UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.James, Peter MichaelSubject: search.filters.subject.architecture

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    Dubai Detox: An Alternative Urbanism of Climate, Culture and Place
    (2010) James, Peter Michael; Bell, Matthew J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, recently experienced a spectacular building boom. The new city--a string of setpieces including palm-shaped islands, manmade marinas and soaring skyscrapers--bears no resemblance to traditional Middle Eastern urban settlements. The end of the boom has left many building plans unrealized. These holes in the urban fabric present strategic opportunities to challenge Dubai's prevailing car-dependent, energy-intensive development model. This thesis proposes design possibilities for an undeveloped 100-hectare area adjacent to a Dubai Metro rail transit station. Using climate and culture as determinants in the design process, time-tested urban, landscape and architectural responses are applied and transformed to the creation of a new settlement pattern. The resulting urban design "kit of parts" provides a flexible framework for transit- and pedestrian-oriented development that accommodates varied densities and building types, simultaneously privileging public space and respecting cultural values of privacy and separation.