Open urban public spaces comprise an important element for the development of social, cultural and economic activities of the population in the modern cities. These spaces are also considered regulators of the region’s climate conditions, providing better thermal, visual and auditory conditions which can be optimized by the application of appropriate strategies of bioclimatic design. The paper ...

Urban green spaces play an important role in maintaining urban biodiversity in the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. Plant-dependent insect assemblages such as Cerambycidae, in particular, are likely influenced by the existence of green spaces in Tokyo's urbanised environments. This study is the first comprehensive inventory of the cerambycid fauna in the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo. A cera...

New techniques to measure 2-D and 3-D visibility over urban spaces are presented in this paper. The concept of ‘isovist’, i.e. the visible space from a vantage point, could help in providing a quantifiable basis for Kevin Lynch's urban analysis, as outlined in his book The Image of the City. We also expand on the concept of 3-D isovists and develop a new technique to calculate them on Digital E...

Urban growth creates challenges recognized by the global community. Sustainable development is a widely accepted strategic framework in city planning and urban parks play an important role in it. Nonetheless, it is argued, that urban parks and other open green spaces are important for the quality of life of an increasingly urbanized society. Following the industrial revolution with its massive ...

Due to audiences’ diversity, local cultural spaces have the highest share in residents’ mass life. Therefore, these spaces are the necessary environment for social relations and face-to-face communication of residents of urban area. If these are well qualified, welfare would be promoted. This study aims at identifying and evaluating factor influencing quality of local cultural space...

This paper reports recent theoretical and creative results of an ongoing postdoctoral study entitled Sound Design for Urban Spaces. The study focuses on the design process of novel audio devices and studies listening strategies for people in transit through the city. Firstly, we will review some conceptual contributions concerning listening and acoustic analysis from the perspective of urban st...

Urban environments present unique challenges for landscape designers wishing to incorporate wildlife attractants into their designs. Cities such as Tucson, Arizona that are surrounded by relatively large expanses of native vegetation provide many opportunities for effectively enticing native wildlife into urban spaces. Patches of landscape can be designed that mimic vegetation composition found...

Today an important challenge is opening: designing public spaces by taking into account the augmented meaning carried by “new digital citizen and users”. New ways of digital communication, a broader network of digital information and the open data naturally transform also the physical space into something new we can call “phygital” (Momentum 2012). The usual way to read urban spaces could be im...