I review several bodies of empirical urban theory relevant to the archaeological analysis of ancient cities. Empirical theory is a type of “middlerange theory” (following Robert Merton): sets of concepts and methods that are less abstract, and have greater empirical content, than high-level social theory. The categories of theory reviewed here include environment-behavior theory, architectural ...

Understanding the context of use of a computing system is an important part of designing human-centred interaction especially where that computing pervades the places and activities of daily life. The aim of this paper is to introduce two ontologies that represent understanding of 1) human perception of architectural place and 2) sociality in an urban space, gained through field studies of the ...

DEDICATION To my parents and family for their endless love and support. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Kathleen Lugosch and Stephen Schreiber for their academic advices and kind help. Urban Villages are a specific phenomenon raised in modern China due to the high-speed economic development and urbanization in recent three decades. And there are social, economic, cultural and architectural ...

This article describes a new model for urban planning in ancient and preindustrial cities that moves beyond the traditional simplistic dichotomy of planned versus organic cities. The model has two components: coordination of buildings and spaces, and standardization among cities. A variety of coordinated arrangements of buildings reflect urban planning, including simple coordination, formality ...

recent increased islamic awakening in many muslim societies, have given a momentum to rise of contextual necessity for islamic culture. as religion and way of life, islam framed in city. city morphology according to islamic ideology has brought interest to the discussion among the specialists and professionals involved in muslim world for many decades, particularly in iran. this goal can be ach...