Browsing by Subject "City planning"
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Item A comprehensive study of the evolution and the design of the walled cities of Beijing(Texas Tech University, 1989-05) Huang, Yi QiThe objectives of this thesis are intended to discuss and analyze site planning, the spatial development, the city design and the major urban complex designs with respect to planning/design methods, and philosophical/cultural considerations. It will achieve the following objectives: (1) This thesis will evaluate the primary factors in affecting spatial evolution of the walled cities, in which it will become apparent that the planning and non-physical factors (human resources) had played an important role in forming a combinationary sequence of the walled cities of Beijing. This part will: a) analyze the major site shifts of the walled cities; b) further give a comprehensive investigation on the planning in the walled cities; c) identify planning's influence in affecting the evolution of the city sites; d) identify the impacts of the civic culture and its physical existence in reshaping the city and maintaining its cultural distinctiveness throughout its history; e) identify and analyze the relationship between the demographic characteristics and city development. and f) identify and analyze the impact of the administration structure on the civic culture and further on the city development.Item A design program for a "third wave" society housing development(Texas Tech University, 1986-05) Jennings, John PNoneItem Item A method of developing land use regulations for a small city(Texas Tech University, 1984-08) Bradley, Patrick D.Not availableItem A redevelopment for the downtown area of Lubbock, Texas(1965-05) Bradshaw, Jerre D.Item ADAPT: Nodes, Infrastructure and Prefabricated Architecture As A Generator of Nodal Urbanism in St. Louis(Texas Tech University, 1998-05) Selby, B Tatet is my intention to revise the theory of the modernist urban planner, Ludwig Hilberseimer, in order to provide a basis for the use of urban mapping as a tool for the architectural mixture of consolidation, erasure and infrastructure as a generator of adaptable nodal urbanism. The resulting facility will actually be a web of infrastructure that uses reinvigorated nodes as structural joints that respond to the local context of their site in order to succor the city as a whole in a long term rejoinder to the urban crisis. The former importance of St. Louis as an American hub is present in its recently renovated and readapted Union Station, unparalleled in grandeur in the United States. But this architectural landmark can't save a city which is amongst the nations leaders in segregation and economic stagnation. The Gateway Arch is another architectural marvel that does little but stop tourists passing through to quickly visit its museum and the nearby Laclede's Landing. The city has begun an ambitious plan to revive the downtown by the year 2004, but the rest of the city fails to have any real part in this undertaking. It is this territory that my focus will be on, choosing three from ten nodes, each at its own level of need, and their linking infrastructure to provide a series of design responses.Item Alternative system approach for affordable housing on the US-Mexico border(1994-05) Goldsmith, Charles O.The need for new or, in many cases, more adequate housing in Mexico has developed and continues to grow according to a variety of influences. These include economic and social pressures, natural growth patterns, migratory realignments in the population, and crisis related needs and movements. Like most Latin American countries, and the developing world in general, Mexico has been experiencing a massive demographic shift from rural to urban, often from south to north, and from a smaller older population to a larger younger one.Item An Episocopal pro-cathedral for Lubbock, Texas(Texas Tech University, 1981-05) Bundy, William L.I have chosen to propose an Episcopal Pro-Cathedral in Lubbock because of the churches' willingness and open-mindedness to foresee evolutionary change. Up to the present, as a whole, the Episcopal Church has not functioned well in the modern urban environment and has often fled to the suburbs and richer neighborhoods. This tendency is evident in Lubbock.Item Autonomous vehicles : land use implications for Austin, Texas(2015-08) Palmer, Rebekah Mae; Wegmann, Jake; Jiao, JunfengAutonomous vehicles are said to be a disruptive technology that will transform the way we live in coming decades. Drawing from the historical context of conventional vehicles and their subsequent transformation of land use development patterns, this paper seeks to understand the ancillary implications of such advances in transport. I assert the argument that Austin will be amongst the first cities to experience these shifts due to its history of economic development strategy, large populous of technology 'first-adopters,' the city's struggle to accommodate rapid growth, and Austin's context within Texas' business-friendly regulatory environment. The literature review aims to cover a broad, high-level view of the current status of autonomous vehicle development and provide context for how the academy is researching the possibilities for autonomous vehicle commercialization. A second portion of this report summarizes the views of Austin-based traffic engineers, transit researchers, attorneys, and other experts serving on various policy advisory councils in Austin, Travis County, and Central Texas.Item Back to the garden : promoting sustainable communities by incorporating community gardens into city planning processes(2009-05) Dalrymple, Heather Elizabeth; Oden, MichaelCity leaders and residents are increasingly considering the need to address urban food provision. Community gardens are one aspect of the urban food system that is seeing a resurgence of popularity and support. Although not intended to replace market-based food streams or the federal food safety net, these gardens can provide many benefits to their communities besides increased food security and access to fresh produce. They can encourage community development, especially in struggling areas, by serving as tools for addressing community issues. Because they are effective uses of open space, cities should consider supporting the development of community gardens. Along with a literature review to show the potential benefits of community gardens, this report uses case study research to show the adaptability of community gardens in meeting communities’ diverse needs. Cleveland, Ohio and San Francisco, California were selected to show how community garden provision is addressed in two greatly differing cities. They provide examples of how community gardens can succeed in many types of urban environments.Item Bonham, Texas: A down town development and city-county building in a civic center(1964-05) Brown, Wayland M.Item Building assets and resilience : the role of the local food system in reducing health and economic disparities(2011-05) Muraida, Laura Cristina; Wilson, Patricia AnnIn recent years, studies have linked various structural and environmental factors to disproportionately increased rates of morbidity, mortality, and adverse health outcomes in low-income racial and ethnic minority neighborhoods. Among the adverse health outcomes, is the constraint on the ability to access and afford a healthy diet. While local food systems play a significant role in influencing urban health and well-being outcomes, they also present an opportunity to develop community-based assets and resilience. By identifying limitations and successes in current food system literature and practice, this report examines how a more comprehensive approach to equitable community health and wellness can be achieved and sustained. Effective disparity reduction relies on cross-sectoral partnerships that not only promote food equity, but also provide participatory social, economic, and educational opportunities to marginalized communities.Item Configuration of public space and social sustainability of urban neighborhood: a case study of the city of San Diego at the dawn of the twenty-first century(Texas Tech University, 2004-05) Pongsmas, NapassakornA socially sustainable city is able to maintain orderly relationship among its diversified residents who are able to meet their hierarchy of needs at the present and in the future. The theoretical foundation of this dissertation is that sound spatial configuration promotes the uses of public spaces and encourages strangers to interact, i.e., the existence of public realm. These, in turn, foster the development of positive tolerance, social integration, sense of community and unity, and public trust among people in the neighborhoods and throughout the city. This is the social capital for community rebuilding and prelude to the building and rebuilding of a more socially sustainable city and community. The western and central areas of downtown San Diego, California, were used as the study site. Spatial configuration was assessed and measured according to Space Syntax methodology in terms of the descriptions of connectivity, integration-3 and intelligibility (R (1.3^ ,.„;). The uses-of-public-spaces was measured based on the number of the pedestrians on sidewalks at three time intervals in seven selected neighborhoods that have the highest and the lowest values of the descriptions and social sustainability levels. The strength of public realm was measured in terms of the number of genders, age groups and personal physical conditions on the sidewalks. The level of social sustainability was assessed according to the indicators developed by the United Nations and by related literatures and availability of census data. It was found that (1) spatial configuration relates positively to the uses of public spaces and the emergence of public realm; (2) the uses of public spaces and the emergence of public realm relate positively to the level of social sustainability; and (3) spatial configuration relates indirectly and positively to the level of social sustainability (for year 2000) through the uses of public space and the strength of public realm. The study concludes that the spatial configuration should promote mixture of broad and various types of activities by combining different syntactic values of the descriptions if social sustainability is to be attained.Item Conservation developments : transitions toward sustainable landscapes and societies(2006-05) Pieranunzi, Danielle Deborah; Moore, Steven A., 1945-Current growth trends make development of greenfields almost inevitable. It is this space, between individual building design and city planning, where much change has occurred in the American landscape and as a result, American culture. Alternatives to the conventional subdivision pattern do exist although these practices have yet to become common among building and development communities, planners or the general public. Similar to the term sustainability, "conservation development" has many interpretations, yet typically it is described as a development that preserves a considerable amount of buildable land as open space which links to an interconnected network of protected lands. In this study, I will examine the discourse on conservation design in terms of four working examples of conservation development and relevant literature. To understand the political, cultural, economic and ecological variables at play in development, I will investigate the different scales of these cases: the building, the development as a whole and its relation to the region. The emphasis on social discourse will reveal values held by the core participants involved in each conservation development. The criteria set by the participants and the practices they emphasize during the development process are recognized as stories within narratives, and together they point toward a desired outcome or, in other words, unique narratives when employed in a particular place. This study will assess first, the degree to which the selected conservation developments are functioning ecosystems and satisfying communities, and second, if they suggest coherent measurable criteria for conservation development.Item Dando voz a la comunidad : including undocumented immigrants in U.S. city planning(2009-12) Garcia, Dana Kathryn; Mueller, Elizabeth J.The purpose of this research is to better understand why undocumented immigrants do not typically participate in U.S. city planning processes, and present recommendations for improved inclusion. This report provides a brief background into the presence of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., their unique civic organization, and the need to include them in the planning of our cities and communities. The East Riverside Corridor Master Plan, (currently under the adoption process by the City of Austin, Texas) serves as a case study for the report. East Riverside is an area that is predominantly Hispanic and home to a large stock of immigrant workforce housing, yet the plan’s public participation phase saw little to no contributions from the zone’s lowincome immigrant residents. Austin city planners’ perspectives are presented in the report, as are the views and ideas of undocumented women who live in East Riverside low-income housing. Suggestions for re-conceptualizing the planning discipline are presented, as well as general tools for how city planners could better include undocumented immigrants.Item Development of a new approach for appraising the aesthetic quality of cities(2003-08) Olascoaga, Jose F.Environmental psychologists, architects, urban planners, geographers, and others have proposed a number of methods for appraising the aesthetic quality of cities. This dissertation analyzes and evaluates those methods and proposes a new approach for conducting aesthetic appraisals of cities. Existing approaches to urban aesthetic evaluation may be divided into two broad categories: (1) expert-based, and (2) lay-based. In expert-based appraisal, analysis is carried out by one or more individuals who have special training or experience that qualifies them to judge urban aesthetics. Lay-based appraisals solicit public opinion about the aesthetic quality of the urban environment. The method developed in this research combines these two approaches. A combined public-expert criticism has the advantage of combining the popular aesthetic sense with the more structured views of experts. This approach is applied to Lubbock as a pilot study. Four sample groups were asked to indicate the most and least visually appealing areas in the city and to give the reasons for their selection. The results were analyzed by content analysis and mapped. Then the twelve highest and lowest ranked areas were subject to a design analysis by the investigator (expert). The results of the lay and expert views were analyzed using triangulation methods. The results of the research found that the public is generally consistent in the criteria they utilize for appraising cities. They also reveal some design properties that are common to the most or least appealing areas of the city. Results of the pilot study show that the new method of aesthetic evaluation is consistent, universal in its applicability, easy to use, and useful for identifying areas that have high or low aesthetic appeal and determining the factors by which they are identified. Findings indicate that a construct of aesthetic quality, based on properties of urban form, is sufficient for design analysis, but not for understanding public appraisals. The author suggests an inclusive construct of aesthetic quality of cities that associates properties of urban form with others of social interaction.Item Downtown revitalization along the US-Mexico Border : a case study on Brownsville, Texas(2011-05) Gonzalez, Ramiro, 1982-; Kahn, Terry D.; Rhi-Perez, PabloThis analysis of the Downtown areas in US- Mexico Border Cities such as Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and San Diego will chronicle the history and foundation of each city and also the current revitalization efforts underway in many of these cities. Brownsville, Texas is one of those cities located along the border with a rich history and a unique downtown that some have called the New Orleans on the Rio Grande. The architecture has a heavy New Orleans influence thereby making this downtown the most unique in the Rio Grande Valley. Revitalization Efforts in Brownsville continuously resurface only to be unsuccessful due to many variables including the lack of political will to take on perhaps the biggest challenge to face Brownsville. Nonetheless, revitalization of this area must occur and in order to fully understand the intricacies of Downtown Brownsville one must look back in time to see what exactly made Downtown Brownsville so special. This report will seek those answers and give positive and realistic recommendations that could assist in the revitalization of Downtown Brownsville.Item Examining transportation's role in social vulnerability : São Paulo, Brazil(2011-05) McGue, Mary Colleen; Zhang, Ming, 1963 Apr. 22-; Lara, Fernando LuizThe City of São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world, with 11,244,369 people living in the metropolitan area and over 19,672,582 people living in the greater metropolitan region, which is made up of 38 cities in the surrounding area (IBGE, Census 2010). Ten percent of the population in the entire country of Brazil lives in São Paulo, and 15.6% of Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product comes from São Paulo. There is an average of 38.1 million trips taken per day in the metropolitan region. Most of the city’s low-income population lives in the periphery of the city, where the land is least expensive, yet most job opportunities are concentrated in the city center, creating a spatial mismatch. Spatial mismatch occurs when low-income residents live in one area of a city, but their places of employment and job opportunities are located in another part of the city. In a spatial mismatch situation, low-income residents often travel long distances to find work and suffer from isolation based on the disconnect between where they live, where they work, and the difficulty in getting from one place to another. The current transportation infrastructure is insufficient to transport the number of commuters from the periphery to and from the city center to work on a daily basis. In this study I will explore this spatial mismatch through an analysis of both qualitative and quantitative travel data for the entire São Paulo Metropolitan Area, with a specific focus on the Zona Sul of the periphery, in order to understand the limitations of transportation infrastructure and spatial mobility for residents of the city.Item Family relocation in the Coronado Urban Renewal Project(Texas Tech University, 1966-08) McNeece, Carl AaronNOT AVAILABLEItem Food trucks as urban revitalization catalysts : microenterprise, interim land use and the food economy(2011-05) Howell, Alex Matthew; Mueller, Elizabeth J.Since 2007, the number of street food vendors in Austin, Texas has more than doubled. Food trucks in the urban environment have three fundamental roles. They are entrepreneurial start-ups, interim and mobile land uses, and cultural expressions. In these roles, street food vending particularly impacts urban neighborhoods undergoing change. By occupying underutilized lots, activating streetscapes, promoting commercial activity and disseminating culture, mobile food vendors represent an innovative and low cost revitalization tool. In an effort to “catch-up” with the rapidly growing phenomenon, the City of Austin has had know choice but to implement policy and regulation reactively. By conducting in depth interviews and context analysis, this research attempts to answer the question: how might cities proactively leverage the beneficial impacts of mobile food vendors? The thesis culminates in a conceptual demonstration project for Birmingham, Alabama; a city on the cusp of a street food explosion.