The ultimate test of the success of a housing development is the level of satisfaction that it engenders for its residents. It has been found, in much research carried out in the developed countries that the lack of detailed knowledge about users' needs and the failure to predict user behaviour were mainly unsatisfactory housing environments. Housing the external open spaces around dwellings were shown to be crucial satisfaction to blame for in multi-family and between the overall user. This study based In Iraq investigates users' satisfaction with the environment of recently constructed multi-family housing. It aims to identify the elements of the external environment associated with the residents' overall satisfaction in relation to these new environments. This study uses a range of factors which have been identified in many studies elsewhere in the world as having a bearing on users' satisfaction with their housing environment to examine people's reaction to their housing environment. It considers how such factors influence users' satisfaction in Iraq, and also identifies the Iraqi housing designers' intentions in relation to the external environment and examines their success in meeting user requirements. Various were used to systematic obtain information-gathering the information needed techniques for the evaluation. These included structured interviews of 183 households in three new housing projects, general observations as well as unstructured interviews with the designers and planners. The results of this study has shown to a large extent that the application of Western research in Iraq is valid. It is suggested that if Iraq used the knowledge available 1n the Western studies, it could avoid repeating the mistakes made in Western Europe and the U.S.A., during its transition from a rural to a more urban society. In particular this study has highlighted some essential social and cultural differences which indicate that Iraq must develop its own special approach to housing. It is hoped that this study may be used both to influence the drawing up of future housing policies in Iraq and the planning of new housing estates. In addition to providing the basis for rearranging the external environment of existing housing estates to meet more closely the needs of the residents.

This thesis is basically concerned with the status of the 'regional development processes' under the system of 'medium-term national socio-economic development planning'. The evaluation of the regional dimension of the sectoralised approach to elaboration of the national plan in a centralised system of planning is the core of the concern. It represents both the explicit contribution of 'reflective practice' and of a systematic survey of 'room for manoeuvre' experienced by a professional planner working in a planning agency - the Plan and Budget Organisation of the Islamic Republic of Iran - at the national level in the field of regional planning. The thesis provides the reader with an original exposure detailed mechanism of 'doing planning' ' from the inside of planning process', discusses the normative and positive ingredients of planning practice - theoretical, technical, procedural, instrumental, and organisational - and examines the following hypotheses: -the conventional approach of elaboration of the national plan neglects the regional dimension and spatial analysis of its choices; -the conventional system of planning prevents both implementation of the deliberate regional policies and incorporation of the results of the independent regional development studies into the national planning process; This dissertation introduces the planning system in Iran, reviews ten efforts at medium-term socio-economic development plans, analyses the regional policies of these plans, and classifies various schools of thought in Iranian regional planning. It concludes that the national planning process would have a haphazard and chaotic contribution in the processes of regional development . Finally recommends an alternative approach to elaboration of the national plan with more satisfactory consideration of both sectoral and regional development' criteria. Finally the dissertation offers a proposal for a sectoral-regional approach of elaboration of a national plan, on the basis of empirical and theoretical analysis of the regional efficiencies of the Iranian national plans and planning procedure.

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This thesis deals primarily with the materials and techniques found in the Eastern Empire up to the 4th century AD, putting them into their proper historical and developmental context. The first chapter examines the development of architecture in general from the very earliest times until the beginning of the Roman Empire, with particular attention to the architecture in Roman Italy. This provides the background for the study of East Roman architecture in detail. Chapter II is a short exposition of the basic engineering principles and terms upon which to base subsequent despriptions. The third chapter is concerned with the main materials in use in the Eastern Mediterranean - mudbrick, timber, stone, mortar and mortar rubble, concrete and fired brick. Each one is discussed with regard to manufacture/quarrying, general physical properties and building uses. Chapter IV deals with marble and granite in a similar way but the main marble types are described individually and distribution maps are provided for each in Appendix I. The marble trade and the use of marble in Late Antiquity are also examined. Chapter V is concerned with the different methods pf wall construction and with the associated materials. There is an enquiry into the use of fired brick and a comparative study of brick and mortar joint thicknesses in Rome with relation to those in the Eastern Mediterranean. Chapter VI looks at all forms of timber construction including roofing with a discusslon of the wooden roof truss. Chapter VII discusses the origins of the arch and vault, relating pertinent early examples to Roman usage. It is concluded that the Greeks probably played a large role in the transmission of the idea of arcuated construction to the west. The development and use of pitched-brick vaulting is also traced. In Chapter VIII the origins of domical construction are studied with examples from all over the Mediterranean. The origins of the pendentive are reviewed and a basic terminology is established in an attempt to end confusion. Chapter IX deals with epigraphic and literary evidence for the financial costs of ancient building including labour, transport and material expenses. Architects and other skilled workmen are also discussed, and there is a-study of the instance of re-use of materials in Late Antiquity and its implications. Finally Chapter X complements Chapter I in discussing architecture up to the 7th century AD in both the East and the West, tracing distinctly Eastern Roman techniques into the Byzantine period.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of searching for identity in the house form in the city of Hofuf. Studies so far carried out into material culture in general and into the development of the house, specifically the use and meaning of space, in Saudi Arabia have not dealt with the matter of identity and how it relates, in its various manifestations, to house form. The main question to be considered is whether the house form in Hofuf responded to the need to express individual and collective identity. The assumptions behind this study were firstly that people's actions in relation to the home environment have been influenced in some way by continued traditions, secondly that these actions have been the expressions or attempted expressions of people's identity whether individual or collective, and thirdly that the exisiting identity of the contemporary home is a mix of of continued, developed and new traditions, meanings and experiences. This study has adopted the ethnographic approach because it is difficult to understand the relationship between people and their physical environment without going deep into their everyday lives. The interaction between people and physical form required from the researcher a study of the physical home environment in Hofuf as it has been in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover not only the physical environment had to be investigated, but also how people understood and interpreted the meanings of physical forms. It was these considerations which led the researcher to measure many houses, to take many phtographs, to collect many floor plans, and to conduct many interviews with residents in Hofuf. The development of private home in the the city of Hofuf shows that there have been strong traditions and experiences which have maintained the significance of the home environment in general and the private home in particular over a period of time and through a series of changes in the its perceptual and associational aspects. In particular the contemporary private house in Hofuf shows, despite changes in layout and perceptual aspects, the enduring associational meaning and use of space within the home environment. The desire to express personal identity in the features of the house combined with the need to maintain privacy requirements, and other factors such as a greater demand for individualised sleeping spaces, has led, in the contemporary Hofuf house, to a potential crisis, where the increasing size of houses threatens to make them economically unviable. This situation has to be dealt with, perhaps through quantitative studies using the findings of this present investigation. In this way it may be possible for future planners and designers to retain the enduring and essential symbolic meanings of the private home while adapting and restructuring the physical home environment.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the similarities and differences in management accounting practices between the Saudi owned and managed companies and the joint venture companies located in Saudi Arabia . The investigation included the degree of sophistication of management accounting systems , the managerial use of accounting and the role of accountants in decision making and control. In the first part the background characteristics of the research in perspective is provided .Along with a general overview of the literature ,the development of the research themes are presented. The second part of the research is concerned with the similarities and differences between the participating companies regarding the degree of sophistication of the accounting system the managerial use of accounting and the role of acountants in decision making and control . This part is descriptive and no attempt is made to explain why such similarities or differences have occuiied . However , the results of the investigation indicate that the western joint venture companies have a more sophisticated accounting system and their accountants have a greater role to play in decision making and control . In addition ,the managers of the joiit venture companies rely more on accounting information in decision making and control compared to their Saudi counterparts. The third part is devoted to provide an explanation of the reasons behind the differences in management accounting practices between the participating companies. This involves the investigation of the relationship between the variables (organizational, managerial , and environmental) and the degree of sophistication of management accounting systems , the managerial use of accounting and the role of the controllers in decision making and control The main results of this part indicate that top management is an important factor which appears to have contributed to the differences of the practices of the participating companies . The other influential factors are the organizational and environmental factors such as organizational goals ownership , price competition and accounting education. Part three ends with the summary and principal findings and a review of the research along with suggestions of how this research can be carried forword.

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<p> This dissertation is an investigation of a theoretical problem&mdash;the determination of truth and being in a work of literary fiction&mdash;in the context of a momentous event in the history of mathematics&mdash;the discovery of a consistent non-Euclidean geometry. Beginning with the first interpretations of the philosophical significance of non-Euclidean geometry to enter the Russian cultural sphere in the 1870s, I analyze how the works by three Russian authors&mdash;Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, and Daniil Kharms&mdash;integrate the principles of mathematical truth into their construction of a fictional ontology and methods of fictional truth evaluation. Each author, I argue, combines their own aesthetic program with the changes in the philosophy of mathematics underwent in their respective eras and historical contexts. The diversity of these contexts provides the variables, against which this theoretical problem is analyzed. </p><p> The first chapter deals with Dostoevsky's interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry and its philosophical significance expressed in Ivan Karamazov's rebellion against God in <i>Brothers Karamazov.</i> I argue that Dostoevsky deploys the Euclidean/non-Euclidean binary to juxtapose two methods of fictional truth evaluation&mdash;a traditional model, obsolete in light of the principles of non-Euclidean geometry, and another model, which Dostoevsky embraces in <i>Brothers Karamazov</i>, based on the paradoxical and yet true axioms of the new geometry. I phrase the distinction in the terms of possibility and necessity: the new model of fictional truth evaluation is for propositions which are true in all possible worlds except the actual. In Chapter Two, I draw upon previous analysis of Nabokov's <i>The Gift </i> and the mention of Lobachevsky's geometry in the internal biography of Chernyshevsky, to argue that the narrative structure of <i>The Gift </i> returns to the Euclidean/non-Euclidean binary as introduced by Dostoevsky, but re-interprets the otherworldly according to Nabokov's own aesthetic praxis and the interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry by late-nineteen and early twentieth century geometers and physicists. Nabokov applies concepts of non-Euclidean geometry and space to the actual world. This analysis provides a framework for interpreting the space and time of <i>The Gift</i> according to structures suggested within the novel itself. The third chapter investigates Kharms's interpretation of the significance and meaning of geometry in light of the impact that non-Euclidean geometry had on mathematical propositions as a means of describing possible states of affairs. I place Kharms's fictional objects, such as the red-headed man of "Blue Notebook no. 10," and implications to truth evaluation in "Sonnet" and "Symphony no. 2," in the context of anti-Kantian theories of truth and logic, which arose in the period around the turn of twentieth century.</p>