This study focuses on the major causes of out-migration from rural areas in developing countries. In addressing ways of eliminating its harmful impacts on both natural and cultural resources, the research considers some of the key concepts that might be applied in finding more sustainable and longer-term solutions to reduce the volume and impact of the rural exodus in developing countries such as Lebanon. At the present time, rural regions in these countries rely heavily on agriculture for their continued existence, but this does not generate sufficient employment or income to encourage the indigenous population to remain. Thus, poverty and lack of opportunity are seen as the major reasons for the rural exodus. However, in many such countries, rural regions are rich in natural and cultural resources, offering alternative or additional opportunities for improving the social and economic condition for local people. But in seeking to capitalise on these, it is important to avoid inappropriate development which ignores or impairs the cultural and natural resource heritage. So, in looking forward, this research explores the potential of ecotourism as a means of reducing out-migration by improving social and economic conditions for the rural population in a sustainable manner. In seeking to provide a firm basis on which to propose overall policy shifts in developing countries together with the consequent regional and local strategies, this research explores the concepts of sustainable development, rural livelihood and ecotourism. In doing this it draws on earlier and on-going experiences of natural resource management policies in North America and Europe, where there has been considerable experience in protecting the overall resource base with a view to creating sustainable futures for rural areas with a particular importance for natural and cultural heritage. The problems of rural out-migration and possible solutions to reduce its negative effect on the area are explored in detail through a case study of the "Qadisha-Cedars" rural region in Lebanon. This is an area that has experienced major problems of rural depopulation and is currently under threat through locally-driven economic activities which are characterised by short-term economic gain that pose a major threat to the longer-term survival of the natural and cultural heritage of the locality. The impacts of a long-standing lack of understanding and interest on the part of government are explored together with new and more enlightened approaches being developed since the early 201h centuries by countries like the USA, Canada and France. This helps highlight the need for greater levels of co-ordination and integration of national, regional and local policies, based firstly on a greater understanding of the principles on which sustainable futures might be achieved, and secondly on the need to listen to, and understand the concerns of local people and the basis on which they would feel able to embrace the principles of sustainable development. There needs to be a meeting of the "top-down" view of government and the bottom-up view of local communities. Having advocated the need to reduce rural poverty through the introduction of sustainable ecotourism based on a rural livelihood management framework, the results are justified by proposing a scenario followed by a model to undertake its implementation and finalised with a set of recommendations.

This research aims to contribute to the debate on informal or popular settlements by viewing them as an opportunity to understand different ways of seeing and thinking about the city. Open spaces in popular settlements, like the housing stock, are to a large extent the product of local self-help and self-managed processes, however, the equivalent level of understanding has not been achieved, partly because they are often seen as spare spaces with little value. Open spaces in popular settlements are public in terms of ownership and accessibility, but are communal in terms of use and attachment. They play an important role in the physical and social dynamics of the barrios since their inception, however the improvement and consolidation of such spaces may not be realised for many years. The aim of this research is to investigate open spaces in the barrios, exploring ideas of production of informal urban space, functional and symbolic consumption, and the language and meaning that these places may convey. The research examines the subject in Bogotá, focusing on three questions: 1) How is open space designed, built, managed, transformed and sustained? 2) What is the relationship between open spaces and the people (users) who create them? 3) What is the form and design language used and how can it be understood and interpreted? The research draws on empirical data from 57 case studies of open space in the barrios of Bogotá collected between 2003 and 2007. Six cases were selected to explore in greater depth during further fieldwork. A qualitative methodology was employed, with a case study approach and a multi-method strategy: semi–structured interviews, observation, mapping, photography, photo elicitation and documentary sources. Based on the general and specific cases, the thesis contributes to an understanding of popular settlements as a way of thinking and developing cities in Latin America, and open spaces as tools of urban and social consolidation. The thesis concludes that open spaces are not „additional‟ areas in the settlements; on the contrary, they are fundamental and hold functional and symbolic uses from the early stages. It also argues that the processes of production and consumption of open spaces are closely interrelated, and help explain the design language found in the barrios, as well as contribute to build meanings for individuals and communities.

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The study of women’s fear of crime has received considerable academic attention from a range of disciplinary directions. This thesis propels these existing debates further forward by problematising the construction of ‘fear’ and ‘safety’ in existing work and by exploring the range of ways in which public spaces are understood, and knowledge about them constructed and deployed. Using a Foucauldian and affective theoretical framework, the thesis uncovers how safe or fearful ‘knowledges’ are constituted, and reconfigures them, beyond the limits of this lexicon, as ‘at-home-ness’ and ‘un-at-home-ness’. These terms offer both broader and more precise ways of speaking about the specificity of women’s day-to-day experiences of occupying public space. With this in mind, this thesis uses a mix of qualitative methods including Walking Interviews, Map Interviews and Multimedia Diaries to investigate, with 45 female participants across three sites in the South East of England, the ways in which they situate themselves physically and emotionally in their home towns. The study begins to excavate how this knowledge, or street-wisdom, is formed and circulated, reflecting the breadth of sometimes emancipatory, sometimes exclusionary or oppressed ways in which women experience their bodies in space. By adopting this nuanced perspective on fear of crime, and by proposing an understanding of fear of crime which is more complex and contingent than existing discussions suggest, this thesis offers challenging and instructive insights into the possibilities and problematics of fear when used to inform street-wisdom.

This thesis sets out to examine the socio-economic characteristics, spatial distribution, fertility and demographic development of immigrant populations in Leeds C. B. The immigrant populations: derive from the New Commonwealth, Northern Ireland, Eire and other areas of the world and the developments in these aspects of their existence in Leeds is examined over the ten year intercensal period from 1961 to 1971. This is performed using a variety of well tested methods and a number of new developments, both of data handling techniques and conceptual frameworks. The links between immigrant groups and certain indicators of social deprivation are examined using correlation techniques to show the trends in association over the ten year period. The developing spatial distribution of the immigrant groups is examined using well tested methods and some indication is derived of the way in which the immigrant populations, and their descendants are likely to develop, spatially, in the future. The demographic aspects of the study are founded in the organising concept of Spatial Population Analysis. This concept is used to give new relevance to population information deriving from both a variety of official sources and from very simple estimations. It ultimately provides a framework for the projection of immigrant population numbers in the United Kingdom. For the city of Leeds new evidence is obtained regarding the levels of fertility of the immigrant groups and this evidence is used in a simple demographic model to project the population numbers, both immigrant and indigenous, up to 1986. Finally an attempt is: made to link these projections to their corresponding spatial distributions at future dates using allocative techniques which examine as a by-product, and albeit very simply, the allocative influence of certain social structures.

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