City planning

Abstract:  This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.

Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for 1992, Society of Architectural Historians.
Most Outstanding Book in Architecture and Urban Planning, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers, Inc., 1991.
International Architecture Book Award, American Institute of Architects, 1992: "This is magisterial history with a grand sweep, an eye for detail and a determination not to simplify.  If Modern architecture in Italy over five generations was complex, paradoxical and full of counter-tendencies in any one architect, then these are lovingly pulled apart and exposed.""

This article examines the conception of the everyday city as presented in the work of architect Christopher Alexander and architectural theorist Bill Hillier: Both thinkers suggest that, in the past, lively urban places arose unself-consciousty through the routine daily behaviors of many individual users coming together in supportive space and place. In different ways. both thinkers ask whether, today, a similar manner of vital urban district can be made to happen self-conscioustv through explicit understanding transformed into design and policy principles. The aim for both Alexander and Hillier is place-based urban communities marked by lively streets, serendipitous public encounters, and informal sociability. The article begins by examining commonalities and differences in Alexander and Hillier's conceptions of environmental wholeness and urban place. Next. the article considers implications for urban design and, last, indicates the considerable value that the two thinkers' ideas offer environmental philosophy, particularly for understanding environmental wholes.

This book is the first of its kind to use historical studies and architectural research to outline Shanghai’s pragmatic developments dominated largely by its politics. Professor Reinhard Goethert from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described it as “a well-thought-out perspective in understanding the amazing transformation of urban Shanghai” and “an excellent foundation for exploring contemporary city-building issues.” In praise of this book, Delft University of Technology Architecture Professor Gregory Bracken, who is also an expert on Shanghai urban studies, writes: “This book is a timely and intelligent examination of Shanghai’s recent urban transformations.” The book has been in circulation since 2009 and been used in architectural, urban and environmental studies courses at MIT, Harvard University and New York University.

A large proportion of non-communicable disease can be attributed to modifiable risk factors such as poor nutrition and physical inactivity. We present data on planning and transport practitioners' perceptions and responses to government public health guidance aimed at ...

... and (b) that any corridor that had scored less than two did not involve a missed BRT opportunity. ... Routes with the largest growth (with development plans factored in) were scored highest; the other routes were scored ... Table 3 summarizes potential benefits data for each corridor. ...

The development of modern transport networks inherited and implemented from the North has almost single-handedly shaped and informed the urban fabric of South African cities. This, in relation with a tumultuous socio-political past, has resulted in a plethora of urban coherency problems and challenges. This paper explores how the physical layout of paths and routes, and dominant modes of inter-city transport, has affected the morphology of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in comparison with international cities which have been developing their morphologies for centuries longer.

This paper explores children’s (aged 7–16) outdoor play in terms of location preference, usage pattern, and accessibility range of play spaces in three neighbourhoods in Dhaka. Data were collected through a survey of children and their respective parents, interviews with children, and observation of play activities in 21 play spaces. Analytical results reveal diverse geographies of children’s outdoor play across gender, age, family income, urban areas, and length of stay. The preferences for outdoor play and intensity of use of the play spaces were significantly lower among girls compared to boys. The frequency of access to play spaces decreased exponentially with the distance between children’s home and play space (exponent of distance-decay = 0.346 per 100 m). Results add evidence to the everyday geographies of children’s outdoor play and inform urban planners in their efforts to create better play environments for and with children in high-density South Asian cities.

Il disegno ha dato il suo contributo nell’analisi della città: con esso l’uomo ha cercato nei secoli e per differenti scopi, di studiare e rappresentare la morfologia della città. La ricerca spazia dall’analisi della rappresentazione urbana alla sistematica catalogazione degli strumenti per il rilievo e la misura del costruito. Nuove osservazioni sono scaturite dall’analisi della pianta di Imola, in cui si sono rintracciati i punti misurati da Leonardo. A secoli di distanza le nuove tecnologie per il rilievo urbano non si discostano di molto dai metodi rinascimentali.

The drawing contributed in the analysis of the city. With it man has tried, over the centuries, and for different purposes, to study and represent the morphology of the city. The research ranges from the analysis of urban representation to the systematic cataloging of the relevant instruments and the extent of the construction. New observations by the analysis of the Imola plan where are traced the points measured by Leonardo. A centuries later new technologies for the urban survey do not differ much from the Renaissance methods.

The aim of this study is to examine the association between sense of community, walking, and neighborhood design characteristics. The current study is based on a sub-sample of participants (n ¼ 609) from the US Atlanta SMARTRAQ study who completed a telephone survey capturing physical activity patterns, neighborhood perceptions, and social interactions. Objective measures of neighborhood form were also computed. Univariate and multivariate models (General Linear Models (GLM)) were used to examine the association between sense of community (SofC) and aspects of the built environment, physical activity, and neighborhood perceptions. In multivariate models the impact on SofC was examined with progressive adjustment for demographics characteristics followed by walking behavior, neighborhood design features, neighborhood perceptions and time spent traveling in a car.

The Swedish code concerning car drivers' responsibility to give way to pedestrians was strengthened in 2000. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the short-term effects of the change in code. Another goal is to look at the effects of the reconstruction of four sites in Borås, Sweden. One site had changes made prior to the change of code, two test sites had countermeasures implemented during the study, and one comparison site was left unchanged. All the sites were chosen because schools were situated nearby. The focus of the evaluation was on children and elderly as pedestrians and cyclists.

En el presente trabajo se entiende que las calles de los centros históricos
son sinónimo de espacio público patrimonial, cuando se manifiesta ahí la
cultura viva en sus monumentos históricos y en sus tradiciones, su folclore
y todo aquello que corresponde a su patrimonio, es decir, a su herencia de
cualquier paradigma, tangible e intangible de carácter histórico-cultural a
sus generaciones futuras. Las calles con sus elementos conectores, de
movilidad, centralidad en la ciudad, entendidos como espacios públicos,
porque es ahí donde actúan los ciudadanos, y transcurre la vida en la
ciudad.
El propósito del presente está relacionada con la rehabilitación del
espacio público patrimonial de las ciudades de México y Zacatecas, al
explicar la función y misión de cada uno de estos Centros Históricos (CH)
que permitieron preservar sus valores históricos y culturales de identidad
nacional y local al conservarse referentes e imaginarios de estas ciudades
que tienen los propios del lugar y los externos (habitantes y visitantes del
CH).

Many studies focus on the competitive characteristics of cities-such as accessibility, infrastructure, knowledge, creativity, institutions, face-to-face-contacts, tacit knowledge, and business interaction-and how these attract FDI, firms, and people. However, few studies focus on the spatial characteristics of urban clusters. In this study, knowledge-intensive FDI into 15 Northwestern European cities was explored. The FDI was geo-mapped at a district level, and the characteristics of these districts regarding proximity, functionality, urbanity and spatial quality were classified. The results revealed the spatial indicators that attract FDI in knowledge-intensive industrial activities.

Public transportation systems are an essential component of major cities. The widespread use of smart cards for automated fare collection in these systems offers a unique opportunity to understand passenger behavior at a massive scale. In this study, we use network-wide data obtained from smart cards in the London transport system to predict future traffic volumes, and to estimate the effects of disruptions due to unplanned closures of stations or lines. Disruptions, or shocks, force passengers to make different decisions concerning which stations to enter or exit. We describe how these changes in passenger behavior lead to possible overcrowding and model how stations will be affected by given disruptions. This information can then be used to mitigate the effects of these shocks because transport authorities may prepare in advance alternative solutions such as additional buses near the most affected stations. We describe statistical methods that leverage the large amount of smart-ca...

A presença de áreas verdes e da arborização viária traz diversos benefícios para as cidades e seus habitantes. Entretanto, o plantio inadequado pode trazer conflitos com estruturas urbanas e perigos para população. Conhecer a situação das árvores urbanas pode ajudar no planejamento para evitar e/ou corrigir os problemas de inadequação de espécies e as distorções de distribuição desigual da arborização no território. Além de dotar os órgãos responsáveis de informações sobre as características das árvores, para seu acompanhamento e manejo. Nesse sentido, este estudo tem como objetivo modelar a situação da arborização viária através da construção de um inventário para a cidade do Rio Grande, RS. Como área de estudo piloto foi selecionado um setor censitário no bairro Cassino. Foi realizado coleta de dados in loco e posterior sistematização em ambiente SIG, com disponibilização dos resultados prévios na web. Apesar das limitações encontradas, espera-se que a discussão proporcionada por esse estudo piloto possa auxiliar na elaboração de um inventário completo, o que trará subsídios para um melhor planejamento urbano e uma cidade mais verde.

Gambling in Macau was liberalised in 2002, when the People’s Republic of China was also campaigning for the city to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 2005, while the opening of new monumental casino venues began to critically transform the cityscape, Macau’s Historic Centre became China’s 31st World Heritage site. In this chapter, I examine how the expansion of gambling and global recognition of the city’s heritage have generated urban and political ambivalences stemming from the intersections of global capitalism, identity formation, and development, despite new regulations and coordinated efforts across the fields of urban planning, heritage preservation, and land use. I analyse how China’s national program for Macau has entailed both the regeneration of gambling as a powerful regional industry and the ‘essentialisation’ of heritage, showing that the attendant processes of city-making and urbanism have continued to allow flexibility and improvisation under the pressures of tourism promotion.

В статье рассмотрены «большие» и «малые» модели исчисления города: гравитационная модель Рейли, энтропийная модель, транспортная модель, Парадокс Доунса-Томсона, Постулат Льюиса-Могриджа, Парадокс Браеса, демографический потенциал, стоимостной подход. Рассмотрены достоинства и недостатки этих концепций, дана оценка научноприкладной значимости этих моделей на основе анализа модели Форрестера и структурно-функционального подхода к анализу территорий Москвы и Ленинграда 1980-х годов. Предложена новая классификация концепций «исчисляемого города» по типу конечного получаемого продукта: оценочные, прогностические и оценочнопрогностические.

In the article, "large" and "small" models of «the calculated city» are considered: the law of retail gravitation of Reilly, the entropy model, the transport model, the Downs-Thomson Paradox (the Pigou–Knight–Downs paradox), the Lewis-Mogridge position, the Braess' paradox, the demographic potential, the value city planning approach. The advantages and disadvantages of these concepts are considered. The scientific merit and practical implications of these models are evaluated based on the analysis of Forrester models and the arrow-functional approach to the analysis of Moscow and Leningrad territories in the 1980s. A new classification of the concepts of the "calculated city" is proposed according to the type of the final product: estimative, prognostic and estimative-prognostic.

There is a long lineage in neighbourhood research that has underpinned sustained academic and policy interest in the UK centred on understanding how spatial ‘clusters’ of neighbourhood-based deprivation might be destabilised. This has seen the privileging of composite indices in the analysis of deprivation which have been criticised for fostering a common perception that deprived neighbourhoods are homogeneous in terms of their compositions and underlying structures. Such indices have also been criticised for being ineffective at capturing temporal change, providing only static snapshots of deprivation at particular points in time. This paper focuses on patterns of deprived neighbourhood change in the Greater Manchester city-region between 2001 and 2007. It develops a typology of neighbourhood change that is triangulated with three complementary typologies capturing the socioeconomic and demographic compositions of deprived neighbourhoods; the functional roles played by deprived neighbourhoods in redistributing population through migration; and the spatial contexts in which deprived neighbourhoods are located. The analysis reveals that an over reliance on static indices to measure deprivation has long-served to conceal complexities in the way that deprived neighbourhoods change, owing to their variable structures and contexts. It illustrates the danger that lies in treating all deprived neighbourhoods in the same way.

Aydın Türk, Y. (2007). "A Method in The Context of Urban Planning and Urban Design", LIVENARCH III Livable Environments & Architecture 3rd International Congress - Contextualism in Architecture, Trabzon, Türkiye, 5-7 Temmuz 2007 (vol. 2, pp.569-580), Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi.

ABSTRACT:
Creating livable urban environments with identity becomes possible as long as the combination of urban planning and urban design are provided. For this reason, it is important that planning from high level planning to design to be applied should overlap with urban design. However, this fact has not been able to be realized in such countries as Turkey. In the west on the other hand, the role of design and planning system in the planning process is well described and they are both taken as a whole mechanism and successful examples are given. Within this mechanism design is a part of the planning on every scale and is accepted as an inseparable part of planning. It is seen that in Turkey, urban planning and urban design was not combined, nor was effective regulations to do this established. For this reason, in the planning process how urban design as an effective mechanism should be places must be questioned.
In this context there is a need for a complete planning-design guide to be prepared through detailed studies in our country. In this study, a method that will foster the preparation of the above-mentioned guide by means of a research model, and its operation, evaluation and the results. Through the method introduced it is aimed to;
bring urban design dimension into planning in macro level ana in the light of the principles and policies to prepare a control list/checklist that will act as a guide for the designer,
to prepare a method for the compilation of the design data, effective evaluation and the transfer of this method into plan,
to develop a strategic evaluation approach that considers different dimensions and properties of the city (such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

CONCLUSION:
Having a check questions list which leads planner step by step so as to strengthen the dimesion of the design will exhibit a requirement that the planner has to take into consideration during the planning. Because, collecting and evaluating all kinds of data about city (or a part of the city) will be mora systematic.
All characteristics of the city, potentials and weaknesses of it will be described locally. Thus the process of the planner and the designer’s evaluating/ examining the city (or the part of the city) during the planning will be clear.
The strategies will be put forward which turns the data found into a plan and makes it concrete.
While developing strategies in the process of planning and designing of the newly developing places except settled areas, in the attempt to renew/ enliven a problematic area in the city check questions will be beneficial. Taking local characteristics in the foreground, highlighting some historical elements as a reference may lead the design during problem definition and analyze. In addition, as the check list has the potential to serve for both the whole area and the part of it, it will control the planned/desined area.
The checklist is thought to be a guide for the planner in the process of problem solving. During the planning, consulting different disciplines such as architecture, landscape architecture will be helpful. The list’s benefits will be completely seen when directors and guiders (planners, designers and local managers) start to use this means actively which has not been used in urban planning and design.
Such kind of a study, when evaluated from the perspective of legacy, serves as an input focused survey. The process put forward in the study can be defined as output focused. Since the findings/ evaluations have equivalent on the field, they will be reflected on the plan easily. Therefore, there will be no need to make any reforms in the discussion of plan-design relationship or using design in public improvement plans. The process that is put forward in the study can be applied to a city (or a part of the city). Execution tools of the reforms (18th subject application, nationalization and taxation) should be applied actively. Different execution tools should be produced. Technical and administrative substructure should be constructed.
When it is evaluated from the perspective of the strategy, time, and the effort, the procedure of acquiring data, evaluation of the data and production take part in the current planning.

Land surface temperature (LST), which is heavily influenced by urban surface structures, is a significant parameter in urban environmental analysis. This study examined the effect impervious surfaces (IS) spatial patterns have on LST in Beijing, China. A classification and regression tree model (CART) was adopted to estimate IS as a continuous variable using Landsat images from two seasons combined with QuickBird. LST was retrieved from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image to examine the relationships between IS and LST. The results revealed that CART was capable of consistently predicting LST with acceptable accuracy (correlation coefficient of 0.94 and the average error of 8.59%). Spatial patterns of IS exhibited changing gradients across the various urban-rural transects, with LST values showing a concentric shape that increased as you moved from the outskirts towards the downtown areas. Transect analysis also indicated that the changes in both IS and LST patterns were similar at various resolution levels, which suggests a distinct linear relationship between them. Results of correlation analysis further showed that IS tended to be positively correlated with LST, and that the correlation coefficients increased from 0.807 to 0.925 with increases in IS pixel size. The findings identified in this study provide a theoretical basis for improving urban planning efforts to lessen urban temperatures and thus dampen urban heat island effects.

"This film is part of a curatorial project carried out by Francesco Garutti while in residence as Emerging Curator 2013-2014 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The film explores the controversial story of the planning and politics of a series of overpasses on Long Island, commissioned in the 1920s and 1930s by the influential American public administrator Robert Moses. The story suggests that the bridges had been designed expressly to prevent the passage of buses, thereby only allowing people who could afford to own a car to access Long Island's leisure spaces. The questions that the story raises are timlier now than ever before. They engage with issues of secrecy and control, the morals of power and the effects of technology: What is the relationship between politics and artefacts? How and to what degree can a project's intentions be deliberately concealed? What are the deviously designed effects and the unplanned political consequences of the agency of the artefacts that surround us? The film explores these questions through interviews with four scholars who in the 1980s and 1990s debated possible interpretations of the case. The film alludes rather than explains, interweaving reportage with the abstraction of theories. It mixes the deafening sound of automobiles with the singing of the birds that live along the parkways of Long Island, which are now almost one hundred years old."

http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/search/details/library/publication/233297Misleading Innocence
http://www.domusweb.it/en/news/2015/07/02/misleading_innocence_francesco_garutti_cca.html
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/issues/3/technology-sometimes-falls-short/2236
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_g2WWeR7b8

Turizm hem gelişmekte olan hem de gelişmiş ülkeler için önemli bir istihdam yaratma ve katma değer üretme kaynağıdır. Gelişmekte olan ülkeler açısından turizmin gelişimi özellikle bölgesel eko-nomik, sosyal ve kültürel dengesizliklerin ortadan kaldırılması noktasında da önemlidir. Ancak, ge-lişim ve kalkınma sürecinin doğrusal bir ivme ile devam etmesi çoğu zaman beklenemez. Bunun sosyal, politik, doğal ve çevresel nedenleri olabilmektedir. Bu araştırmada, Turizm Coğrafyası araş-tırmalarında son yıllarda kullanılan ve beklenilmeyen durumlara karşı yerel toplumların geliştirmeleri beklenilen "rezilyans" teorisi ile turizm ilişkisi ele alınmaktadır. Bu çerçevede, daha önce turizmin gelişmesi noktasında farklı olumsuz (deprem, terör, ekonomik istikrarsızlık) gibi durumlara maruz kalmış olan Van'ın Edremit ilçesi örnek alan olarak seçilmiştir. Araştırma'da veriler nitel araştırma stratejisine bağlı olarak yüz yüze mülakatlar aracılığıyla toplanmıştır. Çalışma sonucunda, yerel sektör temsilcilerinin Edremit ilçesindeki turizmin gelişimi ile değişimi sürecinde adaptasyonları eleştirel bir boyutta değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışma, özellikle rezilyans teorinin turizmle ilişkisinin yerel aktörler aracılığıyla ortaya konulması noktasında literatürde önemli bir boşluğu dolduracağı düşünülmek-tedir. Çalışma sonucunda, yerel işletmelerin ve sektör temsilcilerinin değişen sürece yönelik bakış açılarının olumlu olduğu, turistik ürünlerin çeşitlendirilmesi ve yenilikçi bir perspektifle sunulması noktasında fikir birliği içerisinde olduklarını ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bununla birlikte, işbirliği, birlikte hareket etme, katılımcı yönetim gibi zorlukların ise rezilyans bir turizm toplumu olma noktasında zayıf yönlerinin olduğu görülmektedir.
Tourism is an important source of employment and value added for developed and developing countries alike. The development of tourism is particularly important in the elimination of regional economic, social and cultural imbalances in developing countries. However, development and advancement cannot be expected to continue with a linear acceleration. This may dependent on social, political, natural and environmental reasons. In this study, the relationship between tourism and the resilience theory which is used in tourism geography researches in recent years and which is expected to be developed by local communities against unexpected situations is thoroughly discussed. In this context, the Edremit province of Van, which has been exposed to few disturbance situations (earthquake, terrorism, economic instability) at the point of development of tourism, has been selected as a case area. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews based on the qualitative research strategy. As a result of this study, adaptations of local sector representatives in the development and change of tourism in Edremit province were critically evaluated. The study is considered to fill an important gap in the literature, especially in terms of revealing the relationship between the resilience theory and tourism through local actors. As a result of this study, it has been seen that local enterprises and sector representatives have positive views on the changing process and they all agree on diversification of tourism products and presenting them with an innovative perspective. However, it is seen that difficulties such as cooperation, acting together, participatory management have weaknesses in terms of being a resilient tourism community.

SimCity is a system simulation game frequently used in educational settings. This study investigates whether playing SimCity could change Turkish adolescents' perception of the city they live in. We hypothesized that playing the game would lead to perceptional changes in the players regarding their ideal and real cities. Two hundred forty eight 13year old Turkish adolescents attending 7th grade constituted the sample. Ninety adolescents played the game for six weeks. Their scores on various perception variables on city issues were compared to those of the control group's. Results showed that students in the experimental group changed their expectations of an ideal city to resemble the game, expected city authorities to pay greater attention to city issues, and reported higher level of distrust to city authorities at the post-test compared to those in the control group. Findings are discussed in terms of the potential of SimCity in training informed citizens. Ó

In Brown in Baltimore; School Desegregation and the Limits of Liberalism, Howell S. Baum argues that the failures of desegregation can be traced to liberal principles that protect individual freedom while ignoring race. In this extensively researched book, Baum recounts how local officials and residents attempted to desegregate Baltimore schools in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown.

The link between the built environment and human behavior has long been of interest to the field of urban planning, but direct assessments of the links between the built environment and physical activity as it influences personal health are still rare in the field. Yet the concepts, theories, and methods used by urban planners provide a foundation for an emerging body of research on the relationship between the built environment and physical activity. Recent research efforts in urban planning have focused on the idea that land use and design policies can be used to increase transit use as well as walking and bicycling. The development of appropriate measures for the built environment and for travel behavior is an essential element of this research. The link between the built environment and travel behavior is then made using theoretical frameworks borrowed from economics, and in particular, the concept of travel as a derived demand. The available evidence lends itself to the argument that a combination of urban design, land use patterns, and transportation systems that promotes walking and bicycling will help create active, healthier, and more livable communities. To provide more conclusive evidence, however, researchers must address the following issues: An alternative to the derived-demand framework must be developed for walking, measures of the built environment must be refined, and more-complete data on walking must be developed. In addition, detailed data on the built environment must be spatially matched to detailed data on travel behavior.

This dissertation is about the changing physical conditions and social meanings of royal Buddhist monastic complexes (wat) in the Rattanakosin Historic District from the beginning of the Bangkok period to the 1997 economic crisis. In the pre-modern period, the royal wat was the key site for the ruler to consolidate his power and establish his legitimacy as a righteous Buddhist monarch. In this traditional context, these Buddhist monastic complexes became the centers for accumulating and redistributing wealth surplus in various forms of public facilities. With the advent of the modern era, the royal monastic complexes acquired new meanings and functions associated with the process of nation-building, becoming at once symbols of national heritage, loci for modern education, and models of development. And yet, paradoxically, because of the Thai state's adoption of the Western philosophy of the separation of church and state, the royal monastic complexes which previously functioned as public facilities became more private and centralized under the power of the ecclesiastical authority. Moreover, the monastic land ownership and their space have largely been neglected in Bangkok's urban planning. Monastic communities are not only invisible in the plans for Bangkok's urban development, but they are also responsible for generating their own revenue and for the management of their monastic properties. Comparing three case studies of royal monastic complexes, I show how changes associated with the making of the modern nation-state, including government policies in the affairs of Buddhist religion, transformations in the political economy, and the urbanization of Bangkok, have affected the form and meaning of Buddhist wats. A central aim of this comparative approach is to demonstrate that these changes have not had uniform effects. Rather, as my case studies show, each of these three royal monastic complexes has responded differently to modernization and nation-building depending on the location and size of the monastic donated land, the scale of its major structures, the degree of architectural elaboration, and its social network. In conclusion, the study of problems and historical changes in each royal wat serves to pinpoint what is overlooked in current planning and preservation practice. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Worrasit Tantinipankul was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1971, and he spent his first 25 years of his life with his parents and two younger sisters in a small alley of Soi Supharat 1, north of Bangkok. Worrasit attended the Faculty of Architecture at Silpakorn University, where he received his B. Arch in 1993 with 2 nd Class Honors. In 1993, he joined the Synchron architectural firm, where he was assigned to work with the Committee for Historic Preservation and Development of Rattnakosin City, the historic district of Bangkok. It was this project which stimulated him to search for a better understanding of urban space, Buddhist landmarks and their histories. In 1995, he joined the School of Architecture at King Mongkut's University of Technology at Thonburi, and won a scholarship from the Royal Thai Government to study abroad. He received a