Thesis. 1979. M.Arch.A.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.Arch.A.S.

Thesis (M. Arch and M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1978. / Bibliography: leaves 134-137. / by Julie A. Moir. / M.Arch and M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-80). / by Pui Leng Woo. / M.C.P. / M.S.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (M. Arch. in Advanced Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 329-334. / by Rolf Leonard Oliver. / M.C.P. / M.S.

In southwest France starting in the early thirteenth century, an estimated 500 to 700 new towns were created over the course of about 150 years. These new towns, or "bastides," were most often created on unoccupied lands and took the form of a geometric grid plan that was designed around a central market square ringed with arcades, or couverts. Created for economic trade and settlement purposes, the bastides represent one of the first forays into urban planning on a grid system since late Roman times, especially on such a large scale, and they coincide with new economic and political rights and grants of land laid out in the town charters to attract inhabitants to move to the new communities. Many of the bastides were founded by the kings of France and England, as well as local lords including Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, and were made in cooperation with local landowners who were often Cistercian monasteries or minor nobility. While many studies thus far have focused on the economic and political implications for these charters, which included sales and property taxes that replaced traditional tithing, other scholarship has focused on their geographic placement and their geometric planning. However, few have addressed larger issues of identity formation, the social production of space, visual relationships such as between the market hall and the church, or the impact of the Cathar heresy in the region on the relationship between bastides and ecclesiastic authorities. This dissertation addresses these issues of social context, town design, and architectural form. The Cathar heresy was initially put down by a crusade called by Innocent III and resulted in the wholesale destruction of many cities in southwest France. The bastides were created partly as a consequence of the devastation in order to fulfill the need for new settlements. Because of this history of heresy, many bastides were built on former Cathar lands and utilized a strong stamp of authority through naming practice and the development of over-large church clocher-porches that dominate the town squares. Other bastides reflect identity and ambition through the appropriation of European city names, most of them Spanish or Italian, many of which were developing new economic and political rights of their own that were allowing them to thrive. These included the Fueros de Valencia and the Liber Paradisus of Bologna, which targeted the merchant class at the expense of the nobility, and the latter did so through the rhetoric of biblical metaphor. Many of the names used by the bastides were Italian communes, which had a tradition of written odes that described the ideal city in language that included the visual description of compact, state homes on organized, broad streets. These reflect the wide straight streets of the bastides and not the narrow, overbuilt urban tangle that was more common in medieval cities. Though the underlying geometry of bastides is somewhat tenuous, the massive size of some of their squares stands as a marker of their founders' ambition. Metrological investigation shows that they were designed in proportion with the market halls, are often oriented with the cardinal directions, and appear to use mainly the Roman or royal foot length in whole numbers that could be subdivided into an even number of house lots. The churches of the bastides display more pronounced geometry and were also proportional to the town lots; however, they seem divided between those that aligned themselves with the new town grid and those that were built against the grid in order to maintain a strict east-west alignment or to maintain a direct sightline into the square. These churches also display a plain Cistercian-like simplicity in form, a reflection not only of that monastic order but the presence of the mendicants and the latent belief system of the Cathars that rejected materiality. They also use hallmarks of military and ecclesiastic architecture in common with the region's cathedrals. However, many of these elements were not functional, suggesting they were an aesthetic choice. Some, in fact, were added artificially during the nineteenth century in order to celebrate the medieval heritage of France. I also address how bastides became bearers of meaning, addressing the issue of loose ties to Roman sources and the writings of Vitruvius. I also suggest possible ties to the Heavenly City of Jerusalem through churches that replicate the Holy Sepulchre and the similarity of their form and geometry to Beatus manuscripts depicting the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. One such manuscript was made for the English monarchy the same decade that the English began founding bastides. However, the bastides also acquired meaning through ceremony, including the ritualistic raising of the pau staff bearing the arms of the founder and another reference to the local bishop riding into the bastide on a white mule. Through this examination of the bastides through their formal, ritualistic, and social context, we get a more holistic understanding of the production of space and meaning, and how such urban spaces were created and used over time.

This study examines how community development and mainstream environmental groups form coalitions in state-level urban environmental legislation and the effect these coalitions have upon larger processes of institutional change. I argue that the alignment of community development and environmental interests is essential in the efforts to flatten the existing power hierarchy around land use decision-making and open up new possibilities for urban form. It helps to form a "counter-institutional" response which combines "pragmatic" and "purist" interests to resolve the social and environmental dilemmas of land use. This study begins by establishing the extent of the institutional divide between community development and environmentalism through an archival analysis of the 1970s debate over national land use legislation. It then presents two case studies of policies which seek to close this divide: (1) the New York Brownfield Opportunity Area Program of 2003 which was initiated by community groups and (2) the California Senate Bill 375 of 2008 which was initiated by environmental groups. The case studies employ interview data, surveys of organizations, observations of public meetings, and document review. The cases examined provide examples of attempts to expand potential governance outcomes by forming "heterarchic" alliances across policy silos in order to make land use regulation responsive to the wider concerns of urban environmentalists. I find that heterarchy is achieved in the California case, but not in the New York case. The varying degrees to which urban and environmental advocacy groups are able to bridge the institutional divide between them is determinant of these outcomes. The extent to which heterarchic governance is achieved, in turn, impacts the ability of each policy to change the institutional structure of land use regulation.

Industrial cluster literature has traditionally focused on work-place upgrading, clusters' ability to promote firm productivity, economic growth, and benefits that firm owners can or will give to workers. However, even in growing, productive clusters, such a work-place focus leaves out questions about how to situate the contribution of the firm and cluster in improving living standards in the wider socio-economic and spatial context of the region. By providing a systematic examination of the relationship between industrial clusters and poverty analyzed within a multidimensional frame, this dissertation attempts to close this bridge. It asks under what conditions firms in productive clusters pass on benefits to workers in ways that improve their living standards, even when they are not required by law to do so. Three hypotheses are put forward. First, firms in their own interest boost worker productivity by providing certain kinds of work-place benefits such as overall capability, proxied by various types of internal technological knowledge and skills. Second, firms choose not to give other place-based and work-based benefits like health or housing because social policies do not demand it and it has no direct benefit to the firm. Third, firms pass on these benefits because it costs little, and tend to deepen employee loyalty. The study analyses the case of the Otigba Information and Communications Technology cluster in Lagos, Nigeria and uses survey questionnaires, interviews, and archival research. Results confirm that clustering promotes not just firm-level productivity as literature on agglomeration economy highlights, but also raises workers' living standards compared to non-clustered firms in the same sector. Older employees, and those with prior experience in other firms report improvements in their living standards since working in their firms. Furthermore, firms in the cluster give a diverse number of non-income benefits such as housing, health insurance, feeding and transportation allowance, training, child care, funding for further education, pension and company products, based on the length of service in the firm, age of employee, and size of the firm. Additionally, while formal state-supported social protection institutions are largely absent, monetary and non-monetary benefits such as employment, provision of skills through apprenticeships, housing, transportation, and feeding allowance are channeled to employees through firms and informal institutions based on social and kinship ties. A high level of horizontal and collective cooperation based on professional lines has also emerged within the cluster in the absence of formal state institutions. The dissertation makes a theoretical contribution by bridging studies on industrial clusters with those on social protection policy instruments. The study gives greater evidence to the diversity of social protection available, as well as the opportunity for economic development planners to explore ways in which firm-driven social protection can be integrated into social policy.

Food access has become a popular area of concern in both urban planning and public health as both fields are directing increasing attention to the role that uneven neighbourhood food environments play in diet practices and health outcomes. This research investigates two food access expansion projects underway in New York City by looking at how they are implemented in the neighbourhood of Brownsville in the borough of Brooklyn. One, the Brownsville Youthmarket, run by the city-wide nonprofit GrowNYC, is a farmers' market intervention that increases access to fresh fruit and vegetables by hiring neighbourhood youth to sell regional produce. The second, Shop Healthy, is an initiative run by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (and its District Public Health Offices). It encourages bodega owners to stock healthier items in their stores, including fruits and vegetables. By drawing on concepts of environmental justice and biopower, this research shows how these programs are characterized by competing motivations and strategies. While the stated rationale for these food access programs is to improve food environments by bringing more healthy items into underserved neighbourhoods, they rely upon nutrition education and cooking skills programs that indicate that the underlying problem is a lack of knowledge about what food is healthy and how to prepare it. This gap between motivations and strategies reveals a great distance between city-level actors and the residents of the neighbourhoods that they aim to help. Program designers fail to understand the true barriers to healthy eating in predominantly poor and minority communities and thus intervene with programs that do little to meaningfully change the food environment in ways that address residents' needs.