Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1973.

Thesis (M.U.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation analyzes the pluralist religious claims that ethnically and racially diverse Muslim American communities make on the public and political culture of Hamtramck, Michigan. These claims include appeals for recognition, such as in a campaign for municipal approval to issue the call to prayer. They involve bids for resources, such as the use of public funds to establish alternative Muslim-majority public education institutions. They entail struggles for representation, such as political interventions into LGBTQ-rights debates to safeguard a “traditional” moral order in the city. The study also examines how transnational Islamic frameworks for organizing gender and public space influence the civic engagement strategies of South Asian and Arab American Muslim women respectively, in ways that sometimes challenge dominant gendered spatial norms. With this, the study explores women’s leadership in mosques and religious study circles, examining how gender and generation shape female religious authority, and also present opportunities for women to cross racial, class, and ethnic lines within the city. Postulating a charged, dynamic and mutually constitutive connection between the development of religious, racial, and ethnic identities and the production urban space, the study analyzes how individual and collective forms of minority identity find expression in urban public and political projects, and how liberal secular frameworks in turn condition the production of minority religious sensibilities, affiliations, and practices in American cities. In analyzing how these dynamics shape civic life and local politics, the study approaches Hamtramck as a "post-secular city," or a zone of interchange and heterogeneity in which religious, secular, and humanistic frames of reference converge to configure new possibilities for urban change. This work advances interdisciplinary scholarship on how religion impacts the civic engagement of immigrants and minorities; on how gender systems are preserved, challenged, or transformed in migration; and on how diverse communities living in close proximity negotiate conflicting ideas about the common good. / text

Ethnic conflict is a persistent and vexing problem for the world today. The intercommunal violence during these conflicts not only significantly alters the social and spatial geography in these regions for decades, but also frequently involves external actors who magnify the social conflict. It is within the urban areas that the impacts of violence are often most acute and deleterious to the once functioning system. Ethnic conflict transforms many urban areas into “divided cities” in which barricades and armed posts dominate the landscape. With this paradigm of conflict in mind, the overarching purpose of this dissertation is two-fold: 1) to examine how and why certain peaceful societies devolve into intercommunal conflict, and 2) to outline how ethnic conflict ultimately, and often irreparably, transforms an urban area into a “divided city.” In this dissertation, Nicosia, the ethnically divided capital of Cyprus, serves as the primary case study used to illustrate the process of social devolution from ethnic conflict to a militarily fortified urban division. The three main research questions are asked concerning Nicosia’s division. 1) What historic factors contributed to the progression and intensification of the social and spatial cleavages that appear in the urban landscape today? 2) To what extent is the urban divide diagnostic of the overarching ethnic conflict on Cyprus? 3) How is Nicosia’s urban division similar to or different from other “ethnically” divided cities and how might this comparison help further the general understanding of the causes and consequences of these entities? These three questions help frame Nicosia within the context of the larger social conflict on Cyprus as well as assist in developing linkages with other divided cities. As articulated throughout this study, Nicosia is a “model” divided city that typifies how the historically-laden process of ethno-territorial polarization can manifest itself in the physical and social geography of a contested region. In the end, divided cities epitomize the “worst-case-scenario” outcome of ethnic conflict and once the urban divisions take root, they prove exceptionally challenging to remove from the social and physical landscape. / text

Trees are a valuable asset of our society, but little policy research has been conducted in this area at the university level. The policy in Hong Kong has changed from tree preservation to tree management due to repeated tree collapse incidents that have affected public safety and the harmony and sustainability of the environment and society. The Kingdon and Zahariadis multiple streams approach is found to be the most suitable analytical framework for the analysis of tree management policy in Hong Kong. The problem stream looks at why the problems occur, what they are, the magnitude of change in the conditions and why we need to do something about tree management. The policy stream looks at how to deal with and regulate tree management. The politics stream looks at what is done by whom in tree management policy. Finally, the aforementioned three streams are coupled by policy entrepreneurs using policy output so that the agenda can be set and the policy adopted. The tree management policy in Hong Kong is investigated and analysed through the lens of multiple streams theory and it is hoped that the information in this dissertation can offer a clearer understanding of the policy and its role in creating a better Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

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This comparison of two urban public spaces in the city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, examines the production of gendered space within an ethnohistorical context of material and discursive practices related to socio-spatial order, cultural and biological reproduction, and the construction of urban scale. The focus of the study of these two “commons” is on the liminal spatiality of the central plaza and the seaside promenade, the role of everyday life and consumption in the production of these spaces, and the role of women in these successive spatial transformations. In order to understand the relations and practices that produce these commons, the various spatial transformations that have affected the southern Baja California Peninsula are described and discussed. It is a place that has been constituted and reconstituted within successive globalizing forces since at least the beginning of the sixteenth century, up to and including contemporary international tourism. The city of La Paz, its people, and its sense of itself as expressed in its public spaces have emerged from these historical and cross-cultural processes. By examining and comparing the Parque Velasco and the Malecón as the products of both past and emerging patterns of spatial discourse in the negotiation, rehearsal and affirmation of gender identities, the following specific questions are addressed: What is the role women play in the cultural production and reproduction of these public spaces in a borderland? How do the spaces differ--materially, discursively, and in usage? What or whose purposes do they serve? How do they position peripheral agents within a hegemonic globalizing process? Finally, the study considers the question of what future can be envisioned for La Paz and its commons as border spaces.

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