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Urban environments can satisfy the habitat requirements of a variety of wildlife species. It has been shown that urban residents enjoy wildlife near their homes. The goal of this study was to determine if urban wildlife distributions could be predicted by metropolitan planning variables, so that opportunities for urban residents to enjoy wildlife near their homes could be enhanced. Three hundred one random points, stratified into seven zones, based on intensity of urbanization and vegetation type, were chosen in the Tucson metropolitan study area. Birds were censused with the variable circular plot method. Sign of selected mammal species were searched for at a subset of these points. Native bird species diversity declined steadily as housing density increased. The study area still supports a high diversity of native species because of the high levels of natural open space still found intermixed with residential development. The amount of land covered in residential development and the amount of paloverde-saguaro vegetation types with associated riparian areas were the best predictors of native bird species diversity. The data also suggest that plant cover created by man-maintained vegetation is not as attractive to native bird species as naturally occurring vegetation. Ground nesters and insectivores tended to drop out at higher housing densities while seed-eaters were retained. Three patterns of avian response to variables describing the intensity of urbanization and the amount of natural vegetation emerged: urban, suburban, and exurban. Native Sonoran desert birds appear to be highly sensitive to urbanization, as minor increases in residential housing densities lead to declines in diversity. Mammal species appear to be most sensitive to the size of open space areas and fragmentation and isolation of natural lands. Metropolitan planning processes may be limited in their ability to retain high species diversities. The impacts of urbanization on wildlife diversities may be mitigated through sensitive open space planning.

The "Pueblo and the Public" is a case study of a public issue as presented in newspapers. The issue is whether or not to raze the old Mexican part, the Pueblo, of downtown Tucson. The dissertation is in four parts and is described as follows. Part One defines terms and reviews theory relating speech to thought and society and develops an analytical approach to the research based on the framework of Ogden and Richards (1989). It concludes with a review of urban renewal as a national policy and as an academic debate that raised questions that were never resolved. Part Two is a geographical study of the Pueblo, within Tucson and its history. Geographic descriptions are based on archival information and interviews with old residents. Part Three describes the content of a newspaper text drawn from a 15-year coverage in Tucson's English-language daily newspapers. This text is examined as a story and analyzed in terms of its concepts and its schemes of reality. Part Four makes a comparison between the text's schemes of reality and geographic schemes of reference. A summary is made and the questions from the national debate are answered. The conclusion is that the Ogden and Richards' framework is useful in understanding the situation. The newspapers framed the public issue in a way that did not give the public an adequate or appropriate basis to make an informed decision about razing the Pueblo. The main findings are that speech transmits meaning in three distinct ways at the same time. First, it has form and sequence which expresses ideas having historical context. Second, the listener translates form and context into attitudinal schemes and responds to them. Third, form, context and situation are modified by symbols and meta-ideas. It is concluded that correctly interpreting the meaning of speech requires performing three different cross-referencing operations: (1) to where the action is located, (2) to antecedent action, and (3) to how the listener is situated.

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Diary in lieu of thesis (M.P.A. - Public Administration) -- University of Arizona.

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