<p> The rising demand for suitable housing for low- and middle-income Saudi residents in the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia metropolitan area exceeds the supply. This study explored the possibilities and obstacles facing private sector real estate developers in the development of suitable housing in the Jeddah metropolitan area. The study identified and described developers&rsquo; perspectives relative to supply and demand trends, obstacles that inhibited the development of suitable housing, incentives that might help build suitable housing, and possible long-term solutions to address the ongoing mismatch between supply and demand. The study employed a qualitative case study design, and the case was private sector real estate development in Jeddah. The researcher conducted semi structured, open-ended interviews with 16 private sector, residential real estate developers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Case study findings revealed four major obstacles: bureaucratic frustrations with the Ministry of Housing and the Municipality of Jeddah; lack of financing options for potential homeowners and private sector developers; lack of land with the necessary infrastructure to create communities; and potential homeowners&rsquo; culture-based desire, or housing norm, for large, expensive villas. Future research could investigate the efficacy of the solutions recommended by the study&rsquo;s participants; how other nations&rsquo; housing solutions could be adapted to the Saudi context; and best practices for integrating the study&rsquo;s findings, conclusions, and recommendations with the Kingdom&rsquo;s <i> National Transformation Program 2020 and Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s Vision 2030 </i>.</p><p>

The research reported in this thesis provides a comprehensive safety evaluation of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) using a range of experimental methodologies. An ISA system can have varying system characteristics but, in general, limits a vehicle to a particular speed (or provides advice about the appropriate speed). This evaluation offers an important contribution to the understanding of a range of issues pertinent to the implementation of such a technology. This thesis reports a series of studies designed to evaluate the effect of ISA on driver behaviour and safety. Each of the studies addressed a separate issue and thus a number of research methodologies were used. The studies evaluated the effectiveness of ISA in comparison to other speed-reducing methods and investigated how drivers interacted with ISA across a variety of road types. In addition, a number of variants of ISA were developed and their comparative effectiveness was studied in a laboratory setting and in the real world. In summary, the simulator studies reported decreases in mean and maximum speeds for areas of interest such as curves and village entry points. The field studies on the other hand only found decreases in maximum speeds, probably due to the small sample and high variability in traffic conditions. However these decreases in speed were located in road environments where excessive speed is a problem; thus safety benefits would undoubtedly accrue with ISA. With regards to system design, drivers were more accepting of an ISA system that allowed an override particularly self-reported speeders. Increases in frustration and the perceived loss of time while driving with a mandatory ISA were also reported and may explain the negative shift in gap acceptance behaviour and car following observed in the simulator.

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<p> From 1985 to 2015, local politicians like Kenneth G. Spillias, Jan Winters, and Nancy M. Graham reshaped downtown West Palm Beach. They promised to eliminate urban blight, and turned a crime-ridden area of the city into an upper-middle class entertainment zone frequented by wealthy pleasure-seekers from throughout Palm Beach County.</p><p> However, much of this transformation was an illusion. These politicians eliminated local taxpayers from the decision-making process by circumventing their votes, but subsequently taxed them to pay for the improvements. Furthermore, blight was not eliminated downtown, merely relocated to areas surrounding the entertainment zone. This resulted in ongoing tension between the mostly white patrons and business owners in the redeveloped area, and the primarily black residents in the dilapidated neighborhoods surrounding this development.</p>

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This dissertation examines the cultural and political forces that shape and direct AIDS policy in the United States. Through a multi-sited, ethnographic research project in Springfield, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city with the 11th highest per capita AIDS rate in the nation, this project investigates the political culture that informs and directs needle exchange legislation. With a move toward a more politically engaged ethnography, this research blends political activism, participant observation, open-ended interviews and political analysis to provide an “insider” study of the policymaking process as it unfolded on the ground –from the Massachusetts State House and Springfield City Hall to an illegal needle exchange program operated by local AIDS activists. The political antagonism at the center of my investigation is a conflict between, on the one hand, the scientific consensus on the efficacy of needle exchange, and on the other, the moralizing discourse associated with injection drug use. Here, the often-contradictory forces of science and morality form a paradox within the policymaking process: although there is scientific consensus on the efficacy of needle exchange, needle exchange legislation is continuously defeated on moral grounds. Locating this paradox in the propensity of the American state - beginning with the Reagan administration in the early 1980s - to calibrate social policy through a juridical combination of an enhanced liberal individualism with neoliberal economic reforms, this dissertation interrogates the means by which policymakers harness a particular worldview of human nature–individual will, personal responsibility, entrepreneurship, economic man–to make sense of the AIDS epidemic. To what extent can we locate the present role of moralism in American social policy as indicative of our contemporary political culture? Do social policies operate as forms of moral regulation to govern people in alignment with “the common sense of our age?” If so, can we then argue that social policies are an essential feature of liberal statecraft, a system of moral governance that is reconfiguring the contemporary relationship between individual and society? The immediate concern for democratic politics is the prospect that social policies directed at the needs of politically marginalized groups may not motivated by social concerns alone but based on the cultural stigma associated with their practices.