This research explores the short to long-term impacts that Mega Urban Transport Projects (MUTPs) have on the communities they serve. In particular, intentional and unintentional social impacts that occur in the communities for the non-user of the MUTP. By their very nature of being ‘mega’, these MUTPs act as catalysts for change at the physical, economical and socio-demographic level. Current appraisal methods for planning and implementing MUTPs are relatively short on a standardised framework for assessing and monitoring the social impacts that communities under-go. This PhD research proposes that GIS can provide a fast and powerful overview of social patterns that can assist planners and decision-makers at local, regional and national levels to consider the ‘knock-on’ effects of the MUTP. This contributes towards understanding how to shape change in those communities to improve the socio-economic status for the whole population, beyond the users of the MUTP. The research also proposes the use of the Cynefin decision-making model with which to assess, act and respond to these impacts and to manage the outcomes so as to amplify the positive effects and dampen the negative. The case-studies are the two non-London hubs of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link; Ebbsfleet and Ashford, Kent. Building from the 1991 census to the most recent digital datasets the toolkit creates ‘planning-to-implementation’ stage profiles of the communities. Variables that are mapped include demographic diversity, socio-economic deprivation, accessibility, journey to work modes, and a pilot study to explore the impact of the MUTP upon changes in social exclusion and community cohesion. The findings of this study conclude that whilst useful lessons can be learnt and future guidelines created for planners and decision-makers for other MUTPs, this hypothetical toolkit has weaknesses related to the lack of spatial and temporal resolution in the datasets utilised.

Social mix can be observed in many post-reform Chinese cities, yet the topic has so far remained scarcely researched. Using central Shanghai as a focus, this research asks how socially mixed neighbourhoods have emerged, what is their internal structure, and how have locally-based social interactions been affected by the emergence of social mix. Based on a neighbourhood of 5 housing estates and other relevant examples, this study shows that mixed neighbourhoods have emerged from an unplanned and uncoordinated interplay among new market-driven commodity housing developments, counter-market retention mechanisms on traditional estates, government-led socially-orientated housing projects, residents’ resistance to redevelopment, and the lingering socialist legacy of welfare housing and unclear property rights. Significant differences were found in residents’ socioeconomic attributes, living conditions, tenure and housing expenditure between the traditional, new middle-income, and new upmarket housing. The process of housing redevelopment and the creation of social mix have diminished locally-based social interactions. Residents’ intra-estate interaction is the strongest in traditional estates, lower in the middle-income estate and minimal in upmarket estates. The level of inter-estate interaction in the mixed neighbourhood is weak. The emergence of social mix has brought about a divergence in lifestyles and lifeworlds among the changed set of residents, which is reflected in the spheres of mobility, residential stability, shopping, and children’s education. The level of inter-estate interaction has reduced from the past when the neighbourhood was more socially homogenous. Findings suggest that social mix and a weakening of local social interaction will likely continue, and these will demand more scrutiny considering China’s development agenda on social harmony. Findings here concur with Western studies on mixed communities that social mix does not lead to social mixing. New policies and programmes to foster social interaction should be explored.

Critical success factors are common in projects today as a means of assessing projects (Nixon, Harrington and Parker, 2011). Critical success factors as covered in project management literature surprisingly does not usually mention the project manager’s leadership competence as a success factor for projects (Turner and Muller, 2005). Researchers over the years have developed several critical success factor frameworks to access projects, but none of the frameworks to date include leadership competencies of the project manager as a critical success factor, nor are they used as a tool to help project managers achieve success. This study extends the work of researchers who have created a number of critical success factor frameworks (Koutsikouri, Austin and Dainty, 2008; Belassi & Tukel, 2006; Spalek, 2005; Westerveld, 2003; Cooke-Davies, 2002; Pinto and Slevin, 1989; DeWit, 1988; Morris and Hough, 1987; Lock, 1984; Baker, Murphy, and Fisher, 1983; Cleland and King, 1983; Martin, 1979; Westerveld, 2003) by including leadership competencies as a critical success factor, and by extending the use of the framework as a tool to help project managers achieve success. The unit of study for this research is the IT project managers. Quantitative and qualitative research was utilized to test the updated critical success factor criterion. The updated framework is not intended to be used as an evaluation tool to determine project success, but as a tool for project managers to help achieve success. Key findings include: (1) There are significant differences between project manager success, project management success, and project success (2) Charismatic leadership and people-oriented/relations-oriented leadership have negative connotations associated with them. Charismatic leaders are viewed as not having follow-through. People-oriented/relations-oriented leadership are viewed as biased and ineffective do to the subjectivity of the decisions made, and actions taken that are heavily influenced by favorable relationships.

Organisations pursue Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to achieve improvements in their performance. However, the literature reports that organisations that implement ERP systems still suffer from a gap between the promised ERP benefits versus the actual realised benefits after the completion of the implementation The literature review in this thesis examines the factors, which may prevent a newly-implemented ERP system from being successful. Prior research suggests several models to assist organisations in managing their ERP investments for the sake of leveraging business performance and hence retaining or enhancing competitive advantages. Each implementation model addresses ERP implementation from a single perspective such as generic, process management and training management. As long as stakeholders in ERP implementation are concerned, a review of the critical success factors (CSF) in ERP implementation shows a gap in the literature regarding the holistic view of what key stakeholders perceived as the CSF that results in implementation success. This leads to the assumption that stakeholders’ views are not considered valuable, and as a result, they are receiving less attention of managing their roles and responsibilities. Throughout the thesis, stakeholders management is addressed along two main dimensions; 1) the effect of ERP on stakeholders; 2) the different roles of senior managers, ERP managers, consultants, suppliers and customers on the effectiveness of the implementation. The aim of this research is to establish a well-designed and holistic framework for ERP implementation, centred on the management of roles and responsibilities among stakeholders. The study is an exploratory investigation into the ERP implementation process. Therefore, the research design, involving qualitative methodology, covers: (1) the identification of ERP critical success factors commonly cited in the literature; (2) a review of the existing ERP implementation models; (3) using an in-depth case studies approach to understand how the roles and responsibilities among stakeholders being managed and how it can improve ERP ROI; and (4) reviewing Secondary data sourced from prior academic research studies, so that the findings from the cases investigated could be compared with the findings of this study, to provide triangulation and hence to enhance the validity of the findings. A holistic model for effective management of roles and responsibilities among ERP stakeholders is built, along with a set guidelines and recommendations representing an integrated framework that is straightforward to understand and implement by ERP sponsors to increase the degree of the ERP implementation success. The research findings explain clearly how effective management of roles and responsibilities can optimise return on ERP investment. It suggests three decisive points where ERP sponsors need to focus on how to define, review and amend roles and responsibilities to sustain ERP benefits which increase the long-term ERP investment. Finally the study provides a foundation and proposals for further research and investigation.

This thesis introduces an innovative contribution to the low energy - low carbon design of acute hospitals in the UK. The need for innovation in acute hospital design arises from the consistently poor energy and carbon performance of the health care estate over a period of nearly three decades. This poor performance translates into a situation where overall consumption of energy in the health care estate has remained largely unchanged over that period, despite substantive improvements in the asset specifications of these facilities. With respect to the commitment made by the British Government to reduce carbon emissions under the Climate Change Act (2008) this situation is clearly unacceptable, because that commitment requires an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Of equal concern has been the poor predictability of energy forecasts for new buildings, where the apparent difference in performance between design and what is actually achieved In-use can be substantial. In terms of energy consumption and the associated carbon emissions, the author’s research has discovered that the issues of poor In-Use performance and poor predictability of performance in acute hospitals are directly linked. The central causal factor that leads to both is a poor understanding of clinical user practices and the impact of those practices on the design and engineering of the hospital. The research identified that without such an understanding it means that hospital planners, designers and engineers are required to make substantial assumptions concerning In-Use during the design process, most notably concerning occupancy presence and the diversity of occupancy. The author’s investigations found that it would be possible to use simulation to replicate how acute hospitals operate by utilising clinical process information contained in operational policy documents. It was also discovered that the data derived from clinical information systems could be used to run the simulation. It is the unique methods developed by the author that are his contribution to new knowledge. One method developed by the author is called Occupancy Analytics. The method enables the author to predict occupancy presence and diversity within a range of probabilities at any hour of the day within the hospital. A second method enables these values to be modelled within another simulation called the Whole Facility Energy Model. Using both models in sequence the author discovered how to directly correlate the impacts of operational policies and working practices to energy consumption and the associated carbon emissions. Using this new knowledge, the factors that determine occupancy presence and diversity were then investigated. The author reasoned that if these could be managed then it would be possible to optimise the engineering design, and the consequential energy consumption and the associated carbon emissions. Through the use of a case study that is both revelatory and longitudinal (Yin, Op Cit) the author demonstrates how this objective was achieved. Finally, using the results from both Occupancy Analytics and Whole Facility Energy Modelling the author also discovered that it would be possible to establish norms for energy and carbon performance based on each patient type using the clinical services of the acute hospital. In the case study, the author demonstrates how this form of analysis could be used to establish the basis for departmental energy budgets, which he envisages could make an important contribution to the future optimisation of low energy – low carbon performance of acute hospitals in the UK.

For efforts to build ‘sustainable cities’, citizens’ broad and deep involvement is required in addition to an institutional incentive structure provided by central government. In Japan machizukuri (local community making) is a contemporary development in social movements which tries out various ways of sustainable-community making. This thesis explores the process of social capital accumulation in the Japanese context and investigates through machizukuri case studies: 1. whether active citizen participation makes a difference in the progress towards sustainability; 2. what role local government should play in the process, and 3. how it is possible to build a sustainable society by connecting the efforts of different localities. It concludes through qualitative and quantitative examination, using regression and network analysis, that involving citizens in policy and project development makes a difference in the level of achievement of sustainability goals. However, it suggests that the existence of social capital alone does not deliver as expected. Bonding social capital helps collective learning and solidarity creation within communities. Bridging social capital expands networks and helps information-flow between communities but may not necessarily lead to achievement of the common goal. To achieve sustainable development goals, bracing social capital is necessary to connect vibrant yet fragmented bonding and bridging social capital networks; it expedites goal sharing and resource flows among various communities, and makes the extent of goal achievement greater. By identifying the functions bracing social capital plays, the study suggests that social capital can operate for achieving a sustainable society not just in a closed community, as was suggested by Coleman (1988), but also in an open-type community. To start the process of achieving a sustainable society, there are roles for local government to play; creating an environment in which citizens empower themselves is one.

This thesis focuses on social encounters among strangers in the public spaces of a new masterplanned neighbourhood. By doing so, this research wants to address the dominant negative critiques that argue on the one hand that public life is in decline, and on the other, that the contemporary design trends of public spaces and masterplanned environments are placeless and exclusionary places. This thesis argues that such environments can bring new knowledge on the role of urban design in framing public social life and behaviour. Methodologically, this research involved extensive fieldwork using a combination of empirical methods of observation, walking interviews and spatial analysis to study where, how and why of social encounters in various public settings of a new masterplanned neighbourhood, the Park of the Nations in Lisbon. Besides being a good illustration of current planning and urban design trends, characterized by large-scale, highly controlled and thematic public spaces, at the same time it reflects the new principles of urban compactness and diversity advocated by Jane Jacobs. The findings of my research demonstrate that social encounters do occur in new masterplanned environments and semi-private public spaces. They also suggest that more attention needs to be given to the existence of another category of informal public settings, which I call ‘fourth-places’. As opposed to ‘third-places’, this newly theorized concept is characterized by ‘in-betweeness’ in terms of spaces, uses, time and management and a great sense of publicness. These latter conditions make ‘fourth-places’ sociologically more open in order to bring strangers together. They are effective to break the ‘placelessness’ and ‘fortress’ designs of new urban public spaces. The recognition of these findings problematizes well-established urban design theories about masterplanning and redefines several spatial concepts for designing public space.

In recent decades, the state restructuring of trade liberalisation and decentralisation has emerged globally as attempts to promote more equal economic growth. This staterestructuring also occurs in Indonesia following the Asia financial crisis in 1997. As a case study, Indonesia provides two important insights on the study of staterestructuring on regional convergence. First, Indonesia is a member of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) that its institutional arrangements emphasis on member countries freedom to determine their own trade liberalisation sectors and schedules. Second, Indonesia decentralisation is a rapid and significant shift of politico-economy and social. Second, there is a rapid and significant shift of politico-economy and social institutional arrangements from centralised to decentralisation regime. These external and internal state-restructuring are expected influence the variety of regional economic development and convergence. This study aims to analyse the impact of state restructuring on disparities at the district level for the period from 1993 to 2005. The study divides the period under observation into three sub periods, the pre-decentralisation, the decentralisation and the whole period. This research aims to achieve this objective with three empirical studies as follows, first, using economic indices, the thesis examine inequality level of district economic growth and industry concentration. Second, econometrics analysis explores the impact of trade openness and decentralisation on regional economic growth. Finally, this thesis adopts comparative political analysis by using the historical institutionalism approach to understand the variation of state restructuring impact. The main findings show that despite evidence of regional convergence, disparities are persistent and severe in the post state restructuring period. The quantitative analysis shows that AFTA has insignificant impact and decentralisation significantly contract regional economic growth. While qualitative case studies in the Batam and Bandung cities found that institutional history and path development strongly influence development progress and discourses. Politico-economy shocks only act as critical juncture that provides opportunity for the state and regions to create new development path. However, path dependence of institutional changes and economic development is bounded by the regions’ past institutional arrangements and knowledge. For Indonesia, a country with long history of authoritarian regime, the role of nation-state remains important to promote balance local development.

Science parks (SPs) have been gaining momentum worldwide in the new century as a concrete way of promoting high-tech industries. In China, industrial and science parks of various kinds have become an important device not only to boost innovation but also to alleviate the severe regional disparities. Nevertheless, due to defective political auditing and data constraints, the birth, growth, and dynamics of these cultivated clusters, as well as their present contributions, are still little understood. This PhD thesis develops the theoretical and empirical understanding of SPs as instruments of innovation promotion and regional development in less-favoured countries/regions from the standpoint of innovation system theory. It argues that the existing theoretical foundation underpinning SPs needs revision by a framework that takes account of historic evolution and relationship patterns, and that the existing empirical studies need to be moved beyond political evaluations which neglect temporal and spatial differences and the multi-dimensions of these SPs. The outcome of this thesis is an eclectic four-quadrant model for analysing the dynamics of SPs, which is employed in an original case study on the Optics Valley of China, Wuhan (OVC). The thesis focuses on one particular high-tech industry, optoelectronics, in OVC. Original data are obtained through an extensive face-to-face questionnaire survey of 138 companies, as well as 55 interviews with representatives of public institutions and private agencies on different levels. Qualitative analysis reveals a rich growth history of this potential innovation system, which is accompanied by profound power redistributions between different domains and a strong government intervention. Quantitative analysis investigates the influence of companies’ entrepreneurship, internal resources, and external environment on their general and innovation performance. The results reveal the multiple dimensions of companies’ entrepreneurship and the diverse factors that influence companies’ economic and innovation achievements.

The transition to a digital, knowledge-based economy has seemingly thrown the study of industrial spatial strategy into disarray: theory rooted in the analysis of material flows appears insufficient for the study of informational ones. However, this work will argue that many of the basic, historical aspects of firm location identified by the pioneers of spatial analysis remain profoundly relevant today because these enable us to place the modern firm in an appropriate spatial and economic context. We may then combine these fundamental insights with more recent work on infrastructure flexibility, transactions, types of knowledge, and the importance of face-to-face interaction to flesh out a portrait of industrial location in the telecommunications age. Direct evidence of these strategies in action has been difficult to collect because so many of the inputs to, outputs from, and interactions between firms are invisible. Moreover, traditional social science approaches to data collection and analysis are unable to cope with the flood of information that characterises advanced service economies. The direct study of telecommunications data promises a new and massively scalable way to visualise and explore these crucial connections, but as yet there is little consensus on how to approach such data. Using very large, but fine-grained data sets from a major British telecommunications company and a large American telecommunications company, and drawing upon the ‘eigenplace’ methodology developed in collaboration with Francesco Calabrese of the SENSEable City Lab at M.I.T. (Reades et al., 2009; Calabrese et al., 2010), this work explores the extent to which telecommunications flows—in terms of their timing, volume, and geography—can be correlated with firm location and industrial clustering. The finding of industrial ‘signatures’ in telecommunications data provides evidence of informational strategies at work, and sheds light on the likely future shape of urban and regional economies.