TU Delft Open Access Journals
Not a member yet
3113 research outputs found
Sort by
Study on the Changing of Traditional Urban Fabric in Shanghai Old Town
Get PDFDuring the regeneration process of historic built environment in the megacities like Shanghai, traditional urban fabric and modern urban fabric have different spatial characteristics. The traditional urban fabric in Shanghai, which is represented by Lilong houses, can offer highly shared public and semi-public spaces in daily life. Unfortunately, after nearly 20 years of large-scale renewal process, there is only about 40% of the traditional urban fabric retained in Shanghai Old Town, which deeply depends on the delineation and planning requirements of Historic Conservation Area. In the past two years, in the planning of core conservation zone, Shanghai tries a new reconstruction way by demolishing old house and building new house with similar height and density as the former ones, to maintain the urban fabric and improve the environment quality. Taking Luxiangyuan as an example, the spatial pattern was inherited to a certain extent, the style and the elements of new house echoed with Lilong buildings. This paper finds that confronting with the challenges of disappearing traditional urban fabric, the former planning and "fabric reconstruction" practice has certain limitations, such as the disappearance of the high sharing character of roads and alleys
The impact of self-driving cars on the national transport system: an assessment for Belgium
Get PDFWe study how full automation of the car fleet affects traffic volumes, congestion, and fuel consumption at the country level in Belgium. The central scenario in this paper looks at the combined effect of a lower opportunity cost of travel time, an increase in the acquisition price of cars by 20%, a decrease in insurance costs by 50% and a decrease in fuel consumption per km by 10%. The improvement in fuel efficiency always dominates the increase in acquisition costs, and average monetary costs decrease. Overall car travel increases by 21 up to 26%. Despite the improvement in fuel efficiency, total fuel consumption for diesel and gasoline increases by 5 up to 10%. The impact on the speed of road modes is highly location specific. A sensitivity analysis revealed that there is a threshold improvement in fuel efficiency where the “rebound effect” is nullified. To counteract the effects of full automation on total demand for car travel, a road charge close to 20 EUR cent per km would be needed
City Narratives as Places of Meaningfulness, Appropriation and Integration
Get PDFThis issue is an invitation to look beyond the definitions of meaningfulness, appropriation and integration, and explore the relations between them. We have liberally arranged the articles under the three main themes but, as it can easily become clear, there are overlaps among the themes. In that way, this issue offers not only a geographical journey along different urban narratives, but also an expedition into the network of interrelated terms and spatial practices
River basins and deltas need a second game-change
Get PDFRiver basins and deltas can be considered as complex systems with dynamics resulting from natural processes. These dynamics have generated many ecosystem services, but they are also erratic in nature.Since the industrial revolution, the belief has emerged that these systems can be controlled, thereby suppressing the erratic nature of rivers and deltas and maximizing economic benefits. This has led to a game change in the development of rivers and deltas: until the mid-19th century, the natural system was dominant and economic and urban development followed; after the mid-19th century, economic and urban development became dominant and the river and delta systems were increasingly adapted to the new economic and urban realities. The result of this first game change was the disappearance of sufficient room for the natural dynamics of river and delta systems. This has led to major problems in the current times of climate change, which can only be tackled with a second game change, which takes more into account the natural dynamics of the river and delta systems and offers more space for these dynamics.An example of what this second game change could look like is a proposal for the reorganization of the main discharge of the Rhine and Maas rivers in the Dutch Rhine-Meuse delta. This reorganization has major consequences, but also offers new opportunities for the water system, as well as for the natural environment and for port development, urban development, and the necessary energy transition. For this new game change, design explorations are necessary to investigate how a new synergy can be achieved by combining all these aspects
Energy as a spatio-temporal project & the Rhine Basin urbanisation
No full textLooming crises demand viable territorial responses for their interdependent challenges. Approaching energy as a spatio-temporal project can reorient spatial planning and urban design to organise such responses. The current context of quickened ‘energy transition’ requires the investigation of the scaling-up of renewable energy so that the coming decades can compose socio-ecologically just alternatives in renewed urbanisation paradigms towards the 22nd century. Accordingly, the project proposes a conceptual tool and methodology for the transitional territories of operational energy landscapes in the Rhine Basin. First, it maps the evidence of non-renewable energy, then anticipates and assesses the ‘energy transition’ in its current and future landscapes, informing its territorial design. The project surpasses current dichotomies between the urban and rural, conservation and intervention, and nature and society, developing hybrid landscapes where technologies for mitigation, restoration and sustainability are grounded in the temporalities of the habitats for humans and more-than-humans. In other words, a reorganisation of the links between energy, food, and work into ecological frameworks. Moreover, it works as a platform that contributes with speculative spatial thinking to refresh the concept of sustainability, problematising the geopolitical project for the planet into a geological age of climate instability
Experimental study on a breaking-enforcing floating breakwater
Get PDFFloating breakwaters are moored structures that attenuate wave energy through a combination of reflection and dissipation. Studies into floating breakwaters have been generally restricted to optimising the attenuation performance. This study presents a novel floating breakwater type that was developed to have good attenuation performance while keeping wave drift loads as small as possible. The floating breakwater was designed as a submerged parabolic beach that enforces wave energy dissipation through breaking. The design was tested in a 3D shallow-water wave basin in captive and moored setups for regular and irregular wave conditions. Results are presented in terms of attenuation performance, motions, and (mooring) loads. The results show that the breaking of waves improves the attenuation performance of the floater in captive setup. However, in moored setup, the attenuation performance was dominated by diffraction and radiation of the wave field, with breaking being of secondary importance. This shows that breaking-enforcing floating breakwaters have potential, but require a high vertical hydrostatic and/or mooring stiffness in order to enforce intense breaking. Mean wave drift loads on the object showed significant difference between breaking and non-breaking waves in both setups, with breaking waves leading to lower normalized loads. This is attributed to breaking-induced set-up and set-down of the water level. As a result, the new breakwater design has a more favourable balance between wave attenuation and drift loads than common (i.e., box-, pontoon-, or mat-type) floating breakwater designs. Tests with varying surface roughness showed that floating breakwaters may benefit from dual-use functions that naturally increase the roughness (e.g., shellfish, vegetation), which have a marginal effect on the attenuation performance, but increase the added mass and hydrodynamic damping and as such, reduce mooring line loads
Nile basin land and water acquisition research agenda: A policy brief
Get PDFLand and water acquisitions exacerbate the complexity of the water allocation challenges in the Nile region and consequently have contributed to the growing tensions along the Nile River. Smallholders are especially negatively affected by the increase in water use by foreign investors, the loss of access to the commons, and disposition of ownership. This policy brief is a result of a scenario workshop organized in early 2020 in Leiden, the Netherlands, during which some 30 young scientists from a variety of disciplines joined forces to develop four plausible Nile-futures in 2050. The exercise revealed new challenges and potential knowledge gaps in four areas of policy-based research: local innovation and technology, institutional capacity, gover- nance, and investment regulation. Most urgent was the recommendation to have a unified basin- wide university, which would support basin-wide legislation to promote sustainable farming and reduce the negative impacts of land and water acquisitions
The Making of International Communication Standards: Towards a Theory of Power in Standardization
Get PDFIn this critical literature review, we provide an overview of the history of international communication standards to argue that a comprehensive theory of standardization needs not only to be a theory of technology or institutional configuration(s), but also a theory of power. Such a theory should account for three forms of power respectively in the realms of economy (control over capital), politics (control over practice), and ideology (control over rationalities). By providing an overview starting the standardization of the telegraph, to the Internet, and wireless telecommunication technologies, most notably 5G, we show how these different aspects play significant roles in standardization and need to be accommodated in a non-deterministic manner. Finally, we explore whether there is a role for the public interest in such a theory of power in standardization
Physiomimetic Façade Design: Systematics for a function-oriented transfer of biological principles to thermally-adaptive façade design concepts
Get PDFAdaptive façades are designed to actively regulate the exchange of material and energy flows and thus improve the balance between comfort and energy consumption. However, their technical complexity leads to higher development efforts, maintenance and costs, and ultimatelyfewer implementations. Embedded adaptive functions could be an opportunity to reduce these drawbacks. If embedded adaptivity is to work within a design, the particularities of geometry and material arrangements must be considered. Nature offers fascinating models for this approach, which frames the objectives of this doctoral dissertation. The dissertation examines both adaptive façades and biology criteria that support a function-oriented transfer of thermo-adaptive principles in the early design stage. The research work discusses whether the technical complexity can be reduced by biomimetic designs and which role geometric design strategies play for thermo-adaptive processes. The research work is divided into three phases, following the top-down process in the discipline biomimetics, supplemented by methods from product design and semantic databases. The first phase is dedicated to the analysis of the contextual framework and criteria of façades aiming at thermal adaptation. Further, transfer systematics are developed that guide the analysis and selection process. In the second phase, analogies in biology are collected that appear suitable. Selected examples are examined to identify and systematically describe their functional principle. Two exemplary descriptions herald the third phase, in which functional façade models are created and evaluated. The result of this research work provides a conceptual approach to generate function-imitating biomimetic façade designs, so-called physio-mimetic façade designs