Apartment Research Articles

Designing for social interaction in high-density housing: A multiple case analysis of recently completed design-led developments in London

Over the past two decades, the Greater London Authority (GLA) has pursued the delivery of high-density development in London in order to respond to population growth whilst protecting the green belt. Though high-density places have been associated with sustainable outcomes, it is well documented that residents interact less frequently and build fewer relationships in these environments. This can be particularly detrimental since social contact is fundamental for our general wellbeing and happiness. In response to this problematic, this study explored if and how we can design for social interaction in high-density housing. To do so, it adopted the process of inducting theory from case studies. Firstly, three case studies of recently completed developments were undertaken to determine whether social interaction was a driving factor in the design process, the type and location of social interactions, and clarify the influence of physical design on social contact in comparison to other factors. Three research methods were used to find answers to these questions including interviews with the residents and architects of the schemes, participant observation, and content analysis. These design-led schemes were chosen for investigation as award-winning developments which had received commendation for creating the foundations for a strong community. Next, a cross-case comparison was undertaken to identify hypotheses that addressed the research question and objectives. Providing support for existing literature in the context of high-density housing, it was discovered that limiting the number of apartments to a building allows for collective stewardship, and that communal areas shared by smaller groups are used more intensively. Moreover, combining shared paths and communal areas was observed to support fleeting interactions and helped to nurture a local sense of community. New findings included that externalizing the circulation spaces of multi-story apartment blocks can facilitate conversations between neighbors, and that bike stores can represent an epicenter for contact if internalized and co-located with shared paths. Notably, the impact of physical design factors was not deterministic.

IoT Based System for Sewage Overflow Prevention using Heterogeneous Communication Networks

The increasing population along with water scarcity give rise to water management practices. Water scarcity can be eradicated by wastewater treatment that would in turn prevent contamination of water bodies. One of the challenges in wastewater treatment is to efficiently transport and treat the sewage in a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). Most of the existing STPs in closed campuses of Indian scenarios such as academic institutions, industries, and residential apartments employ several pumping stations in a campus and pump motors in each station that pump sewage to STP for treatment. Manual operation of such motors would lead to sump overflows that negatively impact public health and sanitation. Therefore, an IoT-based system for monitoring and controlling sewage flow is proposed in this paper that uses water level sensors and prevents sewage overflows in pumping station sumps, resulting in the utilisation of all the collected sewage for treatment. Since each campus might have different communication networks such as GPRS, WiFi, RF, or Ethernet, the proposed system is designed to work with any network. The proposed system was tested in the college campus with three pumping stations. Moreover, a test bed was simulated and tested with 100 pumping stations. It is observed that the proposed approach prevents sewage overflows in various scenarios with different constraints.

Urban Consolidation in Australia's Four Largest Capital Cities: Tangible Outcomes of Inner-city Apartment Developments and Their Implications for Urban Planners

Urban consolidation has become dominant practice in metropolitan planning across Australia’s four largest capital cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – as a result of the escalating need to manage rapid population growth and limit urban expansion. The strategic push for higher-density residential dwellings, such as apartment complexes, around strategic infill locations and activity centres is partly in response to the rising demand for more diversity in Australia’s housing stock. Supplementary factors include demographic shifts, cultural changes, and ongoing concerns regarding housing affordability, liveability, accessibility and climate change. Although this style of development has been at the forefront of state government planning agendas for at least a decade, presently little is understood about the outcomes of inner-city apartment buildings, particularly in Perth, as most of the research on modern infill projects in Australia focuses on Sydney and Melbourne.The primary aim of this research is, therefore, to investigate the outcomes of high- Density inner-city apartment developments for residents, the community and urban planners within Australia’s four largest capital cities, with a particular focus on Perth. The research is informed by a review of academic and government literature concerning infill and apartment developments in the specified cities, as well as a case study of a recently constructed apartment building in one of Perth’s main activity centres, Fremantle. The study found that state and local governments are not always achieving ‘good density’, nor are they developing apartment buildings that engender positive outcomes for both residents and the community. Some of the challenges that must be overcome if this is to change include designing apartments that cater to the needs of a diverse population, getting state governments to provide more support for local councils, and engaging earlier and more effectively with local communities. The research findings provide council planners with a better understanding of the challenges faced by residents in new apartment buildings, as well as the difficulties of meeting community expectations and planning ‘good density’, so that future planning policies and urban development can be more suitably informed.

Evolutionary analysis of resident groups’ intention to participate in green retrofit PPP projects of traditional apartment complexes

Green retrofit PPP projects of traditional apartment complexes play an important role in promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of the construction industry and achieving China's "double carbon" goals. The integrated retrofit of apartment complexes presupposes that the resident groups agree to the retrofit. Therefore, it is necessary to study the evolutionary mechanism of residents' intention to green retrofit and the transformation process of their behavior, and to explore how to enhance residents' intention to participate. First, the dissemination model of residents' intention to green retrofit is constructed. Then, the strategic interaction among government, social capitals and residents under the PPP model is introduced into the dissemination model to define the state transformation probability of resident groups. Finally, the evolution laws of residents' intention to green retrofit are analyzed. The results show that: (1) the behavior of government regulation and social capitals' effort to retrofit can motivate the number of the resident agreeing to green retrofit to meet the proportional limit, (2) the faster the government chooses the strategy of regulation and the social capitals choose the strategy of effort to retrofit, the faster the number of residents agreeing to green retrofit reaches a steady state, (3) when the level of government publicity and education is too low, the cost of government regulation or the subsidy given to residents is too high, the green retrofit of traditional apartment complexes cannot be achieved. The research conclusions can provide a reference for the government to formulate green retrofit policies.

Digital common(s): the role of digital gamification in participatory design for the planning of high-density housing estates

“Digital Commons” explores the intersection between participatory design, digital gamification, and community engagement, contextualised in the planning of high-density housing estates in Hong Kong. The research project investigates how digital gamified participatory design can be applied in decision-making processes for the planning of public facilities in high-density housing estates. Focusing on community engagement methods, the project has engaged with residents of a case study housing estate, Jat Min Chuen in the Shatin Wai area of Hong Kong, to facilitate collective planning discussions about the past, present, and future of community facilities. Using a digital community game approach, it has collected opinions and needs from public housing residents, promoted collaborative design thinking processes, and provided a platform for participants to increase their understanding of the complexity of planning problems through 3D visualisation tools. The experiences documented in this study demonstrate how 3D interactivity, real-time engagement, and bottom-up perspectives may enhance the potential of using immersive digital twins during collective decision-making. The gaming outcomes show a high similarity across all teams in close relationship to users’ daily life routines, demonstrating a new powerful role for urban designers as a coordinator of interactive and collaborative planning processes.

How does heterogeneity in dwelling type preferences relate to housing and built environment characteristics?

ABSTRACT Understanding housing preferences is critical for successful compact city development. However, there is limited research on understanding preference heterogeneity in dwelling type choices. Using the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper identifies the key housing and built environment characteristics associated with changes in dwelling type choice from detached houses to high-density. A latent class choice model captures the heterogeneity of dwelling type preferences within a traditionally low-density city, Brisbane, Australia. Findings reveal six household classes with distinct dwelling preferences: Class 1 (senior households without children with other family members) and Class 2 (couple families with children) in inner-city areas, Class 3 (high-income young households) and Class 4 (low-income households without children) in middle-city areas, Class 5 (low-income families with children) and Class 6 (middle-income young families without children) in outer-city areas. Residential environments with better access to educational facilities encourage Classes 3 and 6 to change to high-density living. Greater land use diversity encourages Classes 2, 3, and 6 to move towards high-density living. The findings can be used to design and improve high-density housing for targeted population groups across inner-, middle- and outer-city areas.

A Method for Classifying Residential Prices in Apartment Complex Using Computer Simulation Analysis: A Case Study

The price fluctuation of the real estate market has become an important factor affecting the stability of the national macro-economy. In the history of the worldwide financial crisis, there have been many times related to the real estate market. China's real estate industry occupies a pivotal position in the national economy, and entered a rapid development period in 2000, gradually becoming a pillar industry of the national economy. It ushered in the process of rapid expansion, with investment scale, construction scale, transaction scale and transaction price rising. From the perspective of noise and landscape, this paper discusses the possibility of applying landscape analysis to the price and pricing of apartment complexes. The noise, landscape and sunlight are analyzed based on the landscape analysis (including the point and line through the view analysis, and the line of sight analysis) to provide a basis for the unit price classification of the area.

A simulation-based study to evaluate the cooling potential of nocturnal radiative cooling systems for residential buildings in Egypt

During the first years of the last decade, Egypt used to face recurrent electricity cut-offs in summer. In the past few years, the electricity tariff dramatically increased. Radiative cooling to the clear night sky is a renewable energy source that represents a relative solution. The dry desert climate promotes nocturnal radiative cooling applications. This study investigates the potential of nocturnal radiative cooling systems (RCSs) to reduce the energy consumption of the residential building sector in Egypt. The system technology proposed in this work is based on uncovered solar thermal collectors integrated into the building hydronic system. By implementing different control strategies, the same system could be used for both cooling and heating applications. The goal of this paper is to analyze the performance of RCSs in residential buildings in Egypt. The dynamic simulation program TRNSYS was used to simulate the thermal behavior of the system. The relevant issues of Egypt as a case-study are firstly overviewed. Then the paper introduces the work done to develop a building model that represents a typical residential apartment in Egypt. Typical occupancy profiles were developed to define the internal thermal gains. The adopted control strategy to optimize the system operation is presented as well. To fully understand and hence evaluate the operation of the proposed RCS, four simulation cases were considered: 1. a reference case (fully passive), 2. the stand-alone operation of the RCS, 3. ideal heating & cooling operation (fully-active), and 4. the hybrid-operation (when the active cooling system is supported by the proposed RCS). The analysis considered the main three distinct climates in Egypt, represented by the cities of Alexandria, Cairo and Asyut. The hotter and drier weather conditions resulted in a higher cooling potential and larger temperature differences. The simulated cooling power in Asyut was 28.4 W/m² for a 70 m² absorber field. For a smaller field area of 10 m², the cooling power reached 109 W/m² but with humble temperature differences. To meet the rigorous thermal comfort conditions, the proposed sensible RCS cannot fully replace conventional air-conditioning units, especially in humid areas like Alexandria. When working in a hybrid system, a 10% reduction in the active cooling energy demand could be achieved in Asyut to keep the cooling set-point at 24 °C. This percentage reduction was nearly doubled when the thermal comfort set-point was increased by two degrees (26 °C). In a sensitivity analysis, external shading devices as a passive measure as well as the implementation of the Egyptian code for buildings (ECP306/1–2005) were also investigated. The analysis of this study raised other relevant aspects to discuss, e.g. system-sizing, environmental effects, limitations and recommendations.

Challenges of Renting Apartments in Oyo versus Tenants’ Preference or Choice of Accommodation

Access to decent or good apartment has become source of concern to staff of some private universities hence, the need to find out what could likely be reason why intending tenants could not get the desired apartment. The challenges to having access to desired apartment can be said to be because of certain factors. This study however looked at the challenges in renting a decent apartment in Oyo while respondent’s choice or preferences were also considered. In addition to finding out the type of readily available, the study also identified certain remedies to help in ensuring the desired apartment is available. The methodology of the study is survey approach. The findings indicated some challenges were encountered by the respondents which include;more money spent on endless search which was ranked first or highest, which was followed by the available and desired ones are too expensive which was ranked second among others. Various types of residential apartment such as single room (1 room) apartment, one room self-contained apartment, Brazillian type – wing type or the face-me-I-face-you, a room and palor self-contain 2 bedroom apartment etc. were identified. Amongst the remedies identified, it was noted that Estate Surveyors and Valuers are experts in agency should intensify effort in combating challenges faced by clients during the search for accommodation. The however noted that the findings will help both the prospecting tenants on what look out for especially when the experiences from respondents on challenges has been brought to public domain.

Suitability Index Prediction for Residential Apartments Through Machine Learning

Suitability Index Prediction for Residential Apartments Through Machine Learning

Contributions of Indoor Household Activities to Inhalation Health Risks Induced by Gaseous Air Pollutants in Hong Kong Home

To understand inhalation health risks at home, a comprehensive sampling campaign was conducted in a Hong Kong residential apartment from October to December 2019. Emissions of nine typical household activities, household background release and outdoor pollution were continuously monitored using a suite of the state-of-the-art instruments. Health risks were evaluated in each one-year exposure period. Acrolein and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) likely caused chronic non-carcinogenic risks to residents in all exposure stages. Furthermore, the health risk of the respiratory system was proved in all age groups. For the first time, several household activities were found to cause acute health risks due to exposure to formaldehyde, benzene, NO2 and acrolein in normal urban daily life. The probability distributions of cancer risks from household activities revealed that formaldehyde was the main carcinogen with an average risk of 2.00×10‑4, followed by benzene, acetaldehyde, ethylbenzene and dichlorobenzene. Among all indoor activities, incense burning was the largest contributor to total cancer risk (46%), as this source was respectively responsible for 47%, 54%, and 39% of cancer risks from formaldehyde, benzene, and acetaldehyde, followed by cooking and smoking. Notably, source-related health risk analysis showed that household background release dominated regardless of cancer risk (35.7–58.5%) or non-carcinogenic risk (57.1%). Further, the cancer risk from birth to 18 years was approximately 1.8–2.7 times that of 18~60 and 60~85 years of age. This study shed light on health risks posed by various household activities and highlighted the importance of indoor activities and household background release on acute and chronic health risks.

Analysis of the Socio-Economic Characteristics of Inhabitants in Selected Public Residential Housing Estates in Nigeria

This paper examines the socio-economic attributes of residents in public residential estates in the capital cities of Lagos, Ibadan, Ilorin and Abuja. The research examined the sex, age, education, marital status, household size, occupation and level of income of the respondents. The total number of housing units in the study area was 3784 and a sample size of 421 respondents was used. Data obtained from the questionnaires were processed and analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 16. The results were presented in form of tables, percentages, maps and charts as appropriate. The findings revealed that most of the respondents are males (51.2%), while 42.29% are females The ratio of productive age (31-50) was more than that of dependency. The majority of the working population was in the public sector. 78.97% of the respondents were married, while 15.65% were single. The total number of employed respondents in the private and public sectors (including the self-employed) constitutes the highest percentage. 82.43% of respondents had university and polytechnic education. Also, the homeowners dominated the tenant-occupiers. Findings revealed that the general monthly income is low with 44.1% of respondents earning less than ₦50,000 per month and the type of residential apartment showed that bungalows constitute 40% of the buildings across all the residential estates. 69.12% of the estates were managed by self-help groups. The maximum number of people living in the houses is between 3 and 5 people, which constitutes the highest number (60.71%) of occupants

One-year Dynamic Study of the Use of Solar Water Heater for Domestic Consumption in Egypt: An Energy Assessment

The use of fossil fuels leads to greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and secondary consequences such as desertification and winds in the Middle East and Africa, including Egypt. The use of renewable energy is the most appropriate solution to prevent the emission of polluting gases. Egypt is one of the best places to use solar water heating systems, located in the solar belt. In this paper, for the first time, the best place to use solar water heater (SWH) systems is examined using TSOL 2018 R(1) software and climate data for residential apartments in 35 stations in Egypt. The results showed that Sharm el sheikh station with supplies 96.8% of its total heat needs is the most suitable station for using solar water heating systems. According to the studies performed, using solar water heaters in the studied stations generated good energy savings annually (production of 134.5 GWh of solar heat). Also, greenhouse gas emissions were significantly reduced (preventing the emission of about 39.2 tons of CO2 pollutants per year) and as a result, the government should turn to the use of clean and renewable energy.

A Decentralized Dynamic Pricing Model for Demand Management of Electric Vehicles

Transportation electrification is considered a green alternative to internal combustion vehicles. However, higher penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) can cause several technical challenges to the power systems, including local equipment overloading. This is especially challenging for distribution systems due to the direct connection of EVs with them. To mitigate equipment overloading, by managing EV loads locally, a dynamic pricing model is proposed in this study. First, a satisfaction function is devised for EVs considering the sensitivity of different EV owners to the battery state of charge and urgency of recharge. Then, a welfare function is developed for the EV fleet operator (EFO) considering the net load of EVs and the electricity price of the upstream grid. To this end, a welfare maximization problem is formulated considering the welfare of EVs and EFO. The problem is then decomposed into the EFO sub-problem and EV sub-problem to preserve privacy. Finally, a distributed mechanism is developed to solve the sub-problems iteratively without revealing private information. The performance of the proposed method is analyzed for a residential apartment complex in terms of load management and convergence for different day types (working days and holidays). Simulation results have shown the efficacy of the proposed method in mitigating the overloading of transformers during peak load hours.

Economic features of services and energy cost for engineering systems

There are the results of some municipal services actual specific cost for residential apartment building. These services consist of cold water supply system; drainage and sewage systems; electricity; collection and disposal of municipal solid waste system. Authors did not indicate the specific operating cost for hot water supply and heating systems because their cost was constant. Research period: from 1st quarter of 2018 year to the 2nd quarter of 2022 year. This period was acute phase of Covid-19 pandemic period. Authors have written the dynamics changes in the cost of considered services. Researchers have presented additional factors which affect to the unit cost of municipal services in this paper. There is a brief overview of management companies types which could be in municipal service system. Also it has been considered their capabilities and limitations in creating tariffs process. Authors have identified different trends in the engineering service unit cost changing process. This article could be interested for management companies and tariffs planning departments of public municipal service system in different parts of Russian Federation. Results which were presented in this paper could be used in predictive mathematical models of municipal services economical parts in critical as pandemic or other emergency situations.

Fragility Comparison for Soft Storey Infill Reduced Structures by Incremental Dynamic Analysis

A keen understanding of how a structure behaves when it is exposed to earthquake scenarios is required in order to foresee and avert the adverse effects and consequences when such a incident occurs, with the current rate of development in our country the construction of mid and high rise residential apartments are rapidly increasing but the data to understand such structures is insufficient, this data includes seismic vulnerability of structures, hazard maps of earthquake prone areas, seismic risks involved for a structure, this data provides the insight of what magnitude of risks are at hand when a earthquake scenario occurs and how to avert or minimize the losses with those risks [1]. In the present study, an effort is made to determine the behavior of soft Storey structures for various parameters when it is exposed to an earthquake ground motion; this includes the development of models analytically with the existence of soft Storey in them with different infill reductions and analyzing them, two models with varying heights and plot areas are considered for this study, this four models are modeled in such a way that different variations of soft Storey existence depending on the location of walls, percentage of infill reductions among different walls are done, a total of eight variety of models are been analyzed in both the X and Y directions. It is concluded that in all the models the fragility is higher in the models with lower lateral dimensions, as the length of the side decreases the fragility of that side is increasing. The Model without reduction performed efficiently showing less probability to collapse and that height and plan dimensions of the model are dependent on each other for the increase or decrease of fragility in a structure. If the height increases with the same model plan dimensions, the fragility of the structure also increases, if the plan dimension increases the fragility of the structure decreases.

Теплопотребление жилых зданий на отопление и вентиляцию в процессе эксплуатации

The article studies seven heating seasons’ data of heat consumption of heating in 24-storey residential apartment building in St. Petersburg with ventilated façade, office and commercial spaces on the ground floor. It is established that heat consumption for heating depends on the year passed in operation of building since completion. During the first three years increased heat consumption is observed due to drying of walls of the building, which must be taken into account in a design of the building’s heating and maintenance systems. It is concluded that in a period of no less than three years since completion, operated building should be tested to confirm values of required specific energy heat consumption for heating in the heating season.

Study of Residential Thermal Transfer Values (RTTV) and vertical daylight factors (VDF) for Heavily Obstructed Public Housing Flats

Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, consumes more than a quarter of its total energy in residential buildings. The high urban density leaves many residential flats in a heavily obstructed environment,seriously affecting indoor lighting performance. In response, the Hong Kong government issued requirements for residential thermal transfer values (RTTV) and vertical daylight factors (VDF). The control of RTTV and VDF is considered to be effective in improving the energy efficiency and daylighting performance of residential buildings. However, achieving the required RTTV and VDF at the same time can be conflicting in terms of building façade design. This paper studies the daylight performance and energy use of public housing flats facing large sky obstructions through computer simulations. General correlations between RTTV, energy consumption, and daylighting performance are investigated.

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

The defendant, Treveon Harris, a known Los Angeles gang member, was wounded twice during the fatal shooting of the victim. The homicide occurred in the mailboxes/laundry room of an apartment complex. Bullet strike angles on a washing machine and the walls of the scene room show there was a struggle for a .40 caliber pistol by the victim and his attacker. The victim lost the struggle for the pistol with two bullets to his head. The victim also received three perforating bullet wounds (unknown caliber) to his legs outside the mailboxes/laundry room. Harris received a ricochet bullet core to his left forearm and had a bracelet shot off his left wrist. Even though Harris was twice wounded when he chanced on the shooting, he was charged and convicted of the homicide. The prosecution presented a shooting scenario that ignored exculpatory evidence. Despite the trial defense attorney being informed of the exculpatory evidence, he refused to present it.

Environmental Violence and Natural Symbolism in Chava Rosenfarb's The Tree of Life : An Ecocritical Approach to Holocaust Memory

Abstract: Future prize-winning writer Chava Rosenfarb was seventeen years old when she was incarcerated in the Łódź ghetto. In 1972, she published The Tree of Life [Der boym fun lebn] (1972), a fictional chronicle of that experience of the Holocaust. In this three-volume epic novel, Rosenfarb narrates and interlaces the fates of ten Jewish families from pre-war Poland in 1939 to the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944. The "Tree of Life" is revealed to be the name given by the "ghettoniks" to an iconic cherry tree that stands in the shared backyard of a group of apartment complexes inhabited by many of the protagonists in the ghetto. Far from being an anecdotal presence, the cherry tree becomes the center of Rosenfarb's reflections on the impacts of the environment on one's physical and mental health. In this article, The Tree of Life is analyzed from an ecocritical perspective to examine the interconnections between genocidal intent and environmental precariousness. The first part considers the perpetration angle of the Łódź ghetto establishment as a Nazi tool of ecological violence through its excessive economic program of forced labour and its structural health determinants leading to epidemics. We will then investigate the characters' attempts to reconnect to nature through tangible acts of agency (the development of small gardens to grow one's own food) and symbolism (the cherry tree evoking the freedom of the outside world). The purpose of this article is to explore the links between genocide and ecocide within the framework of literary memory, while appreciating the relevance of Chava Rosenfarb's representations of the Holocaust to our era of renewed ecological awareness.