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(2022)ThesisThis study was conducted to increase our understanding of residents’ place attachment within residential outdoor environments in urban China. There were three aims for this study: to investigate how residents develop place attachment within residential outdoor environments through their experiences of these settings; to examine the role of the physical environment in residents’ place attachment within residential outdoor environments; and to identify the relationship between the Chinese socio-cultural context and place attachment, adding the evidence in the Chinese context to the existing literature on place attachment that mainly focuses on the Western context. Place attachment as an affective bond between people and place has a positive impact on people’s health and well-being. Residential areas are important places in people’s everyday life and there is a large body of research on residential attachment. Residential outdoor environments have been proven to play a role in residential place attachment, but the mechanics of place attachment within residential outdoor environments are not known. This study investigates residents’ experience of the outdoor environments to which they are attached to identify the significant physical characteristics and social dimensions that may contribute to place attachment. Residential neighbourhoods in urban China have witnessed great change over the last forty years due to rapid urbanisation and currently there are two typical residential models in urban China: one, mid-rise apartment blocks with unrestricted street patterns built before 2000; the other, high-rise towers in gated communities built in the past 20 years. Residential outdoor environments are traditionally designed to provide opportunities for physical activities and social interaction, but aestheticization of outdoor environments has become a major selling point and an important indicator for evaluating the quality of newly built settlements in China. This dilemma has put great pressure on landscape urban design to provide quality residential outdoor environments. This study used a comparative case study of the two residential models in Qingdao, China, and three methods were used: semi-structured interviews with 20 adult residents for each case, 40 in total; a questionnaire with the participants involved in the interviews; and participant observation of outdoor environments. Theories of place attachment, social ecological perspective, and urban open space studies provide the conceptual framework for this study. The findings reveal that place attachment within residential outdoor environments can be rooted in social ties and can also stem from the physical attributes of the environment. For the former, residents can ascribe attachment to the place through lengthy person-environment interaction or because of environmental beauty and distinctiveness. For the latter, residents can be attached to the place that symbolises their social group or where they have important personal memories. The findings also identify the key attributes of the physical environment that contribute to place attachment. The relationship between the Chinese socio-cultural context and place attachment is also identified in terms of the physical characteristics as well as social dimensions. This study makes theoretical contributions to place attachment theory. It throws light on the understanding of the role and functions of the physical environment in place attachment and increases our understanding of how place attachment manifests in the Chinese context. It also provides design recommendations for landscape architects and planners to create and construct supportive residential outdoor environments in urban China, which has practical implications.
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(2022)ThesisAchieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings requires decision-making on reducing building carbon emissions at each stage during the entire building lifecycle in an integrated way. However, most existing research has focused on embodied and operational carbon assessment separately, without considering carbon emissions occurred across all building stages. There is a lack of integration of the key decision variables throughout the whole lifecycle building process to support decision-making in achieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. Building information modelling (BIM) provides an object-based representation of a building which facilitates exchange and interoperability of building information across multiple disciplines. Most BIM applications are focused on design and construction stages. There is a lack of entities, properties, and relationships in the current Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema required to support whole life net-zero carbon buildings. Digital Twin (DT) is a virtual representation of building assets, processes, and systems. It can facilitate the construction and operation of buildings by simulating real-time building conditions. Integrating information acquired by DT with BIM has considerable potential to enable whole life cycle net-zero carbon assessment. Therefore, a framework integrating BIM and DT is needed to provide ontology-based computational representation to incorporate all key decision variables throughout the entire building process to support decision-making on net-zero carbon buildings. To fill the gap, this research develops a novel framework that integrates BIM and DT to tackle challenges in supporting net-zero carbon buildings over the whole building lifecycle. Firstly, through a systematic literature review, all key decision variables affecting net-zero carbon outcomes of buildings at each key building stage, throughout the whole building lifecycle, are identified. Then, a mapping process between identified variables and the existing IFC schema is conducted to define these variables using current IFC entities, properties, and relationships. Finally, through utilising the ontology-based representation method, the novel framework is developed by proposing an extension to the current IFC schema and integrating data from the DT to encourage well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. The framework has the potential to pave the way for further research on an automated system to support well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings.
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(2022)ThesisIn recent decades, natural hazards have had significant destructive impacts on human lives, the global economy, the built environment, and the functions and services provided by infrastructure. As a result, post-disaster recovery projects for impacted infrastructure have attracted particular attention to ensure necessary services in disaster-stricken areas. Construction companies play a significant role in recovery projects by providing resources, logistics and expertise. However, due to the complexity and dynamic nature of recovery projects, contractors have experienced diverse challenges. These conditions pose numerous threats to performance and undermine the resilience of companies involved in recovery projects, resulting in their failure to complete recovery projects. One possible means of improving contractor performance and organisational resilience is lean construction practices. Lean construction tools have been widely and successfully implemented in construction projects to improve performance, but the literature lacks consensus on their capability in disaster recovery projects. There is also a dearth of agreement on lean construction capability to improve organisational resilience. Finally, there is a lack of empirical research on the interrelationship between the implementation of lean practices, contractor performance and organisational resilience. Construction companies have played a significant role in infrastructure recovery projects following earthquakes in Christchurch and Kaikoura, New Zealand. However, the environment in which these companies operate significantly challenges their performance and organisational resilience. The thesis investigates the implementation of lean construction practices to improve organisational resilience and contractor performance in the presence of lean barriers stemming from post-disaster reconstruction projects. A conceptual framework incorporating six hypotheses is developed to empirically examine the impact of lean construction on contractor performance and organisational resilience in the presence of lean barriers in infrastructure recovery projects. Data was gathered through an online questionnaire survey distributed to construction companies involved in infrastructure recovery projects following earthquakes in Christchurch and Kaikoura in New Zealand. In total, 57 responses were received (response rate, 57%), and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was applied to test the hypothesised interrelationships in the structural models. The results suggest that implementing lean practices, such as just-in-time, total quality management and visual management, positively correlates with contractor performance and organisational resilience in recovery projects. It was also found that the greater the organisational resilience, the greater the contractors’ performance. Another finding is that organisational resilience has a mediating impact on the relationship between implementation of lean construction and improvement of contractor performance. The moderation analysis of lean barriers revealed that financial barriers negatively influence the implementation of lean practices on contractor performance. Finally, the results indicate that lean practices are more efficient in long-term recovery projects than short-term projects. The results can be used to assist construction companies and organisations involved in recovery projects to find practical ways to improve contractor performance and organisational resilience and invest their efforts and resources more efficiently to implement lean practices in infrastructure recovery projects.
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(2022)ThesisThis thesis addresses language maintenance and shift (LMS) in the Blang community in China. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories including the sociology of language, the social psychology of language and linguistic anthropology, this research examined Blang people’s language practices, their attitudes towards the complex ecology of Blang, Putonghua, the Yunnan dialect, and English. These attitudes inform the research about their perceptions of Blang vitality and their motivations for maintaining Blang for future generations. The study used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with 61 participants representing three generations. The study was also informed by ethnographic observations during fieldwork in the Township of Blang Mountain, Southwest China. The numerical data on language practices was analysed using descriptive statistics, and the discursive data on language perceptions was analysed through thematic analysis. The data analysis identified that the Blang language has been undergoing language shift. This shift was found to have been mediated by social structures that provide limited affordance for the use of Blang in public domains. Blang people’s ideological beliefs about the reduced utility of Blang have further marginalised the language. However, the findings also revealed that language shift did not occur in a uniform pattern in the community, and it was contingent on individual agency. Blang people deployed their agency to either adapt to or resist structural constraints through different linguistic practices, which resulted in varying degrees of LMS. In addition to the interplay between structure and agency, there were contests between parental and child agency. Blang youth responded to the parental agency in varied ways through negotiating their family language policy and their own language preferences. The findings support theories of LMS which recognise that language shift has variation within speech communities. This study provides empirical evidence for the benefit of using qualitative approaches to the study of LMS to have a deeper understanding of structure and agency at play. This study also draws attention to the unequal power relations between languages and calls for language policies which support minority groups to maintain their language.