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.

Globalisation has intensified the international movement of labour and South Korea is no exception. Korea, which in the past was itself a labour-exporting country, has seen a reversal in human mobility since the late 1990's with a rapid growth in immigration and a transformation of a previously almost ethnically homogenous society. However, studies on migrant and ethnic minority groups in Korea have primarily focussed on such areas as industrial law and social policy. In this context, the important questions about the cultural and political implications associated with the construction of minority representations in the media have remained highly unexplored. The starting point of this study is an examination of the vital role of public service broadcasting (PSB) in Korean society, where ethnic minorities have increasingly become visible. Korean PSB's mandate, following the BBC model, emphasises the broadcaster‟s responsibility to represent and reflect the range of public opinion and experiences beyond class, age, ethnicity and ideological orientation. Despite this commitment what this study shows is that PSB in South Korea has failed to fairly represent the culturally diverse groups within Korean society. The main purpose of this study is to empirically examine the means through which PSB generates discourses of We-ness and Otherness at times of change in the Korean society. Empirically, the study focuses on primetime PSB news visual and textual representations of migrants and ethnic minorities. With the use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) it demonstrates that PSB gives a concrete form to the ideological constructions of Otherness, sometimes transforming subtle cultural or social differences into fundamental and oppositional ones. Korean PSB appears to be ideologically biased toward nationalism, while in its visual and textual representations it constructs ideological systems of social and racial stratification, with Southeast Asian migrants constantly represented as the ultimate Others. The study shows the significant role of PSB in representing cultural diversity in public debates and the ways in which such representations and their dissemination reflect media power.

The need for regional planning in Tanzania has long been realized because in this country, as in most developing countries, there are striking contrasts and disparities between regions, clearly reflected in the very unequal opportunities to participate in the social-economic development process enjoyed by the various population groups. The sheer size of the country would make it difficult to treat the country as a single unit, even if the undeveloped transportation system did not further divide the country. These problems have thus prompted the undertaking of this thesis which tries one approach to Regional Physical Planning in Tanzania to see whether this level of planning can solve some of the problems and thus lead to better development in this country. The Study starts off with an examination of the Regional Planning experience of some African countries including a thorough examination of Tanzania's experience before embarking on a case study of one of its regions. The Northern Reglon has been taken for this detailed case study. It is a region with major contrasts in factor endowment and urban development. An analysis of the present situation shows that this region has tremendous resource potential, especially agriculture, industry (especially processing industry), tourism and abundance of labour. However, development has been limited because of some problems facing this region. These include rapid urbanization leading to differences between urban and rural areas, haphazard location of infrastructure resulting in duplication of services in some areas while others have none, land shortage and population congestion problems in the highland zones. The analysis paid special attention to tourism because of its present importance in the economy and development of this region. The results of the Analysis of the existing situation formed the back-ground to the formulation of goals and objectives, a general outline of Alternative Strategies and their evaluation. This led to the choice of the preferred Strategy which was taken and developed as the future Strategic Plan of this region. This Study has recommended a strategy to solve some of the region's identified problems while exploiting existing potentials for growth. The resulting document should, initially, be discussed by local politicians and departmental specialists. Further detailed research and surveys and, feasibility studies would then be needed before implementation can be contemplated. The Plan suggests that a Growth Centre Strategy should be used as a basis for future development by both Local Government and private agencies. This planned spatial distribution of centres would ensure a balanced relationship between the urban and rural sectors. Investment priorities would be in the centres currently lacking essential services and infrastructure. Such a Strategy will maintain a reasonable spread of urban services throughout the region thus ensuring that opportunities for educational and cultural improvement, together with medical and commercial facilities are reasonably accessible to all the rural population. Certain concrete proposals have been made for immediate implementation such as the upgrading and provision of additional infrastructural development in. the selected service centres. Special projects for agriculture and industry have also been suggested. These proposals have been integrated into a long range development PLAN for the Northern Region which recommends a pattern of growth which will accommodate all anticipated development up to the turn of the century. The successful implementation of this Plan will depend on the suggested establishment of a Regional Planning Unit which would constantly review the plan in the light of future new developments. Thus, it remains as a flexible strategic regional plan, unlike previous unco-ordinated sectoral and inflexible Master Plans for limited areas. If this planning approach is successful, it may, in future, be used as a general blue print for regional planning in Tanzania.

The relationship between waterfronts and water in the establishment of many cities is undeniable. Issues as to why many waterfront developments do not respond to their water are often raised. This thesis examines the response of waterfront development towards its water (in particular the urban rivers). This is measured through the level of contextual integration in the city centre of Kuala Lumpur to identify the reason why this situation exists. The research employed the qualitative method using a case study approach. It triangulates several techniques, which include morphological study, field observations (visual survey, direct observation, activity mapping), focus groups and in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework was based on the Integrative Theory of Urban Design, which has five main principles comprising ‘good form’, ‘legibility’, ‘vitality’, ‘comfort’ and ‘meaning’ from which thirteen attributes were extracted. The research found a mix of levels in the contextual integration of the KL waterfront for all attributes evaluated. Five attributes that affect the level of contextual integration the most are the ‘direct access’, ‘physical character of urban river’, ‘seating’, ‘development that addresses urban river’ and ‘shade’. This study inferred that the other related attributes borrowed from other public spaces are vital to achieve the response of waterfronts towards the urban river. However, the evaluation criteria have to be suited to the local context. Twenty-one factors were identified that affect the level of contextual integration. Three reoccurring factors in seven out of the thirteen attributes evaluated are ‘the existence of highway’, ‘fenced private property till the edge of the river’ and ‘building built abutting the river edge’. It also gathered that the contextual integration between the waterfront and the urban river can only be achieved with the interrelation of the physical and functional dimensions. Eight key reasons were established as to why the waterfront is not contextually integrated with the urban river, these are i) lack of planning – policies, laws, guidelines, master plan, ii) limitation of funds, iii) condition of the river, vi) introduction of other transportation systems, v) lack of coordinated management, vi) political will, vii) lack of awareness and viii) market demand. These findings contribute to the gap in many queries and assumptions concerning this issue from the perspective of a city centre in an emerging Asian country.

Subjective wellbeing — happiness — is of increasing interest to economists, including environmental economists. There are several reasons for thinking that environmental quality (EQ), defined as high levels of environmental goods and low levels of environmental ‘bads’, will be positively related to happiness. Quantitative evidence on this remains limited, however. Some papers use cross-sectional data aggregated at country level, but it is open to doubt whether these aggregated measures reflect individuals’ real EQ exposures. Other papers use individual-level data, but in general have spatial data at very coarse resolution, and consider a limited range of EQ variables, exclusively around individuals’ homes. This thesis reports two related strands of work. The first designs, implements and analyses data from two new cross-sectional surveys. It builds on earlier work by using spatial data at very high resolution, and advanced Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques; by simultaneously considering multiple EQ characteristics, around both homes and workplaces; and by investigating the sensitivity of results to the choice of happiness indicator. The second strand develops and implements a new methodology focused on individuals’ momentary experiences of the environment. It extends a protocol known by psychologists as the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to incorporate satellite (GPS) location data. Using an app for participants’ own smartphones, called Mappiness, it collects a panel data set comprising millions of geo-located responses from thousands of volunteers. EQ indicators are again joined to this data set using GIS. Results of the first strand of work are mixed, but support some links between happiness and the accessibility of natural environments, providing quantitative (including monetary) estimates of their strength. The second strand demonstrates that individuals are significantly and substantially happier outdoors in natural environments than continuous urban ones. It introduces a valuable new line of evidence on this question, which has great potential for future development.

This thesis is concerned with how a controversial heritage redevelopment project in downtown Buenos Aires enables social actors to produce and contest meanings of culture, the city and the nation. The research is an in-depth case study of the politics of a culture-led urban regeneration project converting the Palacio de Correos y Telecommunicaciones (the post office national headquarters)into a cultural quarter in the context of Argentina's bicentenary commemorations. Taking the building as the object of study, the investigation draws on interviews, archival research and analysis of discourses and images to shed light on the material institutional and historical configurations of cultural planning from a sociological cultural perspective. The aim is to explore the complex interplay between culture, memory and space through three analytical dimensions concerning the rise, fall and rebirth of the building. First, the thesis considers why culture provides a solution to the deterioration and disuse of the postal place. Second, the politics of memory of the cultural centre is examined through its engagement with the past, present and future of the building. Third, the type of urban space imagined for the renovated site is discussed in relation to similar projects in the city's central area. The multifaceted analysis shows how the post office headquarters becomes entangled in a network of public discourses, memory struggles, material interests and political confrontations, mediated by the language of culture. The thesis argues that policy-makers invoke culture as a claim to legitimacy that is meant to appeal to those reject political parties and politicians and that us aimed at wiping out the conflicting social histories of places. The variety of meanings assigned to culture reasserts the contention over the term and demands empirical analyses that, grounded in specific contexts, resist the prevalence of universal cultural regeneration recipes, challenging culture's function as panacea.

In recent years there has been much political and academic interest in new modes of local governance, which are increasingly based on deliberative mechanisms and aim at engaging larger sectors of the population (i.e. governance by networks, territorial pacts, strategic planning). Whereas the literature on urban governance has focused on the emergence of novel governance arrangements at city and regional levels and on the formation of a collective actor, deliberative democracy scholars have examined the democratic dimension (i.e. the deliberative forums) and assessed the applicability of their normative models to the real world; the literature on planning helps to understand the implementation gap that plagues many of these new arrangements. All these approaches often study the same empirical phenomena, however, with a few exceptions, debates within these literatures take no account of one another. This comparative case-study of strategic planning in four medium-sized Italian cities (Trento, Prato, Lecce, and Sassari), characterized by different socio-political and economic contexts, intends to contribute to bridging the gap between the above theoretical paradigms. Thus, the impact of strategic planning on the local polity is assessed on three levels: the formation of a collective actor, the democratic process, and implementation. Comparative analysis can help to evidence how such an impact is either hindered or enhanced by different forms and resources of leadership and how the latter interact with endogenous (i.e. pre-existing associational density) and exogenous factors (i.e. institutional constraints and opportunities at other jurisdictional levels). Different typologies of leadership will influence each dimension of the dependent variable (i.e. the formation of the collective actor, the democratic process, the implementation) to varying degrees. The type of leadership now required within the new multilevel governance system could be defined as facilitative leadership, which arises from the activity of working with, rather than exercising power over, others. This leadership is no longer identified solely with political institutions but often emerges from the coordinated work of a political sponsor and a public service CEO that acts as the champion of the governance process. Institutional constraints might affect outcomes, as weak administrative capacity and resistance to change from within the bureaucracy will hinder implementation. A facilitative leadership can help to drive cultural change and organisational learning within local institutions, while offering identity incentives to the wider community. While pre-existing associational dynamics do not influence outcomes, since an inclusive leadership can encourage greater participation even where the social fabric would seem weaker, poor policy coordination among jurisdictional tiers will inevitably hamper the positive effects of strategic planning at the local level, which might be lost in a plethora of fragmented initiatives.

This thesis has explored the ways in which young Egyptians construct different classed versions of a cosmopolitan imagination while located in the megacity of Cairo. In an intense ethnographic study, I have examined the ways in which young men and women shape their identities at the juxtaposition of a social reality, which is rigidly structured around classed and gendered divides on the one hand, and a diverse and fluid system of media representations of the self and others, on the other hand. Focusing on everyday life in Cairo has allowed me to examine the contradictory social and cultural experiences associated with being young in a megacity of the global south. Whilst the daily urban lives of these young Cairenes are located within embedded structures that place firm limits on their social and physical mobilities, the city is also a more creative terrain where these highly structured limits on the self are negotiated. As young people move physically in the city, yet shift imaginatively between different systems of representation available to them in the rich mediascapes they have access to, their sense of identity expands. Specifically, this cosmopolitanism takes the form of a dynamic subjective space and a category of imagination from within which identities, drawing heavily on globally circulating media products, are reflexively understood and interpreted. Thus, operating from within repressive, socially fragmented, yet highly mediated everyday contexts, I explore how young Egyptians construct three different versions of a cosmopolitan imagination: closed cosmopolitanism as imagined by the upper middle class, critical cosmopolitanism relating to the experiences of the lower middle class, and for the working class, an implicit cosmopolitan imagination.

This thesis addresses a recurrent question of our time – whether democracy can secure environmental sustainability – by drawing on literatures in the normative theory of democracy, social choice theory and environmental politics. I propose a basic, yet substantial organising principle, the ‘dilemma of green democracy’, which maps out the possibility of realising green outcomes under democratic constraints. Interdisciplinary ideas from neighbouring disciplines are also imported for the purpose of studying the design of good environmental-democratic institutions. The analytical framework is an integrated one, comprising formal choice theory and normative democratic theory. The first part of the thesis focuses on the possibility of environmentaldemocratic institutions. Chapter 1 introduces the dilemma of green democracy – a conflict between three plausible desiderata for environmental democracy – and suggests several proposals for avoiding the dilemma. It concludes that, as long as the dilemma is resolved, it is logically possible to construct environmental-democratic institutions. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 assess the desirability of the different proposals in terms of procedure and outcome. The general conclusion is that whether these proposals are desirable depends on a number of conditions and/or contextual factors. The second part of the thesis examines the substantive issues in designing environmental-democratic institutions. Chapter 5 discusses how the discursive dilemma in social choice theory and the normative ends of deliberation constrain the inputs of such institutions. Chapter 6 demonstrates how the concept of distributed cognition, drawn from cognitive/computer science, reconciles the tension between technocracy and democracy. Chapter 7 suggests how the theory of cognitive dissonance, drawn from psychology, challenges the epistemic performance of practicable (environmental-) deliberative-democratic institutions. The overall conclusion is two-fold. First, democracy can, at least in principle, secure environmental sustainability, provided that the dilemma of green democracy is resolved. Second, interdisciplinary ideas are useful for designing good democratic institutions for collective environmental decision-making. This conclusion has implications not only for intellectual enquiry, but also for institutional design in practice.