The contemporary city is driven by private interests, leaving the public spaces as a weakly woven system. In such a system public space making is usually the left-over in the composition. By shaping the publicly accessible spaces through the section of the tower, a series of relationships of public/ private occur. Elevating the public ground throughout the city through remedial and new developments brings the public space to a more direct confrontation with the typology of the tower. The site chosen for this exploration of building and public space making is the municipal address of 900 Burrard St. in downtown Vancouver. The block already contains two existing buildings, which represent excellent regional examples of early Modernism; the former BC Electric Building and the Dal Grauer Substation. A programme of hotel, residences, office space, fitness club, cinema, and branch library generate specific scenarios around which the public space negotiates as transitional space.

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This study examines the value placed on learning and knowledge by innovative small and medium-sized computer service firms, using a framework for analysis adapted from intellectual capital (IC). Knowledge is conceived as a specialized and appreciable asset capable of being acquired, nurtured, developed, managed and commercially exploited. Emphasis is placed on evaluating the strategies and practices that drive company learning and knowledge transfer in smaller computer service companies with respect to developing and making use of the knowledge owned by employees, customers and the corporation. The study evaluates the extent to which short-term commercial objectives impose conceptual boundaries on particular forms of intellectual capital - skill development, experience and recurrent learning. Data is drawn from case studies and a broader, provincial sample of companies based in British Columbia with ten to one hundred employees. The study concludes that small and medium-sized computer service firms narrowly conceptualize and undervalue knowledge in the area of human resource development, where supporting learning processes and structures are often poorly developed. Companies place a premium value on new forms of knowledge with an obvious potential to improve the skills and experience necessary to support commercial products and services. In contrast, learning, knowledge and expertise related to professional development and more long-term organizational and/or career benefits are consistently and systematically marginalized. The study outlines limitations of the IC framework in terms of the intrinsic values attributed to sources and types of knowledge. Of particular concern is the importance attached to formalized, external relationships with customers and the undervaluing of knowledge with less obvious or potentially more long-term commercial value. Suggestions for using the framework in small and medium-sized computer firms include broadening the existing narrow focus of external knowledge sources to encompass the extensive network of business relationships companies exploit, while the undervaluing of knowledge found in professional development is countered by linking benefits to returns from specific, rather than generic commercial goals. Emphasis is placed on potential gains in efficiency and productivity offered by improvements to learning and organizational processes.

Although the region has acquired expertise in the physical dimensions of rapid transit implementation, that expertise has not translated into a better understanding of social impacts on communities which host this regional amenity. The Broadway Station area is such a community. Although the City of Vancouver is responsible for planning the Broadway Station area community, many provincial decisions have had far-reaching consequences and do not correspond with municipal policy for the community. The province has introduced region-serving programs and facilities into the community despite municipal policy that the Broadway Station area would not serve a regional role. As a consequence, the community is becoming increasingly unlivable. There is a de facto policy vacuum. Moreover, there is a lack of coordination and an absence of protocols for managing and sharing data. There is little, if any, coordination of senior government actions, and the actions of various levels of government and their agencies have resulted in the Broadway Station Area failing to achieve the goal of community livability, for the resident community. The City of Vancouver, within which the case study station resides, has so far been unable to respond to the challenge that the station poses. The degree to which the station area is becoming dysfunctional is not known to the city. Consequently, the thesis question "Is the Broadway Station Area worse off than before SkyTrain" posed a significant challenge. In addition to a review of the case study planning process, which was conducted by the thesis researcher in the latter half of 1996, this thesis adds interviews with professional planners and a limited empirical study to answer the thesis question. By looking at a limited number of key census indicators, and cross comparing that with other data sources, the thesis found that the community's perception has merit, although a great deal more data must be compiled. To better understand what works in the Canadian context of transit-oriented planning, we need to support ongoing qualitative community planning with the empirical work that would assist in monitoring the effect of policies and program implementation and can address the dynamism of this regional transit node.

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No description available.

This thesis examines the past, present and future development and nature of Aboriginal archives and archiving in British Columbia, set in Canadian and international perspective. The thesis focuses on Aboriginal archives in BC because the higher number of First Nations there than elsewhere in Canada makes it one of the most prominent and important areas of Aboriginal archiving activity in the country. The thesis begins with an introduction to the holistic ways in which Aboriginal people in Canada traditionally recorded, preserved, and communicated knowledge and history over time, and thus the methods by which they “archived” up to the mid-twentieth century, in contrast to and compared with Euro-Canadian traditions of archiving. It then goes on to explore the various forces that directly and indirectly disrupted the processes by which Aboriginal culture and knowledge, and thus memory and identity, were transmitted from one generation to the next. As a result of these forces, and the inevitable intertwining of Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian cultures and worldviews, Aboriginal people increasingly found themselves having to access Euro-Canadian archives or establish their own along similar lines. In BC, where historically very few treaties were signed, the documentation created in the context of land claims and treaty negotiations in particular meant that such records were couched in occidental rather than Aboriginal people’s own cultural terms and thus demanded corresponding storage and use methods. Thus, the thesis suggests that such new approaches to Aboriginal archives and archiving were a “reactionary” or defensive response to legal, political, and social requirements and forces, rather than simply as a basis for communicating and recording a traditionally “holistic” sense of culture, memory, and identity. And, as will be seen, this reactionary response was not limited to BC, but would reveal itself concurrently in the rest of Canada, and in other colonised countries such as Australia and the United States. With the results of a questionnaire responded to in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., the thesis then presents comparative national and international approaches to, experiences with, and views on Aboriginal archives and archiving. With these explorations in hand, the thesis concludes with the suggestion that Aboriginal archiving is now coming full circle, returning to its holistic roots, having been positively influenced by the power inherent in the reactionary approach, but also newly challenged with varying issues. At the same time, Aboriginal archiving has challenged and contributed to a redefinition of traditional, Euro-Canadian notions of archiving, and thus pushed the boundaries of archiving as we know it.

The following pages contain a study of the British media coverage of freemasonry in the twentieth century. They consider how and why the public image of freemasonry changed from that of a highly-respected elite organisation, at the centre of public life in 1900, to a position on the fringes, regarded by many with suspicion and disapproval in the 1990s. They focus on national newspapers only. This thesis describes how the press projected a positive message of the organisation for almost 40 years, based on a mass of news, which I believe - and show - emanated from the organisation itself (making it an unexpected pioneer in modern public relations practice). It concludes that the change of image and public regards which occurred during the twentieth century was due, mainly, to Masonic withdrawal from the public sphere. It considers - and finds wanting - the suggestion that this withdrawal was a response to Fascist persecution and it offers a number of additional explanations. Freemasonry's reluctance to engage with the media after 1939 powerfully assisted its critics, who grew in strength as a result of developments within the media and the churches. Within the media, greater competition spawned a more challenging form of journalism and accelerated the decline of deference. The rise of secularism and religious pluralism in Britain provided Christianity with increases competition and led some adherents to re-define freemasonry and treat it as a rival. "Conspiracy culture" remained strong throughout the period, rendering the secrecy of freemasonry a major handicap to public understanding. The history of freemasonry in twentieth century Britain is largely an unexplored field and, in examining the fraternity's media profile, this study also illuminates the organisation's collisions with nationalism, communism, and state welfare provision.

Graduate

No description available.