This thesis’s networked public sphere - the Civic Superstructure - transforms the public sphere by reconsidering the pace and purview of the civic. Contemporary public institutions are typically disconnected and isolated islands dispersed throughout the city. Our fast-paced, plugged-in lifestyle, however, is evermore inconsistent with such inconvenient geographical dispersal. By incorporating isolated public institutions into a networked system, this project provides a connective layer across an existing site and takes advantage of the interstitial zones between private institutions to offer the civic realm in places where you least expect it. This sprawling network acts as a platform for accessing public services and information, while also providing a new common space for the public to meet, to learn, to play and even to protest — in short, to be a public, even in this most unlikely of places rendered newly civic through a combination of digital and physical access.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province enacted its Heritage Act in 1975. The Ontario Heritage Act enables municipalities to conserve built heritage in a number of ways, including instituting heritage conservation districts. Heritage districts recognize and conserve built heritage that extend beyond the special architectural qualities of individual buildings. Port Dalhousie is a quaint community located on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and inextricably linked to the first three Welland Canals. Now a part of the City of St. Catharines, it was designated a heritage conservation district in 2003. However, after the designation an ambitious and controversial re-development plan was proposed for the community’s historic commercial core. The re-development aimed to revitalize the area, but in doing so also threatened to destroy the heritage. This case study used historical research, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires to investigate the cycle of heritage commodification, the effectiveness of public participation and the exercise of power as the various stakeholders in the community of Port Dalhousie deliberated over the future of its built heritage. Findings from this study reveal that sound governance and effective planning policies promoted public participation. The results also confirm that active civic involvement from local residents plays an integral role in heritage conservation, and influences developments that threaten heritage. This study recommends that heritage planning should be more proactive in municipal land use planning, and heritage guidelines for conservation areas should be part of broader heritage management programs where power sharing, participation, and decision making reflect social equity. The findings and recommendations from this study are intended to assist communities, managers and planners in future efforts to conserve built heritage.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province enacted its Heritage Act in 1975. The Ontario Heritage Act enables municipalities to conserve built heritage in a number of ways, including instituting heritage conservation districts. Heritage districts recognize and conserve built heritage that extend beyond the special architectural qualities of individual buildings. Port Dalhousie is a quaint community located on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and inextricably linked to the first three Welland Canals. Now a part of the City of St. Catharines, it was designated a heritage conservation district in 2003. However, after the designation an ambitious and controversial re-development plan was proposed for the community’s historic commercial core. The re-development aimed to revitalize the area, but in doing so also threatened to destroy the heritage. This case study used historical research, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires to investigate the cycle of heritage commodification, the effectiveness of public participation and the exercise of power as the various stakeholders in the community of Port Dalhousie deliberated over the future of its built heritage. Findings from this study reveal that sound governance and effective planning policies promoted public participation. The results also confirm that active civic involvement from local residents plays an integral role in heritage conservation, and influences developments that threaten heritage. This study recommends that heritage planning should be more proactive in municipal land use planning, and heritage guidelines for conservation areas should be part of broader heritage management programs where power sharing, participation, and decision making reflect social equity. The findings and recommendations from this study are intended to assist communities, managers and planners in future efforts to conserve built heritage.

Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att se vilka värderingar elever har efter genomförd religionskurs och hur dessa stämmer överrens med lärarnas ambitioner. Genom en intervjustudie av elever och lärare har jag fått fram en bild av både värderingarna och ambitionerna. Dessa diskuteras mot bakgrund av läroplanen och kursplanen samt det medborgerliga utbildningsperspektivet, citizenship education. För att förstå elevernas värderingar bättre har jag använt mig av Bourdieus sociologiska teorier, vilket gett mig en bild av att skolan inte kan ta på sig hela ansvaret när det gäller överförandet av samhällets värden.

Scholarly accounts of the history of civic virtue in the modern era have with few exceptions been wholly secular, discounting, ignoring, or even outright rejecting the role religious thought has played in shaping the civic tradition. In this dissertation, I focus on the influence of religion on the civic tradition, specifically in the eighteenth century in Scotland and America. I examine the ways in which the religious traditions of each nation shaped the debate surrounding the viability of civic virtue, the place of religious virtues among the civic tradition, and the tensions between using religion to promote civic virtue while protecting individual religious liberty. In the Scottish Enlightenment, I examine the influence of Francis Hutcheson’s moral sense philosophy and Adam Ferguson’s providential theology. In the American Founding, I contrast the New England religious tradition exemplified by John Witherspoon and John Adams with the public religious tradition advocated by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. This work demonstrates not only that religion influences the civic tradition, but also that this influence is neither monolithic nor self-evident. In order to understand how religion shaped this tradition, it is necessary to take into account that different conceptions of religion produce different understandings of what it means to be a good citizen.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore contemporary communitarian thinker Michael J. Sandel¡¦s political philosophy concerning one that realizes the importance of ¡§virtue¡¨ and ¡§ends¡¨ in citizenship and the state. I argue that although Sandel is often known as one of the most compelling critics of John Rawls¡¦ justice theory, his more ambitious commitment since 1984 is to provide a vision about the nature and aim of political life through insights of civic republicanism. The goal of this essay is to sort out Sandel¡¦s perspectives on these normative statements. Introducing from the debates between justice and the good in ethics, I explain what motivates me to write this essay and briefly describe the framework and approach of the thesis. In the second chapter, I elaborate Sandel¡¦s philosophical anthropology. Different from Rawls¡¦ the conception of human, Sandel¡¦s version is one with moral disposition¡X¡Xthat is to say, at the moment when we ask ourselves ¡§ who am I¡H¡¨, it comes to the answer that we are constitutive beings, rather than unencumbered selves from nowhere. Only when an agent is capable of self-reflection and recognizing how self is situated can self-knowledge and political practices possible. In short, only in a political community can spirit of citizenship be realized. In chapter three, I trace Sandel¡¦s argument and point out the fact that the theory and practice of contemporary liberalism has practically become a synonym to procedural republic. It is presented not only the ideas of ¡§rights as trumps¡¨ and neutral state, but also revealed by the erosion of community and the loss of self-government. Therefore, how to rebuild moral life in modern democratic practices has become an important task for people of our time. Following the political tradition of republicanism in American history, Sandelian republicanism, inherence of Aristotlian perfectionism, stresses the importance of political community as a whole to cultivate civic virtue. So I discuss the meaning of freedom/liberty and self-government. Through above discussions, I try to reveal Sandel¡¦s idea of democracy that insists conserving certain conceptions of the good, common ends and substantial moral contents in political life. In chapter four, I deal with how Sandel respond to the tension between republicanism and liberalism. From communitarianism to republicanism, I am persuaded that the core of Sandel¡¦s philosophy lies in the idea of citizenship and the ends of state. Civic virtues are so intrinsic to political life and will help to lead us to a good life. State or government shouldn¡¦t just be neutral but should play a role in developing good citizens. In final chapter, I concluded that Sandel¡¦s concerns to community and citizen and his republican ideals revive an yet long forgotten tradition in democratic thoughts.

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Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes special study report entitled: Morphological study of civic open space in Hong Kong. Includes bibliographical references.

Communications scholars recognize two related trends in twenty-first century politics: the rise of information and communications technologies promising major changes in civic participation and a growing disconnection between citizens and their governments. The coexistence of these trends raises some interesting questions about the role of ICTs for enabling new forms of civic participation. How can new technologies better enable civic participation? This report proposes a typology for evaluating online civic participation projects that allows researchers to analyze the goals, designs, and outcomes of particular projects. The typology also incorporates Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation in order to enumerate the relationships between the project’s goals and its outcomes and to provide a flexible model for understanding the democratic conceptualizations manifested in particular projects. The report analyzes three online civic participation projects, highlighting their innovations and discussion their levels of citizen participation. The analyses suggest that a project’s goals, designs and outcomes are related to, and inform, its desired and realized levels of citizen participation. The review also suggests clarifications to Arnstein’s ladder for future use in understanding online civic participation. The report’s evaluative typology can aid in the interpretation of past online civic participation projects and guide the conceptualization and implementation of future projects in order to facilitate the development of more direct connections between citizens and governments and more open and transparent democratic governance structures. / text