Discontinuities in the evolution of the city system in Texas from 1850 to 2010

We report the results of a historical investigation and quantification of discontinuous evolution, and a gap statistic analysis of discontinuities, on city size distributions of the city system in Texas, USA, over a 160-year period from 1850 to 2010. The growth of the city system exhibits four stages that are evident from our quantitative analysis of the convergence of population in large cities and qualitative analysis of historical socioeconomic and technological developments. The decadal city size distributions in the aggregate evolve with a persistent pattern while individual cities over time shift positions in the urban hierarchy as the result of adapting or passing growth opportunities in infrastructure innovations, economic change, and industrial transformations. These decadal city size distributions exhibit persistent discontinuities that mainly occur in the upper and lower tails. The observed patterns and discontinuities are indicative of the stability and resilience of a complex adaptive system of cities.     

梧州市平浪防洪堤总体设计方案选择

介绍了梧州市平浪防洪堤堤线、堤型的选择原则、思路,总体设计方案等基本情况。该设计方案融入可持续发展及生态水利的理念,将环保、人文以及可持续发展等贯彻于设计的全过程,体现了人与自然的和谐共处。     

青岛市公租房和廉租房建设的调研分析与建议

以对青岛市公租房(含廉租房)的实地调研为依据,分析了两个保障性住房项目建设中存在的问题,并从规划设计、建筑设计、物业管理等方面提出了相应建议。     

Making and negotiating value: design and collaboration with community led groups

ABSTRACT

Value in collaborative design research and practice can be understood fundamentally as relationships, materials, processes, contexts, and outcomes that are subjects of and for negotiation. We argue for conceptions of value that move beyond traditional ‘outcomes’ based measurements to reimagine and rearticulate value itself as co-created, emerging from negotiation, relationality and immersion in specific contexts. These understandings of value, we argue, are not rooted in or always knowable through designers’ experiences, even as designers participate in creating them. Using case studies from our research we suggest that value in design collaboration emerges as a question: value to whom, and to what end? We propose that addressing these questions ethically through co-design requires actively engaged, grounded work with collaborators based in three principles: being present for the work, participant making, and co-creating capacity for collaborators to ‘go off and do their thing’.     

Intelligent services for Big Data science

Cities are areas where Big Data is having a real impact. Town planners and administration bodies just need the right tools at their fingertips to consume all the data points that a town or city generates and then be able to turn that into actions that improve peoples’ lives. In this case, Big Data is definitely a phenomenon that has a direct impact on the quality of life for those of us that choose to live in a town or city. Smart Cities of tomorrow will rely not only on sensors within the city infrastructure, but also on a large number of devices that will willingly sense and integrate their data into technological platforms used for introspection into the habits and situations of individuals and city-large communities. Predictions say that cities will generate over 4.1 terabytes per day per square kilometer of urbanized land area by 2016. Handling efficiently such amounts of data is already a challenge. In this paper we present our solutions designed to support next-generation Big Data applications. We first present CAPIM, a platform designed to automate the process of collecting and aggregating context information on a large scale. It integrates services designed to collect context data (location, user’s profile and characteristics, as well as the environment). Later on, we present a concrete implementation of an Intelligent Transportation System designed on top of CAPIM. The application is designed to assist users and city officials better understand traffic problems in large cities. Finally, we present a solution to handle efficient storage of context data on a large scale. The combination of these services provides support for intelligent Smart City applications, for actively and autonomously adaptation and smart provision of services and content, using the advantages of contextual information.     

现代港口与城市发展的关系——以江苏省镇江市为例

镇江是一座历史文化名城，素有“天下第一江山”之美誉，它的形成发展与其港口是密不可分的。本文从镇江港口空间形态、城市空间形态、港口与城市发展的关系为切入点，寻求港城空间发展对策。     

City profile: Berlin

Berlin is a German city and federal state, situated in the heart of Europe. It has been the capital city since 1991, and is the largest city in the country with around 3.4 million inhabitants. This profile explains Berlin’s historical development and emphasizes changes which took place during the 20th century (the Weimar period in the 1920s, followed by the Nazi takeover in 1933 and the city’s destruction during World War II, then the division of the city into West Berlin and East Berlin, until its final reunification in 1990 after the Wall fell down). After reunification, Berlin experienced a new period of urban redevelopment in which many new buildings were constructed. This profile also outlines some recent positive changes in terms of Berlin’s economic growth and its transformation into the capital of innovative new companies in the digital, culture and media industries.     

Drawing in Time: Processes of Design and Fabrication

Drawing embeds time within itself, notating changes in space and duration. For Babak Bryan and Henry Grosman , founding partners of BanG studio in Long Island City, New York: ‘The drawing is a result of process, but it also describes process.’ It is only through this temporal practice that an essential connection is developed between drawing and building. With the widespread adoption of building information modelling (BIM), linear graphic representation finds itself in crisis, challenged by the static inertia of the model. As Bryan and Grosman describe, the well-crafted drawing remains essential to their studio's approach informing the method of ‘making and remaking’.     

Built Conservation and the Unfinished Fabrics of Time

Differentiating between the static impulse to preserve and the more open-ended and imaginative process of conservation, Federica Goffi presents a building as ‘a fabric that, even when complete, is unfinished and open to change’. Associate Professor and Associate Director of Graduate Programs at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Goffi has written widely on the topic of time, particularly taking St Peter's in the Vatican by way of example.     

Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik , a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.