Urbanism On Track

"Tracking technologies such as GPS, mobile phone tracking, video and RFID monitoring are rapidly becoming part of daily life. Technological progress offers huge possibilities for studying human activity patterns in time and space in new ways. Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) held an international expert meeting in early 2007 to investigate the current and future possibilities and limitations of the application of tracking technologies in urban design and spatial planning. This book is the result of that expert meeting." --Book Jacket.

Tracking technologies such as GPS, mobile phone tracing, video and RFID monitoring are rapidly becoming part of daily life. Technological progress offers huge possibilities for studying human activity patterns in time and space in new ways. Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) held an international expert meeting in early 2007 to investigate the current and future possibilities and limitations of the application of tracking technologies in urban design and spatial planning. This book is the result of that expert meeting. Urbanism on Track introduces the reader to the basics of tracking research and provides insight into its advantages above other research techniques. But it also shows the bottlenecks in gathering and processing data and applying research results to real-life problems. Urbanism on Track showcases tracking experiments in urban studies, planning and design – from pedestrian navigation in Austria to Danish field tests, from TU Delft's Spatial Metro project to MIT's Real Time Rome and last but not least the Sense of the City project realised in Eindhoven. Urbanism on Track discusses the relevance of tracking for policy making, the possibilities of a new cartography and the implementation of tracking technologies in urban design and planning. This makes Urbanism on Track a unique book, setting the agenda for the structural embedment of research using tracking technologies in urbanism.

The themes of this "Arcjitecture Annual" focuses on how the materials, design, construction and running of a building can affect the environment.

Understanding Urbanism presents built environment students with the latest approaches to studying urbanism. The book is written in an accessible and easy-to-understand format by leading urban academics and practitioners with decades of teaching and practical experience. As students move through the chapters, they will develop a critical understanding of the different ways architects, urban and social planners, urban designers, heritage professionals, engineers and other built environment professionals design our cities. Importantly, the book shows how and why the built environment professional of the future will need to work within the Indigenous context of cities in countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.

Recent developments in tracking technologies have opened up new possibilities for research into tourist spatial behavior. This book examines the various technologies available to track pedestrians and motorized vehicles as well as the moral, ethical and legal issues arising from the utilization of data thus obtained.

Tracking technologies such as GPS, mobile phone tracing, video and RFID monitoring are rapidly becoming part of daily life. Technological progress offers huge possibilities for studying human activity patterns in time and space in new ways. Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) held an international expert meeting in early 2007 to investigate the current and future possibilities and limitations of the application of tracking technologies in urban design and spatial planning. This book is the result of that expert meeting. Urbanism on Track introduces the reader to the basics of tracking research and provides insight into its advantages above other research techniques. But it also shows the bottlenecks in gathering and processing data and applying research results to real-life problems. Urbanism on Track showcases tracking experiments in urban studies, planning and design from pedestrian navigation in Austria to Danish field tests, from TU Delft's Spatial Metro project to MIT's Real Time Rome and last but not least the Sense of the City project realized in Eindhoven. Urbanism on Track discusses the relevance of tracking for policy making, the possibilities of a new cartography and the implementation of tracking technologies in urban design and planning. This makes Urbanism on Track a unique book, setting the agenda for the structural embedment of research using tracking technologies in urbanism.

Urban planning is a complex field of knowledge and practice. Through the decades, theoretical debate has formed an eclectic set of possible perspectives, without finding, in our opinion, a coherent paradigmatic framework which can adequately guide the interpretation and action in urban planning. The hypothesis of this book is that the attempts of founding an autonomous planning theory are inadequate if they do not explore two interconnected fields: architecture and public policies.The book critically reviews a selected set of current practices and theoretical founding works of modern and contemporary urban planning by highlighting the continuous search for the epistemic legitimization of a large variety of experiences. The distinctive contribution of this book is a documented critique to the eclecticism and abstraction of the main international trends in current planning theory. The dialogic relationship with the traditions of architecture and public policy is proposed here in order to critically review planning theory and practice. The outcome is the proposal of a paradigmatic framework that, in the authors’ opinion, can adequately guide reflections and actions. A pragmatic and interpretative heritage and the project-orientated approach are the basis of this new spatial planning paradigm.

This book discusses the way that a nature-driven approach to urbanism can be applied at each of the urban scales; architectural design, urban design of neighborhoods, city planning and landscape architecture, and at the city and regional scales. At all levels nature-driven approaches to design and planning add to the quality of the built structure and furthermore to the quality of life experienced by people living in these environments. To include nature and greening to built structures is a good starting point and can add much value. The chapter authors have fiducia in giving nature a fundamental role as an integrated network in city design, or to make nature the entrance point of the design process, and base the design on the needs and qualities of nature itself. The highest existence of nature is a permanent ecosystem which endures stressors and circumstances for a prolonged period. In an urban context this is not always possible and temporality is an interesting concept explored when nature is not a permanent feature. The ecological contribution to the environment, and indirect dispersion of species, from a temporary location will, overall add biodiversity to the entire system.