Landscape Architecture Commons^™

Assessing Elements Of Urban Public Space Under Elevated Freeways: Application To The West End’S Dallas, Adrianna E. Tobias

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

This thesis investigates the revitalization of spaces found underneath elevated freeways into valued urban public spaces. These spaces are created when elevated freeways carve through dense city centers. Literature addressing the history of freeways, their sometimes-destructive impact on the urban fabric of cities and the unique role elevated freeways place in this destruction is reviewed. A brief review of an unintended consequence of elevated freeways as well as the impacts elevated freeways have had in Texas is also reviewed. The research employs three methods which rely on the collecting and synthesizing of data from literature reviews, case studies, site observation …

Strategic Landscape Utilization Of Undeveloped Lands Within Dallas Executive Airport Boundary: Airport Stormwater Management, Ali Khoshkar

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

The purpose of this research is to investigate and propose a sustainable stormwater management improvement for the Dallas Executive Airport future master plan development while carefully considering wildlife preservation and the beautification of the new facility. The literature review draws upon documented research that global aviation growth causes increasing environmental issues. An in-depth review of the history of the airport’s environmental impact shows an increasing concern which ultimately lead to the assigned regulations. The research dives into existing environmental issues caused by air transportation, focusing specifically on stormwater pollutions at small airports and the applicable solutions within the airport boundary …

The Economics Of Landscapes: Why Invest In Landscape Architecture In Mixed-Use Developments/Centers In Texas, Ann Bridget Podeszwa

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

The purpose of this research is to understand the extent to which developers perceive landscape architecture to be a valuable component of mixed-use developments/centers in Texas and how such perceptions add value to their investment strategies. The research focuses on the mixed-use center landscape typology, a growth sector in Texas regional real estate development (VNT, 2014). Since 2000, approximately an 80% Texas population growth occurred in the four major metropolitan areas, Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio (Slijk,.& Saving, 2018) and global trends illustrate that by the year 2050 70% of world population will live in cities (United Nations, 2018). …

Addressing Issues Relating To Food Deserts Through Empowerment; A Community Garden Design Proposal For The Glencrest Neighborhood Of Fort Worth, Texas, Steven Nunez

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

The high rate of population growth in urban areas over the past century has contributed to the creation of food deserts, which are areas characterized by the lack of access to affordable fresh and healthy foods. Food deserts, also known as low-access communities, are believed to be linked to food insecurity and diet related health issues such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that approximately 23.5 million Americans live in food deserts, often occurring in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods (USDA, 2009). Introducing full-service grocery stores to these areas is frequently promoted as the …

The Sea Ranch: Unforeseen Failures And Statewide Successes Of An Ecologically Conscious Coastal Community, Robert Daley

Senior Theses

The term “residential development” or “planned community” brings to mind images of a stereotypical suburbia. The planned community of The Sea Ranch, along the Sonoma County coast in Northern California is a direct challenge to the suburban ideal. Construction of the nearly 1500 homes began in the late 1960s and continues to present day. All of the homes must meet specific design requirements including being ecologically sound and they must fit within the landscape. The strict architectural elements is what provides the distinct look of the community. The construction of a housing development along a ten-mile strip of untouched and …

An Examination Of What Motivates Utah Residents To Adopt The Practice Of Rainwater Harvesting, D. Wayne Honaker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Although most of the earth is covered in water, a very limited amount of that water is fresh water, which is essential to our survival. Therefore, it is imperative that we do all that is possible to conserve and protect our extremely limited water resources, especially in arid regions such as the American West. While there are many ways and means to protecting and preserving our water resources, this thesis focuses on the strategy of rainwater harvesting (RWH) as it is done throughout the state of Utah. RWH is defined as taking the precipitation that falls on our built structures …

Space Syntax: Regional Planning For Bicycles, Connor J. White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study focused on using a mapping tool, Space Syntax, to analyze the connectivity of the Cache County road network and its use to plan for bicycles. Space Syntax is being compared to another method that is already used by city planners called Bicycle Level of Service, or BLOS. The two analyses used data from Cache County and, after they were modeled and evaluated, a statistical analysis was done to see how similar one is to the other. The analyses were done at both a regional and a local scale. At both scales the analyses were not similar.

Data was …

Street Life And The Built Environment In An Auto-Oriented Us Region, Keunhyun Park, Reid Ewing, Sadegh Sabouri, Jon Larsen

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Urban planners and designers believe that the built environment at various geographic scales affects pedestrian activity, but have limited empirical evidence at the street scale, to support their claims. We are just beginning to identify and measure the qualities that generate active street life, and this paper builds on the first few studies to do so. This study measures street design qualities and surrounding urban form variables for 881 block faces in Salt Lake County, Utah, and relates them to pedestrian counts. This is the largest such study to date and includes suburbs as well as cities. At the neighborhood …

Web-Based Archaeology And Collaborative Research, Fabrizio Galeazzi, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

While digital technologies have been part of archaeology for more than fifty years, archaeologists still look for more efficient methodologies to integrate digital practices of fieldwork recording with data management, analysis, and ultimately interpretation.This Special Issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology gathers international scholars affiliated with universities, organizations, and commercial enterprises working in the field of Digital Archaeology. Our goal is to offer a discussion to the international academic community and practitioners. While the approach is interdisciplinary, our primary audience remains readers interested in web technology and collaborative platforms in archaeology

The Usability Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs) For Pedestrian Observation, Keunhyun Park, Reid Ewing

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

The monitoring of pedestrian activity is challenging, primarily because its traffic levels are typically lower and more variable than those of motorized vehicles. Compared with other on-the-ground observation tools, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be suitable for counting and mapping pedestrians in a reliable and efficient way. Thus, this study establishes and tests a new method of pedestrian observation using UAVs. The results show that UAV observations demonstrate high levels of interrater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.99) and equivalence reliability (Cronbach’s α = .97 with on-the-ground counts and .73 with Google Street View). Practical implications of the new tool …

Landscape Architecture And The Saudi Arabia Quality Of Life Program, Abdullah N. Addas

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

Saudi Arabia has for decades felt the effects of the declining condition of its urban, social and natural environments. The government has set out a long-term vision to address these issues through 12 major programs, one of which is the Quality of Life Program 2020. The Program mainly focuses on making Saudi Arabia a top living destination by improving individuals’ lifestyles and enhancing their quality of life. This paper considers the importance of landscape architecture to the Program by way of a literature review to clarify the role of the landscape architecture profession and an analysis of the projects that …

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sensemaking approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Measuring Landscape Performance: Case Study Investigation, Hannah Michelle Lopresto, Brandon Zambrano, Catherine De Almeida

UCARE: Research Products

Participating in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2018 Case Study Investigation has been an incredibly informative experience for our research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We are eager to shine a spotlight on the landscape performance of two Great Plains projects: P Street Corridor, a revitalized downtown streetscape in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park, a waterfront redevelopment in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Working on the post-occupancy study of both projects has been extremely beneficial in understanding how reclaiming underutilized sites can create high-performing landscapes. Both are public projects in urban settings with primary goals of transforming formerly unpleasant, …

Planning For Active Transportation In The Western United States: An Alternative Future For Cache Valley, Utah, Stephanie A. Tomlin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mobility in the western U.S. is defined primarily by the private automobile. Since the conclusion of WWII, the private automobile has become readily available to the public, and as a result, has heavily influenced the design of our modern cities in the west. In recent years the connections between high motor vehicle use and rising obesity rates, crumbling road infrastructure, and deteriorating air quality have caused city officials to reexamine the transportation systems of the west. One solution advocates, city officials, and planning professionals have begun examining is active transportation (walking, cycling, and public transit). Research suggests that a robust …

My Catalyst, Gabrielle Gambino Lyon

Celebration of Learning

Over the course of my internship and shadow program with Pepper Lawson Construction and Ziegler Cooper Architects, I was able to explore the various career paths involved in the design, construction, and civil engineering fields. My work on the construction site of a high-rise apartment building located in the heart of Houston, TX allowed me first-hand experience working and learning alongside project engineers, contractors, building developers, and the construction team.

This project was the perfect confluence of my main areas of interest: structural, mechanical, civil, and environmental engineering, as well as architecture. My daily work consisted of on-site walk throughs, …

Tokyo 20/20

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

With the Olympic and Paralympic Games heading to Tokyo in 2020, the city is going through a flurry of urban development and design change. And the revitalisation of public space is at the heart of the project

Open Spaces, Open Hearts

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

Public space in the city provides exercise and discovery, a chance to commune with nature and neighbours. Landscape architects are addressing human needs in their designs, lifting citizens' spirits with their clever eye for sustainability, smart technology and authenticity

Assessment Of Expanding Light Rail Transit Systems Versus Highway Systems: Influence On Land Use Change And Habitat Fragmentation, Behnoud Aghapour

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses - Archive

The purpose of this research is to assess and investigate the impact of expanding the Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems versus conventional highway systems for land use change, land formation, and habitat fragmentation in the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan area as a highly developing urban area. The DFW metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing urban areas in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). Successfully accommodating this population growth requires North Texans to collectively address important issues including: environmental degradation, suburbanization, suburban sprawl, landscape formation and fragmentation, lack of public transportation, community and well-being needs, transportation expansion, …

Chinese Garden Of Friendship And Sydney’S Chinatown : Friendship And Something Beyond At Darling Harbor, Wendy W. Tan

Publications and Research

Chinese Garden of Friendship was a gift from China; Sydney’ Chinatown is a Chinese Australian community, and they are adjacent to each other at Darling Harbor of Sydney, Australia. The author made visits there to witness their beauties. Besides, she also explored other connections—friendship; Feng Shui; and cultural diversity within these two famous tour sites.

Embody Phenomenal Transparency : The Expanded Application Of "Phenomenal Transparency" In Landscape Architecture, Hongfei Li

Masters Theses

Phenomenal Transparency was first identified from cubism painting and applied to architectural analysis by Colin Rowe and Slutzky in 1963. In terms of the discussion of form, this spatial quality synthesizes and demonstrates complex orders and organizations in a structural way which could be comprehend through experience. From the perspective of modern physics considering the traditional space as timespace continuum, the intentionally ambiguous space creates simultaneous perception and actively mutual relationship between human and time-space which is the essential forum of Phenomenology in current context.

The thesis bridges the theory of “Phenomenal Transparency“, the theory of “Phenomenology” in aspect of …

The Future Of Agriculture In Miami, Siyu Zheng

Masters Theses

Miami is facing an inevitable future in which sea level rise will submerge some of the city and most of the Everglades and agriculture area by 2100.

Phase one investigates the impact on ecosystems surrounding Miami due to climate shift and rising sea level. During this phase, the effect of sea level rise (SLR) on ecosystems in Miami will be analyzed using the existing Land Cover Distribution Map and Land Cover Change Report posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Phase two talks about the farming land being taken over by the wetland. However, both wetland and farming …

Life After Dark, Austin Bamford

Masters Theses

Witnessing the movements of the moon, stars, Milky Way and meteors is a fundamental first step in examining our roles in the universe and revealing the material origins of the landscapes we inhabit. It is this cosmic understanding that leads us to steward our environments and identify who we are.

We see the choreography of the stars not only by seeing the celestial bodies with telescopes or the naked eye, but also by experiencing the ways in which ambient light interacts with ground—changing by the minute, season and year. It is the dynamics between source and surface that catches us …

Future Street, Wushuang Xing

Masters Theses

This book seeks to identify future street typology in the City of Miami for better adaptation to sea-level rise, hurricanes and flooding. Based on the current transportation system, streets in Miami could be improved and be more resilient during natural disasters and be more navigable after disasters have passed. Currently, urban streets in Miami always confront failure during and after hurricanes and flooding. Because of rising sea levels, these problems are going to increase in severity, which could have an even greater impact on people’s daily lives and recovery after disaster. Consequently, improving urban street typology in Miami could have …

Water Voyage From Quabbin To Boston, Ling Xia

Masters Theses

This thesis focus on investigating on revealing the powerful Quabbin to Boston water system. In Boston, whenever we turn on our tap, our shower head, there is water coming out. Being driven by the curiosity of want to know the source of the water, the research eventually get to know the Quabbin Reservoir. Being fascinated by the giant body of water which provides water for people of the big Boston, in phase one the research begins with finding the hidden story of the displaced people who lost their land because of Quabbin reservoir. However, the way of the researching cannot …

Threading Puddles : Stormwater Management As A Way To Address The Impact Of Miami's Future Fresh Water Shortage Due To Increasing Water Demand And Saltwater Intrusion, Jing Zeng

Masters Theses

The city of Miami will face significant challenges in the future of changing climate. Compared with other cities in Florida, Miami is lucky to have the abundant groundwater resource from its surficial aquifer —Biscayne aquifer, which provides potable water for 3 million people of the region. But, as climate change progresses, Florida is expected to experience warmer temperature, more prolong drought, higher precipitation events and more intense storms. All these factors will influence the hydrologic system and current water management due to the uncertainty.

Climate variability will dictate the amount of water available to replenish the suificial aquifer. The low-lying …

Wastescape : Stitching The Process Of Natural Decomposition Back Into The Public Realm, Yu Pei

Masters Theses

The research starts with an interest in waste management in New York City which is the most wasteful city in the world. The city spends extra energy and creates more environmental and social problems by transporting them out of the city and dumping them in the landfill.

With the original question of how to bring the waste back to the city and how to get people close to the waste, Phase I investigates the composition, quantity and mobility of the waste management in New York City and raises the objective of bringing waste back into the city within the broader …

Reviving Floodplain In Miami, Shangyuan Li

Masters Theses

This is a thesis carried out in three phases. Phase 1 and Phase 2 are research-based, and Phase 3 is exploring the future design schemes under the principles and criteria that have been set up in Phase 1 and 2.

Phase 1 is focused on understanding the water dynamics and major issues in Miami, questions like why Miami is so vulnerable to flooding, and where the water comes from are answered. The conclusions of this phase are scientific principles of how water behaves and how water is managed in the South Florida region. Moreover, critical issues caused by flooding and …

Guide The Flood : Miami Vulnerable Neighborhoods Flood Adaptation Design, Zhe Zhao

Masters Theses

When it comes to the future of Miami, what else could be instead of waiting to be swallowed by the sea?

This thesis starts with a group pre-research on different aspects related to the rising up sea-level in Miami. By analyzing the existed urban fabric and typologies, the author tries to use the current segregated open space in every block to create a new open space system to reduce the sea-level-rise influence. Therefore, the goal for the thesis is to provide a powerful and gynamic open space system to the rising sea-level.

The thesis is structured in three phases. In …

The Arctic Commons, A. Gavin Zeitz

Masters Theses

The Arctic Commons envisions a world where geopolitical cooperation and transnational friendship generate an ethos of planetary collectivism promoting the future stability in the Arctic and rest of the world. This book will be a guide to understanding the Arctic at a range of scales, from governmental to regional, and finally the experiential and phenomenal that engages the unique ground conditions. The Arctic Commons encourages political action to create a new network of infrastructure that operates as a model for retrofiting global systems which currently fail to represent the common interests of the everyday citizen. Humankind’s current standards for social …

Home · Land : Olmsted's Legacy And Gentrification In Boston, Ma, Jessica Wilson

Masters Theses

Home • land is a master of landscape architecture thesis project encompassing an expansive body of trans-disciplinary research around the issue of gentrification and cultural displacement. The outcome is a proposal for a Community Land Trust (CLT) around Columbia Road in Boston, MA - the “missing link” of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace park system. This book examines the impetus of Olmsted’s Legacy and the mayor’s promise to complete the “final jewel” of the necklace, the vectors of gentrification acting on the site, and the strategies and tactics that might aid in combating rather than catalyzing gentrification in this neighborhood. …