Serious resistance to urban growth in the Southwest arose at the beginning of the post World War II boom and persisted throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Most historians of the urban West ignore this early resistance. Even New Western historians truncate their studies of urbanization in the Southwest by assuming that serious opposition to development only appeared with the rise of environmentalism in the late 1960s. Urbanization in Tucson and Albuquerque proceeded in the face of constant protest. The expressions of opposition to urban expansion arose in conservative and libertarian political critiques and in ethnic resistance to urban renewal plans that targeted barrio areas. A loosely defined environmentalism appeared in these early forms of resistance as residents fought to preserve their lifestyle and native culture.

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Cities Beyond is a collection of poems about the liminal space between the suburbs and the pasture as metaphor for the created space of memory, self, and location.

Among the smart technologies - smart devices, smart cars, smart homes, smart cities - why has only the smartphone gained worldwide appeal? The aim of this paper is to explore the barriers faced by smart cities and smart homes, and highlight why the two applications of IoT have not gained significant traction despite a decade of promise. Significantly larger in scale than the smart home, the smart city is more constrained by the technical limits of IoT technology due to resource-limited nodes. Therefore this paper will explore the technical hurdles common in the smart city sphere and evaluate potential solutions. On the other side of the spectrum, the use of IoT in the home can be a deeply personal decision. From a business perspective, the smart home market grows increasingly crowded as ambitious entrepreneurs are all looking to claim a piece of an ever-expanding pie. The smart home section will strive to unpack these complex social and business dynamics, suggesting ways to expand and retain a larger user-base.

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Public housing in the United States has been a controversial sociopolitical topic since the years of the Great Depression. The issue of appropriate and secure habitation for the country's "deserving poor" continues to be of great importance as government subsidies become scarce in the early 21st century. This dearth of support for public housing is even more evident and prominent along the United States-Mexico border of South Texas, a territory described as having a third world environment. The dissertation is a narrative history of public housing in Laredo, Texas, a border community. Compiled from news media records and the archives of the Laredo Housing Authority, the study gives insight into methods used by this authority to achieve decent habitation for the underprivileged residents of one of the poorest cities in the United States. After a historical background of Laredo, the study follows a chronological development of federally funded housing through the six decades that began in 1938. The study accentuates the continuing need for such housing as its sponsoring federal agency; the Department of Housing and Urban Development fails to properly fund its subsidiary programs and projects. Principal governmental and nongovernmental sources substantiate the dearth of appropriate housing, with the author providing further insight to his native city's plight. The conclusion outlines how funding, together with higher upkeep and energy costs, will continue in a downward spiral and will lead to an increase in the underserved poor population.

ABSTRACT: What is culture? What is the culture of the city? The premise of this study is that the construction of an official rationality of culture, as a concept that underlies culture-led urban regeneration and place-marketing, is often limiting and exclusionary. The official concept of culture often overlooks the important political nuances and complexities that are involved in the representation and appropriation of cultural identities. It also neglects the value of the symbols and practices that are produced in the everyday life of the city, which may provide a real inclusionary, socially relevant understanding of identity and difference in the city. The study explains the need to prompt urban practitioners and theorists to begin to deconstruct prevailing interpretations of urban culture so that we may begin engaging with alternative interpretations of identities, cultures and difference to more authentically reflect the fluid meanings produced in the realm of urban everyday life. Beginning with a brief glimpse into the various meanings constructed for culture over time, the study then proceeds to analyse the official documented discourse on culture constructed for the city of Johannesburg. These ideas are then distilled into four critical themes acting as a conceptual framework relating to the interpretation of culture in the city. These four themes lead to an exploration of the space of everyday life as an alterative source of the multiple shifting meanings and identities being formed daily in the everyday life of the city. This study extends an invitation to urban theorists and practitioners to embark upon the task of critically deconstructing the realities and political complexities of prevailing interpretations of culture in the city that underlies urban regeneration. In this way the study aims to stimulate the development of alternative rationalities in urban planning about the nuances and representations of social life, identities and difference in the city, urging a 9 critical review and critique of urban decision making and its consequences for the everyday social experience of the city. This research concludes by suggesting that the concept of culture be deprivileged in the context of urban regeneration and that a new direction in practising urban regeneration and place-marketing be explored in the spaces of everyday life.

The Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve is one of twenty-six such reserves in the United States established with the intent of protecting coastal estuaries. GIS-based analysis of aerial photographs of the southern half of the reserve reveals high rates of erosion along the margin of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway which runs through the reserve. From 1970/1971 to 2002 nearly 70 hectares (approximately 170 acres) of shoreline habitat were degraded by erosion along the 64.8 kilometers of channel margin analyzed. Wakes generated by vessels in the Intracoastal are hypothesized to be the primary cause of this erosion. An examination of the relationships between lateral movement of the channel margin and factors with the potential to affect erosion and accretion supports this hypothesis. Exposure to boat wakes was found to be the causal factor most strongly correlated with rate of lateral margin movement. Margin movement rates were also found to vary significantly with exposure to wind waves and with the type of channel margin eroded. A reduction in nearshore wave energy appears to be necessary to allow the recovery of impacted ecosystems. Approaches to erosion management based on nearshore stabilization and regulation of navigation are discussed, and the intricacies of the implementation of such plans are described. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: March 29, 2005. / Erosion Management, GIS / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Deyle, Professor Directing Thesis; Sergio Fagherazzi, Outside Committee Member; John Thomas, Committee Member.