This research introduces the concept of visibility as a useful tool to assess the democratic features of public spaces. It understands democratic public spaces as open spaces, which are accessible to all and allow different cultural expressions for individuals and groups. The concept of visibility refers to the visual perception of the observable features of distinctive urban groups in public space, which give evidence of how these groups engage with, shape, and construct public space. The re...

This thesis proposes a framework to address the design process in design education. Building upon the assumption that teachers, being professional designers, do not discuss the design process in the architectural design studio and do not have a vocabulary to do so, five generic elements or anchor points are defined which represent the basic design skills. The validity of the framework and the assumption is tested respectively in interviews with a variety of designers and in observations of di...

The housing stock in Vietnam has boomed in the last few decades, especially in urbanised areas. However, the increasing number of housing units did not go along with housing quality, a healthy living environment or a sustainable building stock. Recent legislation only applies to public buildings but not the private housing sector, which accounts for the majority of the building stock. Therefore, this research aimed to contribute to a more sustainable building stock in Vietnam by improving the...

Numerous actors have been involved in the planning of the port and city of Naples. National and local authorities—namely central government, the Region, the Municipality of Naples, and the Port Authority—act upon the port at different scales, according to diverging interest and by using different planning tools. Each entity has different spatial claims and contrastive views on what port city integration can be. Their diverse goals have led port and city to develop into separate entities, ...

In this brief, accessible volume, the authors – an urban philosopher and a mathematician-physicist – explain the surprising new findings from the sciences that are beginning to transform environmental design in the modern era. Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros explore fractals, networks, self-organization, dynamical systems and other revolutionary ideas, describing them to non-science readers in a direct and engaging way. The book also examines fascinating new topics of design, includi...

A sound understanding of how our built environment came about constitutes a core competence in any architectural training and professional experience. The history of urbanism on the European continent, in particular, constitutes a fundamental basis for thinking about the city today.

This textbook offers a synthetic, chronological and illustrated overview of the essential ideas, protagonists and paradigms that dominated the theory and practice of urbanism on the European continent from Antiq...