My research is an examination of the scope of contemporary urban design and planning tools and processes which can act as alternative qualitative methodologies for the renewal of urban conditions at multiple scales through adaptive methods embracing change, stresses and shocks affecting societies and the city as a growing epicentre of human inhabitation and complex systems. With growing urbanisation, the question of what constitutes liveable urbanism across urban territories is a critical one. Addressing the lack of unified and culturally aware analysis of the evolution in urban design and planning practice being applied in various contexts across the developed and developing world, I have, through my own international research programme over more than 15 years, traced their potentials for incubating renewal through a collection of published outputs, each with their own approach: a book, essays for the media and for exhibition catalogues and a webzine. Through examination I have learned about the capacities of tools and processes to break with silo thinking and damaging legacies of the past, and to adapt, or to forge new instrumentalities in ways that are context-responsive and situational. My focus has been on studying largely ongoing, phased projects, so this is a work in progress. This self-appointed intellectual mandate for comparative urbanism has required a form of evaluation that includes consideration of the use and mis-use of history and old rules, operational narratives and contestory factors, enquiry into assumptions made, responsibilities claimed, and objectives combining issues of determination (of plans, by their clients) and self-determination (of communities). I have striven to show how the recognition of planning baggage and the emptying out of its tactics, is, in diverse ways, creating space for alternative behaviors in the form of new, potentially more socially equitable and responsive patterns of operation, engaging and reusing resources. I have learned that new hybrid processes of top down and bottom up planning, and interest in engaging with multi-modal approaches with their relative novelty and unprecedented forms of complexity, represent major challenges to long-held beliefs about planning’s role in society and the typical relationships between planner and those planned for. They foster a sense of the symbiotic relationships, interdependencies, alliances and self-determination cities need to generate their futures in socially equitable and resilient ways. My body of research will help inform and contribute methodologies and concepts to future outputs on related themes concerning urban design and planning’s role and identity, including issues of Urbanista.org, my webzine. The wider implications of my research are also that institutions involved in land use of all kinds accordingly need to carry a responsibility to adopt a higher commitment to the value of and need for adaptive instruments of civic urban order.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Anne E. Beamish / One of the most important aspects of a public space is its accessibility and inclusivity for all people. In urban parks, this often means that a wide variety of users must be considered during the design process. Denver Civic Center Park is a historic urban park in the heart of Denver’s downtown. The park caters to a variety of people ranging from tourist, who briefly visit the park, to people who are experiencing homelessness, and call the park home. Ensuring that the needs of people varying in age, culture, and economic background is key to any urban park’s success. Semi-structured interviews, site observations, site inventory and analysis, and critical mapping helped assess Denver’s Civic Center Park’s inclusivity and accessibility. Through a combination of improved infrastructure and additional amenities, a thoughtful redesign of the historic park addressed today’s challenges with homelessness and created a more inclusive environment. Because of the historic nature of the park only specific modifications to the southern ares were made. There are two reasons to create inclusive public spaces. The first is the social mixing that comes from people of different backgrounds and cultures sharing a safe environment. Social mixing connects groups of people through passive and active interactions that are built on seeing someone or overhearing their conversations. Social interactions, that take place in a safe environment, can trigger empathy within the community and start to build relationships between people of different socioeconomic groups. The second reason focuses on the ethics of designing public space. The infrastructure and policy of a public space should not be exclusive to a “desirable” demographic, but should include all existing users and the surrounding community. Because a large portion of users in Denver’s Civic Center Park are people experiencing homelessness, the design and programmatic amenities should consider their needs and desires. Landscape architects can influence the public’s views and the way people interact with each other by designing safe and active urban public spaces. In this project I asked, what design policies and strategies could be implemented to make Denver’s Civic Center Park more inclusive and secure for all park users, including those experiencing homelessness?

This study investigates how Canadian youth, nationally recognized as eco-civic leaders, perceive their own sense of agency and their capacity to effect ‘change.’ More specifically, this study explores how these youth are interpreting change (i.e., attitudinal, behavioural, social, political, etc.), and what their perspectives reveal about the relationship between school and community-based environmental learning experiences and their capacity to make change in society. This project explores the notion of ‘student agency’ as it relates to an emerging trend of environmental action learning aimed at active citizenship within the fields of environmental education (EE) and to a lesser extent, civics education. Drawing on different qualitative research methodologies, such as but not limited to narrative inquiry, 34 past recipients/finalists of the Toyota Earth Day Canada Scholarship participated in this study. I used three different dimensions of environmental action learning to construct the conceptual lens through which the findings were interpreted. My findings suggest a critical gap exists between how EE is widely practiced in Canadian schools (i.e., environmentally responsible stewarding), and how it is currently being taken up in recent EE policy and research (i.e., developing capacity to effect broader socio-ecological change). In turn, this research asserts that although we are cultivating ‘good stewards’ and ‘good citizens,’ we are not educating youth toward becoming ‘change agents.’ As such, the majority of youth in this study demonstrate an egocentric perception of their identity and capacity as young eco-civic leaders. Consequently, my research suggests that specific learning conditions, including youth and adults serving as co-participants in community-based action projects aimed at broader social, political, and environmental change, are important in the development of student agency.

Organizations in the Ugandan civil society sector have faced legal and extra-legal restrictions on their operations, a phenomenon referred to as the ‘shrinking civic space’ which has been on the rise globally. The Ugandan government has taken several measures towards controlling the operational space of, especially organizations working on issues of human rights, anti-corruption, electoral democracy, and social justice and accountability issues in the oil and gas sector. This thesis presents a within-case comparison over time, by analyzing the shrinking civic space of non-governmental organizations working in the oil and gas sector in Uganda between years 2012-2018. The aim is to review the changes of the national legal framework that took place in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and compare the extra-legal and legal restrictions that oil and gas NGOs have faced before and after the alterations. This study finds that while the legal restrictions imposed in 2013-2017 went further than the laws previously in place, the NGOs in the oil and gas sector already faced similar restrictions before – implying that the implementation of the new laws was part of formalizing restrictions of the civic space which were already practiced.

This Thesis project is going to be situated in my home town Östersund, 600 kilometers north from Stockholm.It´s a small town with 60 000 people and it is the only city of the region Jämtland in Norrland, Sweden.In the city centre of Östersund there is one existing bus terminal station where the buses arrive with people from the entire region.The task for this Thesis project is to rebuild the existing bus station in Östersund where the actual terminal building is going to be completely demolished and the entire block within the current bus stops is going to be rearranged.The topography of the terminal area is now dividing the regional buses that arrives on the upper level from the city buses that stops at the lower level. Therefore the main challenge of the new proposal is how one would strengthen the junction between these two flows of people and how a new architecture could enable the encounter between the countryside and the urban city. / Detta examensprojekt kommer att vara belägen i min hemstad Östersund, 600 kilometer norr om Stockholm. Det är en liten stad med 60 000 personer och det är den enda staden i regionen Jämtland, Norrland. I centrum av Östersund finns en befintlig bussterminalen där bussarna anländer med folk från hela regionen. Uppgiften för detta projekt är att bygga om den befintliga busstationen i Östersund topografin på terminalområdet i dagsläget separerar de regionala bussarna som anländer på den övre nivån från stadsbussarna som stannar på en lägre nivå. Den största utmaningen i det nya förslaget är hur man istället skulle kunna stärka förbindelsen mellan dessa två flöden av människor och hur en ny arkitektur kan möjliggöra mötet mellan glesbyggd och den urbana staden.

The primary purpose of this study is to develop a model community organizing plan for persons wishing to establish a grassroots citizen action organization. Existential in nature, this model will be geared toward easy and practical application, i.e. a "cookbook” approach to the process of organizing a citizen action organization. A secondary purpose of this study is to provide students and beginning community organizers with a basic theoretical and historical orientation by which to understand the field of community organization.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The U.S. is now experiencing an unprecedented growth in its older population. In order to reduce the adverse effects of population aging, older adults’ civic engagement has been a recent focus in the field of aging. A considerable body of literature has documented the significance, current status, positive outcomes, and influencing factors of American elders’ civic engagement. However, there are very few studies, if any, that adopt an organizational competency perspective to explore the promotion of older adults’ participation in civic activities. To fill the current research gap, the dissertation aims to help formal organizations identify and develop necessary competencies to better engage American elders through two inquiries. The first inquiry is a mixed methods systematic literature review which included 19 quantitative studies, two qualitative studies, and one mixed methods study. Through meta-summary, six themes and 28 factors related to American elders’ civic engagement were generated. These themes encompassed socio-demographic factors (eight factors), health status (four factors), program characteristics (four factors), engagement opportunities (three factors), engagement outcomes (five factors), and social capital (four factors). Formal organizations are advised to develop relevant competencies to capture the beneficial influences of facilitating factors and minimize the adverse impact of obstructive factors. The second inquiry aims to develop and validate an Organizational Competency Scale (OCS) for elder civic engagement programs. 32 formal organizations and pertinent programs in the State of Texas participated in the pilot study. Factor analyses of the data collected from these organizations revealed a seven-factor solution for the OCS. These factors included client discovery with support, client-centered planning and management, client assessment and training, integration of diverse groups, promotion of adaptation between groups, integration of resources to address the structural constraints, and promotion of social recognition and social justice. As a reliable and valid scale, the OCS can serve as both an assessment tool and practice guidelines for formal organizations to evaluate and develop their competencies to increase American elders’ civic engagement. / 2 years

This research examines the difference in civic participation between Korean and Canadian citizens in two categories – social engagement (participation in general social groups) and political activity by using the Korea Social Integration Survey (SIS) and the Canadian General Social Survey (GSS). According to the results of this study, Canadians show higher social engagement than Koreans, while Koreans exhibit higher political activity, showing higher combined civic participation between individual citizens. This heightened civic participation by Koreans also reflects a stronger sense of collectivism. The results of the analysis on the effect of civic participation for each country show that, in Korea, both trust and sense of belonging were positively associated while in Canada, trust was negatively associated, and sense of belonging more positively associated than in Korea. The difference between the two countries can be attributed to the negative association found in institutional confidence as well. In Canada, active participation in politics implies that civic participation is part of more forward-looking action that shows greater individual preference and intention in comparison to civic participation of Korean citizens influenced more by collectivism. As such, this research implies that Korea needs to enhance individual civic identity in order to overcome collectivism. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The role of Roman patrons and their relations with local communities is investigated. Northern Italy has been chosen as the region where this investigation will be carried out. It will be shown that the institution of patronage in northern Italy underwent a process of decline as the rest of the empire. This point will be displayed by taking into consideration the legal, literary, and epigraphic body of evidence related to the institution of patronage in northern Italy. A careful reading of the sources will show that the title of patronus was granted by local communities as a reward for the patronus’s generosity. Such title did not obligate these patroni to benefit their communities, although many did. This gradual process of decline ultimately reached its peak under the 2nd century AD when patronage transformed into a symbolic institution. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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