Optimal Height Of Land Development – An Economic Perspective
Abstract Sky-scrapers are rising in the panorama of big modern cities more and more often, becoming a symbol of dynamic growth and prestige. High-rise development appears to be an answer to the expanding demand for new residential and commercial space as urban land prices continue to go up and the availability of land decreases. This article aims to identify factors affecting the choice of optimal building height in the context of economic effectiveness. It also presents factors that determine the implementation of high-rise development projects. Given the complexity of this subject matter, emphasis is placed on its economic dimension.
Multivariate Optimization in Large-Scale Building Problems: An Architectural and Urban Design Approach for Balancing Social, Environmental, and Economic Sustainability
This paper explores the promise of genetic algorithms as a tool for optimization of buildings at a neighborhood scale across the conflicting demands of social, environmental, and economic sustainability. A large urban site in Chicago, Illinois, is selected to test the viability of using a multi criteria genetic algorithm to optimize the potential building mix in a newly planned development. Two variables, the number of buildings of a given use-type and their height, are analyzed against cost functions for social, economic, and environmental objectives. Single-objective algorithms are utilized to optimize the variables individually. A non-dominated genetic sorting algorithm (NGSAII) is then utilized to identify the Pareto-optimal solutions considering the three objectives simultaneously. Single-objective results are found to vary substantially by objective, with different variable values for social, economic, and environmental sustainability. For multi-objective algorithms, the results support Campbell’s notion of the three nodes of sustainability being in conflict. Solutions performing well across economic and environmental objectives were most common. Solutions performing well among environmental and social objectives were less common. Solutions performing well across economic and social performance were rare. This suggests that while economic and environmental conflicts are to some degree resolvable, conflicts between social and either of economic or environmental performance are more difficult to resolve. The failure of any solution to perform well across all three objectives lends credence to the idea of design as a series of trade-offs and that one super optimum solution may not exist. The process provides insights into the trade-offs implicit in the building design and development process and raises questions regarding the balancing of competing sustainability objectives.
Letting Women in? Gender Mainstreaming in Regional Policies
Gender mainstreaming has over the last ten years become the dominant strategy of integrating gender issues in public policy. This article presents regional policy as a broad and increasingly important policy field to study, and analyses gender mainstreaming in this policy field in the Norwegian and the Swedish contexts. How do problem representations surrounding “gender equality” and “gender mainstreaming” produce meanings of gender as well as construct possibilities for change? The article shows that, despite some differences between the two countries, gender mainstreaming in regional policy can to a large extent be read as meaning “women”. Women are in this context given a narrow subject position and are constructed as lacking what it takes to produce sustainable regional growth. The concluding discussion highlights the relations between the implementation of gender mainstreaming and neo‐liberal political trends.