Dr. Polakit at UPE8 in Germany

Assistant Professor Kasama Polakit presents a paper on spatial patterns in metropolitan regions at the 8th Internationl Symposium of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association.

Assistent Professor Kasama Polakit presented a paper entitled “Characterizing Collective Themed Spaces: A theoretical framework to study spatial patterns in metropolitan regions” at UPE8, the 8th International Symposium organized by the International Urban Planning and Environment Association.  UPE8 was hosted by the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany and was held March 23-26, 2009.  The theme of the symposium was “Parallel Patterns of Urban Growth and Decline: Sustainability Issues and Challenges for Spatial Planning in 21st Century Cities and Regions”.  Learn more about UPE8 at www.upe8.org.

“Characterizing Collective Themed Spaces" is co-authored, along with Dr. Polakit, by FAU School of Urban and Regional Planning's Professor David Prosperi and Assistant Professor Asli Ceylan Oner.  The following is an abstract of the paper:

Contemporary urban development can be seen as an explosion resulting in the polycentric urban areas, in which many sub-areas with different functions are connected to each other through the flow of resources including people and businesses.  According to the users and types of use it is expected that different parts of polycentric urban areas will have different characteristics. Thus, the urban space can be understood as a collection of themed spaces that have different components spatially separated according to use and users.  Each urban component has different themes with different dynamics.  In this regard, to understand existing and emerging spatial patterns is one of the key concepts in urban design and planning.  

This paper aims to propose an analytical framework to characterize themed urban spaces in polycentric metropolitan areas from a user-function approach.  In doing this, it identifies five different user typologies in relation to public services, commercial, industrial and residential uses.   South Florida Metropolitan Region, incorporating Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, will be utilized as a case study to develop a user-function framework.  Being a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean for businesses and immigrants, as well as serving as the place destination of local and global tourism, South Florida is a global metropolitan area that consists of many different “themes” in its geography and it provides a distinctive characteristic to apply the proposed framework.