Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86). / This thesis is an examination of future growth outside of the towns and suburban developments in Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Its aim is to offer projections for inhabitable physical form. These projections will be responsive to the many specific issues of a given site. Any project contains issues associated with four distinct sizes; namely, Overall Size, Collective Size, Containment Size, and Personal Size. From these issues and their ramifications, this thesis will develop continuities (i.e., of access, sizes, directions, and forms) at each size. The different continuities will reinforce one another in the design of a cohesive place for dwelling. The design projections will be applied to a 30-unit housing development to be built on 12 acres of wooded land, which is located along the western perimeter of Sellersville, Pennsylvania. / by Michael B. Raphael. / M.Arch.

This thesis tells the previously untold story of how environmental activists in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the 1980s waged a nearly decade-long and ultimately losing battle against a plan to pump water from the free-flowing Delaware River. As a case study of grassroots community activism during the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, the struggle known locally as “Dump the Pump” and spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Del-AWARE supports and provides a regional take on recent scholarship that has illuminated the vibrant underlying dynamics of local civic engagement occurring amid the overshadowing political conservatism of the Reagan years. Also a case study in public history, this thesis demonstrates how collective historical memory fueled not only Del-AWARE’s protracted struggle, but its enduring legacy in public policy and community life. It concludes with suggestions for preserving the history of Del-AWARE before it is lost forever. / History