Les terrains vacants et la lisibilité du centre-ville de Montréal.

Les terrains vacants sont, à Montréal, des éléments indéniables dans la composition de la trame urbaine. Leur présence soutenue intéresse déjà depuis longtemps de nombreux auteurs et décideurs municipaux. Toutefois, il s’avère que l’on connaît peu les caractéristiques paysagères de ces espaces. Cette recherche en aménagement vise à compléter nos connaissances sur cette typologie d’espace urbain. Elle porte sur la caractérisation paysagère des terrains vacants du centre-ville de Montréal et sur l’étude de leur potentiel visuel à mettre en valeur les attributs significatifs du paysage urbain. Ces deux études doivent permettre de comprendre le rôle joué par ces vides dans la perception du paysage urbain. Cette démarche s’interroge sur la possibilité que certains vides puissent être justifiés et légitimés en regard de la notion de lisibilité du paysage urbain (Lynch, 1976, 1982). Les terrains joueraient un rôle important au niveau de la perception des paysages urbains. Il s’agit de démontrer le potentiel des espaces vacants dans la mise en valeur du paysage urbain, dans l’optique, pour certains d’entre eux, de légitimer le vide ou une partie du vide qui les définit, de les rendre structurants dans la composition urbaine. Grâce à un travail d’observation des caractéristiques urbaines, contextuelles, visuelles et physiques, l’étude a pu à la fois dresser le portrait de ces espaces en attente de développement urbain et démontrer leur implication dans la lisibilité urbaine. Ce travail présente l’intérêt d’offrir un énoncé sur la planification du développement des terrains vacants du centre-ville de Montréal en regard de la notion de lisibilité urbaine partie prenante dans la qualité urbaine.

Planifier un développement adapté aux caractéristiques hydrographiques et biophysiques du milieu pour l’aménagement d’un quartier durable à Weedon, Québec

La municipalité de Weedon, en Estrie, a récemment acquis un terrain vacant à proximité du village. La municipalité désire un développement intégrant le concept de développement durable dans le plan d’aménagement du terrain et dans la construction des infrastructures. L’objectif général de ce travail est de recommander à la municipalité de Weedon des moyens pour adapter l’écoquartier aux caractéristiques hydrographiques et biophysiques du milieu. Premièrement, le milieu biophysique et hydrographique est caractérisé grâce à l’analyse de données géospatiales et par photointerprétation de photographies aériennes. Le potentiel de développement est analysé grâce à l’outil ArcGIS afin de déterminer les zones propices à l’urbanisation ainsi que les zones à exclure. Il est recommandé de concentrer le développement du site dans la zone n’ayant aucune contrainte et de limiter la densité des habitations dans les espaces présentant des contraintes. Selon ces suggestions, il sera possible de développer environ 40 bâtiments sur le site. Deuxièmement, les systèmes de gestion des eaux usées (le système septique individuel, le système décentralisé et le système centralisé) sont décrits en fonction de leurs avantages, de leurs inconvénients et de leurs limites. Ces points sont ensuite comparés et la création d’un arbre de décision permet de recommander le système le mieux adapté au milieu. Les zones avec contraintes de développement devraient utiliser des systèmes de traitement septiques. Pour ce qui est de la zone sans contraintes, le système de traitement septique est recommandé uniquement si la densité est égale ou inférieure à 5 unités d’habitations par hectare. Si la densité désirée par la municipalité est plus élevée pour cette zone, le raccordement au système de traitement centralisé est recommandé. Troisièmement, les mesures de gestion des eaux pluviales sont présentées selon différentes caractéristiques adaptées au site. Leur recommandation est basée sur une analyse multicritère pondérée. Les pratiques de gestion optimales qui devraient être utilisées conjointement sur le site sont la collecte et la réutilisation de l’eau de pluie pour la gestion sur le site, la noue engazonnée avec drain pour la gestion en réseau et le marais artificiel pour la gestion en fin de réseau. Les recommandations présentées dans ce travail visent à privilégier des modes de développement alternatifs à l’urbanisation classique afin d’établir les bases pour le développement d’un quartier durable à Weedon.

“I woke up and realised the ground had shifted”: the shifting terrain of English curriculum

The theme of this conference comes from the epitaph on the Lewis Carroll’s gravesite. “Is All our Life then But A Dream?” This seems fitting for a time when so much change in the terrain of English makes us feel as if we are somnambulating through a surrealist landscape. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, (Carroll, 2003) we might find ourselves at strange tea parties with bureaucratic mad hatters, and just when we think we have a grasp of applying new theory in our teaching, we fall down another rabbit hole, to swim in confusion as some queen calls out, ‘off with their heads!’. The shifting ground in English inevitably moves in response to waves of theory influencing classroom practice. Each new paradigm has claimed to liberate language learners from the flaws of the previous model. Each linguist or literary theorist who shaped the new paradigm no doubt dreamt of a new population emerging from school as more powerfully literate citizens than the previous generation.

All-terrain vehicle crashes and associated injuries in North Queensland : findings from the Rural and Remote Road Safety Study

Objective: To define characteristics of all-terrain vehicle (ATV) crashes occurring in north Queensland from March 2004 till June 2007 with the exploration of associated risk factors. Design: Descriptive analysis of ATV crash data collected by the Rural and Remote Road Safety Study. Setting: Rural and remote north Queensland. Participants: Forty-two ATV drivers and passengers aged 16 years or over hospitalised at Atherton, Cairns, Mount Isa or Townsville for at least 24 hours as a result of a vehicle crash. Main outcome measures: Demographics of participants, reason for travel, nature of crash, injuries sustained and risk factors associated with ATV crash. Results: The majority of casualties were men aged 16–64. Forty-one per cent of accidents occurred while performing agricultural tasks. Furthermore, 39% of casualties had less than one year’s experience riding ATVs. Over half the casualties were not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash. Common injuries were head and neck and upper limb injuries. Rollovers tended to occur while performing agricultural tasks and most commonly resulted in multiple injuries. Conclusions: Considerable trauma results from ATV crashes in rural and remote north Queensland. These crashes are not included in most general vehicle crash data sets, as they are usually limited to events occurring on public roads. Minimal legislation and regulation currently applies to ATV use in agricultural, recreational and commercial settings. Legislation on safer design of ATVs and mandatory courses for riders is an essential part of addressing the burden of ATV crashes on rural and remote communities.

The vernacular terrain : Songzhang Art Museum, Beijing, China

The field was the curation of cross-cultural new media/ digital media practices within large-scale exhibition practices in China. The context was improved understandings of the intertwining of the natural and the artificial with respect to landscape and culture, and their consequent effect on our contemporary globalised society. The research highlighted new languages of media art with respect to landscape and their particular underpinning dialects. The methodology was principally practice-led. --------- The research brought together over 60 practitioners from both local and diasporic Asian, European and Australian cultures for the first time within a Chinese exhibition context. Through pursuing a strong response to both cultural displacement and re-identification the research forged and documented an enduring commonality within difference – an agenda further concentrated through sensitivities surrounding that year’s Beijing’s Olympics. In contrast to the severe threats posed to the local dialects of many of the world’s spoken and written languages the ‘Vernacular Terrain’ project evidenced that many local creative ‘dialects’ of the environment-media art continuum had indeed survived and flourished. --------- The project was co-funded by the Beijing Film Academy, QUT Precincts, IDAProjects and Platform China Art Institute. A broad range of peer-reviewed grants was won including from the Australia China Council and the Australian Embassy in China. Through invitations from external curators much of the work then traveled to other venues including the Block Gallery at QUT and the outdoor screens at Federation Square, Melbourne. The Vernacular Terrain catalogue featured a comprehensive history of the IDA project from 2000 to 2008 alongside several major essays. Due to the reputation IDA Projects had established, the team were invited to curate a major exhibition showcasing fifty new media artists: The Vernacular Terrain, at the prestigious Songzhang Art Museum, Beijing in Dec 07-Jan 2008. The exhibition was designed for an extensive, newly opened gallery owned by one of China's most important art historians Li Xian Ting. This exhibition was not only this gallery’s inaugural non-Chinese curated show but also the Gallery’s first new media exhibition. It included important works by artists such as Peter Greenway, Michael Roulier, Maleonn and Cui Xuiwen. --------- Each artist was chosen both for a focus upon their own local environmental concerns as well as their specific forms of practice - that included virtual world design, interactive design, video art, real time and manipulated multiplayer gaming platforms and web 2.0 practices. This exhibition examined the interconnectivities of cultural dialogue on both a micro and macro scale; incorporating the local and the global, through display methods and design approaches that stitched these diverse practices into a spatial map of meanings and conversations. By examining the contexts of each artist’s practice in relationship to the specificity of their own local place and prevailing global contexts the exhibition sought to uncover a global vernacular. Through pursuing this concentrated anthropological direction the research identified key themes and concerns of a contextual language that was clearly underpinned by distinctive local ‘dialects’ thereby contributing to a profound sense of cross-cultural association. Through augmentation of existing discourse the exhibition confirmed the enduring relevance and influence of both localized and globalised languages of the landscape-technology continuum.

Terrain following using wide field optic flow

Wall and terrain following is a challenging problem for small, fast, and fragile robot vehicles. This paper presents a robust algorithm based on wide field integration of optic flow. Solutions for two dimensional and three dimensional wall following is provided for vehicles with non-holonomic velocity constraints that ensure that the focus of expansion of the flow field is known. The potential of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated in a simulation environment.

The ‘good’ parent in relation to early childhood literacy : symbolic terrain and lived practice

In this paper we consider the place of early childhood literacy in the discursive construction of the identity( ies) of ‘proper’ parents. Our analysis crosses between representations of parenting in texts produced by commercial and government/public institutional interests and the self-representations of individual parents in interviews with the researchers. The argument is made that there are commonalities and disjunctures in represented and lived parenting identities as they relate to early literacy. In commercial texts that advertise educational and other products, parents are largely absent from representations and the parent’s position is one of consumer on behalf of the child. In government-sanctioned texts, parents are very much present and are positioned as both learners about and important facilitators of early learning when they ‘interact’ with their children around language and books. The problem for which both, in their different ways, offer a solution is the ‘‘not-yet-ready’’ child precipitated into the evaluative environment of school without the initial competence seen as necessary to avoid falling behind right from the start. Both kinds of producers promise a smooth induction of children into mainstream literacy and learning practices if the ‘good parent’ plays her/his part. Finally, we use two parent cases to illustrate how parents’ lived practice involves multiple discursive practices and identities as they manage young children’s literacy and learning in family contexts in which they also need to negotiate relations with their partners and with paid and domestic work.

Profiling off-road motorcycle and all-terrain riders in Queensland, Australia

The current research aimed to profile off-road riders to identify specific sub-groups in relation to their risk-related behaviours and perceptions. A total of 235 adults from the Australian state of Queensland who had ridden a motorcycle or ATV off-road in the last 12 months were recruited. A cluster analysis was applied to the survey data. Two distinct clusters of riders were identified, which corresponded with the self-report of injury from an off-road riding crash in the prior 12 months. The injured cluster had a significantly higher mean risk propensity and use of safety equipment, though did not differ on self-reported risk taking. The injured cluster as a whole included a higher percentage of males, was younger, and rode more often for recreational or competitive purposes than the non-crash involved cluster. The results indicate that the crash cluster may be both more aware of the potential risks of riding and more willing to ride in a riskier manner.