Tehran, the capital city of Iran, has grown from a small village to a giant metropolis within two centuries. The population explosion - the result of both natural growth and migration from around the country to this city- led to the growth of the city and emergence of an unplanned mega city. As a densely populated mega city (with an average 10,000 persons/square km as population density), Tehran suffers from acute problems. Undoubtedly, the task of managing a metropolis with enormous problems and challenges is complex. Some of the elements that empower city managers to address such problems include adequate political and financial power, strategic plans, long-term views for urban development, and efficient decision making processes. The present research study primarily focuses on the latter element in Tehran‘s city management system, particularly in Tehran Municipality as the front line organisation, investigating the interrelationship between the quality of decision making process and the performance of city management systems. For this purpose, the research study concentrates on three distinctive periods after Iran‘s Islamic Revolution, i.e., the period commencing from Revolution including the Iran-Iraq War (1979-1990), the 1990‘s known as Tehran‘s reconstruction or post-war period, and the period after 1999 characterised by novice city councils during the first experience of elected bodies in Iranian urban management system. The thesis initially draws the pictures of Tehran in two snapshots of time: 1990 and 1999, i.e. the beginning and ending points of the second period of investigation, highlighting the considerable advancements in this period in terms of infrastructure development and urban facilities such as transportation network, public transit, green areas, cultural spaces, and other facilities. Then, employing a multi-criteria evaluation model, it conducts a quantitative analysis and measures the relative merit of decision making process at each period using the weighting and scoring method suggested by AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process). Finding the highest score of decision making quality in the second investigated period, the quantitative analysis suggests a positive interrelationship between a qualified decision making process and an efficient city management system. Furthermore, it shows that the quality of decision making has the most significant role among other investigated managerial power elements. The outcomes of the quantitative model are supported by a qualitative analysis through which a number of key decisions made during the second period were investigated to show the instances of qualified decision making process and how they impacted the performance of city management.

The thesis explores the growing significance of cities and urban governance in two interrelated areas: first, regarding national and European socio-economic objectives; second, regarding the processes and spatial implications of inter-urban competition at the EU level. The European Union, in the attempt to tackle disparities and promote economic competitiveness, has developed initiatives for an urban level of policy-making. Central to such a response, it is argued, is the integration into the European policy framework of the fundamental heterogeneity of urban governance structures in Europe. One particular and prominent dimension of urban disparities in Europe is the North-South polarisation of the emerging European urban hierarchy. The thesis goes beyond the traditional economic focus of urban governance studies in its attempt to understand the relatively poor competitive position of cities in Portugal, Greece and Spain. The thesis stresses the analysis of the process of urbanisation from a socio-political perspective: focusing upon the mode of social, economic and political restructuring and competitive orientation of the local level in Southern Europe. The research presented here examines the competitive position of Spain, Greece and Portugal at the local level and the structural divergence of the Southern European urbanisation process from the 'ideal-typical' Fordist/post-Fordist mode of urban restructuring and resurgence. The thesis highlights the characteristic urban governance arrangements of Spain, Greece and Portugal which, it argues, are a causal factor of the lagging competitiveness of Southern European cities. This pattern of European urban heterogeneity is not addressed in the emerging EU policies on urban governance. Case-studies of two EU urban programmes from the 1994-99 policy framework, the RECITE networks and the URBAN Initiative, are used to further illustrate the argument. The conclusion highlights the problems, possibilities and consequences of the Community's current pattern of urban intervention.

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This thesis is divided into three chapters of theoretical research, each followed by an analysis of related artwork. 'This structure is intended to demonstrate a dialogue between art practice and text-based investigation. The city is a representation of human impact and behaviour. To understand city space through art involves drawing closer to the objects embedded in polarised spaces. To further investigate these we require a new spatial language. While recent discourse on art and urban theory has been important, the connection between contemporary sculpture and the city continues to need further development. To further explore the interface between art and architecture it is necessary to reveal the spaces between buildings, between high and low capital, between antiquity and modernity and between the art object and the viewer. The relationships between Mastery and Slavery, Order and Chaos and Light and Dark 'drives' are explored through philosophical models and applied to spaces. These models include those of Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and others. The definition of space is examined in relation to time, capital and existing spatial terms. Two new terms, 'Sterile' and 'Dissonant' are coined and applied to five accessible spaces, located and investigated in five cities around the world via methods of 'drifting', documentation and intervention. Finally, the space of the gallery and the object of art becomes the focus of the study, with a particular concentration on four emerging artists who are implementing a fresh material language in their work. 'The Handyman Aesthetic' concept builds on this work and outlines modes of operation that move from the city to the gallery and back to the city. Through the interwoven exhibitions I present there is a development of 'The Handyman Aesthetic'. In extracting potent debris from city spaces and representing these in a gallery context I am seeking to demonstrate acknowledgement. This acknowledgement occurs between an art object and viewer.

Whilst there exists a body of work concerning the nature of wastelands and derelict spaces - what I term 'informal spaces' - within human geography, urban studies architecture and planning literature, there have been few attempts to link these theories with spatial planning practices. Accordingly, responding to this lack of sustained empirical research, this thesis explores the relationships between spatial planning practices and the production, (re)production and use of 'informal spaces,' ultimately aiming to further our knowledge of these complex relationships. It considers the potential of such spaces to act as a standpoint from which critical perspective towards much urban planning and design can be generated. Furthermore, investigating whether such commonly derided spaces can be conceptualised as a rich resource for urban life. The thesis does this by analysing how four chosen case studies within Manchester and Salford are appropriated, modified, performed, and conceptualised. Following the selection of the case studies, utilising qualitative data obtained by ethnographic methods including walking, observation and photography, unstructured interviews and further ethnographic interviews whilst walking, the study examines the ways in which such spaces are used by a variety of publics. Further qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, the analysis of secondary sources including current planning documents and historical data, are investigated and subsequently analysed to build an accurate genealogy of the sites, understanding in detail the planning contexts and future visions that have produce and sustain them as 'informal.' Key themes focus on the temporalities of the planning process as well as the ways in which stalled timescales intersect with other temporalities of nature and of cultural practice, encouraging appropriation. The ordering and disordering processes that designate and transform these spaces, are also discussed. Finally, the multiple affordances, encouraged by periods of temporal suspension and associated processes of disordering, that promote a diverse array of practices and potentialities are analysed. This research also contributes to debates surrounding the spatiality of dereliction.

This research concerns the Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. The MSC project was the most prestigious component of the Malaysian government's strategy to modernise the country and make it a leading economic powerhouse in Asia. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of what I will argue is essentially a Malaysian-modernist city planning concept, on the life worlds of its (prospective) inhabitants.

The essence of engagement-driven regeneration is the involvement of a range of stakeholders, including local people, in the planning and delivery of regeneration schemes to improve their local area. This approach rests upon the assumption that involving a range of stakeholders in decision-making has a key role in making the regeneration of urban areas sustainable. The intention of this research is to investigate whether the processes used to deliver sustainable communities in the urban environment are effective. Specifically, the scope of this thesis is the regeneration of small, open, urban public spaces and how, why and to what extent the practical mechanisms and social processes used to understand and deliver 'sustainability' are effective and appropriate. Furthermore the research examines stakeholders' experiences of one engagement-driven approach to regeneration intended to deliver sustainable communities. This research uses a case study design, set within an inductive, interpretative, theoretical framework. The research focuses upon a Case Study of a UK environmental regeneration charity called Groundwork. The regeneration projects undertaken by Groundwork have the dual aim of urban improvement and social change. Groundwork operates in partnership with local people, businesses and local authorities taking an engagement-driven approach to regeneration. A mixed methodological approach is used within this thesis, incorporating document analysis, semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and photography and walking. The research explores and documents the practical manifestations of what an engagement-driven approach to regeneration consists of in practice: dissecting, describing and critically reviewing one regeneration model. The examination of the processes by which stakeholders engage in urban regeneration revealed a model of order and control; a managed process, with clear steps and stages to the process of change. This research illustrates that through the process of engagement and change, the dynamics and relations between individuals alter. The study offers a critical distinction between the engaged and the engager (those who manage the process of engagement), relating to the concepts of structure, power and agency within the process of engagement. The processes of engagement created a different dynamic -not just between regeneration agencies and the local residents -but within these groupings. The ethos of the Case Study, of dialogue, engagement and exchange, can get diluted and distorted by the realities on the ground. Thinking of the regeneration in this way will have implications on how the effectiveness and success of such initiatives are assessed.

This thesis considers how continuity and transformation, the past and the future, are inscribed into the cityscape. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ image of the city as ‘a discourse’ and Michel de Certeau’s concept of the Wandersmänner, who write the city with their daily movements, this thesis takes urban space as both a repository of, and inspiration for, narratives. In few cities is the significance of writing narratives more visible than in Moscow. In the 1930s, it was conceived as the archetypal Soviet city, embodying the Soviet Union’s radiant future. Since the deconstruction of this grand narrative and the fall of the Soviet Union, competing ideas have flooded in to fill the void. With glass shopping arcades, a towering new business district, and reconstructed old churches, Moscow’s facelift offers only part of the picture. A number of other visions have been imprinted onto the post-Soviet city: nostalgic impulses for the simplicity of old Moscow; the search for a new, stable, powerful centre; desires for luxury, privatized gated communities; and feelings of abandonment in the grey, decaying, sprawling suburbs. Following an overview of recent changes to Moscow’s topography, these four major themes are investigated through the prism of post-Soviet Russian literature. Retro-detective fiction offers insight into nostalgia for the past and the temporal layers that build up the palimpsestic cityscape. Descriptions of Moscow after the apocalypse shed light on the city’s traditional concentric structure and the concomitant symbolism of hierarchy. Glamour literature challenges this paradigm by focusing on the gated community, a topographical form that splinters the city. Images of the supernatural and the Gothic lead to an alternative vision of the hybrid city, embracing multiplicity. In this way, fictional works defy the physical world’s constraints of time and space, revealing a kaleidoscope of different perspectives on post-Soviet Muscovite experiences.

Recent years have seen a growth in proposals around the globe to develop new urban areas incorporating ambitious sustainability objectives. These projects are often planned by a small, elite group of international architecture, engineering and planning consultants, the Global Intelligence Corps (GIC). This dissertation describes and conceptualizes how and why urban planning ideas travel internationally, using sustainable urbanism as a case study. The dissertation draws on qualitative research conducted between 2010 and 2012. The data is interpreted through a conceptual framework grounded in assemblage thinking, that provides a way of understanding how a model can crystallize in a particular form, but still remain dynamic and flexible. The research found that sustainable urbanism, as it is applied by the GIC, has three key objectives: the creation of “good”, high-performance and integrated urban places. The GIC have a substantial influence on international conceptions of sustainable urbanism, in part as a result of their close involvement in the development and application of some of the key devices for coordinating the model’s travels. Sustainable urbanism’s international success is linked to two factors in particular: its flexibility, which allows it to be expressed in ways that speak to the key drivers of individual urban development projects, and the ease with which the model can be deployed in an entrepreneurial climate. The GIC encourage the take-up of sustainable urbanism in new environments through the use of materials and experiences to introduce their ideas. For practitioners, these findings point to the importance of developing a broad awareness of how the objectives of sustainable urbanism can be achieved, to think critically about where their ideas come from, and to look widely for examples and inspiration. Practitioners also need to apply a pragmatic and iterative ethical frame to guide decision making in the planning process.