Taket är trädkronans grenar som sträcker sig mot ljuset vilket också ackompanjeras av lövverket på våren eller snön på vintern. Jorden, rötterna, löven och bergsknallen är golvet. Däremellan tar ett nytt lager arkitektur form genom att förstärka rummen som redan finns och möjliggöra en verksamhet där barnen spenderar sex månader om året utomhus. Pedagogiken verkar för att barnet ska känna sig trygg i skogen och i sitt närområde, därigenom värna om dem och känna sig delaktig för att få kraft att bevara eller förändra. Växa upp och bli en demokratisk medborgare. / The roof is the branches of the tree crown that reaches to the light, covered in foliage in the spring or snow in the winter. The soil, the roots and the leaves makes the floor. In between, a new layer of architecture takes form by strengthening the existing rooms and enabling an activity where the children spend six months a year outdoors. The pedagogy makes the child feel safe in the woods and in the nearby area, thereby protecting them and making them feel involved to gain strength to preserve or to change. Grow up and become a democratic citizen.

Målet med studien var att låta tre autonoma ungdomsorganisationer (Megafonen,Pantrarna samt Rörelsen Gatans Röst och Ansikte) komma till tals angående sinaverksamheter. Organisationerna är etablerade i svenska förorter och arbetar för atthöja förortens status och att engagera ungdomar i det som påverkar deras liv ochnärområde. Frågeställningarna löd: Hur kan organisationernas verksamhet ochdess mål beskrivas? På vilket sätt kan organisationernas verksamhet tolkas somsocialt arbete? Genom intervjuer med de aktuella organisationerna samtdokumentanalys av nyhetsartiklar och hemsidematerial som organisationernamedverkat i eller själva producerat ville vi ta del av och framföraorganisationernas egna röster. Genom teorin om empowerment samt begreppetclaims-making fördjupades förståelsen för och förklaringen till organisationernasarbete och de sociala problem organisationerna framhåller. Organisationerna haren tydlig social och politisk agenda och betonar samhällets strukturer som orsaktill många förortsbors livssituation. De arbetar med egenformulerade socialaproblembilder som de vill aktualisera i samhällsdebatten. De vill ökamedborgarnas rättigheter och demokratiska inflytande och framförallt öka ochkanalisera ungdomarna i förorternas engagemang samt ge dem kunskap ochverktyg till att organisera sig. / The aim of the study was to let three autonomous youth organizations(Megafonen, Pantrarna and Rörelsen Gatans Röst och Ansikte) getting to talkregarding their activities. The organizations are established in Swedish suburbsand are working to raise suburban status and for involving young people in theissues that affect their lives and neighbourhoods. The question formulation was:How can the activity and the goals for the organizations be described? How canthe activities of the organizations be interpreted as social work? Throughinterviews with the organizations, and document analysis of the content of newsarticles and website that the organizations had been involved in, or produced, wewanted to take part in and present the organizations´ own voices. Through thetheory of empowerment and the concept of claims-making, the understanding ofthe explanation of the organizations´ work and the social problems theorganizations points out got deepened. The organizations have a clear social andpolitical agenda, and stress the understanding of the structure of society as thecause of the suburban residents´ life situation. They work with, by them,formulated set of social problems they want to update in the public debate. Theywant to increase the rights of the citizens and the democratic influence and aboveall increase and channel the engagement of the youth in the suburbs, and givethem the knowledge and tools to organize.

This thesis engages in an initial exploration of the spatial experiences of older youth in the suburbs of the West Island of Montreal. Adopting a Lefebvrian spatial lens, the goal of this thesis is to outline the characteristics of the lived experiences of older middle class youth in a constructed suburban environment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in a largely Anglophone college with students aged 18 to 19 years of age. I begin my thesis by reviewing the literature on urban youth geographies, aimed at analyzing the influence of the built urban environment. I argue that the suburban experiences of older youth varies from those of children, inner city youth, and marginalized youth who are most represented in the literature. Then, I present the important considerations of doing research with youth participants and the ways in which my conceived methods were altered during my fieldwork, leading to adjustments in sampling, and subsequent impacts on the conclusions of this thesis. I continue by presenting the themes that emerged during the interviews, which I illustrate by sharing the reflections and everyday experiences of participants. From these accounts, I draw links between the similarities and differences among participants, the literature, and Lefebvre's theories. In this analysis, I reflect upon the differences between available youth literatures and the young people from my sample, leading me to further explore broader literatures that enable me to contextualize more characteristics of my sample and concepts related to the lack of illegitimate spaces in the suburbs, the significance of private space in the suburban environment, play, resistance, and the use of alternative spaces, in a way that differs from the accounts from marginalized urban youth literatures. I argue that the young people from my sample feel less marginalized, therefore engaging in less obvious forms of resistance, while still finding ways to shape their identities and play while being limited by some of the conditions of the built suburban environment.

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Can the single family suburb survive into a post fossil future? This project explores the financial and ecological conditions of suburbia and how this will shape its future. The conclusion is that in its current form there is little chance for it to survive, in fact it is already being deconstructed.With the aim to reduce sprawl and protect the commons, while trying to maintain some of the calmer and softer properties that makes the suburbs so attractive for many people.The proposal is therefore to place rowhouses as infill between the current housing stock, creating a more dense city which has a higher capability to sustain itself. This is to be supplemented by an urban strategy that provides community centres and retail spaces where needed (along with public transport and paths for walking/biking).The hope here is to create neighbourhoods that can sustain under the 15-minute city model, while also giving people the possibility to live way more ecologically than previously possible, without having to bulldoze or drastically reshape it.But most of all its meant to spark a discussion about how suburban neighbourhoods can transition into a fossil free future, can we get them there by their own volition and on its own terms or are the suburban life doomed to be left behind?

Syftet med studien är att belysa de kollektiva representationer dvs. kollektivt accepterade utsagor som återspeglas genom lokalmedias publiceringar om förorten i en mellanstor svensk stad. Studien ämnar också belysa vilken typ av nyheter som publiceras om förorten. Studien antar ett kritiskt diskursivt angreppssätt och urvalet består i 7 debattartiklar, 7 ledarartiklar och 5 debattinlägg från Nerikes Allehanda som sedan analyseras. Det baseras också på en översikt av 309 nyhetsartiklar publicerade mellan 2006-2015. Studien visar att lokalmedia producerar en bild av förorten som otrygg. Invånarna i förorten beskrivs inte sällan som icke-reflekterande, passiva och moraliskt avvikande. Studien argumenterar för att media skapar och upprätthåller en moralisk differentiering i gestaltningen av den andre och en dikotomi kring förorten. / The aim of this study is to analyse local media’s narratives about the suburb in a Swedish middle-sized city. This in order to show the collective representations (collectively accepted narrations) about the suburbs. The study also shows which kind of news about the suburb the local media is publishing. The methodology is influenced by the critical discourse analysis, CDA and the sample is based on 5 debate articles, 7 letters to the newspaper and 7 leaders. It’s also based on an appraisal of 309 news articles distributed between 2006 and 2015. The study displays that the local media creates an image of the suburb as an unsafe place. The inhabitants are often styled as passive, non-reflecting and morally deviated. The study argues that the local media is creating and sustaining a moral diversity when labeling “the others”. It also argues that the local media is enforcing a dichotomization of the suburb.

Dans une société où il est plutôt normal de passer beaucoup de temps assis, nous étudions, à partir de l’aménagement, l’intégration de l’activité physique de loisirs et de transport dans les activités et les lieux du quotidien. Cette intégration est relativement peu étudiée dans sa globalité car elle nécessite de prendre en considération les facteurs de l’environnement physique et social, les deux types d’activité physique, les différents lieux fréquentés quotidiennement et elle pose en ce sens de nombreux défis d’ordre méthodologique. Cette vue globale du phénomène s’impose car de plus en plus de recherches font état d’associations entre des dimensions spécifiques de l’aménagement et des comportements précis; occasionnellement, ces résultats se contredisent. Pour comprendre le phénomène, nous sommes partis du modèle écoenvironnemental et l’avons adapté pour mieux représenter la mobilité de la population. Nous avons conséquemment choisi une unité d’analyse comprenant le territoire résidentiel, le territoire du milieu de travail et le trajet entre les deux. Ainsi, en utilisant plusieurs sources de données, nous avons caractérisé des milieux comme étant contraignants ou facilitants pour l’activité physique et les personnes y résidant comme étant suffisamment actives ou pas. Nous avons ensuite fait ressortir les éléments importants des entrevues en fonction de cet appariement. Parmi les thèmes explorés en entrevue, nommons les caractéristiques de l’environnement physique qui ont de l’importance, l’impact de l’environnement social au travail et au domicile, la logique sous-jacente aux courses, etc. Les principaux résultats de cette recherche démontrent que les usagers du train de banlieue font suffisamment d’activité physique en dépit qu’ils résident en banlieue. En ce sens, notre échantillon est plus actif que la moyenne québécoise. Nous remarquons que l’influence de l’environnement est manifeste mais sous le principe des vases communicants, c'est-à-dire que le pôle résidentiel et le pôle des emplois ont tous deux des contributions qui s’avèrent très souvent complémentaires. L’influence de l’environnement social passe par le rôle signifiant des proches plutôt que par leur proximité géographique tandis que l’aménagement a une énorme contribution à rendre les parcours agréables et, de ce fait, donner une plus-value au temps requis pour les emprunter. La vocation des milieux, le type de marche et le sens qu’y voient les usagers doivent guider le design; il n’y a donc pas qu’une formule ou une seule prescription pour augmenter le potentiel piétonnier et/ou cyclable des milieux. Cela dit, les outils de caractérisation doivent être revus. En conclusion des pistes de développements futurs à cette recherche sont proposées. / In a society where it is quite normal to spend much time sitting, we study from an environmental design standpoint, the integration of physical activity for recreation and transportation activities and everyday places. This integration is relatively little studied in its entirety because it requires taking into consideration the factors of physical and social environment, both types of physical activity, the various places visited daily and it puts in that many challenges of methodology. This overview of the phenomenon is needed because more and more researches have reported associations between specific dimensions of the built environment and specific behaviours, and these results are occasionally contradictory. To understand the phenomenon, we set the eco environmental model and have adapted to better represent the population mobility. We have therefore chosen a unit of analysis including the residential area, the area of workplace and travel between the two. Thus, using multiple data sources, we characterized the community as restricting or facilitating physical activity and people living there as being sufficiently active or not. We then highlighted the important elements of interviews based on this pairing. Among the themes explored in the interview, characteristics of the physical environment that are important, the impact of the social environment at work and at home, the logic underlying the errands, etc. Key findings of this research show that users of the commuter trains are sufficiently active although they live in the suburbs. In this sense, our sample is more active than the provincial average. We note that the influence of the environment is obvious but under the principle of communicating vessels, that is to say that the residential pole and employment center has both a contribution that is often complementary. The influence of the social environment is through the significant role of relatives rather than by their geographical proximity while environmental design has a huge contribution to make the journey enjoyable and thereby give an added value to the time required to use them. The purpose of environments, the type of walking and the expectations of the users must guide the design. Consequently, there is not one formula or one single prescription to increase the walkability of the community; that being said, the characterization tools must be tailored. In conclusion, ideas for future developments following this research are proposed.