Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / 3 folded maps in pocket. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-212).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-212) Also available in print.

70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. Cities are growing faster than can be designed. Townships and informal settlements are becoming a common site within cities around the world. South African cities are ill and require healing. It has inherited an intrinsic genetic flaw, apartheid’s social and spatial planning. This urban DNA structure encouraged weakness in the connectivity systems and was designed to prevent people from connecting and contracting. It is Postapartheid times and this weakness continues. Therefore the location of interest is Diepsloot, a disconnected post apartheid township. Over 400 000 people reside in this township which is located between two major cities in Gauteng. The conceptual framework is based on the analogy of the Recombinant DNA applied to how urban design unfolds. The scientifically engineered process of healing through sharing, recombining, accepting and adapting is a strong methodology to adopt into the urban design process and methodology. The theoretical framework looks at Peter Calthorpe’s New Urban Network is based on reorganising transport networks into a hierarchy which assists in increasing connectivity and improving the quality of the urban network. While Complex Adaptive Systems theory is understood through Sanders’ five complexity-based observations about cities and urban environments. David Grahame Shane’s explanation of the theory of recombinant urbanism involves the theory that cities emerge from armatures, enclaves and heterotopias which are all constantly combined and re-combined. In addressing spatial inequalities and disconnectivity, three bases of literature have been reviewed. The literature review includes Compact City and Decentralised Concentration, New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development – Urban Network System. The work researched and developed in these design movements and approaches are vast. This study touches on the essence of the design movements and approaches. The challenge is the application of these strong design approaches or movements into a local context. The hypothesis says that it is possible to develop a design methodology that works from a parallel system of both bottom up and top down design processes. It is possible to extract a strength in the current organic structure of a township development, and incorporate it into formal urbanism design tools. This is to ensure that the formal design intervention is adopted into the current system, or study area, and adapts and grows incrementally. Similar to the process of how the host would accept the recombinant DNA of the antivirus. The aim of the design intervention is to apply local lessons learnt in the existing spatial context and link the strengths found with contemporary urban design principles of transit oriented development that encourage connectivity and intensity of development around intermodal facilities. This approach demonstrates a design methodology that employs a parallel system of bottom up and top down processes. The approach developed is specifically, a design and a physical built morphology analysis and does not include the arm of social interaction in the form of public participation, etc. The findings demonstrate that connectivity and density is a critical component to healing the city. This discussion is held within the Transit Oriented Development model. The study analysed the level of connectivity Diepsloot exhibits from a regional scale, to a district scale and finally to a neighbourhood scale. Healing the weakness of disconnectivity requires tackling it from all scales.

Among the founders of the science of town planning at the beginning of the twentieth century, Scotsman Patrick Geddes introduced methods of investigation commensurate with other sciences. A biologist, trained by Thomas Huxley, Geddes borrowed the practices of the microscopical laboratory in creating the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, Scotland which served as a model for an approach to the study of cities. His method was like that of a field botanist studying a species, and assumed an interdependent relationship between place, work and folk. Embracing the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, Geddes proposed subtle town planning interventions as a means by which cities could adaptively respond to change over time. He advocated the employ of a graphic device, which he called his "thinking machines," and which served as a paradigmatic strategy to forge new relationships within sets of ideas. Such an approach aligned him with the taxonomic strategies in practice in the formation of museum collections and display of the nineteenth century. This work examines the archival evidence of the principles underlying Geddes' methods in the hope that they may be recovered in contemporary town planning. / Ph. D.

Orientador: Gilda Figueiredo Portugal Gouvea / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-14T02:18:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Saraiva_MarinaRebecadeOliveira_M.pdf: 5190822 bytes, checksum: 60a315315423c6bc89e63315cdaf4ad2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: A dissertação trata do fenômeno da segregação urbana nas metrópoles brasileiras tendo como referência o cotidiano de um grupo de crianças, com idade de 07 a 11 anos, moradoras de um condomínio fechado de luxo localizado na cidade de Campinas-SP. O texto procura apresentar as especificidades de uma infância entre muros, explorando a riqueza e a singularidade de suas formas de apropriação do condomínio e suas inserções pela cidade. Assim, explora, por um lado, a relação das crianças com os espaços do condomínio e como se desenrolam seus laços de sociabilidade, principalmente nos momentos de lazer. A pesquisa mostra como as crianças reescrevem os espaços do condomínio percebendo outra existência que não aquela constituída pelo percurso planejado, pela segurança diária, pelo tempo programado, enfim, por suas práticas cotidianas normatizadoras. Por outro lado, o texto descreve os principais deslocamentos das crianças para a cidade além muros e analisa a percepção da cidade para esse grupo de crianças. Mostra como seus deslocamentos pelo espaço urbano e as outras maneiras como as imagens da cidade chegam até esses agentes, são elementos significativos para suas percepções sobre o espaço urbano. Dessa maneira, a pesquisa procura refletir sobre uma experiência urbana singular, a partir dos diversos modos de enfrentar a cidade. Em suma, a dissertação apresenta uma infância na cidade e mostra em que medida uma apropriação da infância enquanto objeto sociológico pode contribuir para uma importante reflexão sobre as novas formas de subjetivação presentes na cidade contemporânea / Abstract: The dissertation deals with the phenomenon of urban segregation in Brazilian cities with reference to the daily life of a group of children, from 07 to 11 years of age, living in a gated community located in Campinas-SP. The text aims to present the specifics of a childhood between walls, exploring the richness and singularity of their forms of appropriation of the condominium and insertion into the city. Thus, on one hand, it explores the relationship of children with the gated community's spaces and how their ties of sociability take place, especially in moments of leisure. The research shows how children rewrite the spaces of the gated community perceiving an existence other than that formed by the planned route, the daily security, the scheduled time and their regulated every day practices. On the other hand, the text describes the major shifts of children to the city outside the walls and also examines the perception of the city for this group of children. It shows how through its displacement by urban space and other ways the images of the city come to such agents and are significant elements to their perceptions about urban space. Thus, the research reflects a unique urban experience, from the different ways of facing the city. In short, the thesis presents a childhood in the city and shows the extent to which ownership of childhood as a sociological object may contribute to an important reflection on new forms of subjectivity in the contemporary city / Mestrado / Sociologia da Cultura / Mestre em Sociologia

The aim of this dissertation is to study urban domesticity in Polish film and literature against the background of the political and social transformations that have taken place in recent decades. The study begins with the so-called belle époque of the Polish People’s Republic and the decade of Edward Gierek, continues through the political upheavals, the period of martial law, and the system transformation of 1989 and the two following decades, which have been marked by the introduction of democracy, global capitalism, consumerism etc. The primary sources consist of almost thirty literary and cinematic works from various genres covering a period of forty years – twenty before the system change, and twenty after. Their common denominator is their setting in the socialist housing projects (blokowisko).  The dissertation places itself in the field of geocriticism and literary/cinematic spatiality. The object of the study is the ̒social space’ (Henri Lefebvre) of the urban home, and the main analytical frames are spatial representations and narrative space, which are viewed as important in shaping both character and plot. The analysis also draws from cultural theory by Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Mikhail Bakhtin, Mircea Eliade, and Loïc Wacquant. The dissertation detects a shift in the representations of the urban home that indicates that the home has become more private and secluded after 1989, also suggesting that a spatial and social marginalization of the socialist housing projects has occurred. These findings are interpreted as consistent with theories in human geography on changes in the perception and experience of space due to global paradigm shifts and changes in the production system.