Thermal comfort in care homes: vulnerability,responsibility and ‘thermal care’

Care homes are a distinctive setting for the management of thermal comfort due to the expectations involving the provision of both a home environment and caring service. Based on six UK case studies, the care home setting is investigated for how owners, managers and staff understand thermal needs and how their management of thermal comfort is shaped. The core function of good quality care is understood as closely related to the provision of thermal comfort. The association between ‘old and cold' and the obligations that follow for the provision of care are deeply entrenched in activities: such as the provision of hot drinks, use of blankets and the non-stop operation of heating systems. The responsibility for the provision of ‘thermal care' for residents is challenging and complicated by the diversity of people living (and working) together, their occupation of communal spaces, and the interactions between the means of providing thermal comfort and physical safety. The wider implications are identified for the uptake of sustainable technology, patterns of thermal-related vulnerability and, most significantly, for how the ethics, agency and relationality of thermal care provision are to be understood. Future research needs and directions are considered.     

The difference of ‘being diverse’: City branding and multiculturalism in the ‘Leicester Model’

This city profile on Leicester focuses on the representation of ethnical diversity in city branding. Through a historical approach, the paper discusses how the local authorities have taken advantage of the arrival of different migration flows into the city, in order to redefine its post-industrial identity in terms of multiculturalism, tolerance and inclusivity. In so doing, the paper emphasises the combination of deliberate marketing communicative activities, the provision of services for attracting and retaining foreign businesses and the creation of an open urban milieu where various ethnic groups are free to express and celebrate their own cultures through festivals and events. The paper identifies the alignment between place communication and place ‘offerings’ development as the crucial element underpinning Leicester's model for multicultural cooperation and critically assesses the recent challenges that are being posed to the sustainment of a multicultural city image.     

‘Super-Natural’: Parametricism in Product Design

As a stylistic movement, Parametricism has the scope to move beyond the limits of architecture, penetrating adjacent disciplines. Renowned industrial designer Ross Lovegrove , known as ‘Captain Organic’ for his nature-inspired designs, acknowledges the potential of ‘new codes of creation’ being incubated in architecture schools for product design, accelerating innovation across materials, structures and manufacturing technologies.     

The ‘distinctiveness of cities’ and distinctions in cities: boundaries of belonging in comparative perspective

It is in cities where people are most strongly confronted with diversity in an ‘age of migration’. However, comparisons of local integration contexts usually take ethnic boundaries as given or assume that they are constituted by the nation state. Our analysis of local discourses challenges this methodological nationalism. Departing from the ‘distinctiveness of cities’ approach, we scrutinise how Frankfurt, Dortmund, Birmingham and Glasgow differ in how diversity is discursively constructed. We maintain that the discourses not only reflect different frames in dealing with diversity but also serve as a proxy for debating the self-image of the city.     

Growth and degradation in the Orient’s ‘Las Vegas’: issues of environment in Macau

This paper argues that the rapid growth of gambling‐related tourism and urban construction in Macau has given rise to serious environmental degradation. The major environmental issues include air quality, water supply, solid waste disposal, noise prevention, heritage conservation and environmental management. The author suggests that the government in Macau should refocus this city’s development direction and commit itself to sustainable development. At the policy‐making level, there are such urgent issues as integration of environmental, economic and urban planning with community participation in decision‐making; enhancement of environmental legislation and institutions; implementing vital measures to control of the numbers of visitors; developing a mass transport system; and protecting the city’s cultural heritage.     

An examination of the ‘rule of law’ and ‘justice’ implications in Online Dispute Resolution in construction projects

This paper examines the ‘rule of law’ and ‘justice’ implications of using Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platforms as technology-mediated interfaces for small claim dispute resolution in construction projects. Data is obtained from a questionnaire survey of construction stakeholders, administered using direct non-random sampling of professional contacts with the authors. Data is analysed using SAS 9.4 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) on a Windows 7 platform. Surprisingly, study findings do not suggest any ‘rule of law’ and ‘justice’ implications for small claim ODR. Tentatively, this conclusion supports wider use of ODR. The originality of the study is that although there is considerable academic and practitioner interest in various alternative forms of dispute resolution (ADR), both practitioner use and academic study of ODR remain sparse. Thus, this study serves as a foundation for further empirical exploration of ODR as a nascent component of ADR.     

The Human Face of Remodelling: Postwar ‘Slum’ Clearance in Sydney

Abstract

Past government responses to poorer areas have been to label them ‘slums’ and remodel these areas through slum clearance programmes. This article attempts to reconstruct the built environment and human infrastructure of such communities and assess the social implications of rehousing ‘slum’ dwellers in Sydney from 1944 to 1961.     

The ‘landscape scale’ in planning: Recent experience of bio-geographic planning units in Britain

Landscape-scale mapping is becoming more widely used as an approach to identifying ‘characteristic’ units of countryside for information gathering and policy delivery purposes. A number of innovative approaches currently being developed and applied in Britain are reviewed. The justifications for producing these methods, as reflected in published sources, are analysed. Interviews with selected professionals, who identify various benefits for more effective policy delivery, integrated planning, partnership formation and public engagement, are reported on. Most of the approaches also override administrative boundaries, which enables a more naturalistic reflection of environmental systems, whilst also creating some political difficulties. Other problems are associated with cost and subjectivity. Overall, the methods are likely to improve joined-up rural decision making, but further research into their effectiveness is needed.     

Productivity in buildings: the ‘killer’ variables

Losses or gains of up to 15% of turnover in a typical office organization might be attributable to the design, management and use of the indoor environment. There is growing evidence to show that associations between perceived productivity and clusters of factors such as comfort, health and satisfaction of staff. Some of the management, design and use characteristics which contribute towards better energy efficiency also help productivity, thereby helping to close the loop on a potential ‘virtuous’ circle. Unfortunately, the vast majority of occupied buildings do not have these self-reinforcing qualities and many are unmanageably complex. This paper examines which factors within the control of building designers and managers best contribute to human productivity - the ‘killer’ variables of the title.

L'étude, la gestion et l'utilisation de l'environnement intérieur peuvent être á l'origine de pertes ou de gains pouvant atteindre 15% de la rotation du personnel d'une organisation administrative. Il apparaít de plus en plus qu'il existe des liens entre la productivité perçue et des groupes de facteurs tels que le confort, l'hygiène et la satisfaction du personnel. Quelques unes des caractéristiques de gestion, de conception et d'utilisation qui contribuent à un meilleur rendement énergétique sont également benéfiques pour la productivité, ce qui permet de fermer la boucle d'un cercle vertueux potentiel. Malheureusement, la grande majorité des bâtiments occupés ne possèdent pas ces qualités d'autorenforcement et dans de nombreux cas, sont impossibles à gérer de par leur complexité. Cet article examine quels sont les facteurs que peuvent maîtriser les architectes et les responsables et qui peuvent contribuer au mieux à la productivité de l'Homme (les variables majeures du titre).     

‘Filling the mattress’: Trust development in the governance of infrastructure megaprojects

The development of trust is a major challenge for the governance of public private infrastructure megaprojects. Contractual pre-arrangements should provide a blueprint for collaborative behavior and trust development but the characters of megaprojects challenge such arrangements. This longitudinal study explores practices of trust development in the collaboration of commissioner and contractor consortia in the Dutch road infrastructure megaproject ‘Schiphol, Amsterdam and Almere’ (SAA). The findings show that six different types of workshops have been used to intervene in the collaboration of project partners in order to develop trust. The study contributes to the debate on governance in megaprojects showing how governance arrangement are enacted in the daily practice in megaprojects. To buffer the potential loss of trust through conflicts, project partners negotiated for a balanced reciprocal relationship, which is the simultaneous exchange of equivalent resources without delay.     

‘Activating Nature’: The Magic Realism of Contemporary Landscape Architecture in Europe

The redefinition of European cities has created new opportunities for the greening of public urban spaces. Lucy Bullivant describes how three young practices in particular – West 8, Gross.Max and Mosbach Paysagistes – are leading the way with their highly dynamic and inventive narrative approaches to history, culture and the emergent city. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE ‘WHOLLY OTHER’: On the Spatiality of the Holy in Islam

Most architects and planners are familiar with the failings of Modernist high rise housing constructed in die 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps the most symbolic was die Pruitt Igoe housing development in St Louis which was demolished in 1973. It would come as a surprise to many, however, that in 1997 the NSW Department of Housing is planning complete demolition of a housing development known as die Villawood estate. More surprising would be die fact that Villawood is not a high rise development, but a medium density housing scheme completed as recently as 1981. Post-occupancy evaluations at Villawood have indicated that most residents have few complaints regarding the individual dwellings. One such study found that the internal dwelling design was actually ‘a redeeming feature’.¹ Instead, many of their problems stem from die spatial organisation of the dwellings, associated open space, pedestrian and vehicular circulation and community facilities. This article will examine the ideology which influenced the design of Villawood and explain why the spatial organisation has contributed to producing an unsatisfactory residential environment. Most importantly, it will demonstrate the importance of spatial organisation in Australian urban housing.     

The Landscape of ‘Customary’ Law versus that of ‘Natural’ Law

Anglo-American common law is rooted in time-out-of-mind, place-specific, custom. It coexists uneasily, however, with the ‘Natural’ law ideal of the Enlightenment, which is inspired by the timeless and placeless mathematical and geometrical principles that govern natural science, and which are characteristic of Newton's absolute space. Each notion of law, it is argued, creates its own conception of landscape, and this conception, in turn, shapes the political and material landscape. These differences are illustrated through a comparison of the landscapes of New England and Mid-Western America.     

‘Unfinished Business’: Neoliberal Planning Reform in Australia

Abstract

This paper reviews the recent and contemporary neoliberal reform agendas that have sought a reduced role for planning in Australia. Our aim is to describe these reform paths and to theorise their broader implications for urban governance in Australia. Our analysis focuses on two initiatives: first, the broad reform framework embodied in National Competition Policy that is now affecting planning regulation at the state level; and second, the new vision for a standardised development control system that has been put forward by the Property Council of Australia. As we will show, neoliberal reforms have the potential both to reduce the possibility for spatial regulation and also to undermine the other recent reform agendas that have sought a positive transformation of planning; namely, community democratic movements and environmentalism.     

A model to measure compressive strength of compressed earth blocks with the ‘3 points bending test’

This article proposes a modelling of the ‘3 points bending test’ on compressed earth blocks (CEB) which will give their compressive strength. This test is already used in situ for CEB quality control. Conventional bending modelling gives the tensile stress at failure using three of the principal assumptions of the Strength of Materials theory, which are in fact not respected here. This is why it is proposed in this paper to model the arch behaviour in compression, which is of primary importance for aspect ratios less than three. Considering a proposed lattice, a behaviour at failure is obtained, close to that of a CEB during a 3 points bending test. The compressive stress at failure is obtained by using this lattice. The validation of the model is given using experimental data. Then the model gives information on the CEB structure such as isotropy, dry density gradient within the CEB, and effect of friction with the experimental direct compression test device, leading to confinement of the sample.     

Sheep grazing in ‘lawnscape’ management: an emissions comparison with conventional ‘lawnscape’ management

The use of sheep in lawnscape management is touted as a low-carbon alternative to conventional lawnscaping; however this claim remains unsubstantiated. While conventional lawnscaping generates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily through fuel combustion, sheep grazing produces methane (CH₄) as well as manure which releases embodied nitrogen as nitrous oxide (N₂O) as it degrades. These gases have a carbon equivalency of 25 and 298 respectively, indicating their much greater potency as GHGs relative to carbon dioxide (CO₂). This paper is the first to critically profile and compare GHG emissions produced by grazing and conventional lawnscape management. It discusses critical factors affecting the carbon footprint of both practices, and develops a framework for evaluating lawnscape management emissions. This study finds that replacing lawnmowers and the treatment and application of compost with a grazing regime can reduce net lawnscape management emissions by 34–37%, or 980 kgCO₂e/ha/year.     

Muscular strain in ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ building work

In this Finnish study, the causes and frequency of musculoskeletal strain among concrete reinforcement workers and painters on house maintenance are analysed from observations at 30s intervals, from accident report forms and from interviews about unreported minor accidents. Various measures are then suggested to prevent the problems revealed, including careful work planning and site layout, and care over means of access to the work point.