Andean pre-historical urban planning tradition

Urban design features that formed an Andean urban planning tradition through continual use across successive periods of time, civilizations and extensive, varied geography are identified. Some Andean urban features were also mirrored or pre-date similar ideas that occurred in other parts of the world, particularly ideas used by Spanish colonialism.

Virtual melawati : 3D GIS as a decision support tool for urban planning

Virtual Melawati is an environment for developing expertise in the application of 3D interactive visualization and GIS (Geographic Information System) to address problems of the built environment and to test the model as a decision support tool in the context of the local planning authorities in Malaysia. The visual approach enables the integration of highly complex spatial GIS information such as the evolution and transformation of the urban precinct as well as the impact of planned developments into the decision making process. The study will examine the techniques of data acquisition, data reconstruction from physical to digital, urban analysis and visualization in constructing an interactive 3D GIS model to support and assist the decision making process in urban design and planning. The outcomes of the study will deliver an experimental test bed for improving decision making processes in urban planning and design utilizing 3D modeling and GIS. The project will accelerate the uptake of digital and multimedia methods in local government, facilitate current planning and consultation processes between councils and stakeholders and improve the dissemination and management of spatial information about urban environments.

Embracing rigour : developing a community engagement framework for strategic urban planning

Local governments are increasingly seeking new ways to engage with communities through a variety of productive avenues. Yet strategic planning lags behind with an accepted method to consult and engage with communities about proposed policy changes. When engagement methods are used which go beyond those which are legislated for, the process often involves members of communities who are familiar with planning processes, or have time to participate, thereby excluding large sections of the community. In addition, consultation methods often lack rigour in data collection upon which major strategic decisions are based, thereby undermining government's capacity to make quality and informed planning decisions. The aim of this paper is to assist local government urban planners with their community engagement practice in order to form policies which are acceptable to the affected communities. The paper proposes a community engagement framework which introduces rigour within the community engagement process by drawing on research methods from psychology and political science.

A new urban planning code's impact on walking: The residential environments project

Objectives. We examined whether people moving into a housing development designed according to a state government livable neighborhoods subdivision code engage in more walking than do people who move to other types of developments.

Methods. In a natural experiment of 1813 people building homes in 73 new housing developments in Perth, Western Australia, we surveyed participants before and then 12 and 36 months after moving. We measured self-reported walking using the Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire and collected perceptions of the environment and self-selection factors. We calculated objective measures of the built environment using a Geographic Information System.

Results. After relocation, participants in livable versus conventional developments had greater street connectivity, residential density, land use mix, and access to destinations and more positive perceptions of their neighborhood (all P < .05). However, there were no significant differences in walking over time by type of development (P > .05).

Conclusions. Implementation of the Livable Neighborhoods Guidelines produced more supportive environments; however, the level of intervention was insufficient to encourage more walking. Evaluations of new urban planning policies need to incorporate longer term follow-up to allow time for new neighborhoods to develop.

Advancing community engagement practice for strategic urban planning : learning from allied and remote disciplines

Urban planning has the potential to draw on allied and remote disciplines to improve community consultation processes for strategic planning projects. Urban design and landscape architecture have quantitative and qualitative methods which can be utilised to visualise different options of urban intensification which may fit within communities’ expectations of change. Furthermore political science has long used scientifically established psychometric techniques to collect data from broad sections of the population, analysing demographic profiles of communities and understanding their perceptions and attitudes. By appropriating quantitative and qualitative methods from other disciplines, urban planning policies can be developed which may reflect communities’ aspirations of amenity and neighbourhood character. The aim of this paper is to assist local government urban planners with their community engagement practice in order to form policies which are acceptable to the affected communities. The paper draws on Victoria as a case study of community engagement practice, examines research methods from allied and remote disciplines and proposes a community engagement framework which introduces rigour within the community engagement process.

Education and research in urban planning and development in Latin America

Las tasas de urbanizacion de America Latina son las mas altas del mundo y los problemas generados por ellas seguiran influyendo en el desarrollo politico, economico y social de la region en los anos futuros. Las necesidades de formacion de profesionales y de investigacion en el campo del desarrollo urbano son tan enormes y los esfuerzos desplegados tan escasos, que se requiere un enfoque enteramente nuevo de parte de las agencias interamericanas. En este sentido, se propone la formacion de un Consejo de Asuntos Urbanos de las organizaciones interamericanas destinado a: a).orientar y financiar los esfuerzos y prestar asesoria en problemas de urbanizacion; b).establecer, en el largo plazo, centros de estudios urbanos y de planificacion nacionales y/o regionales; c).asesorar a las universidades a traves de grants, becas y bolsas viajeras e incrementar el numero actual de becas en desarrollo urbano; d).patrocinar la elaboracion de materiales para la formacion de urbanistas.

ARTHUR: A Collaborative Augmented Environment for Architectural Design and Urban Planning

Projects in the area of architectural design and urban planning typically engage several architects as well as experts from other professions. While the design and review meetings thus often involve a large number of cooperating participants, the actual design is still done by the individuals in the time in between those meetings using desktop PCs and CAD applications. A real collaborative approach to architectural design and urban planning is often limited to early paper-based sketches.In order to overcome these limitations, we designed and realized the ARTHUR system, an Augmented Reality (AR) enhanced round table to support complex design and planning decisions for architects. WhileAR has been applied to this area earlier, our approach does not try to replace the use of CAD systems but rather integrates them seamlessly into the collaborative AR environment. The approach is enhanced by intuitiveinteraction mechanisms that can be easily con-figured for different application scenarios.

Linking territorial foresight and urban planning

Este artículo muestra las oportunidades y beneficios de ligar la prospectiva territorial a los procesos de planificación urbana. Adicionalmente, este trabajo sugiere un enfoque para reforzar el método de diseño de escenarios con instrumentos analíticos que le doten de mayor profundidad y rigor.

A conceptual insight on digital paralell workshops for urban planning

The educational realm in Urban Plan ning needs a review because of the global challenges that human settlements will face in the near futu re. In this scenario, international boards of research call for the development of common frameworks of research, accredita tion, and planning best-pra ctices, that need to transcend the limits of local competences, which at the same time affect educational structures. A central issue on achieving this pursued consensus is in ternational cooperation among academic institutions, seeking global awareness on urban challenges, built equally upon a variety of context-based experiences. The rise of ICT's and digital tools are widely perceived as a great field of opportunity to establish complex and de-centralized networks of knowledge-bu ilding that can be critical to address these needs.

Flâneurs, Urban Planning and Disembodiment: Communities and Space in TV Series

Flâneurs, Urban Planning and Disembodiment: Communities and Space in TV Series

The "other" cities: urban planning and architecture for tourism: the case of the Spanish Mediterranean (1945-1975)

There we analyce the first touristic nucleus arouse in the Spanish Mediterranean coast between World War II and the Petroleum Crisis (1945-75). Special attention is payed to the characteristics of these new villages: the relation of their urban frame with nature -original or artificial- and the lack of industry. We make a distintion of three types: cluster nucleus (La Manga and El Saler), tridimentional urbanism (Playa de San Juan y Urbanova) and extreme typologies (Campoamor and Benidorm). With them the cities for vacations are discovered, mainly for second home purpouse (vacation home/holiday home). The panorama after the current crisis is a lineal chain of small urban settlements on the coast. Finally, Finally, we can see how these "secondary cities" without industry and specialized in leisure, are developing to our days until become new cities of services, doubling the existing ones; now they are "the other cities".