Through uneven processes of planning by a multiplicity of participants, Edinburgh’s built environment continues to emerge as the product of many competing strategies and projects of development. The 2005 proposal of a dramatic new development intended for an area of the city’s Old Town represents one such project in which many powerful municipal and commercial institutions are invested. As one of the last remaining residential areas of the Old Town, the population of which has experienced in recent decades a gradual transformation towards transience, the Canongate became the focus of a heated campaign organised by remaining residents who sought to claim their rights to participation in the redevelopment of their neighbourhood. This thesis explores the efforts of these campaigners to accomplish a Deleuzian reterritorialisation of the Canongate, in the face of perceived threats to its community, territorial identity and built environment, represented by the development proposal named Caltongate. The remarkable success of the campaign in cultivating a sense of community belonging and mobilising residents in collaborative efforts at reimagining alternative futures for the Canongate was ultimately unable to affect Caltongate’s approval through formalised bureaucratic procedures. Through an innovative programme of community research and representation, however, the campaigners have impacted subsequent community-led planning efforts throughout the Old Town, which emphasise small-scale development that is accountable to both the residential community and the built heritage of the Old Town. The relationship between the Canongate neighbourhood and the proposed Caltongate development, which is currently suspended in the depressed economic climate, emerges in this thesis as mutually constructive, as well as principally opposed.

This is an ethnographic study of urban education and community development in the city of New Orleans. In New Orleans, as in all American cities, the public schools are at the center of local politics and the policies that affect community life. Institutions of public education have come under fire for failing to prepare youth to compete in the global economy. This is particularly true in urban communities, where schools serve a higher proportion of students of color facing greater incidences of poverty, underemployment and economic distress. As education policymakers and business leaders look to improve education, many of the solutions put forth to reform schools focus on meeting state standards and instituting high stakes testing. A group of educators, community activists, artists, and young people in New Orleans have taken a different approach. By combining classroom learning with social action, the individual and collective empowerment of students serves as the focus of Students at the Center, a program designed by a writing teacher and his students, that operates within the public school system. Through community-based study on environmental, public health, neighborhood development issues, young people in the Students at the Center program begin to see the learning process, and the product of their education as tools for equitable social change through research, writing, youth media, and social action. This research examines the ways that taking part in community collaborations that emphasize local history, a sense of place, and the struggle for social justice affects students, teachers and residents as they strive to make education accountable to community concerns.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research investigates the engagements between community activists and urban authorities in the provision of sustainable sanitation services in the informal settlements of Khayelitsha Cape Town. Since 2008, there have been contestations on the exclusion of informal settlements in the planning and delivery of sanitation services by the City of Cape Town. The planning and decision-making of sanitation services in the informal settlement is complex due to numerous stakeholders involved and thus not clear on how sustainable sanitation can be achieved. The challenge has been on understanding the level where decision-making in the provision of sanitation services is more effective for sustainable sanitation.

This dissertation considers the impact of the U.S. civil rights movement on postwar urban design and urban policy, looking specifically at the case of urban renewal, a federal program of urban reconstruction intended to help central cities modernize and compete with the growing suburbs. Tracing the history of three renewal projects from planning through design and implementation, it argues that these projects were shaped by public debates on civil rights and desegregation and the growing ability of community groups to organize and advocate on their own behalf. This dissertation also revisits the usual critique of urban renewal as a program of social and physical destruction and describes these years as a tumultuous period of construction and community building defined by new expectations for community participation and racial justice. Conceived in the 1950s, as the impact of postwar suburbanization began to be felt in older urban neighborhoods, renewal projects aimed to revitalize declining areas through targeted interventions in the built environment, including the construction of modern housing, shopping centers, and community facilities, as well as the rehabilitation of existing housing. During the turbulent 1960s, these physical design strategies took on political significance, as city officials, planners, and residents considered urban change alongside the social issues of the period, such the racial integration of the housing market, de facto school segregation, and community control over neighborhood resources. Although these projects often began as idealized experiments in racial and economic integration, they quickly became battlegrounds on which communities struggled to balance their desire for federal investment and modernization against the costs of displacement and gentrification. Ultimately, as the civil rights and Black Power movements gathered strength, racial identity and community control were privileged over integration and assimilation, and the buildings and spaces that represented postwar liberalism became targets of anger and protest. While many of these spaces now seem ill-conceived or poorly designed, the collapse of urban renewal is no mere failure of design or planning policy—it is the result of a profound shift in social and political relationships that played out through the negotiation of change in the urban built environment.

This exploratory research project explores the production and use, and subsequent closure and eviction of the community-designed and managed Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford – a predominantly working-class area in south-east London. This community garden played a key role in the lives of many local residents and its closure and subsequent demolition to make way for a large housing project drew a significant backlash from local residents which included protests, law-suits, and the occupation of the garden itself. Why this small, half-acre community garden garnered such a notable response is the main focus of and motivation for this research project. Using a combined-methods approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this research investigates what it was about Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden which resulted in this backlash, and why the local council’s decision to close it drew such a militant revolt from local community members. Combining the empirical results of this research with a deep inquiry into the concepts of space and power within urban theory, this thesis seeks to understand the rights working-class communities have to contribute to the production of public green space, and how such community-led contribution can impact on the space produced, both inside and outside the context of Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden and its former users.

This thesis tells the previously untold story of how environmental activists in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the 1980s waged a nearly decade-long and ultimately losing battle against a plan to pump water from the free-flowing Delaware River. As a case study of grassroots community activism during the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, the struggle known locally as “Dump the Pump” and spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Del-AWARE supports and provides a regional take on recent scholarship that has illuminated the vibrant underlying dynamics of local civic engagement occurring amid the overshadowing political conservatism of the Reagan years. Also a case study in public history, this thesis demonstrates how collective historical memory fueled not only Del-AWARE’s protracted struggle, but its enduring legacy in public policy and community life. It concludes with suggestions for preserving the history of Del-AWARE before it is lost forever. / History

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-04-11T16:36:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thais da Rosa Alves_.pdf: 4429074 bytes, checksum: 130f0d7262220b2887aa14ba17bafc1d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-11T16:36:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thais da Rosa Alves_.pdf: 4429074 bytes, checksum: 130f0d7262220b2887aa14ba17bafc1d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-28 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / PROSUP - Programa de Suporte à Pós-Gradução de Instituições de Ensino Particulares / Esta pesquisa insere-se no conjunto de estudos sobre ativismo de mulheres de camadas populares. A partir de um diálogo com a antropologia da política e com o feminismo negro, principalmente desde a perspectiva interseccional, esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar como um grupo de mulheres negras compreende suas práticas em uma associação comunitária localizada no Morro da Polícia, na periferia de Porto Alegre. Desde uma abordagem etnográfica, acompanhei as práticas cotidianas das integrantes da Associação e, em especial de Rosa, durante os meses de julho a setembro de 2018, totalizando três meses de trabalho de campo. Neste período, acompanhei eventos organizados pela Associação na localidade e, também, acompanhei as integrantes em demais eventos nos quais minhas interlocutoras participaram. Ao acompanhar o dia-a-dia da Associação, esta dissertação evidenciou diferentes níveis de atuação e de percepção da política neste espaço, articuladas com elementos que se interseccionam no ativismo dessas mulheres. / This research is part of a series of studies on women activists from popular classes. From a dialogue with political anthropology and black feminism, especially from the intersectional perspective, this master thesis aims to analyze how a group of black women understands their practices in a community association located in Morro da Polícia, in a rough area of Porto Alegre. Based on an ethnographic approach, I followed the daily practices of the members of the Association, especially Rosa, between July and September 2018, totaling three months of field survey. In this period I followed events organized by the Association in the locality and also accompanied the members in other events where my interlocutors participated. In accompanying the daily routine in the Association, this thesis evidenced different levels of action and policy perception in this space, articulated with elements that intersect in the activism of these women.

Cette thèse s’intéresse aux politiques de relations communautaires, community relations [CR], conçues et mises en place par les autorités publiques dans le contexte du conflit nord-irlandais entre 1969 et 1998. Elle s’interroge sur la filiation entre les dispositifs de 1969 et 1987-1990 et sur la cohésion de ces programmes dans la période étudiée. Elle insère les politiques de CR dans une démarche globale de construction de la paix, peacebuilding, parfois adoptée par les autorités publiques dans le contexte du conflit nordirlandais. La thèse décrit les caractéristiques de cette démarche et les met en relation avec les développements ayant lieu au sein du secteur associatif nord-irlandais. Malgré une première impression de discontinuité dans les politiques de CR, ce travail doctoral met progressivement en exergue la permanence de schémas de pensée et d’action au sein des autorités publiques entre 1969 et 1998, desquels émergent les programmes de CR étudiés. / This study focuses on community relations policies followed by public bodies in Northern Ireland during the Troubles [1969-1998]. The author compares the first plan, which lasted from 1969 to 1974, with the second series of measures taken from 1987. She also examines policies set up during the intervening thirteen years [1974-1987] when the issue of CR remained dormant. This examination shows that the consistency of government policies in the field of community relations is questionable. Community relations programmes have been looked at alongside peacebuilding initiatives involving public bodies as well as community activists. Despite an initial assumption that there has been no continuity in community relations policies between 1969 and 1998, it appears from the research that, throughout the Troubles, such policies have emanated from modes of thinking and acting which are well established among decision makers.

This case study examines the factors that shaped the identity and landscape of a small island-urban-village between the north and south forks of the Middle River and north of an urban area in Broward County, Florida. The purpose of the study is to understand how Wilton Manors was transformed from a “whites only” enclave to the contemporary upscale, diverse, and third gayest city in the U.S. by positing that a dichotomy for urban places exists between their exchange value as seen by Logan and Molotch and the use value produced through everyday activity according to Lefebvre. Qualitative methods were used to gather evidence for reaching conclusions about the relationship among the worldview of residents, the tension between exchange value and use value in the restructuration of the city, and the transformation of Wilton Manors at the end of the 1990s. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 contemporary participants. In addition, thirteen taped CDs of selected members of founding families, previously taped in the 1970s, were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. My findings indicate that Wilton Manors’ residents share a common worldview which incorporates social inclusion as a use value, and individual agency in the community. This shared worldview can be traced to selected city pioneers whose civic mindedness helped shape city identity and laid the foundation for future restructuration. Currently, residents’ quality of life reflected in the city’s use value is more significant than exchange value as a primary force in the decisions that are made about the city’s development. With innovative ideas, buildings emulating the new urban mixed-use design, and a reputation as the third gayest city in the United States, Wilton Manors reflects a worldview where residents protect use value as primary over market value in the decisions they make that shape their city but not without contestation.

No description available.