This thesis explores the intersection between city planning in Winnipeg, Manitoba and branding the city as a creative city, by examining several key Winnipeg planning documents, which are interpreted as enacting the collective drive to develop - and brand - Winnipeg as a Creative City. Inspired in particular by the work of Charles Landry, this study reveals how Winnipeg’s creative city identity and approach is actively crafted and defined through local planning discourses. The research seeks to expand and enrich the dialogue around the creative city, using a creative city-making framework, to encourage a more holistic and inclusive approach to what rates as a creative city, and what merits recognition as creative and creativity in a city planning context. Some of the creative themes found in Winnipeg of interest to planners include a commitment to collaboration, integration, participation and the desire to operationalize creativity within municipal governance. / May 2016

The historic connection between homelessness and severe economic depression has disappeared as a shortage of affordable decent housing prevails even during periods of strong economic growth. New factors such as the reduction of low skill careers in manufacturing in favour of higher paid higher skilled positions are causing an increasing gap between the highest and lowest earning populations in Canada. Furthermore, shifting taxation rates have reduced the federal government’s ability to provide funding for affordable housing. As a result, current market based solutions are failing to meet the diverse housing needs of our communities, leaving some homeless and many others at imminent risk. Policy plays a large role in finding a solution to this crisis; however the means of applying any solution is intrinsically an architectural issue. This thesis examines the state of homelessness in the city of Toronto and proposes a new and inclusive urban housing typology to better meet the city’s housing needs. The thesis is structured by three forms of inquiry: Firstly, an analysis of homelessness in Canada is used to identify the historic causes of homelessness. As well, the principle obstacles faced by key demographics are highlighted. Secondly, the thesis investigates existing responses to homelessness to identify the difference between reactionary responses and a more effective integrated city making approach. Finally, the lessons learned from earlier research are applied through the design of an inclusive housing typology, which, through a city making strategy, blends together residential, cultural, and commercial programming. The goal of this design proposal is to foster a richer urban community, which better serves the needs of the entire city.

The historic connection between homelessness and severe economic depression has disappeared as a shortage of affordable decent housing prevails even during periods of strong economic growth. New factors such as the reduction of low skill careers in manufacturing in favour of higher paid higher skilled positions are causing an increasing gap between the highest and lowest earning populations in Canada. Furthermore, shifting taxation rates have reduced the federal government’s ability to provide funding for affordable housing. As a result, current market based solutions are failing to meet the diverse housing needs of our communities, leaving some homeless and many others at imminent risk. Policy plays a large role in finding a solution to this crisis; however the means of applying any solution is intrinsically an architectural issue. This thesis examines the state of homelessness in the city of Toronto and proposes a new and inclusive urban housing typology to better meet the city’s housing needs. The thesis is structured by three forms of inquiry: Firstly, an analysis of homelessness in Canada is used to identify the historic causes of homelessness. As well, the principle obstacles faced by key demographics are highlighted. Secondly, the thesis investigates existing responses to homelessness to identify the difference between reactionary responses and a more effective integrated city making approach. Finally, the lessons learned from earlier research are applied through the design of an inclusive housing typology, which, through a city making strategy, blends together residential, cultural, and commercial programming. The goal of this design proposal is to foster a richer urban community, which better serves the needs of the entire city.

This article presents theoretical and empirical insights into how Ljubljana is integrated into the discourse of a creative city through top-down discourses and practices, and how bottom-up activists and stakeholders actively position themselves towards this development. The phenomenon described is an example for the realization of European cultural policy in a local context on the geopolitical and imaginative periphery of “EU-rope”: Slovenia.

La croissance des bidonvilles interroge les modalités de production de la ville, notamment dans les pays en développement. Cette thèse montre le cas de Bangkok où les « communautés denses », outre la flexibilité de leur architecture, cristallisent souvent des pratiques sociales et une histoire commune propres au lieu. Rarement prises en compte dans la métropole et victimes d'une image négative, elles font preuve d'un dynamisme économique et associatif stimulant et représentent un enjeu fort face aux notions de développement durable et de droit à la ville, à l'échelle locale comme internationale. Au travers d'une analyse spatiale principalement, d'entretiens d'acteurs et d'observations de terrain, nous abordons l'habitat spontané comme une construction incrémentale issue de processus d'appropriation individuelle. Nous l'analysons autour de trois configurations ou « contextes d'émergence » de ces constructions : l'habitat spontané « ancien », « pur » et « greffé ». Cette première configuration interroge la notion de patrimoine au sujet de constructions populaires remontant aux origines de l'urbanisation à Bangkok. L'habitat spontané pur tend en parallèle à former de véritables morceaux de ville attractifs et finement reliés à leur contexte urbain. Avec les greffes spontanées observées sur les immeubles sociaux de relogement, l'habitat spontané s'affirme comme un mode de construction viable et un outil de développement urbain. L'habitat spontané entraîne progressivement le repositionnement des acteurs de l'urbain, la mise en place de processus de projet alternatifs qui renouvellent la production courante du logement vers une construction urbaine partagée. / The importance of spontaneous construction raises some questions about the modalities of urban production, especially in developing countries. This thesis presents the case of Bangkok, where the "dense communities," besides the flexibility of their architecture, often crystallize a common site specific history. Rarely taken into account in the metropolis and victims of a negative image, they show, at a local and international level, a stimulating economic and associative dynamism and represent a major challenge in light of the concepts of sustainable development and the right to the city. Through a mainly spatial analysis, interviews and field observations, we approach spontaneous settlements as an incremental construction, result of a process of individual appropriation. We then analyze three configurations or "contexts of emergence" of these constructions: “ancient”, “pure” and "grafted". The first configuration questions the notion of heritage in relation to these popular constructions, dating back to the origins of Bangkok’s urbanization. At the same time, the pure spontaneous housing settlements tend to become real attractive city districts, finely linked to their urban context. With the added spontaneous grafts, which we observed on the social re-housing buildings, informal settlements become a viable way to build the city and a tool for urban development. Spontaneous housing leads progressively to a repositioning of urban actors, the implementation of alternative design processes, renewing the current models of housing production to a shared urban construction

In recent years, urban historians have established that the period from 1560 to 1660 was a key era for London’s development from a relatively small European urban centre into a large dynamic global capital. This dissertation attempts to intervene in London scholarship by drawing attention to the economic, political, religious and – most significantly – cultural importance of clothing in the city in this period. Using material, visual, literary and archival sources, it explores the ways clothing contributed to the development of early modern London and, in turn, how London’s rapid growth changed the making, wearing, and meaning of clothing. This dissertation places material evidence at the fore using extant objects from museum collections. It also employs the new methodology of reconstruction to explore craft, ingenuity, and emotional self-expression in dress. As clothing infused economic and social life, it draws upon on a wide range of evidence, from London guild records, to portraits, travel accounts, personal letters, diaries and account books, plays, sermons and poems. With a focus on urban experience, this dissertation discusses not only elite luxury consumption, but also investigates the wardrobes of guildsmen, immigrant craftspeople, apprentices and maids – asking what they wore, what they thought about what they were wearing, and how they used clothing to navigate through the city during this time of rapid change. A chapter on the ‘London Look’ shows how inhabitants and visitors documented the visual and material styles of the city. Exploring the collaborative processes by which clothing was made, worn and appreciated by craftspeople and consumers, a chapter on making and buying clothing demonstrates how clothes were made and charts the emergence of a new consumer culture. Existing scholarship on sumptuary laws is challenged in a chapter that demonstrates how laws were enforced in the city while also integrating extant objects into the discussion for the first time. Finally, using a sample of London wills, the dissertation shows how Londoners owned, bequeathed and inherited clothing, and imbued it with emotional meaning. In sum, this dissertation aims to integrate scholarship on early modern London with material culture studies, and to promote the new methodology of reconstruction for historians. In revealing how London was conceived during a time of rapid change, clothing can be used as a lens through which to explore wider discourse about a city that by 1657 was being described as ‘Londinopolis.’ Clothing helped to make London into a wealthy, dynamic, and diverse urban centre, and these changes dramatically shaped the way clothing was made and appreciated.