Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA data-driven investigation on urban form evolution: Methodological and empirical support for unravelling the relation between urban form and spatial dynamics( 2023-06)Investigating the patterns of urban development and transformation and unravelling the principles behind these processes are critical for understanding how cities evolve under different physical conditions. While socio-economic, political and cultural forces undeniably shape the patterns of spatial change and persistence, urban form should not be perceived as a passive resultant or a mere consequence of these processes. Quite the contrary, urban form plays a determinant role in establishing the spatial conditions that influence future development patterns by constraining some choices while facilitating others. Recognising the scarcity of systematic, diachronic and quantitative studies on urban form evolution, this thesis is driven by an interest in understanding the relationship between urban form and spatial change. It aims to develop theoretical, methodological and empirical support for unravelling the influential role of urban form in guiding spatial dynamics. The thesis develops a diachronic and quantitative methodological framework to investigate how urban form conditions created by plots, buildings, streets and land uses affect the patterns of change and persistence in three different grid cities: Midtown Manhattan, New York (US); City Centre, Melbourne (AUS); and Eixample, Barcelona (Spain). As part of the research, three longitudinal morphological datasets were generated, drawing upon a rich array of historical cartographic resources and geospatial databases to enable a comprehensive assessment of urban form evolution within each city between the 1800s and 2000s. Through quantitative analysis of urban form and its association with spatial dynamics, the thesis demonstrates that urban form conditions have a measurable impact on the patterns of physical and functional change. This understanding contributes further to the fact that design does not exclude the possibility of change but may even favour it under particular conditions. A rigorous and evidence-based understanding of the interplay between urban form conditions and patterns of spatial change empowers practitioners and policymakers to choose particular forms and structures over others, guide the long-term evolution of urban form and improve the adaptive capacity and resilience of the built environment.
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ItemSpatial planning to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires( 2020)Bushfire hazards can pose significant risks at bushfire-prone urban-rural interfaces and peri-urban areas, highlighting the need to manage bushfire risk in relation to settlements’ planning and governance. Settlements’ resilience to bushfires can be purposively facilitated by the development and application of bushfire risk management knowledge. Spatial planning has the potential to support learning about and acting upon changing conditions and new bushfire information to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires. However, the translation of new bushfire knowledge into meaningful spatial planning practices has been limited and spatial planning systems often struggle to integrate bushfire risk management. Thus, this research aims to contribute to understandings of spatial planning ability to improve its practices by identifying, reframing, and putting into action new considerations about bushfire risk management to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires. This research used an inductive qualitative research approach employing two case studies: the spatial planning systems of Chile and Victoria (Australia). Qualitative data was collected from documentation, archival records, and semi-structured interviews. The data was analysed using time-series analysis, qualitative content analysis, and cross-case synthesis techniques. The research was divided into four stages, two stages correspond to the individual case study analysis and the remaining two to cross-case synthesis and discussion. The research concludes that the Chilean and Victorian spatial planning systems are still constrained in their promotion of settlements’ resilience to bushfires due to internal and external complexities that frame and limit their ability for bushfire risk management. In Chile, there have been several mostly unsuccessful attempts to integrate bushfire considerations into the spatial planning system, thus the current system only outlines spatial planning mechanisms for bushfire risk management generically and inapplicably. In Victoria, the spatial planning system has partially and progressively improved its ways for dealing with bushfires, however, the current system still considers bushfire risk management partially and sometimes ambiguously. In practice, this implies that both spatial planning systems are sometimes allowing and even promoting settlements patterns that perpetuate bushfire risks. Based on a cross-case synthesis, the research concludes that spatial planning instruments that comprehensively address bushfires are necessary, suggesting an integrated approach that undertakes bushfire risk management at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of planning mechanisms and processes. This approach establishes the instruments’ role in bushfire risk management and other factors that provide directions for improving their ability to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfire. Furthermore, the research also concludes that reflexive processes are not always conducive to the development and improvement of spatial planning systems for bushfire risk management, due to the variance of willingness, understanding, and capacity issues within the system and in the wider context. Accordingly, thesis propositions about the barriers and facilitators that influence spatial planning progressing from the identification, to the reframing and implementation of change about bushfire risk management were suggested.
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ItemInheriting sustainability: World Heritage listing, the design of tourism development and the resilience of social-ecological complex adaptive systems in small oceanic islands: a comparative case study of Lord Howe Island (Australia) and Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)( 2014)Tourism development and sustainability are pressing issues to small oceanic islands featuring important and scarce natural heritage assets; these islands normally present small geographical areas with clearly defined boundaries, typically limited economic development alternatives combined with environmental systems and resources that are fragile and difficult to restore, once modified. Nevertheless, however paramount and highly interdependent the conservation of natural heritage and the obtaining of economic and social benefits through tourism might be, they do not seem to be subject of easy control; tourism development sustainability is dependent on the behaviour of many different agents, with not always complementary but rather, quite often, competing interests. From a Social-Ecological Complex Adaptive System – SECAS perspective, this research sought to understand how different forms of interpersonal and inter-organisational relationships of cooperation and competition influence the sustainability of Tourism Development - TD in small oceanic islands. Additionally, it sought to identify strategies that could influence these drivers and inhibitors within different social economic contexts, the influence of World Heritage Listing – WHL investigated as one possible global strategy for Localised Conservation – LC. Structured as a qualitative multiple case study, this research took place in two small oceanic island tourist destinations: Lord Howe Island – LHI in Australia and the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago – FDN in Brazil. With relatively similar geographical, tourist, regulatory and environmental characteristics, these sites presented the researcher with cases that have experienced the effects of WHL in different time spans and under different circumstances. They are also microcosms of the distinct social and economic contexts deriving from the different development models of the countries they are part. Aiming to contribute to the body of knowledge on the dynamics of sustainability transitions within tourism development in tourist destinations, this research: provided an overview on the evolution of the multiple concept of sustainability and proposed a working definition; carried a discussion on tourism development in the context of sustainability and developed an associated explanatory model and working definition; developed and applied a conceptual working model for researching the dynamics beneath the resilience of SECASs; bridged different areas of knowledge and applied Grounded Theory – GT methods to the research of SECASs; developed a transdisciplinary approach to research on Sustainability; concluded that Local Empowerment, Local Social Cohesion, Attachment to Place and Local Identity are fundamental to the resilience of Local SECASs and therefore to the sustainability of TD; and concluded that, when analysed from a SECAS approach, LC can both increase and decrease the resilience of global and local social-ecological systems.