The integration of urban system science and physical design: dynamic simulation technologies for urban resilience

One of the major challenges in plan-making for urban resilience is dealing with the deep uncertainty inherent in urban systems. While design/planning solutions are intended to manage or abate a wide array of negative impacts on the built environment, they many times fail to achieve their intended goals due to an inability to assess the complex interactions in urban systems. These complex interactions evolve as cities continue to grow over both time and space with dynamic forces adding to the uncertainty. Addressing the uncertainty derived from complex urban systems requires multi-scale and multi-disciplinary decision-making that helps promote broader and profounder dialogues for resilient (sustainable) urban management. Such efforts must be supported by novel approaches that assess and evaluate estimates of dynamic mechanisms between human and natural processes and that are complex but accessible to practitioners –designers and planners. This dissertation argues that designing for resilience in contemporary landscape architecture should be a cross-disciplinary endeavor that is driven by an understanding of urban system science. The shift in focus from a designer-controlled process as a normative exercise to landscape design within the context of a multitude of exigent circumstances requires designers to understand the mechanisms underlying complex systems by accepting objective and analytic methodologies. Despite the rush to establish design or planning guidelines to cope with emerging resilience issues, however, the integration of urban system science with design creation is still an arduous task. To this aim, we need to have complex (but accessible) analytic approaches that investigate urban dynamics and that produce information that landscape architects find useful, practical, and understandable. This dissertation explores ways to promote a science-based design process that is actively incorporated with quantifiable information, dynamic modeling systems, and real-world applications. Ultimately, I aim to contribute to an endemic process for more resilient landscape design solutions by linking large-scale scientific knowledge of urban dynamics to physical design. This dissertation is a collection of research that has been conducted in the Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) laboratory under my lead and published (or submitted) in academic journals or presented in international conferences. Case studies involved in the dissertation include sociohydrological modeling for McHenry County (IL), socioeconomic modeling for Sangamon County (IL), green infrastructure modeling for Chicago (IL), statewide solar energy analysis for Illinois, and urban heat island analyses for Korean new towns.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Kwak, Yoonshin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hart, David
• Deal, Brian
• Sullivan, William
• Hannon, Bruce

• Resilience
• Urban System Science
• Landscape Architecture
• Simulation Modeling
• Planning Support Systems

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Yoonshin Kwak

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113168

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/113168