There has been a long-standing debate about whether urban living is more or less sustainable than suburban living, and quality of life (QoL) is one of several key measures of the social sustainability of residential living. However, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined life satisfaction among residents of downtown high-rise living compared to residents living in suburban low-rise hou...

with the wind permanent flow in the cities, obtaining the minimal pollution in the environment is accessible. different policies have been considered for optimization of cities such as attachment and or reduction of building parts like air-traps, ceiling forms and so on. due to population growth in cities and the increasing need for resettlement these people in the cities, inevitably, to the hi...

As global interest in using engineered wood products in tall buildings intensifies due to the “green” credential of wood, it is expected that more tall wood buildings will be designed and constructed in the coming years. This, however, brings new challenges to the designers. One of the major challenges is how to design lateral load-resisting systems (LLRSs) with sufficient stiffness, strength, ...

This is an empirical study on the pricing of two vertical property attributes: floor level and building height. Floor level is the vertical location of a unit in a multi-storey building; the extra price paid for a higher floor level is labelled a floor-level premium. Previous hedonic price studies unequivocally showed that the floor-level premium is positive, but they were silent on whether its...

The main factors influencing the spatiotemporal variability of urban climate are quite widely recognized, including, for example, the thermal properties of materials used for surfaces and buildings, the mass, height and layout of the buildings themselves and patterns of land use. However, the roles played by particular factors vary from city to city with respect to differences in geographical l...

Over the early years of the 21 century, cities throughout the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf region have expanded more rapidly than ever before. Given the presence of a large volume of high-rise buildings allover the region, the local authority aims to set a new standard for sustainable development; with an integrated approach to maintain a balance between economy, quality, environmental...

With the exception of the 2003 Tokachi-Oki earthquake, strong ground recordings from large subduction earthquakes (Mw > 8.0) are meager. Furthermore there are no strong motion recordings of giant earthquakes. However, there is a growing set of high-quality broadband teleseismic recordings of large and giant earthquakes. In this thesis, we use recordings from the 2003 Tokachi-Oki (Mw 8.3) earthq...