Transitional Architecture: A Temporary Architectural System for De-Industrializing Waterfronts

The following thesis began as an investigation into port cities that lie in the limbo between industrial and post-industrial. It questions the role of architecture during this stage of transition. The research brought forth a vision of infrastructural re-use and reversible architecture, aimed to address the indeterminate and environmental condition of de-industrialized contexts. Essentially this thesis envisions the reactivation of wasted rail and manufacturing infrastructure present among industrial-port cities. They are to become a supply chain network, producing temporary architecture. Areas of high rail density such as rail yards and industrial piers thus act as incubators of the future era; served by a reversible architecture. These communities become the focus of the city's redevelopment efforts while resisting the pressure of permanent, large scale redevelopments. As the transition from industrial to post-industrial nears stabilization, more permanent solutions will begin to emerge while the architecture may move on to serve another context.

Transitional Architecture: A Temporary Architectural System for De-Industrializing Waterfronts

The following thesis began as an investigation into port cities that lie in the limbo between industrial and post-industrial. It questions the role of architecture during this stage of transition. The research brought forth a vision of infrastructural re-use and reversible architecture, aimed to address the indeterminate and environmental condition of de-industrialized contexts. Essentially this thesis envisions the reactivation of wasted rail and manufacturing infrastructure present among industrial-port cities. They are to become a supply chain network, producing temporary architecture. Areas of high rail density such as rail yards and industrial piers thus act as incubators of the future era; served by a reversible architecture. These communities become the focus of the city's redevelopment efforts while resisting the pressure of permanent, large scale redevelopments. As the transition from industrial to post-industrial nears stabilization, more permanent solutions will begin to emerge while the architecture may move on to serve another context.

Technical and economic evaluation of justification for preventing negative effects of feedback in local elements of interaction of rail yards

The operation of rail yards is characterized not only by direct links, but also by feedback in the local elements of interaction, resulting in a violation of interaction conditions between adjacent elements, which causes a negative effect on the state and functioning of the elements. The duration of the track occupation in the arrival yard depends on both its parameters: the marshalling hump and the operation of other elements of the yard located at the arrival yard in the direction of cargo traffic processing. Therefore, when choosing the rational parameters of the rail yards, attention should be paid to the existence of feedbacks in the local elements of interaction and conditions of their negative manifestation should be investigated in order to justify measures to eliminate them. In the article, the issue of improving the customer transport service quality by technical and technological modernization of railway enterprises was studied. Technical and economic evaluation on justification of measures for the elimination of negative effects of feedback in local elements of interaction of the rail yards is presented for practical use.

Principles of the Feedback Action in Local Elements of Rail Yard Interaction

Achievement of high-quality servicing level of cargo owners should be carried out under unconditionally effective use of rolling stock of railways and technical means. The real transport process should be implemented based on logistic cargo supply chains by types of connections for each shipment. The practice of railway operation shows that there is a significant shortage of train locomotives as a result of which the departure of ready trains at rail yard is often not carried out. In such cases, a feedback effect in local elements of interaction of these stations occurs. Due to delay in departure of trains, sending of already formed trains from rail yards is delayed; furthermore, because of the overflow of rail yard tracks, the sorting process on marshalling humps can be slowed down and delay of prepared trains for dismantling at arrival yard may occur. As a result of feedback action, downtimes of rail cars are increasing and movement of inventories is slowing down. In order to mitigate feedbacks effects in local elements of interaction, the principles of their operation, consideration of which will enable acceleration in passage of the rail car and cargo traffic through the railway network in practical activity, were formulated.

Securing the Workplace

This chapter, along with the next two, interrogates the ways that police reform amplified ordinary white men’s power to police free black Baltimoreans. One site of such racial policing was the workplace. By the late 1850s, Chapter 3 shows, white workingmen were commonly engaging in job busting – i.e. chasing skilled black workingmen from the docks and rail yards with the police’s complicity. This was because the law did not treat all workers equally, even in an industrializing city where employers held much of the leverage and the vast majority of the people of color were free. Black workers were prolific in Baltimore, and the wages black Baltimoreans earned were meaningful evidence of their freedom, but the legal and institutional discrimination they confronted put them at a severe disadvantage when facing white violence in the workplace. More times than not, professional policemen confirmed the disparity.

Macrolevel Classification Yard Capacity Modeling

Classification yards play a significant role in railroad freight transportation and are often considered bottlenecks for railroad networks. Based on a generic yard simulation model, the model in the presented study fits the Bureau of Public Roads function, which is widely used in highway capacity to represent the volume–dwell time relationship. The proposed analytical model incorporates major features of rail yards, such as the number and capacity of tracks in each area, the number of engines and humps, the humping speed, and the assemble rate. The model is validated by historical data from 16 classification yards of Class I railroads in the United States. The results show that the proposed model can generate precise capacity data of rail yard, as well as the dwell time of rail cars in yards. The dwell time increases sharply when the volume is greater than the capacity of a rail yard. The identified relationship may help a railroad analyze its network at the macro level and therefore improve the systemwide capacity and efficiency.