Papers by Cynthia Girling
Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, 2022
Background: Cities consume a disproportionate amount of energy for internal temperature regulatio... more Background: Cities consume a disproportionate amount of energy for internal temperature regulation. Being able to reduce cities’ cooling load on hot summer days can decrease energy consumption while improving occupants’ thermal comfort. The urban canopy is an effective shading agent, adding cooling benefits to existing buildings and streets while providing other ecological and physiological values. Yet the building and street shading dynamic is a highly complex system that involves micro-level building components and macro-level variables. Introducing urban canopy to such a complex system creates another challenge, as urban canopy variables can also interact with buildings at both micro- and macro-levels. In order to accurately represent the urban canopy shading effect, it is necessary to account for the interactions among buildings, streets, and urban canopies. Methods: This study simulates the shading effect of urban canopy measured by aerial laser scanning (ALS) in the City of Va...
Landscape Journal, 1993
... generated problems in suburban America occurred during the same period that urban historians ... more ... generated problems in suburban America occurred during the same period that urban historians like ... by the relationship between the perimeter circulation system and the common spaces that it ... the tradi-tional living room faced onto a yard and the public green beyond, while the ...
Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 2010
Landscape and Urban Planning, 2003
2017 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications, Computers and Signal Processing (PACRIM), 2017
Tomorrow's immersive applications will leverage Mixed Reality interfaces accessing a multitud... more Tomorrow's immersive applications will leverage Mixed Reality interfaces accessing a multitude of services from distributed clouds. They will face extreme latency constraints, massive datasets, spontaneous collaboration, and constant service churn. This paper outlines our experience evolving an application designed to support collaborative work in Urban Design (UD) practices. The application, UD Co-Spaces, recently weathered significant churn as a core service was discontinued and replaced by a service with a subtly different API. A “dumb pipes” approach, where services communicate through a simple message queue, facilitated this evolution with relatively little disruption to the rest of the system. We show how this strategy can be used to reintroduce new features to the system, and is sustainable as the system's interfaces evolve to use Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments.
2017 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications, Computers and Signal Processing (PACRIM)
Tomorrow's immersive applications will leverage Mixed Reality interfaces accessing a multitud... more Tomorrow's immersive applications will leverage Mixed Reality interfaces accessing a multitude of services from distributed clouds. They will face extreme latency constraints, massive datasets, spontaneous collaboration, and constant service churn. This paper outlines our experience evolving an application designed to support collaborative work in Urban Design (UD) practices. The application, UD Co-Spaces, recently weathered significant churn as a core service was discontinued and replaced by a service with a subtly different API. A “dumb pipes” approach, where services communicate through a simple message queue, facilitated this evolution with relatively little disruption to the rest of the system. We show how this strategy can be used to reintroduce new features to the system, and is sustainable as the system's interfaces evolve to use Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments.
Environmental Science & Policy
UniverCity: Building a New Green Neighborhood Cynthia Girling If North American cities are to mak... more UniverCity: Building a New Green Neighborhood Cynthia Girling If North American cities are to make the significant tech- nological, physical, and social-cultural shifts necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, urban form will have to change dramatically. Many urban regions are beginning to rise to this challenge, taking steps to control sprawl, air and water pollution, and the fragmentation of urban ecosys- tems. One region that has made notable progress is greater Vancouver, British Columbia. Since passage of Vancouver’s Livable Region Strategic Plan in 1996, aggressive steps have been made to encour- age more sustainable development patterns based on core goals: protect the region’s Green Zone (agricultural and environmentally significant lands); build complete com- munities 1 ; and achieve a compact metropolitan form that offers increased transportation choice. Under the plan, attempts are being made to direct regional growth inward toward nodes of density, connected by comm...
86 pp. Bookmarks supplied by UO. Includes maps and figures. Published July 1996; most recent acti... more 86 pp. Bookmarks supplied by UO. Includes maps and figures. Published July 1996; most recent activity (memorandum) January 28, 1999. Captured January 11, 2008.
The research presented here examines how a web-based urban design reference tool called elementsd... more The research presented here examines how a web-based urban design reference tool called elementsdb was used in four landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmental design courses. Using a sequence of questionnaires, focus groups, interviews and content analysis, the research tested the hypothesis that interactive use of the database would enhance student learning by providing students with spatial data-rich precedents of welldesigned buildings, streets and sites. This paper introduces elementsdb, which provides high quality project specific urban design precedents, presents its structure and contents, and illustrates how students utilized it. The findings reveal that many of the students acquired some basic urban design knowledge, and we found three categories of student use: i) as a passive reference medium to look up information; ii) as a mechanism to assist with critically evaluating existing urban development; iii) in the a form-making process to assist in the creation...
While being major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, cities also suffer some of the most severe clima... more While being major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, cities also suffer some of the most severe climate change impacts. Urban forests have gained increasing recognition as nature-based solutions to climate change via the various benefits they provide, such as carbon sequestration and temperature regulation. Many cities have developed climate change and/or urban forest policies to enhance climate resilience and support urban livability. However, it is still unclear whether these policies consider and address potential alignment between climate action and urban forest planning and management. This study explored whether and to what extent urban forest and climate change policies are mutually supportive and reinforcing, by conducting a review of climate change and urban forest policies in the largest 20 Canadian cities. Results suggest significant gaps and discrepancies between these policies, across and within study cities, indicating potential weaknesses related to stakeholder/actor enga...
If North American cities are to make the significant tech- nological, physical, and social-cultur... more If North American cities are to make the significant tech- nological, physical, and social-cultural shifts necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, urban form will have to change dramatically. Many urban regions are beginning to rise to this challenge, taking steps to control sprawl, air and water pollution, and the fragmentation of urban ecosys- tems. One region that has made notable progress is greater Vancouver, British Columbia. Since passage of Vancouver's Livable Region Strategic Plan in 1996, aggressive steps have been made to encour- age more sustainable development patterns based on core goals: protect the region's Green Zone (agricultural and environmentally significant lands); build complete com- munities 1 ; and achieve a compact metropolitan form that offers increased transportation choice. Under the plan, attempts are being made to direct regional growth inward toward nodes of density, connected by commuter train, passenger ferry, light-rail transit, rapid bus, and, in the case of Vancouver itself, local bus. It has recently been shown that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from residential areas depends on several interrelated factors: the form and density of neighborhoods must enable easy access to shared public services; alternative modes of travel such as transit, walking, and biking must become viable as alternatives to private automobiles; and the general building stock must become more energy efficient. 2 To meet these objectives, proponents of Smart Growth have espoused including services and places of work within residential neighbor- hoods. Robert Cervero, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, among others, has demonstrated the equal importance of bring- ing housing to employment nodes. 3
The authors have been developing computer-based decision support tools to bring education, visual... more The authors have been developing computer-based decision support tools to bring education, visualization and modeling to design charrettes (design-oriented participatory community planning events) and other design-oriented public workshops. These tools have been created to engage the public together with professionals in community planning and design. One goal of the work is to close a challenging gap in knowledge and understanding between professionals and stakeholder groups charged with generating and evaluating planning alternatives. Design charrettes are well supported by qualitative, design-based participatory methods that engage the public, such as with visioning and brainstorming techniques that draw out aspirations and preferences about future growth. In order to achieve more sustainable models of urban form, charrettes must also be supported by quantitative, analysis-based methods that model and evaluate performance against indicators of sustainable development such as hous...
Landscape Journal, 1995
... Robert Melnick, the depart-ment chair, and our colleagues in the department worked hard toope... more ... Robert Melnick, the depart-ment chair, and our colleagues in the department worked hard toopen our schedules and provide office support for this project. Our students in design studios and seminars have contributed fresh ideas and insights about the suburban landscape. ...
... Robert Melnick, the depart-ment chair, and our colleagues in the department worked hard toope... more ... Robert Melnick, the depart-ment chair, and our colleagues in the department worked hard toopen our schedules and provide office support for this project. Our students in design studios and seminars have contributed fresh ideas and insights about the suburban landscape. ...
Uploads
Papers by Cynthia Girling