Architecture and Urban Development (IJAUD)

Higher and middle income residents in Nairobi, Kenya have demonstrated a great craving for gated community housing. The phenomenon is manifested in all forms of residential property advertisements and in most new residential developments. The objective of this paper is to establish the drivers of the gated community developments in Nairobi County by identifying and documenting the push factors causing migration of a section of urban dwellers from open to gated neighborhoods. The study results are expected to influence urban housing policy decisions towards developing sustainable urban housing typologies. The researcher reviewed existing literature from local and international scholars in order to understand the variables in the phenomenon before engaging in a field study. This study adopted a cross-sectional survey design so as to allow the researcher to relate many different variables at the same time. The target population of gated communities was restricted to only those classified as lifestyle and prestige types that were found to be complete and occupied at the time of study. Eight gated communities were randomly sampled for the study. The main findings that drive GCs were security, lifestyle and location. Further, residents wanted to be involved in the decision making in management of the GCs. The study recommends clear development guidelines, flexible building standards and offer quality public services.

The expansion and growth of cities is a remarkable phenomenon in urban planning literature, so that unpredictable developments have become more evident in recent decades, especially in cities that have undergone changes in their physical structure following the promotion of their political role. The present paper seeks to identify the factors driving growth in the developed areas of Ardebil city and extract basic factors and variables by investigating development of Ardebil. In this study, 27 variables have been tested in 920 expansion blocks during the years 1996 to 2011 using GIS and factor analysis. Four main groups including congestion factor, external factor, access factor and facilities are identified as driving forces of growth. The final combination of four factors in the Arc GIS environment show that the north, east and south east blocks of Ardebil had a higher score than the other blocks; in other words, these factors have the most effect on the growth of these areas. In addition, the Southwest blocks with the lowest score of between 0 and 2 have had the least impact from among the factors mentioned.

This study is a field research that aims to determine the extent of green open spaces that serve as neighborhood parks in Housing Public Company Panakkukang, which consists of three areas: Toddopuli, Tidung, and Tamalate. Population in this study, is the third of the areas. The selected sample is Tamalate, arguing that the area is in the middle and is central to the whole Housing Public Company Panakkukang. Data collection tool used is the Global Positioning System. Data analysis techniques, qualitative analysis that compares the comparison theory / standard SNI 03-1733-2004. Standard Housing in Urban Environmental Planning with the reality on the field. Based on the results and discussion, it is known that the area of green open space in the area of Housing Public Company Panakkukang Makassar city in general is not in accordance with the provisions of the extent of green open space required in SNI 03-1733-2004.

Although it has physical effects, temporary landscape as a new issue provides various potential as a place events that can’t be ignored because of wide range effects on promoting and upgrading the quality of space. The purpose of this study is to analyze the status and mechanism of temporary landscape. As a basic and practical research, it is done by using the correlation method and descriptive-analytic approach using documents and the researcher’s studies. The mechanism of temporary landscape is specified by logical reasoning. The results of the research show that the components of temporary landscapes include fixed, semifixed and nonfixed (moving) components. Temporary landscapes in various range types as events, disasters and second elevations, by their enriched or corrosive functions can create a new experience, as a stimulus. Therefore they leads to conscious and unconscious social actions. So they can affect people's perception of the space. On the other hand temporary landscapes can create the meaning of space and affects the quality of space. Therefore they can cause a space distinction that lead to create a unique space.

Climate changes, failure to complete the natural cycle of water in the city due to unsustainable construction of the urban environments and increase of impervious surfaces, lack of nutrition of underground aquifer in the cities, unsustainable management of stormwater and the floods due to them in the periods of rainfall caused to provide an approach that is called water sensitive urban design. This approach offers methods in the three parts; Sustainable management of stormwater, domestic scale water management and wastewater management. Different countries have pay to utilize of these methods according to their climatic conditions and their urban forms each in different ways. This study shows for achieve success in use of WSUD methods we need situation and requirements such as: Legal framework, ability of methods to close water cycle in cities to natural water cycle, pay attention to aesthetic concepts and aspects, methods ability to achieve the technical objectives, pay attention to type of methods and the scale of site, pay attention to climate conditions and specifications in implementation of projects, the measure of selected methods efficiency, public acceptance and integrated planning in the projects.

This paper gives a pictorial view of the relevance of lean thinking, particularly the application of muda as a supplement to the sustainable improvement diagnosis technique of existing public office buildings, for a fuller assessment of users’ requirement in Nigeria. The impact of perceived muda was related to the triple bottom line of sustainable development on perceived job productivity and design features and estimated from endusers’ perspective, using diagnostic POE as data acquiring tool, while the confirmatory analysis was done through AMOS, SPSS and MS Excel to explain the relationship between the different variables. The findings showed that muda is inherent in public office buildings and it has highly significant causal effects of 0.66 and 0.76 respectively on perceived job productivity and design features; it also has strong effect sizes of 44% and 58% in explaining both their variances respectively. The result revealed that users require more improvement in facilities as against spatial plan and structures, while there is a medium and positive correlation of 0.48 between perceived job productivity and design features – implying that improvement in design features will consequently lead to improvement in perceived job productivity. The study concludes that lean thinking is relevant to building improvement and could serve as good supplement to the current improvement diagnosis of existing public office buildings, but not as a substitute since data were only collected from users who are not able to provide the required technical data that would otherwise warrant use of equipment.

Marcos Novak mainly considers a type of architecture cuts loose from the expectations of logic, perspective, and laws of gravity, and has invented a set of conceptual tools for thinking about and constructing territories in cyberspace. Novak introduces the concept of "liquid architecture”, a fluid, imaginary landscape that exists only in the Digital domain. He views trans-architecture as an expression of the "fourth dimension”, which incorporates the time alongside space among its primary elements. Novak's liquid architecture bends, rotates, and mutates in interaction with the person who inhabits it. In liquid architecture, "science and art, the worldly and the spiritual, the contingent and the permanent," converge in a poetics of space made possible by emerging, virtual reality technologies. Novak describes his work as a process of metamorphosis, a “symphony of space”, in which 3D constructions have the properties of Music, an experience he has since referred to as “Navigable Music”. In this paper what considered are those phenomenological and post structural approaches and states that they also have become outdated. New senses have been attained through the crossbreeding between the reality of the individual and the virtuality of the structure. A strong concept of space, then comes forward, where the manifestation of mind in the realm of the body calls for what is to be perceived as real. The architecture is now characterized by the fusion of information, art, and technology; the purpose of this research, to question how those realities are constructed and how they take the individual into account.