abstract: This study looked at ways of understanding how schoolyards might act as meaningful places in children's developing sense of identity and possibility. Photographs and other images such as historical photographs and maps were used to look at how built environments outside of school reflect demographic and social differences within one southwest city. Intersections of children's worlds with various socio-political communities, woven into and through schooling, were examined for evidence of ways that schools act as the embodiment of a community's values: they are the material and observable effects of resource-allocation decisions. And scholarly materials were consulted to examine relationships in the images to existing theories of place, and its effect on children, as well as to consider theories of the hidden curriculum and its relationship to social reproduction, and the nature of visual representation as a form of data rather than strictly in the service of illustrating other forms of data. The focus of the study was on identifying appropriate research methods for investigating ways to understand the importance of the material worlds of school and childhood. Using a combination of visual and narrative approaches to contribute to our understanding of those material worlds, I sought to expose areas of inequity and class differences in ways that children experience schooling, as evidenced by differences in the material environment. Using a mixed-methods approach, created and found images were coded for categories of material culture, such as the existence of fences, trees, views from the playground or walking in the neighborhood at four Tempe schools. Findings were connected to a rich body of knowledge in areas such as theories of space and place, the nature of the hidden curriculum, visual culture, visual research methods including mapping. Familiar aspects of schooling were exposed in different ways, linking past decisions made by adults to their continuing effects on children today. In this way I arrived at an expanded and enriched understanding of the present worlds of children communicated as through the material environment. Visually examining children's worlds, by looking at the material artifacts of everyday worlds that children experience at school and including the child's-eye view in decision processes, has promise in moving decision makers away from strictly analytical and impersonal approaches to decision making about schooling children of the future. I proposed that by weighting of data points, as used in decision-making processes regarding schooling, differently than is currently done, and by paying closer attention to possible longer-term effects of place for all children, not just a few, there is the potential to improve the quality of life for today's children, and tomorrow's adults. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Educational Psychology 2013

This study is an examination of the role of community-based food projects in place making and collective futuring efforts. I look specifically at food access projects in Dayton, Ohio, a city I have personal connections to. In this study, I forefront the concepts of relationality, co-creation, ownership, economic (dis)investment, soil systems, and regeneration as they emerge from my fieldwork on food access in Dayton, which consisted of interviews, participant observation, and spatial analysis. My methodology centers on critical mapping which the traces conceptual and material connections that shape food access in Dayton and situate community-based efforts within broader economic and political landscapes. In doing so, I demonstrate how food access can be conceptualized in terms of global contours and local manifestations. I draw on the work of Anna Tsing, Karl Polanyi, Jason Moore and Bikrum Gill, to develop a political ecology of encounter that examines the historical roots and ongoing practices of enclosure as a tactic of governance that shapes human-nature relations in specific ways. I demonstrate how these acts of enclosure bring to the fore certain ecological relations in ways that uphold dominant systems of power, while obfuscating other ecological relations. This allows me to theorize encounters between individuals, communities, and environments as political sites of both impasse and change. I conclude that food (in)access is a feature of the production and management of eco-social relations by governments, communities, and individuals. Thus, in focusing on the eco-social relations and encounters that are fostered through food production, distribution, and consumption, communities can (and are) working to build more socially and ecologically just futures. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study draws on research in ecological sciences and social sciences as well as data gleaned from interviews and observations in Dayton, Ohio to explore the role of community-based food systems in building resilience against the cascading effects of anthropogenic climate change. I turn to Dayton largely due to my personal connection to the city. This speaks to this study's attentiveness to community building efforts of folks in Dayton and attention to politics of the everyday. Using interviews, observations, and scholarship in political ecology, I map the efforts of Dayton residents to improve community food access within broader economic, social, and political systems to show how these projects both improve food access for communities and promote a sort of politics that contributes to the economic, ecological, and social health of Dayton communities. This positions these projects as important efforts in building resilience against ongoing and intensifying disturbances and disasters from climate change amidst the ongoing failure of political and economic institutions to enact meaningful change. Finally, I explore how these findings help to develop a broader research framework that is grounded in lived experience and attentive to broader political, social, and economic systems.

With its starting point in social and community building activities of everyday life, this project seeks a complex understanding of a former industrial site in Malmö - Norra Sorgenfri - its past, present and possible futures. Critical and participatory mappings, speculations, policy making and small-scale interventions are part of the produced material that circulate around the feminist ethics of care, and how it can inform a socially aware architectural practice. The site, a celebrated regeneration project, produces an interstice in relation to the more controlled urban fabric surrounding it. It is more open to diverse modes of occupation and use, accommodating activities and groups that otherwise have a hard time to make a space for themselves in the city. I argue that a feminist ethics of care enables designers and involved participants to make a complex engagement with places. Care can help us to redefine the role of the architect and to alter architectural practice. In the 1980:s Carol Gilligan introduced care as an attached way of human connection, requiring listening and understanding differences and needs. In this light, I define a design practice where sustainability is understood in relation to responsibility and actions oriented towards other people. Urban caring is about carefully seeing and using what is here; the small-scale and subtle that might go unnoticed in planning/architectural projects. My proposals contain how to read, care-fully observe, interpret and act - as an urban-caretaker. Among the design proposals and methods are: critical mapping as a central participatory task, a manual of care as part of the mapping and from an intimate understanding of the site, a series of design tests -strategies, policy making and small-scale interventions- , a manifesto that suggests ways for this knowledge to be transferred to other sites, and the interactive map a care-full companion. Urban caring offers an open-ended process, enabling the site to develop in a number of directions. My role has not been to over-determine what the outcome might be, but instead to facilitate tools of enabling positive change toward possible futures. / Projektet strävar efter en komplex förståelse av ett före-detta industriområde i Malmö - Norra Sorgenfri. Det handlar om nya sätt för arkitekter och planerare att arbeta med en känslig plats: att ta hand om existerande egenskaper och villkor, platsens historier och möjliga framtider, samt inte minst de viktiga roller som sociala och samhörighetsskapande vardagsaktiviteter spelar i Norra Sorgenfri idag. Tesen som jag driver är att en feministisk omsorgsetik (ethics of care på engelska) kan möjliggöra ett hållbart engagemang med en plats, mer specifikt här ett industriområde med ett rikt småskaligt kulturliv, och på så sätt forma en socialt ansvarstagande urban praktik. Norra Sorgenfri är ett hyllat urbant utvecklingsprojekt och utgör ett ”mellanrum” i relation till den omgivande mer kontrollerade stadsstrukturen. Platsen är mer öppen för olika användningssätt och ackommoderar aktiviteter och grupper av människor som annars kan ha svårt att göra sin röst hörd i staden.  Med hjälp av konceptet care (omsorg) kan arkitektens roll och arkitekturfältet omdefinieras till att bli mer inkluderande och deltagande i samhällsförändringar. På 1980-talet introducerade feministiska etikern Carol Gilligan omsorg som ett mer empatiskt sätt att relatera till andra människor, med fokus på lyssnande och förståelse för skillnader och behov. I detta ljus definierar jag en arkitekturpraktik där hållbarhet förstås utifrån ansvar och handlingar gentemot andra människor.  Urban caring handlar om att omsorgsfullt se och använda det som finns här; det småskaliga och subtila som riskerar att gå obemärkt förbi i arkitektur- och planeringsprojekt. Mina förslag innehåller metoder för att läsa, omsorgsfullt observera, tolka och agera – som en urban caretaker. Bland förslagen finns: kritiska kartläggningar som ett centralt sätt att arbeta med deltagandeprocesser, en omsorgsmanual (manual of care) som en del av kartläggningen och utifrån en ingående förståelse av platsen, en serie av designtest – strategier och småskaliga interventioner, ett manifest som föreslår hur kunskapen från detta projekt kan överföras till andra platser, och den interaktiva kartan en omsorgsfull följeslagare (care-full companion).