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Since rapid urban growth forces poor households to settle in highly congested urban areas, slum dwellers are increasingly vulnerable due to a multiplicity of hazards rooted in the environment, nature, health, society and the urban economy. Hitherto, the understanding of urban risks and the vulnerability of inhabitants has been an underrepresented subject in urban planning. The different reasoning and rationales of slum dwellers, municipal authorities and other actors provide each with different perceptions of risks. This study focuses on the communication of urban risks between two slum communities and the Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad by examining endeavours in slum improvement and more responsive urban governance. In using a conceptual framework that synthesises socio-cultural approaches to risk, communication theories and collaborative planning theory, the thesis points out the deficiencies and potentials of risk communication in long-term urban development planning. Currently urban risk management is not recognised as an integrated, cross-sectoral topic by the Municipal Corporation. Due to the structural fabric of the administration and the lack of capacity and guidance, the notion of risk is based on conventional approaches to disaster risk management with responsibilities spread across various departments. By contrast, slum dwellers have a much more integrated understanding of the micro-level risk conditions in which they live and work. The findings of this study suggest that a meaningful two-way communication process can only take place if the interaction of stakeholders is understood in terms of human relationships that go beyond techno-bureaucratic co-ordination and the prevalent notion of mono-directional communication. This concept of communication is underpinned by values such as trust, fairness, credibility and justice in interaction in the context of urban governance. The research approach and the findings suggest areas for improved policy making and further research. The outcome of the research especially contributes to a better understanding of urban risk situations in the social and cultural contexts of poor communities in India. Hence this investigation may be viewed as a potential basis for generating practical guidelines for mitigation policies and their links to urban governance.

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This practice-based PhD opens an original dialectical discourse between theory and practice in the domain of themed playground design. It introduces the concept that action research involving playworkers and young people, as well as with designers of playground equipment, can lead to novel and socially empowering new forms of design specifications that can enrich children's play in numerous ways. The thesis argues against the aesthetic of many of the types of apparatus currently available in commercially themed playground equipment, on the grounds that most such equipment fails to adapt to the variability of thought and engagement as expressed in early childhood narratives of play. Underpinned by this argument, the thesis proposes and expounds a research methodology which is multi-disciplinary and based on the contribution of Developmental Psychology (from the academic fields of Education and Psychology), Playground Equipment Design (from the fields of Design, Interaction Design and Technology), and Play and Narrative theories and practices (from the fields of Literary and Narrative Studies, and Early Years Play Theory). These theories address the deconstruction and redevelopment of a holistic approach to themed playground equipment aesthetics that aims to serve two of the most essential characteristics of early childhood play: pretence and construction. The thesis' theoretical offering is the new `Ludic Aesthetic', proposed as a model of adaptive function that leads to variable narrative defined by five design criteria, described here as `design events'. These are: assemblage, motion, transformation, ludic symbolism and condensation (concepts that are discussed at length in these pages). The emergent theory of the `Ludic Aesthetic' arising from this study of design practice is closely related to the study of a new form of playground tool: the `ludic machine', defined in the thesis as a form of original themed playground equipment that deliberately affords a proposed aesthetic of play. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship in the area of play-based action-oriented research, with findings that underpin both educational social design methodologies for future study of children's play. It further contributes to the domain of playground equipment design by demonstrating the core design principles and outcomes achievable by applying a play-based model to this important field, both in terms of theory and of daily practice.

The realities of climate change and diminishing resources now require that each discipline re-examines its ontological relationship with nature. This is likely to involve are-examination of its own origins and development, and may require restructuring its models and practices in line with the most up to date scientific thinking about natural processes and reality. The modem movement in architecture and planning, which treated urban components as isolated objects in an abstract space, failed because it oversimplified reality, based on a mechanistic view of the world -summed up by Le Corbusier's; -A house is a machine for living in- statement. Modemism's deficiencies, the need to improve 'quality of life' in expanding urban areas, and people's desire for greater interaction with their immediate surroundings, have highlighted a polarisation of views conceming recently popularised geomantic practices. These range from uncritical acceptance on one hand, to total dismissal without investigation, on the other. The design of settlements, urban design, has long-forgotten roots in such traditional, geomantic (i.e. earth-centred) ways of environmental modification in cultures across the world. These are commonly thought to be archaic and irrelevant in our contemporary era. However, they were often a key basis on which settlements that are vital &vibrant, or are now much loved, were planned. The integrated way in which places were considered, appears to resonate with the mu/ti-dimensional ways in which we perceive the world, and is beginning to be reflected in some wholistic views being suggested by the 'New Sciences'. The post-modernist sciences of chaos and complex systems have revealed some of the deep structures and dynamic processes that underlie the diversity and complexity of the natural world. These are reflected in the way our brains are structured and by our perceptual processes, appearing to extend even to the social and economic systems people create. Such leading-edge paradigms promise more useful methods for dealing with complex built-environment issues. Over the last two decades, the traditional idea of 'place-making' has been effecting a comeback into urban discourse and regenerative practice. This study explores what this might mean for urban design theory as seen through the lenses of ancient and traditional geomantic approaches on the one hand, and the emergent concepts of chaos, complexity and implicate order in the sciences, on the other hand. It also uses relevant insights from post-modem design trends, to explore the usefulness of geomantic approaches in understanding place-complexity. This is done by firstly seeking to detennine what, if any, links might exist between geomantic and scientific worldviews, and secondly, by synthesising the implications of empirical studies underlying such a reconciliation, to formulate aConceptual Framework of place structure. Key elements of this place-structure are then used to propose a Generative Framework of the possible dynamics underlying urban morphogenesis. Ageneric mapping of attributes comprising our 'sense-of-place' with those ofageomantic 'meta-language' is outlined and briefly applied, to assess its usefulness andfile prospects for generating place complexity in various cultures. It thereby proposes a method for integrating extant urban design methodologies -and suggests through their mapping, the basis of a derivative language for representing key aspects ofthis complexity in urban design.

In this thesis] examine the use of the human body as a model in urban theory since antiquity, with a focus on the second half of the seventeenth to the first half of the twentieth centuries. This approach makes it possible to reveal the continuity in use of the physiological analogy throughout history, to reveal its impact on urban theory, and to attach Le Corbusier, who used the analogy extensively, to a well-established tradition in urban planning. Philosophers, architects and urbanists have used analogies with the function of the human body to guide their schemes since Plato's Republic, and probably before. In the work of some, like Le Corbusier, the debt to the body as model is admitted freely; others, like Christopher Wren, make no mention of it, though the influence is apparent; others, like Yitruvius, held the body to be the ultimate model for proportion, but did not discuss how physiology influenced their plans. We are able to discover how the function of the human body, as they understood it, influenced these and other architects and authors by examining contemporary political, economic, and urban theories, as well as their various city plans. I demonstrate that before the discovery of blood circulation, cities, like Alberti's, were considered best when static, like the humours in the body. After circulation, however, the city becan:e a place of dynamic exchange. In addition, I argue that the analogies used in urban theory developed alongside discoveries in the biological sciences, so the function of ideal cities remained analogous to the function of the body.

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Previous work on renewable energy siting controversy has focussed upon description rather than explanation and has often been based on quantitative approaches using prompted questions. Opposition to obviously 'desirable' renewable energy developments has been presented as 'the problem' and therefore alternative interpretations of the technologies have been less well documented. This thesis argues that there is a need to look more closely at the reasons behind opposition and support positions. Rather than looking for areas of ignorance or misunderstanding, the focus here has been to uncover the explanation and justification of different stakeholder positions in the context of two UK renewable energy developments: Wave Hub in Cornwall and Eccleshall Biomass in Staffordshire. Qualitative stakeholder interviews and a wide range of secondary data were used to investigate the two case studies. Three explanatory themes of opposition and support were identified from the empirical data: symbolism, knowledge claims and consultation. These themes were explored using literature from the fields of science and technology studies, risk, participative decision-making and geography and were considered in relation to the relevant planning and policy context. Divergent assessments of the impacts of developments and their acceptability were found to arise, not from a lack of information, as a 'deficit model' would assume, but from many different knowledge claims being made on the basis of different framings, assumptions, methodologies and values. Stakeholders had their own expertise and experience and some developed this over the course of the development. The consultation processes that was expected and requested varied greatly between the different stakeholders, as did the way in which the actual process was experienced and described. In both cases the process of consultation itself became the source of some stakeholder's objections. The findings indicate the need for developers to manage stakeholder expectations of the consultation process, in particular how stakeholder responses will feed into the design and management of the developments. The focus upon the visual impact of wind turbines has led to the neglect of many of the facets of 'place' and how these may be seen to be affected by a particular renewable energy development. These interpretations of place were combined with symbolic interpretations of the technologies which gave rise to various assessments of whether the development had symbolic 'fit'. Consideration of a bioenergy and a wave energy case, have broadened the wind energy dominated renewable energy siting controversy literature. Whilst this has been a study of two particular developments, the findings from the three themes have wider transferability for other renewable energy developments. Both conditional and unconditional opposition and support positions were evident in the cases studied. By considering the reasons for opposition and support positions and their conditional or unconditional basis, potential actions have been identified that could strengthen and protect conditional support and reduce conditional opposition.

This knowledge has to proceed within many stages, which called knowledge acquisition process. This process consists of 5 main stages, which concerns with identifying the objectives of the system with drawing a relationship between the different factors that effect the desired conclusion. This knowledge should be taken to establish the main concept that will be used to be represented in an expert system. The next stage comes to formalise the collected knowledge followed by the implementation stage and finally the evaluation of the system.

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