Initial insights on the biodiversity potential of biosolar roofs: A London Olympic Park green roof case study

Cities dominated by impervious artificial surfaces can experience myriad negative environmental impacts. Restoration of green infrastructure has been identified as a mechanism for increasing urban resilience, enabling cities to transition towards sustainable futures in the face of climate-driven change. Building rooftops represent a viable space for integrating new green infrastructure into high density urban areas. Urban rooftops also provide prime locations for photovoltaic (PV) systems. There is increasing recognition that these two technologies can be combined to deliver reciprocal benefits in terms of energy efficiency and biodiversity targets. Scarcity of scientific evaluation of the interaction between PVs and green roofs means that the potential benefits are currently poorly understood. This study documents evidence from a biodiversity monitoring study of a substantial biosolar roof installed in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Vegetation and invertebrate communities were sampled and habitat structure measured in relation to habitat niches on the roof, including PV panels. Ninety-two plant species were recorded on the roof and variation in vegetation structure associated with proximity to PV panels was identified. Almost 50% of target invertebrate species collected were designated of conservation importance. Arthropod distribution varied in relation to habitat niches on the roof. The overall aim of the MPC green roof design was to create a mosaic of habitats to enhance biodiversity, and the results of the study suggest that PV panels can contribute to niche diversity on a green roof. Further detailed study is required to fully characterise the effects of PV panel density on biodiversity.

Future(s) Perfect: uchronian mapping as a research and visualisation tool in the fringes of the Olympic Park

This article explores and discusses the development of a mapping tool inspired by Charles Renouvier’s philosophical novel Uchronie (l’utopie dans l’histoire) (1876). The article explains the research and design process of creating a uchronian map of a formerly empty site in Fish Island in East London and describes a participatory workshop titled ‘Hackney Wick and Fish Island: Future Perfect(s)’ (25 April 2015) that used uchronian mapping to explore past and future development imaginaries of two sites in the neighbourhood. Given a uchronian mapping template, a protocol and a dossier of planning and other documents, participants were encouraged to develop their own uchronian map of each site, and in doing so test and question the process of visualizing ‘what was supposed to happen’, ‘what actually happened’ and ‘what could have happened’. The article concludes with a reflection on uchronian mapping as a tool for researching, analysing and making visible urban alternatives.

Rhetoric and Realities of London 2012 Olympic Education and Participation ‘Legacies’: Voices from the Core and Periphery

A legacy emphasis was one of the fundamental pillars of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The notion of an Olympic legacy was predicated on assumptions that the event’s value would not purely derive from the sporting spectacle, but rather, from the ‘success’ of enduring effects met out in London and across the country. For physical education students and practitioners, Olympic legacy agendas translated into persistent pressure to increase inspiration, engagement, participation and performance in the subject, sport and physical activity. Responding to this context, and cogniscent of significant disciplinary scholarship, this paper reports initial data from the first phase of a longitudinal study involving Key Stage Three (students aged 11-13) cohorts in two comparable United Kingdom schools: the first an inner-city (core) London school adjacent to the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London (n=150); the second, a (peripheral) school in the Midlands (n=198). The research involved the use of themed questionnaires focusing on self-reported attitudes toward the Olympic Games, and, experiences of physical education, sport and physical activity. Students from both schools demonstrated a wide variety of attitudes toward physical education and sport; yet, minor variances emerged regarding extreme enthusiasm levels. Both cohorts also expressed considerably mixed feelings toward the impending Olympic Games. Strong and variable responses were also reported regarding inspiration levels, ticketing acquisition and engagement levels. Consequently, this investigation can be read within the broader context of legacy debates, and, aligns well with physical educationalists’ on-going discomfort regarding legacy imperatives being enforced upon the discipline and its practitioners. Our work reiterates a shared disciplinary scepticism that while an Olympic Games may temporarily affect young peoples’ affectations for sport (and maybe physical education and physical activity), it may not provide the best, or most appropriate, mechanism for sustained attitudinal and/or social changes en masse.

Megaeventos e direito à moradia: como opera o empreendedorismo urbano no contexto do neodesenvolvimentismo. O caso do Parque Olímpico no Rio de Janeiro

Esta pesquisa busca investigar um processo em curso, onde a estratégia do empreendedorismo na gestão das políticas públicas urbanas vem se adaptando e se conformando ao atual contexto de política econômica chamada de neodesenvolvimentismo. Para isso, as parcerias público-privadas tem um papel fundamental na gestão do desenvolvimento urbano, no âmbito das três esferas de poder. Abordaremos, portanto, o histórico das reformas políticas do País que levaram a uma evolução da política de nacional-desenvolvimentismo ao novo desenvolvimentismo, para entendermos o contexto no qual as atuais parcerias público-privadas vem sendo desenvolvidas como modelo para de gerir o território. Mencionaremos também a legislação e os discursos por trás da defesa deste tipo de negócio entre o poder público e o setor privado. Ainda, como o país enfrentou a crise de 2008, chamada de crise das crises, utilizando esse modelo de gestão do território. Os megaeventos esportivos serão analisados como um fator catalizante da atração de investimentos e negócios para as cidades. No Rio de Janeiro, com a escolha da cidade para sediar os Jogos Olímpicos, e também sendo uma das cidades sedes da Copa do Mundo FIFA de 2014, várias de transformações territoriais se iniciaram. Com fortes indícios de que uma série de violações estava por vir, a fim de abrir espaço e ampliar o mercado dos investimentos privados. O Parque Olímpico, como principal local de competições das Olimpíadas de 2016, configura-se como uma imensa oportunidade de negócios com a iniciativa privada, localizado em área de ampla expansão do mercado imobiliário da cidade: a Barra da Tijuca. Diante disso, muitas comunidades pobres vem sofrendo com a política de deslocamento forçado para dar lugar aos investimentos no território. Neste contexto, está a comunidade Vila Autódromo, estabelecida bem ao lado do local de implementação do empreendimento. Sua remoção está prevista no estudo de viabilidade e no edital de concessão. Estudaremos a parceria público-privada realizada para a construção do Parque Olímpico, através da análise dos documentos relacionados ao seu processo licitatório e a escolha do consórcio vencedor. Ainda, como esse empreendimento tem impactado no caso da comunidade Vila Autódromo, que além de já ter sido alvo de outras tentativas de remoção, foi objeto de uma política de regularização fundiária no passado e tem um intenso histórico de resistência e de luta pela permanência.

A aplicação das geotecnologias na gestão do esporte: um olhar nos megaeventos esportivos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

O presente documento apresenta sucintamente os conceitos e definições das geotecnologias, com ênfase em duas ferramentas tecnológicas de suporte a utilização desta metodologia: o geoprocessamento e o sistema de informação geográfica (SIG). A proposta metodológica da utilização da geotecnologias teve como objetivo a observação dos fenômenos dos megaeventos esportivos, que serão sediados na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, a Copa do Mundo de Futebol 2014 e os Jogos Olímpicos e Paralímpicos de 2016, bem como atender as exigências de conclusão da tese de doutorado. Para tal, foram realizados dois artigos que observaram o fenômeno megaeventos esportivos no espaço geográfico da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O primeiro verificou as mudanças urbanas com as características socioeconômicas ocorridas nas proximidades do parque olímpico, a partir de uma visão temporal da década de 2000. O segundo artigo observou o espaço geográfico da cidade junto aos sítios olímpicos e as mudanças climáticas que vêm ocorrendo nesses locais, através da observação da evolução da temperatura de superfície com a construção de mapas termais, e de dados meteorológicos.

Culture and the 2012 games: creating a tourism legacy?

The role of tourism in delivering wider economic legacies is strongly stated in recent national tourism policy documents. The Olympic Games are envisaged to have the legacy impact of ‘4 million extra visitors’ and ‘50,000 extra jobs’ over 4 years (DCMS (2011). Government Tourism Policy, p. 15). This paper considers the nature of Olympic tourism and the possible contribution of the Cultural Olympiad to developing a cultural tourism legacy. It does this by investigating local perceptions of culture and local cultural enactments in the London Borough of Hackney, one of the five boroughs surrounding the Olympic Park. This research shows that local cultural enactments and programming connected to the Olympics are largely motivated by a wider social agenda. They are funded by a wide variety of arts, social and youth programmes and largely reflect initiatives and projects that were already in place in the Borough. While there is an acceptance that cultural events might stimulate the visitor economy, specific discourses around ‘tourism’ and ‘tourists’ are not expressed by the people engaged in the local process.

Local festivals, social capital and sustainable destination development: experiences in East London

This paper explores the nature of social capital arising from engagement in local festivals and the implications of this for the social sustainability of an emerging destination. Two case studies are developed from a longitudinal research project which investigates local festivals staged in the Hackney Wick and Fish Island area adjacent to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, UK between 2008 and 2014. This area has been directly affected by extensive development and regeneration efforts associated with the staging of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The two festivals considered here respond to the challenges and opportunities arising for local people as the area changes. One festival aims to foster a sense of community by creating shared experiences and improving communication across diverse groups. The other draws together the cultural community, links them to the opportunities arising as the area emerges as a destination, and attracts visitors. These festivals increase social capital in the area, but its distribution is very uneven. The accrual of social capital exacerbates existing inequalities within the host community, favouring the “haves” at the expense of the “have nots”. There are tensions between the development of social capital and social sustainability in this emerging destination.

Olympic National Park, Washington /

Relief shown by shading and spot heights.

A Transformative Olympic Village: The Washington 2024 Post-Games Legacy

This thesis explores the Modern Olympic Games to strategically design an Olympic Village for Washington D.C. that plans not just to house athletes, but to provide a vision for the post-Games city. Through discovery of the spirit and meaning behind one of the world’s biggest events and analysis of various post-Games Villages, the proposed Olympic Village will innovate the future of Washington D.C.’s Southeast region. Study of existing mixed-use architecture, urban planning, and adaptation will help formulate an Olympic Village design. It is the intention that the Olympic Village, much like its athletes, will emulate the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” meaning “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” The objective is to establish a village that allows for a faster turnaround in post-Olympic design, utilizes higher standards, and uses stronger applications to building a more sustainable city.

Power quality enhanced operation and control of a microgrid based custom power park

This paper describes the operation of a microgrid that contains a custom power park (CPP). The park may contain an unbalanced and/or nonlinear load and the microgrid may contain many dis-tributed generators (DGs). One of the DGs in the microgrid is used as a compensator to achieve load compensation. A new method is proposed for current reference generation for load compensation, which takes into account the real and reactive power to be supplied by the DG connected to the compensator. The real and reactive power from the DGs and the utility source is tightly regulated assuming that dedicated communication channels are available. Therefore this scheme is most suitable in cases where the loads in CPP and DGs are physically located close to each other. The proposal is validated through extensive simulation studies using EMTDC/PSCAD software package (version 4.2).

A lava park in Spain

The lava park is surrounded by the volcanic mountains of Les Preses, revealed as the edges of a vast caldera and repeated at a human scale with low walls made up of small volcanic boulders. These walls are evidence of how successive communities have gradually worked amongst this lava flow to create arable land, supported by rich soils. The people saw the land prosper and learned how to maximise its productivity. Boulders that had come to the surface during agricultural cultivation were moved with human labour to create "artigas“, the characteristic pilings of volcanic stone. They have been used to raise and lower areas, to create shelter and exposure for their crops and to make caves for storage. Amongst all this, paths weave and cross. The whole place is made up of grey and black rocks with a constant cover of green crops or grass.

Bike park in Groningen, The Netherlands

Groningen is a city that collects contemporary projects. A trip around town reveals something like a zoo, with examples of all design languages of the last twenty years, many of them now aging and distinctly past their prime. Even though some of these projects are outdated, this collection not only demonstrates a commitment to design (even occasionally lacking judgement) but also serves an archival function: we can consult the Groningen Zoo of Design to determine the design to determine the design preoccupations of the past and how those often theoretical interests (since most of the work by these designers was not built) manifested themselves in material form on the ground.