Thesis--Stockholm. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 410-428).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-246). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): David S. Yost, Lyman Miller. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-61). Also available online.

Smart growth tools address a diverse range of specific concerns, including historic preservation, farmland protection, habitat conservation, flexible architectural design, and expedited land development. Smart growth unites the traditionally separate and competing growth promotion and growth control measures into a single growth accommodation approach. In addition to these important concepts, Henry R. Richmond posits that smart growth must now be explained within the context of “new urbanism” and “new regionalism.” What smart growth tries to accomplish is thus development with implied improvements in quality of life and environmental protection rather than mere urban growth or economic expansion per se. An important obstacle to smart growth measures is that growth problems rarely respect political boundaries. Scattered development patterns, as well as the traffic congestion, environmental degradation, fiscal stresses, and other problems that often accompany them, tend to be regional in nature, extending beyond the boundaries of any one locality. Accordingly, many growth problems are better addressed through regional solutions that federal, state and local smart growth measures my not provide. The general premise of “new regionalism” is that the economic health of the city and its outlying areas are inseparably intertwined, and that without regional planning and programs, individual jurisdictions in a single region compete with one another for limited resources and economic investment. New regionalists typically advocate from one of these three competing positions: greater economic prosperity, increased environmental protection, or improved social equity. Consequently, many politicians, advocates and activists are calling for the implementation of integrated policies that address the interrelatedness of all regional challenges, including housing, transportation, water, sewage, and other regional physical infrastructure systems. Denver evidences a suite of tensions between the promise and outcomes of planning with a wider, regional applicability. On the one hand, there is a progressiveness that embraces regional governance, growth management, economic vitality and quality infrastructure. But on the other hand, there is the reality of city sprawl, competitive local government relationships, and a convergence of interest between citizen choice and development industry behavior. This report will illustrate three issues regarding effective and efficient regional planning implementation at local, state and federal levels in the context of regional planning efforts in the Denver Metro Area. First, why does infill development and economic revitalization not only benefit the central city but the region as a whole? Secondly, how do land-use assignments and development design, like Smart Growth and New Urbanism, encourage regional planning efforts towards integrated mass transit? Finally, How does government fragmentation and overlap contribute to the lack of regional consensus and efficient planning? / text

This dissertation gives an aesthetic analysis on the selected woodblock prints of the Okinawan artist Gima Hiroshi concurrent with an exploration of the identity politics of the Okinawans. Deconstructing the historical circumstances of the archipelago, the contradictions and predicaments that the islanders have been struggling with from the trade era and annexation period, to the wartime, the U.S. occupation and the reversion to the Japanese state are portrayed in the war prints. With the constitution of a multi-vocal identity, a regionalist identity has been articulated. This regionalism is manifested in the artist’s prints about traditions, customs and everyday life in terms of folk dance, drum playing, craftsmanship, festivities, daily activities, agriculture, residential space and the practices related to nature. Following a thorough discussion of the visual texts is the elucidation of essentialism in contemporary Okinawan studies that identity politics is itself delimiting and institutionalizing in representation. Essentialist representations reinforce the dichotomy of the self/other structure that they can be more detrimental than explicit performative discourses. As a concluding argument, this essay finishes with a proposed alternative to essentialist literature – visual representations. The interpretative potentiality and transformative powers of art serve as a stepping stone for the third party to experience the experience of the Other, which challenges the presumptions imposed by the self/other narrative. In this process, the marginalized can be made visible. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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In this set of essays, I grapple with issues related to the core questions of urban economics. Why are people so heavily clustered in urban areas? Why do some cities grow while others decline? What explains where people live within urban areas? My first essay focuses on understanding patterns of racial segregation within metro areas. One factor that has long been hypothesized to contribute to this divide, but has proven difficult to test empirically, is that local zoning regulations have an exclusionary impact on minority residents in some neighborhoods. I focus on variation in block-level racial composition within narrow bands around zone borders within jurisdictions. My results imply a large role for local zoning regulation, particularly the permitting of dense multi-family structures, in explaining disparate racial location patterns. The second essay returns to core issues of agglomeration and the role of cities. The fact that wages tend to be higher in cities, and that this premium grows with density, has been seen as strong evidence for urban agglomeration forces enhancing productivity. In modern data this density premium seems only to exist in areas with above average levels of human capital. Agglomeration models emphasizing learning and knowledge spillovers between workers in close proximity seem most compatible with the data. Finally, I investigate the impact of local governance structure on urban growth over the last 40 years. Some economists have touted the virtues of competition between fragmented local governments in efficient provision of local public goods, while regionalists have pointed to the need to coordinate planning and infrastructure across jurisdictions, and warned of the impacts of fractionalization on segregation and sprawl. While cities with regionalized governments have grown more rapidly, a small set of strong historical correlates with local government density can account for this. Impacts on segregation are more robust. / Economics

In the context of regionalism and regionalisation, the notion of a region holds sway. Discussions around the topic of how spatial entities defined as ‘regions’ form, evolve, develop, become institutionalised and sometimes stabilized have been active and profound over the last forty years. Moreover, rich and diverse literature provides different conceptualizations and problematisation of regions that have been changing over time. ‘Heterogeneous relations’ that stretch over boundaries and are not territorially fixed have been accorded an increased attention in the regional studies. This research investigates the region building process in the Alpine region and analyses different agenda-settings pursued by various stakeholders in the Alpine region. The study employs qualitative methods to analyse processes of region building by applying Paasi’s institutionalisation theory. The findings show the regional dynamics in the case under investigation and claims that the Alpine region has being transformed from a closed, bounded, territorially fixed entity to a relational one, based on not territorially fixed heterogeneous relations. This transformation leads from a relatively ‘fixed’ Alpine region (as defined by Alpine Convention) to a more fluid, unbounded and ‘fuzzy’ space – the Alpine macro-region, which is being developing.

Den sydsvenska regionbildningen är en förening som tillsammans står bakom en avsiktsförklaring för att slå samman Blekinge, Kalmar, Kronoberg och Skåne till en region med eget utvecklingsansvar. Förslag på att Sverige borde införa regioner med eget utvecklingsansvar lade den statliga utredningen, kallad Ansvarskommittén, fram efter att utförligt undersökt hur Sveriges samhällsorganisation kan förbättras. Efter Ansvarskommittén lade fram sitt förslag diskuterades det kring regionbildningar runt om i Sverige, men dessa diskussioner har en efter en lagts ner, förutom den sydsvenska regionbildningen och denna uppsats vill försöka ta reda på varför. Syftet med denna uppsats utgår ifrån att ta reda på om argumentationen för att bilda region som presenteras i Ansvarskommitténs utredning är drivkraften bakom den sydsvenska regionbildningen. För att ha underlag för att besvara detta syfte utgick jag från följande frågeställning Vilka huvudargument lade Ansvarskommittén i sin utredning fram för regionalisering i Sverige?, Vilka likheter och skillnader finns det i huvudargumenten för regionalisering från Ansvarskommittén i förhållande till den sydsvenska regionbildningens sätt att resonera kring en regionalisering? och Mot bakgrund av forskningslitteratur om regionalism, nyregionalism och regionalisering, i vilken utsträckning kan dessa begrepp kopplas samman med Ansvarskommitténs utredning? För att besvara syftet utgick jag från Ansvarskommitténs utredningsdokument och dokument från den sydsvenska regionbildningen. Genom kvalitativ textanalys i form av idéanalys och argumentationsanalys kom jag fram till att det verkar som att den sydsvenska regionbildningen har sin drivkraft i Ansvarskommitténs argumentation.

No description available.