Informal urban settlements are increasingly recognised as vulnerable to climate related risks. Their political-legal status is known to influence their vulnerability, but the linkages between state governance and vulnerability in this setting remain under researched. In particular, as more urban governments develop climate risk assessments, questions arise about how risks are defined, operationalised and received; and the impact this politics has on local-scale vulnerabilities. The thesis proposes a new conceptual direction for urban vulnerability research. First, it draws on livelihoods debates to highlight how the politics of access influences vulnerability, and shows how this is shaped through the interaction between agency and structure, and the social and political relations of meaning and power in which livelihoods decisions are embedded. Second, the thesis shows how theories of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and public policy, and theories of the state, can be used to investigate the politics of risk assessment in informal, urban areas. This theoretical frame generates insights at the interface between development studies and post-structural thought, providing a new perspective on questions of how adaptation takes place in informal areas, who adapts and what they are adapting to. The conceptual propositions of the thesis are applied to a landslide risk management programme in three informal settlements in Bogota, Colombia. The thesis presents empirical findings that illustrate (i) how risk assessments are shaped by state values and practices particular to informal sites in ways that create new inclusions and exclusions in policy; (ii) how inhabitants respond to risk in the context of sociallyembedded meanings and identities and their relationships with the state; and (iii) how people’s agency to transform risks is forged in socio-economic and political networks of power. The thesis argues for a re-politicisation of approaches to understanding urban risk and adaptation, and for transformations in policy to reflect this approach.

Although, much has been written about the housing conditions and segregation of minority ethnic groups, less has been written about their housing careers, residential mobility, and preferences. This thesis attempts to address these limitations in our knowledge and to enhance our understanding of the residential location and preferences of South Asian households. To fully explore these objectives the research adopts a triangulated approach; combining a quantitative study using census data of both the residential location and concentration of South Asian groups in the study area and in-depth interviews with migrating South Asian households. The major findings of the research show that over the past ten years Greater Glasgow has seen changes in the residential location of its South Asian population; the results of the census analysis detail the maintenance of both residential differentiation and continued concentration in the inner city as well as evidence of dispersal to traditionally white suburban areas, areas adjacent to the core and in-between areas. The processes underlying these changes are shown to be dynamic and complex, encompassing elements of choice and constraint and reflecting negotiated choices. Cultural expectations, religious observance, financial constraint and limited housing options interact with choice in sustaining ethnic clustering in the inner-city. On the other hand we seen the spatial ramifications of changing practices social aspirations and economic opportunity for a selected group of movers. Although ethnicity and religion play a continuing role in shaping the residential choices of the South Asians interviewed, these factors were not independent but interacted with individual/personal factors, class, economic status, gender, age, family issues and the dynamic nature of culture in determining locational needs and preferences. The South Asian population is shown to be differentiated from within. This suggests that the idea of a coherent ‘Asian community’ obscures differences and generates assumptions regarding residential behaviour and ‘in-group’ identities not matched in the empirical data presented here.

Efficient use of energy is one of the key elements of sustainability. Energy consumption through transport has been increasing, not because transport has become less energy efficient but rather because the overall travel demand has been increasing so rapidly. An increasing number of trips by motorised modes as well as increasing travel distance are two main indicators of this trend. In order to lower the energy used by transport, consideration must be given not only to the policies directly related to transport, but also to those related to urban development. It may be possible to reduce the amount of energy use in an urban environment through these policies. Thus, one of the objectives of planning activity is the realisation of cities which promote short distance trips with more energy efficient transport modes. The main concern of this research is to examine the possibilities of having more energy efficient travel demand patterns and to find out under what circumstances, the spatial structure of an urban area allows for a reduction in the energy used by transport. Urban residential developments that tend to move out of the city are especially good example of development that might result in more energy intensive travel demand patterns. In terms of its relation both to the inner city and in itself, the overall travel demand characteristics of a city can easily be changed by residential choice. New housing developments, especially the out-of-city ones, may lead residents either to travel for longer distances, or to use cars widely, or both. But, it could stimulate them to travel for shorter distances or to use motorised modes less, or both. The spatial structure of a new development and its connection and relation to other facilities (such as work places, schools, shopping areas, recreational places and so forth), shape travel demand patterns. This research has attempted to define the travel demand patterns of the inner and out-of city residents of Ankara and to discuss the factors affecting them. Beside this comparative analysis, there was an attempt to discover what the out-of city residents would do if they were living in the inner city districts. The possibilities of having more energy efficient travel demand patterns in the selected districts of Ankara were examined. It is evident from the survey results that transport energy use changes due to the location of a residence relative to the CBD. Living in an out-of city area means travelling for longer distances and a wider use of motorised modes. Living near to the central facilities encourages walking trips. Trips by motorised modes also have a considerable share, but the travel distance is not as long as in the out-of city case. Additionally, dependence on cars has been accelerating through the increasing distance of residence from the central inner city facilities. Following the assumption that the previous residence of out-of city residents was the inner city, the comparison of previous and actual travel demand patterns indicates that they used to have less energy intensive travel demand patterns. The main reason behind the urban decentralisation policy was to reduce the air pollution level in Ankara. Research findings, however, confirms that increasing travel demand together with transport energy consumption are negative outcomes of this policy. These developments are contributing the environmental problems through wider use of motorised modes and long distance trips and air pollution created by huge volume of traffic coming into the inner city. Thus, it is out of question whether the planning objectives have been reached or not through the urban decentralisation measures or what should be the additional measures or policies to contribute sustainable urban development process.

Working at the Wales Rural Observatory (2004 - 2014) provided first-hand experience of mapping rural statistics for policymaking. It was evident that representing social and economic data in population-sparse areas was not as straightforward as the technology permitted. Mapping could reveal rural issues but also caused others to be hidden or misrepresented. This was an issue worthy of further investigation. How was this understood by others attempting to represent social and economic statistics? Were mistakes made, could they be rectified, and what were the consequences? Literature linked to the topic was fragmented; split between the technical, theoretical and practical. This research has attempted a synthesis, helping develop concepts to guide this research and a lens for understanding mapping practices within organisations. A case study of Wales was used to investigate mapping practices used for policymaking and planning, applying qualitative methods to study quantitative practices. Studying mapping required more than technical knowledge and more than just critique, it required the study of mapping in context, and more so the detail of these processes in action. As such this research focussed on the experiences of those closest to these processes in an attempt to sensitise future studies to often overlooked interactions. Multiple barriers existed in Wales and included a lack of technical awareness, capacity, and appropriate training. To overcome these barriers the literature suggests that mapping practices become collaborative activities. However this should not be just in the formation or presentation stages but throughout the mapping process. As a collective all resources can be pooled and used many times, with common rules defined through a process of debate and learning, with all forms of knowing admissible. The technology is certainly in place to enable this to happen. The challenge going forward is raising awareness and creating frameworks that enable this to happen.

This study offers a particular reading of ethnography, innovation processes, and gender performances. By attending to processes, (gender) performances, and their effects, the thesis brings out the consequences of a specific approach - a processual, poststructuralist and posthumanist one - for gender (how performances include and exclude people), research methods (what we are responsible for in our ethnographies), and innovation (a politics of who acts in innovation processes and a politics of what innovation processes are about). The thesis draws on empirical material collected through an ethnographic study in two research organizations, a biomedical research centre based in Italy (BfL), and the British branch of an IT multinational (Techie). Through the analysis of the material, the thesis develops three contributions. As a first contribution, I offer a stronger process-oriented reading of innovation and show how a lens founded on the intertwinement of “performativity” and “enrolment” integrates extant innovation models by adding two dynamics (constructing and effecting), and by re-looking at the role of objects in shaping innovation processes. As a second contribution, I empirically address the lack of research on gender and innovation in management literature, by shedding more light on if, how, and with what consequences gender dynamics are enacted and shape innovation processes and its people. The third contribution refers to the elaboration of a theoretical framework enabling a politically responsible ethnographic practice, and accounting for differences as a methodological premise for grasping a phenomenon.

Our understanding of urban poverty has been broadened during the last decade to focus less on economic characteristics and to include concepts such as exclusion, vulnerability, and violence. The spatial components of poverty have received less attention despite concepts such as the right to the city entering the academic and policy reform agenda. This thesis explores the dynamics of spatial and social integration by surveying the everyday life of precarious settlements in a mediumsized city in North-East Brazil. A qualitative approach that links poverty, mobility, social networks and state action is employed to argue that informal settlements are spatial traps where the individual perspective and exploitative relationships surpass collective approaches. The use of life stories and interviews with residents in three settlements and with planners are used to deconstruct preconceptions and show how the fight for a place in the city takes shape. For the most part the state is absent from the poor's lives. This absence has some advantages in that the Brazilian state has a record of infringing human rights that leads to a loss of economic, social and spatial links. However, the lack of adequate intervention and community organisations means residents employ in their daily round various tactics including violence, opportunism, and economic and political bargaining to challenge the state and society to rethink the politics of invisibility and what I term as the territorialisation of poverty. The generational legacy of vulnerability and exclusion in the everyday life of the urban poor reveals the difficulties of implementing the right to the city when faced with the worst practices of state and social organisations. Continued mobility and spatial segregation, vulnerability and exclusion reveal that beyond a rhetoric of a right to the city the fight for a place in the city is not over.

Motivated by the desire to see a world living up to the ideal of harmonious multicultural communities, this thesis critically assesses two contemporary approaches to multiculturalism, namely Liberalism 1 and 2. The central argument forwarded here is that although Liberalism 1 and 2 are commendable approaches to the management of difference in a polity, they are unable to secure long-term intergroup harmony owing to the static understanding of identity that underpins both approaches. To highlight the shortcomings of Liberalism 1 and 2, this thesis examines the relationship between Diasporas and more sessile communities. Diasporas have been specifically selected for this purpose for two reasons. Firstly, most comprehensive discussions on multiculturalism have not employed the experience of diasporas in their research. Secondly, as the number of diasporas are set to grow and as the term is traditionally used in a negative way in reference to a `difficult' minority, there is a need to examine approaches towards multiculturalism through diasporic eyes. Evaluation of the three diasporic experiences of the Chinese, Africans and Jews in both Liberalism I and 2 has supported the main argument of the thesis. All three experiences have revealed that Liberalism 1 and 2 are unable to attain their long-term goals for multiculturalism due to three difficulties that stem from their static notion of identity. (1) Both positions foreclose the possibility for long-term harmony in a multicultural polity due to an overly pessimistic approach to the management of difference. Due to this foreclosure, predictions of conflict unwittingly prove to be true. (2) Liberalism 1 is overly reliant on constant but unachievable enforcement with its difference-blind approach to the management of difference. (3) The need for Liberalism 2 to compartmentalise individuals into distinct groups leads to the perpetuation of stereotypes while also denying individuals the opportunity to redefine themselves.

This study is an attempt to assess the usefulness of the concept of ethnogenesis for describing changes occurring within ethnic collectivities, with particular reference to boundary negotiation prcoesses between minority and majority groupings. It explores the nature of ethnic identification and suggests that there are distinct processes involved in the choice to identify with an ethnic group, and the desire to use this identification as the basis for undertaking public action based on that affiliation. It explores the question as to whether there are differences between the structure and function of associations identified with an ethnic category and those identified with an ethnic group, and suggests that associations may provide a key to understanding boundary negotiation processes of group identity. The functioning of ethnic associations in Bristol is examined in some detail and conclusions offered on the relevance of different approaches to understanding these phenomenon, and on the viability of various options of ethnic political organization. The role of associations in performing tension management functions in ethnic communities is noted, in the context of a critical appraisal of the notions of 'communal' associations and 'buffer institutions'. Examination of the internal tension management processes of ethnic associations is explored, and the central role of 'welfare' noted. It is suggested that this exploration reveals many deficiencies in the voluntary association literature in general and in the ethnic association literature in particular. Problems of undertaking research in ethnic communities in terms of access difficulties are highlighted, as is the problem of studying processes. Areas for further study are identified.

This thesis examines the character of queer political activism in Accra, Ghana. It asks what are the key modes of organising, types of action, and political practices that characterise queer activism in this setting. It further considers how ‘universalist’ models of LGBT rights connect (and disconnect) with local forms of queer politics and explores the lived experience of working class queer men, or sasoi. Methodologically, the study is based on thirteen months of ethnographic research. Theoretically, it draws on Foucault’s work on subjectivity, Deleuzean theorising on becoming, and Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony. The thesis begins by examining the subjective, linguistic, and embodied practices of saso activists. Here, it invokes Deleuze to conceptualise these as ‘becomings’, that is, as productive and emergent practices of difference. The study then looks at the politics of the LGBT rights CBO, CEPEHRG, delimiting how the political economy of development, heteronormativity, and homophobia mediate their work. Finally, the thesis sets out the political practices of saso community networks and considers how activists experience peer education programmes predicated on voluntarism. This analysis reveals a dislocation between the agendas and modes of operation of global development actors and the needs and priorities of working class sasoi.

This thesis evaluates textual, visual and material legacies of modern architecture and urbanism in Mexico City between 1938 and 1964. There is a growing literature on the architects, architecture and urban development of Mexico City in the twentieth century, but few that provide an analysis of these material legacies beyond their claim as historical evidence. My research attends in detail to writing, drawing and building through key moments in the work of the Mexican architect Mario Pani. I analyse an archive of material that moves from his co-founding of the journal Arquitectura/México in 1938, to the construction of the Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán, a modernist housing estate in Mexico City in 1949, to the work of his Taller de Urbanismo (Urban Studio) between 1946 and 1964. I argue for an understanding of architectural and urban writing, building and drawing as ways of producing the world, rather than describing or responding to it. I demonstrate that latent geographical biases in the architectural writing of Arquitectura/México contributed to Mexican debates about architecture and the nation. A visual analysis of urban plans and research from the Taller de Urbanismo foregrounds their role in defining the problem of housing in Mexico City towards the legitimation of a specific genre of public housing. By examining the inauguration of the Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán, I uncover the materiality of the building as generative for the Revolutionary Mexican state. Within the context of emerging scholarship that rearticulates colonial circulations of urban planning and architecture within a framework of multiple or alternative modernities, I emphasise an attention to the co-constitution of writing, drawing and building, and their role in assembling the urban.