The three root values are continuity, connection and openness. Under the present priorities of city making, the contemporary city is heavily biased toward continuity. A paradigm shift is required in the way cities are conceived and developed to rebalance the three root values with the intention of creating cities that are better places for humans to inhabit. This shift is a call for a more human city. This research investigates a collection of urban design principles that are intended to humanize the city and improve them as settings for human use and occupation. The research utilizes the festival as a temporal moment in the city of uniquely human-centered use. It is a moment in which the human becomes the dominant priority in the organization and occupation of space, while other systems of the city are temporarily interrupted. Through a series of six festival case studies a number of consistent adaptations of space emerge in which the festive events highlight strategies for humanizing space in the city. The urban design principles highlighted by this research include adapting spatial containment, restructuring movement, exposing meaning and commonality, attracting density of people, removing separation of uses, increasing overlapping activities, and spatially and temporally scripting and choreographing all of these strategies. / (cont.) These principles are then examined through a design test that shows their applicability in making humanizing adaptations of space and ultimately creating more human cities. / by Joshua Charles Fiala. / M.C.P.

Au Pui Sze. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2003-2004, design report." / Includes bibliographical references. / Chapter 1.0 --- Abstract / Chapter 2.0 --- Site Analysis / Chapter 2.1 --- District / Chapter 2.2 --- Path / Chapter 2.3 --- Nodes / Chapter 3.0 --- Design Intervention / Chapter 3.1 --- Process / Chapter 3.2 --- Final design / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Site Strategy / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Detailed design / Chapter 4.0 --- Researches / Chapter 4.1 --- Precedents of places of worship / Chapter 4.2 --- Proposal for redefining urban spaces / Chapter 4.3 --- "Feng shui, temple & city" / Chapter 5.0 --- Bibliography

Sze Wing Yee. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2004-2005, design report."

This thesis is the product of ethnographic research conducted over a period of eighteen months on a council estate, located on the outskirts of a city in Britain. The research explores how the everyday lives of people on The Estate are shaped by their being there. It also examines the material and social conditions, which produce and legitimate knowledges of these people and this place. A central concern of the research is the exploration of classed identity formations. Conducted in ‘austerity Britain' it traces the material and social constitution of the council estate at a moment of heightened interest (popular, political and academic) as ‘other'. The thesis aims to develop a theorisation of being placed on the council estate, which maintains sensitivity to the objectifying processes of claiming to know: specifically, a political commitment to representations of ideas of difference and dissensus (Rancière, 1998; 2006). This work is produced in conversation with class theory; inspired by Bourdieu's linking of objective structures to subjective experience (Bourdieu, 1977; 1980; 1983) and feminist reflexive writings of the affective in classed beings (Hey, 2006; Walkerdine, 2010; Lucey, 2010). However, crucially, it does not produce a new categorisation of class. Rather I begin from a premise that ‘identity categories are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary' (Butler, 1992: 15-16). In this thesis, I work through a deconstruction of the concepts of class in order to ‘continue to use them, repeat them, to repeat them subversively, and to displace them from the contexts in which they have been deployed as instruments of oppressive power' (1992: 17). This work is located within academic debates around identity. Thinking with post-structural conceptualisations of gender (Butler, 1990) and race (Nayak, 1977), I develop these as a way to think class. I build upon conceptualisations of habitus (Bourdieu, 2005) as a starting point for exploring subjectivities. Drawing upon work foregrounding the affective consequences of shifts in circumstances resulting in a habitus ‘out of place' (Reay, 2007); I explore the moments of negotiation that occur when one is ‘in place'. Furthering a theorisation of class as a social placing, I bring in conceptual developments within social geography to explore the social constitution of classed places (Massey, 2005; Featherstone, 2013). Through my conceptualisation of ‘being place(d)' I posit identity formation and place making as intertwined processes. Consequently, identity formation through processes of being place(d) on The Estate is not a simple process of socialisation where one learns to be through being of a particular place; rather it is the positioning in place through being in moments of difference. Through my analysis, I theorise identity as moments of identification (Hall, 1996), within which aspects of self are formed in proximity and/or distanced with others. This conceptualisation of relational identity construction is heavily influenced by Bourdieu's thinking, yet moves beyond habitus as ‘forgotten history' (Bourdieu, 1990: 56) to habitus as ‘foregrounded history'. Finally, I bring my range of theoretical resources together in my analysis of a Community Centre as a ‘contact zone' - a social space where ‘cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power' (Pratt, 1991: 34). These momentary exposures do not occur in isolation and are entangled within histories and processes of domination that reach far beyond the moment of contact. Consequently, analysis of this interaction requires bifocality - at once interested in the moment of construction, whilst exploring the contexts within which this moment is located and thus interpreted. In so doing, I highlight the importance of power in the maintenance of structures, whilst allowing the possibility of subversion and resistance within moments of contact.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2009. / Author also earned an Urban Design Certificate from the Program in Urban Design; a joint graduate program with the Dept. of Architecture and the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Includes bibliographical references. / Modern streetcars are making a comeback in the United States after their disappearance in the mid twentieth century. They resemble their distant relative, also known as the trolley, in many ways but express a contemporary, provide modern conveniences, and act as a magnet for redevelopment within the city. Modern streetcars build on the theory behind the European tram systems and provide desirable transportation options to support a range of densities in urban living. Currently in the United States, Portland, OR and Seattle,WA operate one modern streetcar line and have plans to expand their singular line into a network. Using these two routes, the plans for system expansion, and the individual cities that support them as case studies, this thesis analyzes the potential for streetcars to return to Denver, CO.The analysis for the Mile High City was conducted using my knowledge of and research on Denver and the surrounding metropolitan region, its historical skeleton that developed around the streetcar, and the City's current trends in public transportation and planning processes. Based on a multifaceted analysis that includes studying the relationship of potential streetcar route length, multi-modal connections, major destinations, high bus ridership routes, projected residential density, projected employment density, and redevelopment potential based on use and zoning, Denver is in fact an appropriate city for the return of streetcars. / (cont.) Not only would one streetcar be successful, but an integrated system could serve the City and its surrounding urban neighborhoods well. Taking the analysis one step further, the research attempts to compare a potential modern streetcar system for Denver with the historic streetcar routes that operated until 1949. Many observations arise, including the obvious difference in the limited number of modern lines versus the vast number of historic routes. Modern streetcars typically occur on primarily mixed-use corridors rather than pass through strictly residential neighborhoods as they once did. It is also evident that modern streetcars in Denver would direct redevelopment within the city whereas historic streetcars directed development to the edge of the city.This ability to direct development and redevelopment within the city's boundaries in addition to providing transportation fit in line with Denver's goals for growth management, multi-modal transportation options, and neighborhood revitalization. / by Sarah E. Snider. / M.C.P.

Esta tese trata das mudanças ocorridas no processo de urbanização no município de Campinas, sobretudo a partir dos anos 1970, e em especial no eixo da Rodovia Dom Pedro I. Essas mudanças consistem na formação de um novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional, que está intimamente relacionado ao surgimento de novos padrões de tecidos urbanos. Podemos dizer que diversos fatores propiciaram a formação desse novo padrão de urbanização regional, entre eles: a implantação de novas redes de infraestrutura de transporte, abastecimento e comunicações, novas legislações ambientais e de parcelamento do solo, mudanças econômicas nas esferas da produção e do consumo, além de mudanças culturais. Como reflexo destas transformações, verificamos no tecido urbano o surgimento e difusão de condomínios residenciais horizontais, loteamentos unifamiliares fechados, shopping centers, centros empresariais, loteamentos e condomínios fechados industrais. Esta tese procura mostrar que, ao contrário do que se costuma afirmar, o surgimento dessas tipologias está menos relacionado à violência urbana, ou a simples cópia de um modelo estrangeiro de urbanização, e mais ligado a esse novo padrão de urbanização em escala regional que já vinha ocorrendo muito antes do acirramento das tensões sociais ou da abertura da economia brasileira em meados dos anos 1990. / This thesis deals with the changes in the process of urban growth in the city of Campinas, from the year 1970 onwards, more specifically in the areas surrounding the axis of Highway Dom Pedro I. These changes consist in the formation of a new pattern of urban growth in a regional scale, which is closely related to the emergence of new patterns of urban fabric. We can say that several factors provided the formation of this new pattern of regional urban growth, including: the deployment of new networks of transportation, supply and communications infrastructure, new environmental and urban laws, economic and cultural changes in the spheres of production and consumption. As a result, we notice the appearance of air condos, gated communities, business parks, shopping malls and closed industrial enclaves in the urban fabric. This thesis intends to explicit that, contrary to what is often said, the emergence of these new typologies has more factors involved in its making than a mere reaction to urban violence or the reproduction of a foreign model of urbanization. This new pattern of regional urban growth has been occurring long before the rise of social tensions or the opening of the Brazilian market in the mid 1990s.

This research presents an attempt to geolocate postmodern urban development within Canadian urban space using changes in the form and structure of the rural-urban fringe areas as a diagnostic tool. The main argument presented herein is that conceptualizations of postmodern urban form and structure, and particularly their treatment in the urban geographic literature, mask the high level of diversity occurring across the Canadian urban hierarchy. A two-stage methodology linking the models describing postmodern urban form and structure found in the North American geographic literature with the theoretical contributions dealing with factors and forces of urban development is employed. First, investigation of the current patterns of differentiation of the urban social space in Canadian metropolitan areas is conducted. This stage of the analysis is informed by a structural approach to urban geography and carried out by means of factorial ecology. A typology of Canadian rural-urban fringe CSDs is developed using data from 1991 and 1996 censuses of population. Second, two indicators of functional relationships existing between urban fringe and urban core areas the geographic extent of personal networks of individuals and the activity spaces of households are investigated in the exemplar rural-urban fringe CSDs. This stage of the analysis is informed by propositions of structuration theory, although it remained compositional with regards to the main focus of analysis. The results of this research suggest that models of postmodern urban form and structure, which have developed in the context of the recent socio-economic restructuring taking place in the United States, do not adequately describe the situation in Canada. While the current context of urban development in Canada shows certain similarities to that in the United States, it also exhibits some unique features that have important implications for the urban development. Variation in urban form and structure in Canada appears to follow two axes the regional location of metropolitan areas and their positions within the national urban hierarchy. Although Canada exhibits a strong spatial differentiation into heartland and hinterland regions, no shift in focus of the socio-economic space comparable to that of the American Frostbelt-Sunbelt dichotomy is observed here. The majority of rural-urban fringe areas that have elements of postmodern form and structure were found at the top of the urban hierarchy and in the region that has historically been the economic and political core of Canada. Urban areas positioned in the middle of the urban hierarchy appear to have a monocentric structure with a significant degree of centrality.