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The catalyst for this research has been the growing national interest in inner city living. Specifically this has come from local and state government, the housing and land development industry, and the general public over the last two decades. During this time there has generally been an increase in dwellings and residents within most Australian inner city areas. The last two decades has witnessed a continual barrage by public and private organisations as to the benefits of inner city living. However there has been negligible research from the inner city residents perspective. Most research to date has centered on inner city lifestyle benefits, what dwellings private developers are providing,and what local and state governments are doing to promote inner city living. This research has focused on Northbridge as a case study as an indicator of inner city Australian areas. The research identifies historical influences and changes in landuses in Northbridge since 1829 through to the 1990s with particular reference to the move from residential to commercial land uses, and the resurgence in residential land uses. This has included an analysis of the role and impact of local and state government, and commercial forces. A synoptic view reveals that landuse changes have been driven by the needs of commercial forces, with local and state government serving commercial before resident needs. A demographic profile of who the inner city residents are has been established. It has been revealed that the diversity of the inner areas is reflected in the demographics of the people that live there. / Similarly the inner city household types and structures are varied, although most households are smaller than those of the middle or outer suburbs. Further research was undertaken to determine the relationship of the available dwellings in inner areas relative to what residents want in terms of dwelling design, size, location, open space, cost and affordability. The type of dwelling being built was found to be similar to what inner city residents want, although their cost creates inequitable access. The problems with inner city living and what support services are required for inner city residents was analysed. This was correlated with an analysis of transport needs, and the relationship between inner city residents, and the location of employment, retail and entertainment facilities. Most support services required by inner city residents were found to be available, although a need exists to improve specific services. Inner residents do rely on private vehicles, although to a lesser degree than middle or outer suburban dwellers and with less time spent travelling to access employment, retail and entertainment facilities. This research has essentially focused on the inner city residents needs, and the degree to which these needs have been fulfilled. / The general consensus amongst local and state government, and private bodies involved in the supply of inner city dwellings is that building more dwellings will inject life into the inner areas. Unfortunately this is a simplistic view that is unlikely to create the bustling, lively streets envisaged. To revitalise the inner areas requires a closer examination of who the residents are that are moving into the inner areas' so as to enhance and not detract from the existing diversity. The concluding chapter of this thesis outlines recommendations that have been designed to promote equitable access to inner city dwellings and revitalisation of inner areas to ensure than not only is the inner city population increased, but that life is injected back into the inner city by the residents, and that there is more of a focus on resident, rather than commercial needs.

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This paper examined the process followed in the selection and establishment of an inner-city Professional Development School located in a large, North Texas school district.

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Thesis (M.Arch. (Prof.))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, 2012. / Over 800 000 people access and commute through Johannesburg Inner City every single day. (JDA, 2009) Out of this, a certain group of people enter the city with every intention to fi nd permanent residency and work within the city. They mostly come from afar, rural or semi-rural areas and often from neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, with the continuously changing urban environment, it can be an incredibly difficult process to adapt to alone. As such, this can be the best time and the worst time of their lives, fi lled with mixed emotions of excitement, disappointment, fear and anticipation. This is the time where one may manage to truly live life, or end up surviving it. The sudden change in lifestyle, security, social and economic conditions, entertainment and habitat can create situations where the very best will fail in their quest to improve their lives and fall into degenerate lives of crime and despair from which very few will emerge stronger. As I see it, architecture is the science of building, in terms of not only visually inspiring structures but more importantly, structures that can improve the lives of people whilst preserving the environment and assisting in the building of a stronger economy and moral fi bre. I believe that architecture is at the root of civilization itself. However, due to a multitude of varying levels of control implemented into the urban realm of Johannesburg’s Inner City, in order to ensure this change, it appears that parts of the physical environment are being distorted to accept a selected group of city inhabitants, leaving the marginalised group to fend for themselves. In saying this, there thus appears to be a new form of segregation occurring within the city. As such, the social and physical environments are beginning to lose a certain key characteristic of what a city should be – spirit and integration between all of its parts. This thesis therefore investigates a design that strives to create a bridge between Johannesburg’s Inner City and the formal environments where new city-dwellers can fi nd respite and are assisted to achieve their goals without succumbing to the pitfalls that would otherwise await them. The design will ensure that the transition between these new-comers’ old and new lifestyles and surroundings is as painless as possible allowing them to reach their full potential quickly and hopefully removing the risk that they may become a burden to themselves and society. This thesis will focus on the construct of a 21st century interpretation of Godin’s familistère, not necessarily in its structural make up but rather in its funding, management and programmatic structure to fulfi l its mission in a sustainable manner as well as the new idea of connecting these factors into the ‘bigger picture’. (Benevolo, 1971) This thesis will address the fundamentals of target group, services provided, training, temporary living accommodation, optimal time of stay, work ethics, funding and most importantly, the spatial framework required for such integration to occur. The results of this thesis will culminate in a full-scale detailed design of such a construct and propose how it could be achieved spatially for the direct benefi t of those individuals, as well as the indirect effect it could have on the physical make-up of Johannesburg’s Inner City.

This thesis is an exploration of the daily realities of childhood in the Johannesburg inner city, investigating how the children understand and negotiate the possible dangers and probable safeties of the inner city. Growing up in the inner city is an image few think is possible. However, throughout my research I will argue for a conceptualisation of childhood that speaks to the urban public spaces in the Johannesburg inner city and an inner city that speaks to the a new childhood in South Africa. I have used danger and safety negotiation as the bridge between studies of the Johannesburg inner city and studies of a South African childhood, and as a bridge in the gap between theories on childhood and theories on the city. I investigate the ways that the children negotiate the everyday dangers in the city and develop practices of safety, and how these practices and avoidance techniques speak to the reality of living in the inner city. The very nature of the congested inner city offers a freedom that many suburban childhoods lack, and that the children experience an independent mobility within an infamously dangerous space speaks to the changes within the inner city often hidden behind the skewed opinion of many of the Johannesburg inner city. I make a claim that the inner city offers more freedom of mobility that is expected. This mobility is a relatively simple and well practiced form of creating visibility within the pedestrian congestion of the city. These practises of visibility, I argue, is heavily reliant on the layout of the inner city and the ways in which children understand the dangers that face them. As such, their safety practices are a complex network of sharing cautionary stories and avoidance techniques. For most children, this environment is also the only space that they know and therefore, what to outsiders might seem a dangerous, chaotic and confusing space is to the children just their everyday experience. These are the stories about which I write.

À Montrimond certains jeunes sont connus pour squatter les halls et les places publiques. Ce sont les « mecs de cité ». Dans cette banlieue parisienne, ces jeunes résident dans les deux « quartiers sensibles », le Belvédère et le Val. Fruit d’une enquête ethnographique conduite au sein de la famille Aïth Ali pendant plus de six ans, cette thèse décrit l’expérience de cette affiliation juvénile depuis la perspective des jeunes, à hauteur de ce qui suscite leurs passions et leurs haines. Qu’est-ce que signifie au quotidien d’« être un mec de cité » ? Quelles pratiques soutiennent ce sentiment d’appartenance ? Quels liens font tenir cette collectivité juvénile de pied d’immeuble ? Une partie liminaire examine sur le plan historique l’émergence de ces « quartiers sensibles ». Elle montre les raisons pour lesquelles certains jeunes incarnent au tournant des années 1960 et 1970 une angoisse sociale particulière : la disparition du « vieux Montrimond ». Face à ces nouveaux venus perçus comme des outsiders, les Montriots des « origines » se sentent menacés. En creux, les jeunes de cités deviennent alors responsables de ce monde qui s’en va. Face à cette légende des origines, les jeunes de cité se taillent un autre récit de fondation pour inscrire leur biographie dans cette histoire urbaine. Être un « mec de cité » c’est s’identifier à un ordre temporel grâce auquel chacun trouve sa place, celle d’« ancien », de « grand » ou de « petit ». Cet ordre générationnel fournit un cadre narratif sur lequel s’appuyer pour donner du sens à sa vie. On peut alors dire qu’on est un « mec » d’ici, du « quartier » ou de la « cité ». Puis, l’enquête décrit les réseaux d’amitié au sein desquels prennent forme ces rassemblements de jeunes. Elle suit plusieurs fratries depuis leur prime enfance, leur passage des bacs à sable à l’école primaire et secondaire, et en parallèle, les institutions municipales de délégation éducative, comme les MJC, les clubs de sport et les centres de loisirs. Une société juvénile, avec ses propres standards moraux, se développe dans les réseaux de relations qui lient ces trajectoires de socialisation. Véritable pierre de touche sur laquelle s’échafaude tout un univers éthique, cet entre-soi juvénile s’organise autour de trois figures relationnelles : l’ami, le complice et l’ennemi. Une question se pose alors : qu’advient-il de la moralité ordinaire qui lie ces amis d’enfance quand ils deviennent complices dans la délinquance ou le crime (deal de stupéfiants, vols, braquages, etc.) ? La hantise de la déloyauté, de l’arnaque et de la délation sape le ressort sur lequel reposait la certitude de la bonne foi d’autrui, sa sincérité. Ce contexte de vulnérabilité affective et éthique place les complices dans un cercle vicieux où les intentions de leurs proches souffrent d’une double lecture. Face à l’indétermination du futur, l’angoisse de la trahison poussera les plus déterminés à anticiper les mauvais coups et à céder à la violence. L’enquête sondera alors les ressorts psychosociologiques du passage à l’acte ainsi que les conditions d’exercice du jugement moral face à la violence. / At the bottom of housing projects in Montrimond, young men gather in building entrances and public places. In this small city located in the ring of suburbs, next to Paris, a few adolescents and young adults see themselves as the “guys from the hood”. The “guys from the Belvedere” and the “guys from the Val” wander around in the so-called “sensitive neighborhoods” the city hall has labeled as such. This thesis shed light upon the lived experience and the meanings of this juvenile affiliation. What does that mean to “be a guy from the hood” on a daily basis? On which everyday activities this affiliation relies on? How some boys come to be morally bound together? Initially, the thesis investigates the historical and ecological aspects in the genesis of the so-called “sensitive neighborhoods.” It shows how youth came to embody a social phobia that yields the residents to see them as outsiders. Then, this social fear is related to the narrative of foundation youth tells their own origin. Through the order of generation upon which they tell the history of their “hood”, anyone can be assigned to a place of either an “ancestor,” an “elder” or a “young.” Here we describe the networks of friendships that shape those generational gatherings. In the interstices of educational institutions of the city, like family, school and youth center, those “guys” cultivate an esprit de corps with its own moral standards. This esprit de corps is the touchstone upon which they give rise to a moral world that revolves around three ethical figures: the friend, the partner in crime (accomplice) and the enemy. Finally, the thesis unfolds the psychosociological dynamics entailed in the metamorphosis of commitment friends are engaged in while becoming deviant (drug dealing, robbery, stick-ups, etc.). In the context of deviant careers, friends cannot believe anymore in the sincerity of their alter ego. Facing the possibility of disloyalty, scam and snitch, they start doubting the honesty that was at the core of their mutual respect. In this distrust process, the ethical and emotional vulnerability undermines the faith in the future, engaging each other in a vicious circle of predicting the betrayal of the old friend. Some would go as far as killing a would-be enemy, others would be cruel in retaliation when certain would withdraw from violence to save their sense of humanity.

The Neighbourhood Centres (NCs) in Sydney, Australia, were established to encourage forms of local control and resident participation and to provide a range of activities to build, strengthen and support local communities and marginalised groups. This thesis is concerned with exploring the personal conceptions, passions and frameworks, as well as the political and professional identities, of activists and community workers in these NCs. It also explores stories of practice and of how these subjective experiences have been shaped through the discourses around the NCs, some of which include feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism and social justice. The following key research questions encouraged stories of community practice: What do the terms empowerment, participation, community service and citizenship mean for community organisation? What did community workers and organisers wish for when they became involved in these community organisations? What happened to the oppositional knowledges and dissent that are part of the organisational histories? Foucault’s concept of governmentality is used to explore the possibility that these NCs are also sites of ‘government through community’. This theoretical proposition questions taken-for-granted assumptions about community development and empowerment approaches. It draws on a willingness of the research participants to take up postmodern and poststructuralist theories. ‘Practising place’ emerges in the research as a description of a particular form of activism and community work associated with these inner city Sydney NCs. The central dimensions of ‘practising place’ include: a commitment to identity work; an openness to exploring diverse and fluid citizenship and identity formations; and the use of local knowledges to develop a critique of social processes. Another feature of ‘practising place’ is that it involves an analysis of the operation of power that extends beyond structuralist explanations of how to bring about social change and transform social relations. The research has deconstructed assumptions about empowerment, community participation, community organisations and community development, consequently another way of talking about the work of small locally based community organisations emerges. This new way of talking builds upon research participants’ understandings of power and demonstrates the utility of applying a poststructural analysis to activist and community work practices. Overall the research suggests that if activists and community workers are to work with new understandings of the operation of power, then the languages and social practices associated with activist and community work traditions need to be constantly and reflexively analysed and questioned.