Open-space networks in cities in disaster-prone environments can be designed to facilitate recovery. This study explores residents' perceptions of urban wetlands in earthquake-prone Concepción, Chile. Two scenarios were posed, one representing everyday life and a second representing life after...

Form-Based codes are promoted, although not proven, as a means to create walkable streets because they regulate built features on the street. In this study an audit survey developed to measure the physical features of streets related to walkability was used to evaluate streets built from...

Medians or central reservations have received scant attention in the vast literature on the history, morphology and design of streets, and are rarely considered as places where people can gather. They are mostly conceived as safety barriers, traffic-calming elements or visual features on...

Limited attention has been paid to the value of the aesthetic dimension of the urban environment in altering the character of commuting by bicycle. The positive impact of aesthetics on cycling is primarily related to emotional reactions of an individual. For cyclists, aesthetic experience is a...

This paper examines the role of ethnicity and culture in the making of urban parks. It focuses on neighbourhood parks in three Chinatowns to explore how park design that addresses the social and cultural needs of the user groups affects park uses. The study employs a combination of field...

Socio-semiotic theory is suggested as a basis for exploring, empirically, how drawings and models are used in place-based design work. This is done to encourage more self-awareness amongst designers in how they produce images as well as reflection on how they might be interpreted in different...

Design competitions are often used to select design teams for high profile development projects, yet have received scant attention in the literature. Seeking to redress this imbalance, this paper presents a competition model that was employed on Toronto's waterfront in 2006 for a large public...

In the rapidly expanding suburban periphery of Perth in Western Australia, highly malleable coastal dunes are substituted with expansive artificial topographies of level lots terraced with retaining walls. Although efficient for facilitating current engineering, construction and real estate...

This paper explores the pedestrian streets in Thailand and the idea of the street as public space in Southeast Asia. Based on pilot studies in 15 pedestrian streets and detailed fieldwork in four case studies in Thailand, this paper reveals an informal manner of street use for socio-economic...