A Cultural Historical Study of Land Use in Dade County, Florida

Humans have used the land within the area currently defined as Dade County, Florida since around 11,000 B.P., but did not significantly alter the local environment until less than one hundred years ago. These recent changes greatly affected many critical ecological factors, thereby reducing the sustainability of many types of life, including humans. This study explains how land use evolved from earlier sustainable systems for satisfying human needs into the current menacing patterns. This is done by examining the environmental, technological, social, and cognitive contexts of land use through time. Changes in all these areas have followed a general trend leading to increasing intensity of land use and environmental change driven by population growth and technological innovation.

Sustainability and Community Networks

Community networks are IP-based computer networks that are operated by a community as a common good. In Europe, the most well-known community networks are Guifi in Catalonia, Freifunk in Berlin, Ninux in Italy, Funkfeuer in Vienna and the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network in Greece. This paper deals with community networks as alternative forms of Internet access and alternative infrastructures and asks: What does sustainability and unsustainability mean in the context of community networks? What advantages do such networks have over conventional forms of Internet access and infrastructure provided by large telecommunications corporations? In addition what disadvantages do they face at the same time? This article provides a framework for thinking dialectically about the un/sustainability of community networks. It provides a framework of practical questions that can be asked when assessing power structures in the context of Internet infrastructures and access. It presents an overview of environmental, economic, political and cultural contradictions that community networks may face as well as a typology of questions that can be asked in order to identify such contradictions.

Multilevel processes and cultural adaptation: examples from past and present small-scale societies

The last two decades have seen a proliferation of research frameworks that emphasise the importance of understanding adaptive processes that happen at different levels. We contribute to this growing body of literature by exploring how cultural (mal)adaptive dynamics relate to multilevel social-ecological processes occurring at different scales, where the lower levels combine into new units with new organizations, functions, and emergent properties or collective behaviors. After a brief review of the concept of “cultural adaptation” from the perspective of cultural evolutionary theory, the core of the paper is constructed around the exploration of multilevel processes occurring at the temporal, spatial, social, and political scales. We do so by using insights from cultural evolutionary theory and by examining small-scale societies as case studies. In each section, we discuss the importance of the selected scale for understanding cultural adaptation and then present an example that illustrates how multilevel processes in the selected scale help explain observed patterns in the cultural adaptive process. The last section of the paper discusses the potential of modeling and computer simulation for studying multilevel processes in cultural adaptation. We conclude by highlighting how elements from cultural evolutionary theory might enrich the multilevel process discussion in resilience theory.

Catalyst: reimagining sustainability with and through fine art

How might we begin to explore the concept of the “sustainable city” in a world often characterized as dynamic, fluid, and contested? Debates about the sustainable city are too often dominated by a technological discourse conducted among professional experts, but this technocratic framing is open to challenge. For some critics, sustainability is a meaningless notion, yet for others its semantic pliability opens up discursive spaces through which to explore interconnections across time, space, and scale. Thus, while enacting sustainability in policy and practice is an arduous task, we can productively ask how cultural imaginations might be stirred and shaken to make sustainability accessible to a wider public who might join the conversation. What role, we ask, can and should the arts play in wider debates about sustainability in the city today? We explore a coproduced artwork in the northeast of England in order to explain how practice-led research methods were put into dialogue with the social sciences to activate new perspectives on the politics, aesthetics, and practices of sustainability. The case is presented to argue that creative material experimentations can be used as an active research inquiry through which ideas can be tested without knowing predefined means or ends. The case shows how such creativity acts as a catalyst to engage a heterogeneous mix of actors in the redefinition of urban spaces, juxtaposing past and present, with the ephemeral and the (seemingly) durable.

Intereses, motivaciones y su importancia en el desarrollo de un turismo cultural sostenible

A partir de los estudios sobre turismo cultural sostenible realizados en San Agustín e Isnos, se propone una reflexión sobre las prioridades e intereses que marcan el desarrollo de las poblaciones involucradas. Así mismo, se proponen alternativas para generar procesos de participación que promuevan el bienestar de las comunidades locales y la sostenibilidad económica, ambiental y socio-cultural del destino turístico.

A essência da gastronomia na valorização cultural : a aplicação do conceito "Slow Food" nos Açores

Dissertação de Mestrado, Gestão do Turismo Internacional, 19 de Julho de 2016, Universidade dos Açores.

Learning Sustainability with EPS@ISEP – Development of an Insectarium

8th International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE)

Reclaiming the Fall Zone: Mediating Physical and Cultural Exchange in Richmond, VA

This thesis will address cultural and physical place reclamation, at the ambiguous intersection of ‘city’ and nature.’ By creating a juxtaposed sequence of multi-scalar interventions, which challenge the conventional boundaries of architecture, and landscape architecture; in order to make commonplace a new dynamic threshold condition in Richmond, Virginia. At its core, this thesis is an attempt at place-making on a site which has become ‘no place.’ This concept will be manifest via a landscape park on Mayo Island in Richmond, anchored by a community retreat center, and architectural follies along a constructed path. The interventions will coincide with value of place in historical Richmond: an integrated, socially desegregated waterfront hinge; a social nexus of inherent change, at the point which the river itself changes at the fall line.

Investigating the sustainability of a vernacular village

Vernacular architecture, as an attractive product of the society, is an expression of the cultural beliefs, geographical characteristics and available local materials, which inevitably reflects on its territory and context. The vastness of countries such as Iran, with different climatic zones, has initiated the development of logical design solutions via vernacular architecture. The vernacular heritage with self-efficient local materials and climate responsive design is a manifestation of sustainability. This paper presents the principles and methods of vernacular architectural design, used in a historical village, Abyaneh, in the central part of Iran, to address how sustainability has been achieved through vernacular design in this region. This paper also explores how physically sustainable urban settlements can lead to socially sustainable and viable communities. There are many lessons to be learnt from the vernacular architecture of traditional villages, like Abyaneh, which have been shaped organically, throughout the centuries. Through investigation of vernacular strategies, we need to find economically viable and context responsive design solutions in today's contemporary architectural designs. This study is based on the systematic review of the existing literature, site observations and field studies.

Approaches to urban heritage, development and sustainability

More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas, and cities provide the setting for contemporary challenges such as population growth, mass tourism and unequal access to socio-economic opportunities. Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability examines the impact of these issues on urban heritage, considering innovative approaches to managing developmental pressures and focusing on how taking an ethical, inclusive and holistic approach to urban planning and heritage conservation may create a stronger basis for the sustainable growth of cities in the future.This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular reference to the conflict between, and potential reconciliation of, conservation and development goals.

Heritagescaping and the aesthetics of refuge: challenges to urban sustainability

The year 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, or World Heritage
Convention. Regarded by many as a hugely successful project, World Heritage has
provided a framework for safeguarding a wide array of historic built environments.
The choice of “sustainable development and the role of communities” as the theme of
the fortieth anniversary was, however, recognition of the significant problems and
challenges this arena of cultural and spatial governance has created for those living in
and around listed sites. Cities have proved particularly challenging, and resistant to
prescriptive modeling at the level of international policy. Evictions, punitive
legislation, rising living costs, and loss of community are the now familiar by‐products of worldheritage that continue to go undocumented and ignored.
Against this backdrop, this chapter traces recent developments and trends surrounding urban heritage conservation, highlighting recent turns towards community‐driven approaches and discourses of sustainability. It then raises the issue of gentrification, with a particular focus on where such problems take on critical importance: small‐scale urban environments. Focusing on Galle in Sri Lanka, the final part of the chapter explores the emergence of a form of “heritagescaping” oriented by an aesthetics of solitude, tran-quility, and quiet comfort. In offering a contribution towards debates around urban sustainability and the role of heritage therein, it is argued that such processes present significant obstacles to the development of more community‐based, culturally sustainable forms of heritage conservation.

Urban heritage, development and sustainability: international frameworks, national and local governance

More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas, and cities provide the setting for contemporary challenges such as population growth, mass tourism and unequal access to socio-economic opportunities. Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability examines the impact of these issues on urban heritage, considering innovative approaches to managing developmental pressures and focusing on how taking an ethical, inclusive and holistic approach to urban planning and heritage conservation may create a stronger basis for the sustainable growth of cities in the future.This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular reference to the conflict between, and potential reconciliation of, conservation and development goals. A global range of case studies detail a number of distinct practical approaches to heritage on international, national and local scales. Chapters reveal the disjunctions between international frameworks and national implementation and assess how internationally agreed concepts can be misused to justify unsustainable practices or to further economic globalisation and political nationalism. The exclusion of many local communities from development policies, and the subsequent erosion of their cultural heritage, is also discussed, with the collection emphasising the importance of ‘grass roots’ heritage and exploring more inclusive and culturally responsive conservation strategies. Contributions from an international group of authors, including practitioners as well as leading academics, deliver a broad and balanced coverage of this topic. Addressing the interests of both urban planners and heritage specialists, Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability is an important addition to the field that will encourage further discourse.

Intereses económicos y políticos versus identidad cultural del corregimiento de Belén de Bajirá

En Colombia, el ordenamiento territorial debe ser una política de estado, un instrumento estratégico para el desarrollo del país que debe tener una visión de largo plazo y debe tener como objetivos la sostenibilidad de recursos naturales, la preservación de la biodiversidad y reconocimiento de servicios eco sistémicos, la equidad en el acceso a los servicios e infraestructura, la preservación del patrimonio étnico y cultural además de incentivar la competitividad con perspectiva de responsabilidad territorial. Es precisamente en la zona de Urabá, entre el límite entre Chocó y Antioquia donde existe un corregimiento llamado Belén de Bajirá, el cual se encuentra en un conflicto territorial hace 16 años. Los dos departamentos se disputan la posesión de este corregimiento que tiene un censo de 16 mil habitantes, un inspector de policía, rector de colegio, recaudador de impuestos que no se pueden cobrar, asimilando un gobierno paralelo; este trabajo de grado busca explicar o dilucidar las causas por las cuales esta diferencia limítrofe ocurrió y dar posibles soluciones.

Cultural Values Change in the Rehabilitation of Historic Schools in Portugal

Despite the importance of the preservation of the historic built environment for the benefit of present and future generations, there is a lack of knowledge of the effects of architectural rehabilitation decisions on the cultural significance of historic buildings. Architectural heritage conservation literature has focused almost exclusively on providing principles and guidelines, describing intervention methodologies, and discussing predicted impacts of design on material values. This thesis argues that a focus on the actual effects is needed if the sociocultural sustainability of historic buildings significance is to be achieved. Supported by an extensive literature review and informed by personal insights from the researcher’s everyday practice, an adapted model of the Theory of Change based on Weiss (1995) was designed, providing a tool to evaluate the effects of rehabilitation on cultural significance [ERECS]. Using a selection of six recently rehabilitated historic secondary schools in Portugal (liceus), this research investigated architectural decisions and their effects on the cultural values of this building typology for education, focusing on three objectives, corresponding to three stages of interventions: understanding the existing cultural significance, identifying the design strategies applied and assessing the short-term effects of design decisions on the cultural values. Stressing the role of stakeholders in rehabilitation processes, data were collected from the buildings and architectural projects, the decision makers in the conservation process, and the school community. Although confirming that the evaluation of the effects of architectural decisions on cultural values is a complex task, the findings demonstrate that the historic liceus have historical, architectural and sociocultural values, and whilst strategies did not value social values, material cultural values were generally considered and preserved, contributing to the enhancement of intangible values. The implications of this theory-based and evidence-based research highlight the importance of evaluating actual effects for cultural heritage theory, architectural conservation practice and heritage management policy.