The Neighborhood Impact Assessment (NIA) [1]is an important instrument of the Brazilian Urban Policy enacted in the City Statute, Federal Law 10.257/2001. Considered by the national academic literature as a relevant instrument for local urban environmental management. However, in Brazil, the understanding that the environmental and the urban are part of the same context is not yet a reality within the local public administration sectors, with a deep disconnection of management and governance between the urban and environmental departments. The objective of this work was to analyze the application of NIA in medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo and to evaluate its contribution to the local urban environmental management of these cities. We also intend to evaluate the NIA integration with other sectors of local public management such as the environment, urban mobility, social housing, etc. As a methodology, we used NIA Process Components, verifying the absence or presence in the urban laws of four (04) medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo. We also interviewed civil servants from the environmental and urban sectors, supplementing information that was absent in laws and official documents. The results reveal that most municipalities do not have a specific law that regulates the NIA, and Master Plans, Land Use and Occupation Law regulate this instrument. Civil servants emphasize the weaknesses and strengths of the instruments. As potentialities of this instrument, they observed public participation, increased state control in environmentally sensitive areas, greater urban-environmental compensation mechanisms, and so on. Weaknesses signalize were: conflicts involving urban land subdivision, interference of the real estate market in the use and occupation of urban land, changes in the Master Plans by the city councilman aiming to meet the interests of private financial capital. The four cities, which are part of the Case Studies, have not yet effectively incorporated elements of climate change in their local governance. Issues related to social housing, expansion of slums, occupation of protected environmental areas by poor populations are still the most urgent priorities in these cities, as well as in many Latin American cities. The improvement and advancement of the articulation of the urban and environmental sectors in Brazilian cities must require thinking about better scientific methodological and governmental improvements.

Urban intensification seems to be a growing trend, especially in the context of severe land scarcity. Brownfields offer great potential in meeting the increasing demand for housing in major cities worldwide. Redevelopment projects appear to provide immediate solutions to housing shortages that are being experienced due to population pressures in large metropolitan areas. The paper explores the range of factors that property developers need to consider in their decision-making process when assessing the viability of brownfield redevelopments. This research, which employed a comparative case study approach, and examined two brownfield redevelopments in Auckland, focused on the economic, social, and environmental criteria that were utilised in the decision-making process. Document analysis of the two case studies, site observations, and semi-structured interviews with the property developers were the main data collection methods. The results suggested that the economic aspects of a brownfield redevelopment are the most important criteria that developers consider during the feasibility assessment of proposed projects. Projects that offer the potential for quick investment returns for all stakeholders are the preferred choice for developers. Brownfield redevelopments offer significant potential for invigorating local areas through urban intensification which boosts local businesses and encourages community revitalisation. The environmental concerns appear to be the lowest priority and little consideration is given to reducing the environmental impacts or incorporating green building practices in the new developments. A major shift from a purely economic focus toward a comprehensive environmental approach to new developments is needed to ensure the sustainable development of cities.

This qualitative study argues that occupant involvement in housing design and construction process should lead to more appropriate buildings that can sustain their usefulness with minimal changes. It documents the design of a house in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, South Africa that uses Open Building (OB) principles so that the house adapts to the changing needs of the family and maintains its intergenerational value. This project centres the occupant in the design and construction process and considers the house flexible and conceived by many authors. Based on this worldview, we use the following tools: a literature review on OB, an OB analysis of low-cost housing, and analysis of the design project. We compare low-cost housing projects using four OB principles: how the project involves the occupant’s agency to build; how the project separates its elements to facilitate this agency; whether the project focuses on providing a housing product, or a housing process; and, how sustainably the delivered structure can accommodate the occupant’s current and future construction. The paper illustrates these OB principles in the design of a low-cost, rural house project in Bushbuckridge to show that they also have value for the architecture at a small scale, and how a house can be designed to ensure that it adapts to the changing needs and creativity of the occupant. The paper concludes with the implications that OB principles have for the design process. The process no longer consists of a simple sequence that separated design and construction and ends with a housing product. Rather, the design and construction focus on delivering a building process that the occupant can take ownership of a sustain intergenerationally.

Coastal communities will be more vulnerable to floods in low-lying areas and seawater inundation as the sea level rises. Users will have to take a detour to use alternate roads while the vulnerable roads are closed, increasing travel time. A large amount of literature has been focused on addressing climate change and sea-level rise impacts, vulnerability, economic evaluation, and adaptation. However, few studies have been conducted to study the impacts of population dynamics due to sea level rise within future transportation network modeling. This study aims to identify the future transportation infrastructure in the 2035 model that is vulnerable to a two-foot sea level rise in the Tampa Bay Region, Florida. The impacts of these changes have been considered within three different relocation scenarios for the affected population in the inundated zones. This analysis uses the two-foot Mean Higher High-Level water surface data and the digital elevation data provided by NOAA for 2035. The findings of this study reveal how different sea level rise scenarios could affect the future estimates of the transportation system and could potentially inform future transportation planning decisions. The analysis found that approximately 358 lane miles of highway links will be inundated. Moreover, the number of trips produced, and the amount of congestion generated with each scenario were dependent on the population and employment relocation. The key recommendation of this research is to incorporate the potential impacts of population relocation due to sea level rise into transportation modeling. Generally, different scenarios for relocating population and employment generate new traffic demands, which could result in traffic congestion. Thus, transportation planners should simulate future sea level rise scenarios and evaluate their impact on the current transportation system. Findings from this study could help transportation planners and decision-makers identify the locations and transportation facilities that are most vulnerable to rising sea levels, allowing them to make more informed decisions about adaptation planning.

Recently, the direct causal relationship between the built environment and well-being has been shown to affect the quality of life as well as the performance of the urban environment. While it is often difficult to establish, the urban built environment plays a major role in shaping the way people act inside it. (Thwaites, Kevin, et al., 2016) While urbanisation takes place in a transforming society, societal development leaves its signature in urban spaces. When industries and development plans decline in some parts of the city, especially those with archaeological value, those parts will have been abandoned due to migration. Urban pockets or gaps inside the built environment are left behind to suffer from informality, deterioration, and increasing crime and unemployment rates. The aim of that research is to find some possible solutions in the direction of improving those public abandoned spaces that accommodate dangerous buildings, high rates of unemployment and unsafe urban areas in the regional range of Meet-Ghamr, Dakhlia governorate. (Aggnieszka Lisowska, 2017). The targeted area of the study is "minaret el Amir Hamaad" in Meet-Ghamr, Dakahleia, Egypt, one of the most important archaeological sites in the Islamic heritage of Dakhlia governorate, which is well known for its unique mosques and mosque minarets.

This paper investigates opportunities to connect divided cities by analysing ways in which occupation practices operate alongside, subvert and potentially transform historic, and presently developing urban infrastructure divisions in Tshwane’s eastern urban region. Through a critical theory lens existing and perpetuating conditions of infrastructural segregation are examined in order to understand scenarios through which built environments, as assemblages, maintain conditions of extreme inequality and power. In this respect, urban spatial research projects, analysing formal and informal settlement patterns are presented. The projects form part of an architecture design lead research studio that focuses on discovering alternative scenarios for urban environments by examining existing infrastructure barriers, and unpacking methods for the transformation of segregative systemic forms. Extracts of the projects are presented as case studies with a focus on areas around Mamelodi east and Moreleta Park in rapidly growing parts of Tshwane. These projects demonstrate conditions through which urban divisions of scarcity are established and constructed along infrastructure development zones in the region. They also raise key spatial questions pertaining to inequality and the role of capital investment in its perpetuation. The second part of the project involves socio-spatial methods of mapping self-build situations occurring alongside hard infrastructure zones in the region. The studies focus on the composition of building fabrics that actively attempt to circumvent issues of scarcity and unequal access to material and social infrastructures. Through the establishment of physical interfaces, people form modes of operation despite extreme resource limitations. The project aims to identify alternative ways of reading territorialised urban infrastructure assemblages by examining critical zones of urban occupation. While the examples expose many of the volatile situations that the urban majority experience on a perpetual basis, the primary aim is to reveal - from the everyday – urban spatial emergence and methods of coding and mapping these emergences towards an adaptive, reparative and transformative approach to divided cities.