Urban identity and colour : the case of Tirana, Albania

When an artist is put in charge of a city, he will use the town as his canvas. Edi Rama became Mayor of Tirana in 2000 and since them has undertaken an unusual and colourful renewal program for the Albania capital.

Chiesa dei Ss. Ippolito e Cassiano (The Church SS Ippolito e Cassiano in Cassano Valcuvia)

The development of the town of Cassano door, unknown time, first to build a chapel, a church filiare then, the town center, the building, intended for the cult of Mary, is described during the visit of Bishop Diocesan Pastoral Feliciano Ninguarda : "Item in the Middle huius pages, pro COMMODIT incolarum, east extructum sacellum, seu oratorium B. Dicatum Mariae Virginia, eastern parvum penes quo cum bell tower, ubi ab rates annis not fuit celebratum, quia non est to formam decretorum extructum [...]» [... down in Annex more information]

Il percorso Ciclabile cantonale della Valle Maggia (Maggia Valley Cantonal Cycleway)

La ferrovia della Valle Maggia, in Canton Ticino, ha operato tra il 1905 ed il 1965 collegando Locarno, sul Verbano, a Bignasco. Il tracciato prevedeva un armamento a scartamento ridotto; il servizio era operato con vetture automotrici dotate di giardiniera o rimorchio per le merci.

Le vie dell'Impero. Le strade coloniali italiane e il loro rapporto con la manualistica del Ventennio

Imperial roads. The Italian colonial routes and their relationship with 1920-40 manuals

Mapping resilience : A framework for changing cities

Urban centres base their resilience on the ability to evolve and adapt as needed throughout their life. Although constantly developing, changing and subsuming nature for its needs, the current age of environmental awareness requires that cities progress in a more conscious and considered way. While they have become the dominant form of human habitation, there now exists a need to integrate 'green' solutions into urban centres to address social, physical and environmental wellbeing. The means of implementing the vast array of possible solutions without negative impacts is not clear; cities are complex systems, layering meaning, history and cultural memory ‐ they are a manifestation of shared cultural values, and as such, they do not allow a tabula rasa approach of 'blanket' solutions. All around us, cities are continuing to develop and change, and although their form is varied ‐ sprawling cities with density and sustainability problems; or collapsing cities with 'dead' centres and dilapidated districts – a common issue is the resilience of the local identity. The strength or resilience of cities lies in the elements which have become fixed points in the urban structure, giving character and identity to a shared urban experience. These elements need to be identified and either maintained or revitalised. Similarly, the identification of urban elements which can most viably be modified without compromising character and identity of place, will assist in making concrete contributions to increasing both the sustainability and experience of cities, making them more resilient. Through an examination of case studies, this paper suggests a framework to inform urban renewal assessing the widespread elements which generate an urban identity, beyond the traditional approach of heritage conservation for cultural or tourist purposes. The rapid contemporary alteration of urban structures requires an innovative methodology which satisfies on one side the need of new sustainable performances and, on the other, the resilience of the local character.

Chaos and creativity of play : designing emotional engagement in public spaces

How do we create strong urban narratives? How do we create affection for our cities? Play, an essential part of any species' biological existence and development, can often be perceived as chaotic and derogatory to social and spatial order. Play is also often perceived as a creative force which generates social and spatial value. This paper looks at the design approaches to both chaotic and creative perceptions of publics at play in urban space. Commonly, Urban and Architectural Design constitutes reactive management of perceived chaos, which derogatorily effects our sensory and emotional engagement with space. Alternatively, Urban and Architectural Design can appeal to the creativity of play, by encouraging unsolicited novelty that is vital to strong experiential narratives in the city and iterating environments that encourage the emergence of physical, emotional and cultural invention. These perceptions of chaos and creativity affect the design methodology of professional practice. Tested through the exciting vehicle of Parkour as urban narrative, the constraints and opportunities of both approaches are presented.

Negative space and positive environment : mapping opportunities for urban resilience

Cities have long held a fascination for people – as they grow and develop, there is a desire to know and understand the intricate interplay of elements that makes cities ‘live’. In part, this is a need for even greater efficiency in urban centres, yet the underlying quest is for a sustainable urban form. In order to make sense of the complex entities that we recognise cities to be, they have been compared to buildings, organisms and more recently machines. However the search for better and more elegant urban centres is hardly new, healthier and more efficient settlements were the aim of Modernism’s rational sub-division of functions, which has been translated into horizontal distribution through zoning, or vertical organisation thought highrise developments. However both of these approaches have been found to be unsustainable, as too many resources are required to maintain this kind or urbanisation and social consequences of either horizontal or vertical isolation must also be considered. From being absolute consumers of resources, of energy and of technology, cities need to change, to become sustainable in order to be more resilient and more efficient in supporting culture, society as well as economy. Our urban centres need to be re-imagined, re-conceptualised and re-defined, to match our changing society. One approach is to re-examine the compartmentalised, mono-functional approach of urban Modernism and to begin to investigate cities like ecologies, where every element supports and incorporates another, fulfilling more than just one function. This manner of seeing the city suggests a framework to guide the re-mixing of urban settlements. Beginning to understand the relationships between supporting elements and the nature of the connecting ‘web’ offers an invitation to investigate the often ignored, remnant spaces of cities. This ‘negative space’ is the residual from which space and place are carved out in the Contemporary city, providing the link between elements of urban settlement. Like all successful ecosystems, cities need to evolve and change over time in order to effectively respond to different lifestyles, development in culture and society as well as to meet environmental challenges. This paper seeks to investigate the role that negative space could have in the reorganisation of the re-mixed city. The space ‘in-between’ is analysed as an opportunity for infill development or re-development which provides to the urban settlement the variety that is a pre-requisite for ecosystem resilience. An analysis of the urban form is suggested as an empirical tool to map the opportunities already present in the urban environment and negative space is evaluated as a key element in achieving a positive development able to distribute diverse environmental and social facilities in the city.

The culture of the journey as structure of the landscape: an inquiry on mobility facilities and identity of place

The structure of the travel, meant as cultural activity, is proposed as a key to read and design the urban or rural landscape.

The identity of the empire : the Italian colonial experience in the design of places

The Italian Colonial Experience in the design of the built environment is analysed as a case study of State image promotion.

Sections of the city : architecturalising the tools of urban morphology

The study of urban morphology has become an expanding field of research within the architectural discipline, providing theories to be used as tools in the understanding and design of urban landscapes from the past, the present and into the future. Drawing upon contemporary architectural design theory, this investigation reveals what a sectional analysis of an urban landscape can add to the existing research methods within this field. This paper conducts an enquiry into the use of the section as a tool for urban morphological analysis. Following the methodology of the British school of urban morphology, sections through the urban fabric of the case study city of Brisbane are compared. The results are categorised to depict changes in scale, components and utilisation throughout various timeframes. The key findings illustrate how the section, when read in conjunction with the plan can be used to interpret changes to urban form and the relationship that this has to the quality of the urban environment in the contemporary city.

From slum to suburbia : examining a spectrum of planned and unplanned urban morphology in humid sub-tropical regions of the world

The current rapid urban growth throughout the world manifests in various ways and historically cities have grown, similarly, alternately or simultaneously between planned extensions and organic informal settlements (Mumford, 1989). Within cities different urban morphological regions can reveal different contexts of economic growth and/or periods of dramatic social/technological change (Whitehand, 2001, 105). Morpho-typological study of alternate contexts can present alternative models and contribute to the present discourse which questions traditional paradigms of urban planning and design (Todes et al, 2010). In this study a series of cities are examined as a preliminary exploration into the urban morphology of cities in ‘humid subtropical’ climates. From an initial set of twenty, six cities were selected: Sao Paulo, Brazil; Jacksonville, USA; Maputo, Mozambique; Kanpur, India; Hong Kong, China; and Brisbane, Australia. The urban form was analysed from satellite imagery at a constant scale. Urban morphological regions (types) were identified as those demonstrating particular consistant characteristics of form (density, typology and pattern) different to their surroundings when examined at a constant scale. This analysis was correlated against existing data and literature discussing the proliferation of two types of urban development, ‘informal settlement’ (defined here as self-organised communities identifiable but not always synonymous with ‘slums’) and ‘suburbia’ (defined here as master planned communities of generally detached houses prevalent in western society) - the extreme ends of a hypothetical spectrum from ‘planned’ to ‘spontaneous’ urban development. Preliminary results show some cities contain a wide variety of urban form ranging from the highly organic ‘self-organised’ type to the highly planned ‘master planned community’ (in the case of Sao Paulo) while others tend to fall at one end of the planning spectrum or the other (more planned in the cases of Brisbane and Jacksonville; and both highly planned and highly organic in the case of Maputo). Further research will examine the social, economical and political drivers and controls which lead to this diversity or homogeneity of urban form and speculates on the role of self-organisation as a process for the adaptation of urban form.

Grey St. Xchange 2.0 by QUT

Partnerships between universities and public institutions such as this offer the beginning of a long term relationship to actively influence public policy, procedures and new ways to engage the many diverse communities to be integral in shaping the environments in which they live. It offers an opportunity to apply authentic positioning of research theories and build new methodologies for consulting, analysing and implementing innovation. SBC, as an established corporation offers a unique precinct to research and develop models with its different offers of tourism, leisure and neighbourhood. The Parklands and Little Stanley Street are well advanced in the goals however Grey Street, which connects the precinct to the greater surrounds, has been a complex issue that is now ready to be addressed. This project offers the ability to be of real worth at this critical time of development with the history of the past development combined with the desire for future visioning to be realised over the next 5 years. QUT has the unique opportunity to be part of this future.

Asset specificity and behavioral uncertainty as moderators of the sales growth-employment growth relationship in emerging ventures

New venture growth is a central topic in entrepreneurship research. Although sales growth is emerging as the most commonly used measure of growth for emerging ventures, employment growth has also been used frequently. However, empirical research demonstrates that there are only very low to moderately sized correlations between the two (Delmar et aL, 2003; Weinzimmer, et al., 1998). In addition) sales growth and employment growth respond differently to a wide variety of criteria (Baum et al., 2001; Delmar et al., 2003). In this study we use transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1996) as a theoretical base to examine transaction cost influences on the addition of new employees as emerging ventures experience sales growth. \\le theorize that transaction cost economics variables will moderate the relationship between sales growth and employment growth. W'e develop and test hypotheses related to asset specificity, behavioral uncertainty, and the influence of resource munificence on the strength of the sales growth/ employment growth relationship. Asset specificity is theorized to be a positive moderator of the relationship between sales growth and employment growth. When the behavioral uncertainty associated with adding new employees is greater than that of outsourcing or subcontracting, it is hypothesized to be a negative moderator of the sales growth/employment growth relationship. We also hypothesize that resource scarcity will strengthen those relationships.

Eye on the Street? Sensory Experience in Public Places

Research on the sensual experience of place is not a mainstream topic in the architectural debate; it is more common in other disciplines like landscape architecture or interior design. The curriculum sometime offers opportunities of cross-pollination between disciplines; students in architecture courses might be exposed to different theories of space more typical to other fields. This paper explore the teaching/research nexus within QUT Master of Architecture research stream; the focus of the discussion is students’ experimentation with people’s experience and navigation of the public space. Theories of placemaking in relation to urban design are first introduced; then the teaching/research nexus is discussed; finally students’ experience in approaching phenomenological research within the Master of Architecture are presented.

Improving the Walkability of Subtropical Urban Areas: a case study analysis for the development of a design process

This research develops a new framework to be used as a tool for analysing and designing walkable communities. The literature review recognises the work of other researchers combining their findings with the theory of activity nodes and considers how a framework may be used on a more global basis. The methodology develops a set of criteria through the analysis of noted successful case studies and this is then tested against an area with very low walking rates in Brisbane, Australia. Results of the study suggest that as well as the accepted criteria of connectivity, accessibility, safety, security, and path quality further criteria in the form or planning hierarchy, activity nodes and climate mitigation could be added to allow the framework to cover a broader context. Of particular note is the development of the nodal approach, which allows simple and effective analysis of existing conditions, and may also prove effective as a tool for planning and design of walkable communities.