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“It is evident that home is not an object, a building, but a diffuse and complex condition that integrates memories and images, desires and fears, the past and the present. A home is also a set of rituals, personal rhythms and routines of everyday life. Home cannot be produced all at once; it has its time dimension and continuum and is a gradual product of the family’s and individual’s adaptation to the world. A home cannot, thus, become a marketable product.” - Juhani Pallasmaa, 2005 The topic of this thesis is about how a diverse community and the feeling of home come together at different scales, the scale of the city , of the neighborhood, of the street and of home. It is also about how architecture weaves these scales to adjust the boundaries of “self ” and “other”. It focuses on how to transition from the big scale of the city to the intimate scale of home. It examines the walls of home and how they interact with society. Also, it extends the elements of home beyond the intimacy and safety of our bedroom. It embrace mixtures of uses and it seeks to generate diversity. The topic seemed important to me because it is a reflection of the constant movement and change of times. Also, it explores the elementes that make a home. It has always intrigued me what is it that makes you feel at home. It sometimes seems that units are treated like garages that can easily park in and out individuals. In these layouts dwellers fail to feel rooted. It is almost as if they are never able to “unpack”. Finally, it serves personal interests. I am one of many young, early professionals and parents from diverse cultures that move frecuently and seek fertile ground for re-invention and to build a home. In my own search, my inspiration and point of reference in this exploration led me to the Southwest region of Washington DC. / Master of Architecture

No / Plagued by bloody wars and armed conflicts, political instability, communal violence and displaced persons, and at the mercy of natural catastrophes such as drought and famine, it is not surprising that the Western press has long dismissed Africa as the 'hopeless continent'. In the face of these challenges, Africa today is faced with a stark choice: either unite or perish. The debate on why and how the continent should unite in terms of co-operative peace, security and development is more urgent than at any other time in Africa's post-colonial history. Moving forward from the failure of the earlier, typically idealistic Africa unity project, David Francis demonstrates how peace and security challenges have created the imperative for change. He argues that a series of regional peace and security systems are emerging, and that states that have participated in practical experiments in regional peacekeeping, peace support operations, conflict stabilization/management and preventive diplomacy are building de facto systems of peace and security that could be institutionalized and extended.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

Traditional views on International Relations dominate regional analyses. These invariably emphasize the dominance of state and market forces in inter-state relations. Experiences and expectations of people are less prominent in these discourses, and the practices they foster. This thesis critically analyses the regional processes in West and southern Africa within the framework of Critical Theory. It argues that these processes are constrained by instability and the increasing legitimacy crises of the State. The thesis demonstrates that the State, through exclusive nationalist practices, hinder the growth of a cosmopolitan order, and it argues that neo-liberal regionalism is a contested phenomenon because of its exclusive nature. Finally, the thesis suggests steps needed to resolve the legitimacy crises and to build an inclusive regional order, based on cosmopolitan values.

Global economic integration and urbanisation are two of the main processes which characterise contemporary globalisation. Urbanisation is so pervasive that urban landscapes now stretch far beyond the traditional city limits such that the city may no longer be the most appropriate unit to reflect how contemporary urban life is organised. Today, city-regions even mega city-regions are considered by some to be the primary spatial scale at which competing political and economic agendas are convened. Moreover, proponents of the new regionalism believe that decentralisation of state power is producing new forms of political economic regulation at supranational and subnational levels which are more appropriate for effective governance. However, it is argued that the geoeconomic logic for city-regionalism is focused too narrowly on the functional economic side of regional development, thereby overlooking how city-regions represent geopolitical constructions both of, and inside, the state. This thesis therefore aims to explore the constitutive role of politics in the construction of mega city-regions. The starting point is to complement North Atlantic accounts of city-regionalism by focusing on the geopolitics of city-regionalism in China. Using the Yangtze River Delta mega city-region as its case study, this thesis stresses that theories of new city-regionalism must increasingly be derived from, rather than applied to, the Chinese case. It is revealed how the unprecedented rate of city expansion, scale of urbanisation, and context of a highly centralised, one-party state, produces a distinctly Chinese city-regionalism that requires a combination of new conceptualisation, alongside refinement and modification of existing theories on mega city-regions.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

The core of the diploma thesis "EU Development Cooperation with ACP Countries in Terms of the Regionalism Theory" lies in the case study analysing historical evolution of mutual relations and development cooperation between ECC / EU and the ACP group of countries from the Rome treaty to the present day. Analysis is focused on the external features of development cooperation, which was developing together with international treaties defining the priciples of collaboration. The research is based on concepts of the New Regionalism theory and focuses on searching connections between developing development cooperation and applied european regionalism. The basic assumption of the hypothesis is, that the development collaboration EEC / EU with ACP countries contains inter alia the fact of regionalism. In the end of case study is the hypothesis verified, but revealed regionalism is not a stable and anchored phenomenon, but a very dynamic one internally. With the application of development cooperation comes an evolution of the shape of european regionalism. That is visible mostly in shifting of priorities of international treaties. EEC / EU puts an increasing emphasis on socio - political requirements which are becoming conditional for the continuing development cooperation, when the economic dimension is...

The diploma thesis "The position of England in the context of the regional organization of Great Britain"deals with the issue of establishing a regional level of governance in the eight regions of England in the period between 1997 and 2004. This policy was promoted by the New Labour government as an answer to demands for democratisation and responsibility of governance in the regions as well as an answer to demands for improvements in economic performance of the regions. The aim of the thesis is to respond to the question of why the public in the regions does not support plans for strengthening of the regional level of governance and for establishing elected regional assemblies in the regions and why this policy was rejected in the referendum held in 2004 in the region North East. The research was carried out using the theory of new regionalism and the concept of construction of regions. Specific criteria are set and are used as a basis for analysis of the situation in the English regions in the selected time period. The first criterion is the territorial framework of the English regions, the second criterion is the institutional framework and the last criterion is the regional identity. It clearly emerges from the analysis that the English regions are not institutionalised as distinctive units...