High-rise Dwellings Research Articles

Morphology Optimization of Residential Communities towards Maximizing Energy Self-Sufficiency in the Hot Summer Cold Winter Climate Zone of China

Further research is needed on the capability of residential communities to achieve energy self-sufficiency under the constraints of current standards of land use, in particular for the Hot Summer and Cold Winter climate zone (HSCW) of China, where the majority of communities are dominated by high floor-area ratios, thus high-rise dwellings, namely less solar potential per unit floor area, while most residents adopt a “part-time, part-space” pattern of intermittent energy use behavior, thus using relatively low energy per unit floor area. This study examines 150 communities in Changsha to identify morphological indicators and develop a prototype model utilizing the Grasshopper platform. Community morphology is simulated and optimized by taking building location, orientation, and number of floors as independent variables and building energy consumption, solar PV generation, and energy self-sufficiency rate as dependent variables. The results reveal that the morphology optimization can achieve a 4.26% decrease in building energy consumption, a 45% increase in PV generation, and a 13.2% enhancement in energy self-sufficiency, with the optimal being 39%. It highlights that energy self-sufficiency cannot be achieved solely through morphology improvements. Moreover, the study underscores the crucial role of community orientation in maximizing energy self-sufficiency, with the south–north orientation identified as the most beneficial. Additionally, a layout characterized by a horizontally closed and staggered pattern and a vertically scattered arrangement emerges as favorable for enhancing energy self-sufficiency. These findings underscore the importance of considering morphological factors, particularly community orientation, in striving towards energy-self-sufficient high-rise residential communities within the HSCW climate zone of China.

Big houses on a small island: legislating Singapore’s ‘good class’ bungalows

Land reform in post-independent Singapore was led by compulsory purchase predominantly in the 1960s–70s and resulted in numerous kampungs or villages being demolished. With efficient assembly of land, high-rise public flats were built to accommodate the country’s burgeoning population. Today, 95 per cent of residents reside in high-rise dwellings and Singapore is the 3rd most densely populated country globally. Remarkably, planning regulations protect a housing typology known as ‘good class bungalows’ (GCBs). Though housing less than 0.2 per cent of Singapore households, GCBs collectively take up 7 per cent of the available land for housing. Numbering less than three thousand, GCBs have statutorily required large minimum lot sizes and are situated in Singapore’s choiciest residential enclaves. Development of GCB land to more intensive use is strictly prohibited. In this article, I examine the legal policies and socioeconomic rationale for maintaining this uniquely Singaporean institution, concluding that there are indeed cogent justifications for its existence.

Optimization Analysis of the Residential Window-to-Wall Ratio Based on Numerical Calculation of Energy Consumption in the Hot-Summer and Cold-Winter Zone of China

Along with the rapid urbanization and economic growth of China over the past decades, the thermal comfort needs of the people in this region have risen dramatically, and at the same time, promoting building energy efficiency is cited as part of the major projects in the 14th five-year plan for energy efficiency improvement. In addition, the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has plunged people into long-term panic, and promoted the entire construction industry to think about a healthier and more sustainable living environment. To respond to the imbalance between energy supply and demand, an optimization analysis based on energy use is developed, assessing the energy efficiency of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) design and calculating the energy consumption of three different types of residential buildings for both cooling and heating loads as well as for year-round loads. Owing to its harsh climate and huge energy consumption, in this study, the Hot-summer and Cold-winter (HSCW) zone of China was chosen as the experimental setting for the optimization analysis of WWR. Then, in the three main types of residential buildings, including detached houses, multi-story dwellings and high-rise dwellings, a correlation between WWRS and energy consumption in the cooling season, heating season and year-round was built. The comparisons between the WWRS and energy consumption for different types of residential buildings are presented. The design optimization recommendation for WWRS are proposed. It has significant positive meanings for the development of green and sustainably designed residential buildings that offer high levels of thermal comfort and energy efficiency.

‘Hier woont men in de wereld’

In Dutch history the years between 1945 and 1965 are regarded as the period of post-war recovery and reconstruction (wederopbouw). One of the main issues of this period was the urgent need to house the rapidly rising Dutch population. High-rise dwellings were seen as one of the answers and, according to many, desirable. However, after the war, and even into the early 1960s, the construction of high-rise apartment towers was considered suitable for only a small, relatively well-to-do, part of the Dutch population. It was thought that most people would not be interested in living in tall buildings unless there was an element of luxury in both the buildings and the apartments themselves. Most architects and city planners labelled high-rise as unfit for the working class and for families with children. Consequently, most high-rise construction in the 1950s and early 1960s was aimed at a small group of ‘modern’ people, well-educated and perhaps slightly bohemian. Seven of these buildings are studied in this article. They vary in size, height and architectural appearance, but still form a distinct architectural type. As the article points out, these buildings were, and are to this day, very successful. Their success is analysed through a close reading of the buildings themselves and of their location in the urban context. The success of the luxury apartment building is attributed to the following conditions. The buildings were built for a small group of independently-minded people, keen to live a modern and comfortable life. They were even prepared to pay far more for their apartment than most terraced houses would have cost. Secondly, the developers invested in a wide variety of luxury features such as central heating, elevators, roof terraces, a housekeeper, ‘American’ kitchens, lock-up garages and the like. Thirdly, renowned architects were hired to design these luxury buildings. Since it did not concern social housing, the building budgets were rather generous. The architects could therefore design rather stylish buildings with well thought-out floor plans and airy and spacious rooms. Costly and decorative materials were used lavishly. As these buildings were unique, architects could meet the requirements of the building plot as well as of the intended inhabitants. Furthermore, the buildings were invariably built on highly desirable sites. They either overlook a city park, a large pond or a canal, or are in an already established residential area, but always within easy reach of urban amenities.
 Unlike a considerable part of the social high-rise buildings in Dutch cities built from the early 1960s onwards, many of the luxury apartment buildings are still considered highly desirable places to live, even sixty years after their construction.

Designing Application For Defect Recording and Handover Of Property Based On Mobile Application by Applying SQLite Technology

Property development companies that produce housing products, high rise dwellings, and office buildings generally have data on the quality of buildings, one of which is obtained during the defect inspection process between developers and consumers before handing over units. Recording data is generally still done manually using a form on a paper. For these conditions, researchers tried to build an application based on mobile apps to digitally record the defect checklist of the dwelling so that the data collected can be processed for the needs of analysis and development strategies. Difficulties encountered during the unit handover process using digital methods on the newly completed property, one of which is the quality of data and internet signals. Mobile apps certainly require a data signal connection to send data to the server. This Android-based mobile apps will implement SQLite technology which allows the recording of transactions to be done locally first, which can then be synchronized into the database server after getting the required internet data connection. SQLite was chosen because it has a relatively small library code unlike relational DBMS in general. SQLite is also easy to use without complex configurations. With the support of the ease of function of SQLite it also allows applications to be integrated with the property sales application system.

‘Living outside the house’: how families raising young children in new, private high-rise developments experience their local environment

ABSTRACT Families are increasingly choosing to raise children in the growing number of private, high-rise apartment complexes developed in Australian capital cities. However, most of these developments have been designed for the childless and there are concerns as to how supportive these settings are for young children. This paper explores parents’ experiences of the environment surrounding their high-rise dwellings in an inner-city municipality of Melbourne, Australia using the participatory method, Photovoice. Ten parents photographed elements of their dwellings and environments that had positive or negative impacts on raising young children. Findings indicate that environments surrounding parents’ high-rise dwellings were used on a daily basis, often due to limited space within apartment complexes. However, aspects of this environment were challenging, requiring mutual accommodation between families and their immediate settings. This has implications for policy to ensure the neighbourhoods surrounding high-rise developments in inner-city areas are more child friendly.

Living up to the normative ideal of the human right to adequate housing in urban Ghana

This article constructs a holistic narrative on the right to adequate housing in Ghana by piecing together the fragmented literature on the various dimensions of the right using the traditional “qualitative” approach to literature review. Results of the thematically synthesized literature reveal that housing rights in urban Ghana pale empirically in comparison to its normative tenets. The right is violated in all its dimensions, ranging from high insecurity of tenure to the cultural unsuitability of many high-rise dwellings. Major causes identified include the normative framing of slums as illegitimate, defunct and unenforced rental legislation, poor integration of modern and vernacular housing designs, and poor justiciability of the right within the domestic legal system. The situation in Ghana mirrors those in other countries across the globe—however, with local peculiarities—and points to why empirical work on the right within diverse sociopolitical contexts is necessary.

Exploring the relationship between social deprivation and domestic radon levels in the East Midlands, UK

The natural radioactive gas radon is widely present in the built environment and at high concentrations is associated with enhanced risk of lung-cancer. This risk is significantly enhanced for habitual smokers. Although populations with higher degrees of social deprivation are frequently exposed to higher levels of many health-impacting pollutants, a recent study suggests that social deprivation in the UK is associated with lower radon concentrations.The analysis reported here, based on published data on social deprivation and domestic radon in urban and rural settings in the English East Midlands, identifies a weak association between increasing deprivation and lower radon areas. This is attributed to the evolution of the major urban centres on low-permeability, clay-rich alluvial soils of low radon potential. In addition, the predominance of high-rise dwellings in towns and cities will further reduce average exposure to radon in populations in those areas.

Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China: A case study of state-led urban redevelopment in Shenyang

Since 1978, urban redevelopment in China has resulted in large-scale neighbourhood demolition and forced residential relocation, which can severely disrupt established people-place interactions in the demolished neighbourhoods. Urban redevelopment in China has also been criticized by the public and scholars, because the position of the residents in decision-making processes of urban redevelopment is often marginalized. Conflicts have arisen between the residents, local governments and developers, against the backdrop of the uneven redistribution of capital accumulated via urban space reproduction such as the replacement of declining neighbourhoods in which low-income residents reside, with newly-build high-rise dwellings for middle- or high-income residents (Qian and He 2012, Weinstein and Ren 2009). The aim of the thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of urban redevelopment and its induced forced relocation on residents, by investigating their behavioural and emotional responses to the state-led urban redevelopment in Shenyang, a Chinese city. In particular, it highlights the agency of the affected residents, through exploring their interactions with other stakeholders and through displaying the ambivalence embedded in their neighbourhood experiences.

Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China

Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China

Flip Book

Flip Book Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (bio) Cubist States of Mind / Not the Cruelest Month Marc Jampole The Poet's Haven www.poetshaven.com 36 Pages; Print, $6.00 Reading Marc Jampole's verse reminds me of an old adage I just made up: Words are the matter of poetry—music is the mortar. Jampole combines words and music seamlessly, creating potent tone poems. "A wind full of ocean" becomes the subject of a mellifluous bouquet. "Undivided Stillness" echoes with insights on isolation and integration. Indeed, the questioning of space between the singular and the universal is central throughout as the very atmosphere itself is plumbed for its recesses and riddles. Hence: zen jazzmine wizardry. In his first book, Music from Words (2007), Jampole introduces an innovative brand of linguistic liquidity. We often find bunched rhymes and alliterative bursts. Here is an extreme example. A muggy ocean breeze…fills the streets with sticky nuzzlesand the puzzle of the clouds:will it drizzle, will it drench… Another stylistic flourish involves surprising syntactical juxtapositions like "above us tendriled contrail welkin…." These techniques work together to both support and deflate the existentially elegiac undertow. They also offset the literary danger of overly relying on one or the other. Finding music in the words is evident in the playful poem "July 4th." In this dialogue with a three year old, Joe Venuti becomes the nom du jour. Everything is a "Joe Venuti." And the three year old at the picnicsaid she wanted to play the violinand I said just like Joe Venutiand she said, You're Joe Venutian she pulled a tuft of grass and said,here's some Joe Venuti. Another sort of list poem, "Faith Is a Fine Invention," begins with an epigram by Emily Dickinson. Jampole often speaks through varying masks, from Victor Hugo to Moses to Gilgamesh, exploring legends and archetypes to find beauty and meaning, as here: "formal eternal / mouth moves and makes no sound, then sound of soundlessness." In several poems, a melancholy examination of unfulfilled fates is effectively evoked in a slate-gray palette. For instance, the protagonist of "Thomas Alfred Thinks of His Princesses" is a lonely conformist caught in a shiny grind. The presence of a paralyzed J. Alfred Prufrock (T. S. Eliot) obviously hangs over the poem. "29 Birds (after Audubon)" reads like an ekphrastic erasure work from a guide book (with a sly cross reference to Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"). Jampole has a wonderful ear for placing words in a way that animates them and gives them interactive agency, such as "… screeches floating feathers settling cliffward. / Falcon." By way of conflating these two poems, let me quote the venerable Helen Vendler. "The blackbird has perhaps something in common with Eliot's 'shadow' that falls between potency and act, desire and consummation." Jampole exploits that gap as well—that negative space between positive connectors. In his new double book Not the Cruelest Month/Cubist States of Mind, he has sharpened his skills. The poems in Not the Cruelest Month (with its continued association with Eliot) are, in part, a Romantic overture to April. Nature mingles with the city and its inhabitants in immersive sketches. The wind "gently licks the high rise dwellings." It is "uncorrupted by the fumes / of buses, taxis, cars, and trucks." This diacritical stance, of opposing forces interacting, adds underlying suspense. The dual role of mother nature, its sexuality and its reproductivity, is looked at in "The Legs of Nature:" Between the legs of nature,she's mothering but not a mother,more a fickle courtesanto bend at waistand let her whisper reassuring liesabout forever after possibilities. Continuing to confront dualities, the courtesan in the poem is also an oppositional type compared to the poet. She is not one to "pretend to feel / the dissonance between a life and a language." Yet this carnalized heroine "makes the lie behind the promise of each moment / more attractive than the moment." Finding unity in antithetical propositions is perfectly expressed in the title "Storm Music." Both eight-line stanzas begin with description and end with a...

Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China

Residents’ Perceptions of Impending Forced Relocation in Urban China

Indoor Annual Sunlight Opportunity in Domestic Dwellings May Predict Well-Being in Urban Residents in Scotland

Abstract Indoor sunlight improves health in hospitals, schools, and workplaces, and there is clinical evidence for the impact on depression. But the impact of indoor sunlight on residents' health and well-being in domestic dwellings is unclear. Understanding this relationship could have important implications for building design and residents' indoor behavior, and impacts on health. Using a cross-sectional survey, we investigated the relationship between annual indoor sunlight opportunity and psychological well-being in 40 residents of high-rise dwellings in a socioeconomically deprived area in Glasgow, Scotland. Perceived physical health, physical activity, psychological distress, and indoor environmental factors were potential mediators of the relationship between annual sunlight opportunity and well-being. We used novel simulation modeling of window size, orientation, occlusion, and occupant behavior to measure annual sunlight opportunity. We found a significant positive association between well-being ...

Inside the 'Machine for Living'

The moment I walked through the rows of piloti, concrete columns that prop up the structure like stilts, and entered the semi-dark lobby, I was inundated with memories of similar high-rise concrete dwellings in the Soviet Union. The only thing missing was the all-permeating cabbage-soup stench that used to dominate the doorways, the stairs and other communal spaces of Moscow apartment blocks in the 1960s and 70s.

Carbon costing for mixed-use greywater recycling systems

Urbanisation in the twenty-first century is accompanied by higher water demands per unit area of available space. The ability of water providers to meet these demands long term will require sustainable innovations in terms of water supply. Previous research by the authors has shown that urban mixed-use systems that share greywater (GW) between high-rise domestic dwellings (where GW production exceeds non-potable demands) and high-rise offices (where non-potable demands exceed GW production) could overcome these difficulties. This paper explores the carbon costs (embodied and operational) of such an urban arrangement by investigating the influence of membrane bioreactors (MBRs), constructed wetlands (CWs), building heights, floor plate areas and cross-connection distances. Five water supply scenarios are considered: scenario 1 (conventional mains treated offsite); scenarios 2a and 2b (individual GW treatment via CW/MBR); scenarios 3a and 3b (shared GW treatment via CW/MBR). Over a 15-year period it is shown that shared CW treatment had the lowest carbon dioxide emissions, saving up to 11% compared with conventional mains, whereas a shared MBR increased carbon dioxide emissions by up to 27%. Furthermore, most carbon dioxide savings occur when the ratio (height or floor area) of office building to residential building is 2:3.

Dietary Health Behaviors of Women Living in High Rise Dwellings: A Case Study of an Urban Community in Malaysia

Diet-related non-communicable disease (DR-NCD) occurrence is a serious problem amongst Malaysian women and urbanization is probably a challenge to their achieving the nutritional environment conducive to healthy eating. This case study aimed to determine diet quality of an urban community using women respondents from high rise dwellings in Kuala Lumpur. The sample consisted of 135 households and a healthy eating index (HEI) scale was used to evaluate the women’s diet quality. A total of 128 women (Malays = 45, Chinese = 56, Indian = 27) participated. Total HEI score was significantly different (P < 0.05) within ethnicity (Indians = 75.7 ± 8.1 <Malays = 80.5 ± 7.4 <Chinese = 80.1 ± 8.1) and affected by component scores for fruit (range 3.8–6.2, P = 0.044), sodium (range 7.8–9.0, P = 0.006) and food variety (range 9.3–9.9, P = 0.001). Dairy foods rated poorly (range 2.0–3.9, P > 0.05) regardless of ethnicity. Income strata (ρ = 0.159, P = 0.048) and eating out frequency (ρ = −0.149, P = 0.046) also independently affected HEI scores. Income negatively correlated with sodium restriction score (ρ = −0.294, P = 0.001) but positively with cereals (ρ = 0.181; P = 0.025), fruits (ρ = 0.178; P = 0.022), dairy products (ρ = 0.198; P = 0.013) and food variety (ρ = 0.219, P = 0.007). Decreased vegetable intake (ρ = −0.320; P < 0.001) and sodium excess (ρ = −0.135, P = 0.065) were associated with eating out frequency and poor HEI scores. This case study suggests health promotion for DR-NCD prevention is needed at the community level to improve diet quality of urban women.

Safety Performance Assessment Scheme for Low Cost Housing: A Comparative Study

The significance of having a safe performance in residential property is because it leads to the building sustainability. In relation to the safety aspects in the performance of low cost housing, many cases have shown that most are fail to meet their objectives right from the moment they were declared complete. This paper aims to compare the safety performance assessment schemes use for high rise dwellings or low cost housing, namely Building Quality Assessment (BQA), Building Safety and Condition Index (BSCI), Building Environmental Assessment Method (HK-BEAM), Comprehensive Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme for Buildings (CEPAS), Standard of House Performance Appraisal (SHPA) and Housing Performance Evaluation Model (HPEM). The objective of reviewing safety performance assessments as highlighted in this paper is to indicate a construct validity whether safety issues are concern in the scheme. It can be concluded that majority of the aspects are relates to significant of safety towards occupants of low cost housing.

Life cycle costs of pumping stations

Analysis of the life cycle costs for pumping systems provides an invaluable basis for decision-making as well as offering insights into resource use. Here, Mariusz Cieslak of Enterprise Rail examines the real case of a group of pumping stations operating as part of the local water-supply system to provide water to high-rise dwellings.

Religiosity, Religious Coping Styles, and Health Service Use: Racial Differences Among Elderly Women

This study explored racial differences in the effects of religiosity and religious coping styles on health service use. The sample (N = 274) consisted of a cross-section of women ages 55 and older living in publicly subsidized high-rise dwellings in Nashville, Tennessee (1999 to 2000) and included 159 White and 115 African American women. The results suggested the effects of religiosity on health service use are generally negative for both groups. However, the effects of religious coping styles on health service use differed by race. The self-directing coping style was associated with higher levels of use for White women, but with lower levels of use for African American women. The deferring coping style was associated with greater physician visits and inpatient days among White women, but with fewer inpatient days among African American women. The collaborative coping style was associated with higher inpatient days among African American women, but had no significant effect on use patterns for White women. Conducting assessments of religiosity and religious coping styles would enhance holistic nursing practice.

Introduction

A large proportion of the world's workers live in communities on the outskirts of cities, what for the want of a better word we might call suburbs. In different places, such communities take different forms. Working-class districts composed of dense, high-rise dwellings ring many European cities, like Paris and Moscow. By contrast, in the United States, Canada, and Australia, working-class suburbanization has been characterized by single-family homes, low density, and automobile dependency. In Latin America, Turkey, and parts of Africa, sprawling self-built communities of shacks and shanties surround major urban centers (a phenomenon that occurred in some North American cities during the early twentieth century).