Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Tens of millions of predominantly low-income, minority Americans live in food deserts – areas with poor access to healthful, affordable food. Food deserts have been associated with higher rates of diet-related diseases such as high blood pressure and obesity. These diseases carry significant morbidity and mortality and account for hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending and lost productivity per year in the U.S. Establishment of a supermarket is the most effective intervention to eliminate a food desert. However, food deserts have historically been neglected by the retail industry. Local governments are rarely involved in supermarket recruitment. Often, food deserts themselves must recruit supermarkets. This study sought to understand how leadership and community engagement in supermarket recruitment influence its efficacy. The objective was to enable food deserts to more effectively recruit supermarkets. A case study of Argentine, a low-income, minority neighborhood in Kansas City, KS that successfully recruited a supermarket in 2013, was conducted. The heart of the case study was a series of interviews with individuals who were heavily involved in the recruitment. This study found the results of community engagement – specifically a community food assessment – were leveraged to attract funding and financing for a supermarket development. In settings where recruitment of a supermarket is contingent upon obtainment of these dollars, community engagement may be critical. Engagement empowers people to play an active role in shaping the future of their communities. It is a vital component of the urban planning process and government in general. Additionally, in the context of a food desert, engagement of residents can help accomplish the lofty goal of recruiting a supermarket and improving the food landscape – and health – of the community.

In this thesis, I address the role of museums in contemporary Scotland, with specific reference to Glasgow Museums, the city of Glasgow’s municipal museums service. The empirical research focused on both the policy landscape within which Scottish museums are emplaced, and the activities and practices of museum staff. The research involved interviews with museum professionals, and participant observation within the museums service. The research findings emphasise the complexity of the role that museums play in contemporary society. In the thesis, I attempt to articulate the policy concept of social inclusion insofar as is it articulated within Glasgow Museums. I argue that in recent years Glasgow Museums has attempted to re-orientate its service around social inclusion, and yet the diffuse nature of the concept, coupled with the complexity of the institutional and organisational configurations within which it is implemented, means that many different – and extremely diverse – activities come to be considered part of the social inclusion agenda. The complex set of power relations through which social inclusion is articulated often results in conflict between different museum venues, departments and cohorts of staff. Through an examination of the theory underpinning the concept of social inclusion, and the practices privileged as part of Glasgow Museums’ commitment to social inclusion, I argue that it could usefully be understood as a therapeutic technology. I also suggest that community engagement has become an increasingly important part of socially inclusive practice within Glasgow Museums, yet I contend that community engagement represents a new and largely uncharted territory for many museum professionals. Through an exploration of the planning and execution of a community engagement project – entitled Curious – I argue that community engagement could usefully be thought of as a form of care. As a result, I contend that community engagement requires distinctive skills, and that these skills are often explicitly gendered.

Languages currently used by planners to conceptualize, document, and present projects lack expansive imagination and polyphonic literacy. Planning demands new languages to address social and environmental challenges within our increasingly cross-cultural urban environments. Although storytelling theory in planning has expanded contemporary understanding of what constitutes method and practice within the discipline of planning, there has been little work to date explicating what poetry offers to planning education and practice. This thesis examines several opportunities and challenges in adopting poetry into contemporary practice in Vancouver, British Columbia using a multi-method approach. Methods include: a literature review on planning projects collaborating with artists; an ethnomethodological analysis of interviews with four Vancouver poets; a constructionist analysis of a planning text and a re/formation experiment with poetry; and finally, autoethnographic 'poetry as inquiry'. Learnings suggest that a critical approach to poetry offers an alternative language to connect to both 'self as planner' and to the multitude of overlapping voices of 'publics' in process, document, and presentation.

Languages currently used by planners to conceptualize, document, and present projects lack expansive imagination and polyphonic literacy. Planning demands new languages to address social and environmental challenges within our increasingly cross-cultural urban environments. Although storytelling theory in planning has expanded contemporary understanding of what constitutes method and practice within the discipline of planning, there has been little work to date explicating what poetry offers to planning education and practice. This thesis examines several opportunities and challenges in adopting poetry into contemporary practice in Vancouver, British Columbia using a multi-method approach. Methods include: a literature review on planning projects collaborating with artists; an ethnomethodological analysis of interviews with four Vancouver poets; a constructionist analysis of a planning text and a re/formation experiment with poetry; and finally, autoethnographic 'poetry as inquiry'. Learnings suggest that a critical approach to poetry offers an alternative language to connect to both 'self as planner' and to the multitude of overlapping voices of 'publics' in process, document, and presentation.

The modern interaction we have with the natural environment surrounding our cities is often limited to designated areas that usually contain manicured trails. When information is very limited or absent we often avoid exploring such areas and instead opt for others both familiar and easily accessible. Mapping as a means to engage a community is a method that encourages exploration and discovery. Often there are hidden treasures of our communities’ backyards that have nearly been lost to time and memory. This practicum is an attempt to reconnect and engage residents and visitors of Thunder Bay, Ontario, with the historically significant Kaministiquia River. It focuses on the Kaministiquia from Kakabeka Falls to Lake Superior. By providing the public with information on the river’s attractions and how to access the river, it is hoped that families and individuals will utilitize the information to get outside and explore their surrounding environment.

YEC’s main goal was to open dialogue with high school students from under resourced communities about environmental injustices and to create and explore positive alternatives. The summer program, which was funded by the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace and the Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Project Award, included a group of 11 high school students from Pomona, Montclair, La Puente, and Chino Hills, CA. The students were paid to participate in the program for 6 weeks in the summer of 2010, five days a week, for 30 hours each week. The program was designed to consistently connect movements for food and environmental justice with the farming work that we did. Priscilla Bassett and I led this program in partnership. Priscilla is a student at Scripps College, where she pursues a major in Environmental Analysis with a focus on race, class, and gender. This paper includes many sections. First, it briefly outlines and defines environmental injustice, food injustice, the industrial food system, the Inland Empire, and systems of domination and oppression as issues which motivated the creation of YEC. I then discuss my positionality as a white, class privileged, educated, man working with Priscilla, a black woman, and predominantly first generation low-income high school students of color. After this, I discuss how and why the work of bell hooks, Pablo Freire, and the Food Project was influential as Priscilla and I formed a teaching style. Then, I briefly I talk about the grant writing process for YEC and I outline the process by which Priscilla and I recruited and selected the interns we worked with. I summarize the program’s activities day by and then include responses to surveys which the YEC interns completed on a weekly basis. I use the results of these surveys to suggest that experiential urban farming programs at the high school level can connect high school students with issues of environmentalism and social justice and can motivate them to take action against the industrial food system and the environmental injustices they see and experience around them.

Languages currently used by planners to conceptualize, document, and present projects lack expansive imagination and polyphonic literacy. Planning demands new languages to address social and environmental challenges within our increasingly cross-cultural urban environments. Although storytelling theory in planning has expanded contemporary understanding of what constitutes method and practice within the discipline of planning, there has been little work to date explicating what poetry offers to planning education and practice. This thesis examines several opportunities and challenges in adopting poetry into contemporary practice in Vancouver, British Columbia using a multi-method approach. Methods include: a literature review on planning projects collaborating with artists; an ethnomethodological analysis of interviews with four Vancouver poets; a constructionist analysis of a planning text and a re/formation experiment with poetry; and finally, autoethnographic 'poetry as inquiry'. Learnings suggest that a critical approach to poetry offers an alternative language to connect to both 'self as planner' and to the multitude of overlapping voices of 'publics' in process, document, and presentation. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Magister Educationis - MEd / This thesis sought to understand the various ways in which Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania, as a teaching and research institution, engages with its communities. This was prompted by the increasing calls upon the universities, both locally and globally, to become relevant to the communities through community engagement. Although the idea of community engagement has emerged and continues to gain momentum in higher education, there have been different understandings and shifts in the ways in which universities are practising community engagement. The study is located within the broader debates in the literature, which sees community engagement as a contested concept in terms of its exact practices and outcomes, particularly in relation to the university’s core activities of teaching, learning and research. With the contextual nature of community engagement, a case study design was deemed to be suitable for this type of study. Data collection instruments comprised of document reviews, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. From the data collected and analysed, there are three key findings in this study. Firstly, community engagement in the Tanzanian higher education system in general has moved from predominantly supporting communities to incorporating some aspects of teaching, learning and research, as well as economic pursuit. This is illustrated in practices such as national service programmes, continuing education, volunteering, field practical attachment, community-based research, commissioned research and consultancy, participatory action research, experiments and technology transfer. Secondly, whereas some of the practices are fading away in some Tanzanian higher education institutions, those that are active at SUA fall within both the Land-Grant (one-way) and Boyer’s (two-way) models of community engagement. Thirdly, there are no deliberate efforts by SUA to institutionalise community engagement as a legitimate activity that enriches teaching, learning and research. As such, there are loose and discontinuous linkages between community engagement and SUA’s teaching, learning and research, attributed to a weak institutional approach to community engagement.

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

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.