Adaptive reuse, as an alternative approach to the treatment of existing old buildings and urban areas, is being received more concerns in contemporary China. Taking Shanghai as an example, this thesis attempts to assess the practice of reuse of historical buildings in the urban context of Shanghai from 1990 to 2008. / In this research, the practice of adaptive reuse is studied with a focus on improving dynamic urban life through giving old buildings an advisable new use. With the aim of finding out what makes a lively and dynamic city, I employ the theory of city diversity from Jane Jacobs into my research as a theoretical basis to be tested in the research. / These investigations of Shanghai were conducted during a fieldwork in Shanghai. The case includes three types, which are respectively located in different areas in contemporary Shanghai. The first one is an alteration and upgrading of old industrial buildings on the waterfront. The second is a reuse of clusters of commercial buildings built in the colonial era on the Bund, with the ‘Bund 18’ building as a critical example. The third one is an urban renewal through adaptive reuse of traditional residential buildings in an inner city area, with a focused study on the Xintiandi area. / Through empirical analysis of these three cases, I try to examine the relationship between the buildings transformed through adaptive reuse and the urban surroundings in terms of participation or use by the various urban populations, and further explore how adaptive reuse may contribute to the generation and sustaining of diverse urban life in the urban context. / We may assume that the relationship between the city and the user is linked by urban activities, and that diversity of urban life can contribute to the healthy growth of cities. Given these assumptions, the empirical studies in this thesis suggest that the principal condition in adaptive reuse of historical buildings, for generating diverse and active urban life, is a potential in the old buildings to be ‘divided’. This includes ‘divisions’ of space, function and the category of users. Consequently, the design principles, as I would propose at the end of this study, are as follows: extracting spatial potential, creating mixed and small-scale businesses, and expanding categories of users to attract participation of a broad spectrum of the population with a diverse social background. Based on this, the practice of adaptive reuse of historical buildings can help reviving a close and dynamic relationship between the user and the physical setting, people and the city, facilitating the generation and sustaining of a diverse and healthy urban life.

Thesis advisor: Peter Skerry / The most important political fault line in American politics today is marked by the postwar liberal consensus itself. What is often overlooked, however, is that both liberals and anti-liberals assume a modern, progressive view of history in which the world is growing up to become more secular, technologically advanced, and egalitarian. Liberals celebrate this trajectory as they see themselves “on the right side of history.” They consider their opponents backward holdouts or, more generously, those not yet enjoying the goods of modern life. Anti- liberals on the right see the world according to liberalism proceeding apace to undo traditional morality, globalize economies, automate jobs, replace the nation-state, and undermine cultural norms. A nostalgic politics of reaction aspires to reverse the course of history and return to an unmolested golden age. In the words of one recent variation on this theme, only such a reversal can “Make America Great Again.” This dissertation offers intellectual portraits of three American social critics: Christopher Lasch, Paul Goodman, and Jane Jacobs. Each was a critic of progressive habits of mind in different ways, but all three offer an alternative to the progressive optimism and nostalgia for the past at work in today’s debates. If, then, these thinkers were reactionaries in resisting progressive programs of their times, they were enlightened reactionaries insofar as they rationally resisted the deeper assumption of inevitable progress that animates both left and right. While I address a specific concern in the work of each writer, I draw out three points common to their thought. First, each thinker dissolves the dichotomy between past and future that is central to progressive history. The progressive view of history shared by liberal and anti-liberal alike points toward, alternatively, an inevitably improved future or a past that is slipping away. Lasch, Goodman, and Jacobs, however, point to the continuity of past and future and resist subsuming the present in a deterministic account of history. Second, the thought of each embodies a defense of tradition – historically conditioned ways of knowing, as opposed to supposedly trans-historical universal reason. That defense is expressed not only in each thinker’s view of the past as a resource for the present, but in his or her resistance to the very idea of an Archimedean point that is assumed by claims to have seen the end of history. Indeed, each thinker’s arguments are presented explicitly as part of a tradition, and the work of each points to the importance of tradition as an indispensable lens on the world. Each author shows how the assumption of progress, despite progressives’ claims to have escaped tradition, does not reflect an inescapable law of history but is itself part of a modern tradition that we are free to modify. This in turn points to the political possibilities of recovering tradition as the basis of common discourse. To the extent we are conscious of the decisive role of tradition, we will be aware of the degree to which we are responsible agents: responsible for the contingent way we see the world, and for the contingent choices made by the light of our traditions. Finally, I argue that Lasch, Goodman, and Jacobs’s use of tradition stands in contrast not only to transcendent, objective reason but also to an understanding of traditions as closed language games, coherent in themselves but rationally inaccessible to one another. Lasch, Goodman, and Jacobs present a view in which traditions are dynamic, self-correcting, ongoing arguments within and between themselves. Their use of tradition-bound arguments to develop counter-traditions against dominant progressive perspectives exemplifies the way in which traditions might confront and correct one another. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Att skapa hållbara städer är ett av de viktigaste målen idag för att tackla problem som rör ekologiska, ekonomiska och sociala frågor i vår värld. Syftet med denna uppsats är att visa hur ägare av det fysiska rummet i städer, nämligen fastighetsägare, har möjligheter men också restriktioner för att påverka. Genom att lösa sociala problem i städer, med cirkulärt ekonomiska verksamheter i fastigheterna, kan vi komma närmare att uppnå Jane Jacobs bild av en levande och demokratisk stad där människor själva bidrar till en hållbar stadsutveckling. För att kunna förstå fastighetsägarnas möjligheter och restriktioner, i detta fall Hemsö fastighets AB, har intervjuer genomförts med Vd:n som fastställer riktlinjerna i företaget, men även andra medarbetare, för att få en bild av deras handlingsutrymme. Dessa möjligheter och restriktioner diskuteras sedan utifrån Jacobs teorier för en stadsutveckling som i denna uppsats anses vara ett socialt hållbar sätt och exemplifieras med cirkulärt ekonomiska verksamheter för att visa hur detta även leder till en hållbar stadsutveckling. Resultatet visade att restriktionerna är detaljplaner, hyresavtal, bygglov och företagets lönsamhetskrav. Den visade också på många möjligheter och en vilja att vara hållbara. Problemet som visat sig är bristen på kunskapen om hur det kan ske.

This thesis is a quest to identify the factors that influence social capital in one spatially isolated, multi-ethnic neighborhood, Kungsmarken. The commonly held view that many Modernist-style housing estates have evolved into dead-end areas that breed social ills and require endless outside assistance (Jane Jacobs), does not contain the whole truth. A fraction of this complex problem will be tackled in this thesis. The study case of Kungsmarken in Karlskrona, Sweden, is studied to better understand the links between an area’s physical structure, demographics, socio-cultural trends, economy, and social capital. By analyzing these various potential factors, interviewing the residents and other key persons, and examining public statistics, the author draws several conclusions. One main conclusion is that the social capital developments in Kungsmarken can be directly linked to the broad economic trends in the municipality. Other conclusions include that while the physical structure is a hindrance, trust and close relationships still exist between the residents, which indicates that social capital exists there. The ultimate objective of this study is to identify and explain the factors that either help or hinder the development of social in Kungsmarken.

Thesis advisor: Carlo Rotella / Addressing a gathering of social scientists at Boston’s Lowell Institute in 1870, Frederic Law Olmsted worried that the "restraining and confining conditions" of the American city compelled its inhabitants to "walk circumspectly, watchfully, jealously" and to "look closely upon others without sympathy." Olmsted was telling his audience what many had already been saying, and would continue to say, about urban life: sympathy was hard to come by in the city. The urban intellectuals that I examine in this study view with greater optimism the affective possibilities of the city’s social landscape. Rather than describe the city as a place that necessarily precludes or interferes with the sympathetic process, late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban intellectuals such as Stephen Crane, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Joseph Mitchell, A. J. Liebling and Jane Jacobs attempt to redefine the nature of that process. Their descriptions of urban relationships reconfigure the affective patterns that lay at the heart of a sentimental culture of sympathy—patterns that had remained, in many ways, deeply connected to those described by Adam Smith and other eighteenth-century moral philosophers. This study traces the development of what I call "urban sympathy" by demonstrating how observers of city life translate received literary and nonliterary idioms into cultural forms that capture the everyday emotions and obligations arising in the city’s small-scale contact zones—its streets, sidewalks, front stoops, theaters, cafes and corner stores. Urban Sympathy calls attention to the ways in which urban intellectuals with different religious, racial, economic, scientific and professional commitments urbanize the social project of a nineteenth-century sentimental culture. Rather than view the sympathetic exchange as dependent upon access to another’s private feelings, these writers describe an affective process that deals in publicly traded emotions. Where many see the act of identification as sympathy’s inevitable product, these observers of city life tend to characterize an awareness and preservation of differences as urban sympathy’s outcome. While scholars traditionally criticize the sympathetic process for ignoring the larger social structures in which its participants are entangled, several of these writers cultivate a sympathetic style that attempts to account for individuals and the larger social, economic and political forces that shape them. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

No description available.

Gävle beräknas inom de kommande åren växa med cirka 500 invånare per år, vilket måste avspeglas i satsningar på bostäder, arbete och service. Fastigheten Skeppsbyggaren, mer känd som Philipsontomten, bär anor från svunna industriepoker och har sedan mitten av 1990-talet stått oexploaterad. Genom att närma sig vattnet med en alltmer publik verksamhet och bostäder kan kvarteret Skeppsbyggaren medföra en förtätning samt utvidgning av de centrala delarna i Gävle. Vidare kan fastigheten bli ett bidrag till en redan värdefull kulturmiljö, något som bör ligga i både invånarnas, kommunens och ägaren CA Fastigheters intresse. Vårt arbete har gått ut på att projektera ett miljöcertifierat gestaltningsförslag för Skeppsbyggaren som bidrar till en hållbar stadsutveckling och en positiv exponering av Gävle som stad. Att miljöcertifiera byggnader är något som vunnit mark de senaste åren, men vid projektering av hela bostadsområden finns ett värde i att ta ett ytterligare steg och behandla hållbarhetsfrågor rörande hela stadsdelen. Den problembild som varit knuten till fastigheten är den intilliggande industriverksamheten, områdets ansträngda trafiksituation och att gator i anslutning till fastigheten upplevs som otrygga och därmed oattraktiva att beträda. Även den höga risken för markföroreningar associerade till tidigare verksamheter har varit en central fråga. Med stöd av Gehls och Jacobs teorier om en stadsdelsplanering som lockar till möten, aktiviteter och trygghet har vi med människan i centrum tagit fram vårt gestaltningsförslag. Området utgörs huvudsakligen av flera sammanhängande byggnader som tillsammans skapar en bullerdämpande barriär mot Södra Skeppsbron och Brodingatan. Denna bebyggelse kompletteras med ett punkthus samt en lågbebyggelse i form av radhuskroppar på innergården. Målet har varit att med huskropparnas placering och dess arkitektoniska utformning skapa ett varierat och inbjudande område som uttrycker sitt århundrade med god arkitektur. Resultatet innefattar bland annat ett underjordiskt garage, förslag till systemlösningar, egen elproduktion och brukarrelaterade lösningar för en mindre miljöpåverkan såsom bilpool, urban odling och individuell mätning av elförbrukning med mera. Förslaget uppnår betyget VERY GOOD vid vår certifiering med miljöcertifieringsverktyget BREEAM Communities. / Gävle is expected to increase its population with approximately 500 inhabitants per year in the foreseeable future, which should be reflected in the development of housing, work and services. The building plot Skeppsbyggaren, also known as Philipsontomten (the Philipson plot), dates back to an old industrial epoch and has since the mid-1990s, remained undeveloped. By approaching the water with an increasingly public business and residential district Skeppsbyggaren can lead to a densification and extension of the central parts of Gävle. The site could furthermore contribute to an already valuable cultural environment, which should be of interest for the inhabitants, the society and the owner CA Fastigheter. Our aim has been to design an eco-certified housing project proposal for Skeppsbyggaren, which contributes to a sustainable urban development and a positive exposure of Gävle. In recent years, the certification of building is something that gained ground, but during the development of entire neighborhoods is worthwhile consider sustainability issues at a larger scale, throughout the district. The problems associated with the property have been the adjacent industrial activity, the area’s strained traffic and that the nearby streets are perceived as unsafe and therefore unattractive to use. The high risk of contaminated land linked to past activities was also a central issue. We have developed a design proposal with a people-centered focus supported by Gehl’s and Jacob’s theories of planning a high functional neighborhood that attract human encounters, social activities and security. The area mainly consists of several connected buildings, which together create a noise-reducing barrier against the adjacent streets. This development is complemented by tower blocks and low buildings in the form of townhouses, located in the courtyard. Our aim regarding the positions of the buildings and its architectural designs has been to create a diverse and inviting neighborhood that expresses good architecture out of its own century. The final result includes an underground garage, selection of systems such as ventilation and heating, a local production of electricity and user-related suggestions for a smaller environmental impact such as carpools, urban gardening and individual metering of the consumption of electricity, and so on. Our proposal achieves the grade VERY GOOD in our certification using BREEAM Communities.

Stories about the civility through which diverse peoples have come to live peaceably in cities such as Vancouver are being used to launch Canada into the global urban future. The freedom promised by respect for privacy, mobilizing action for change, constructing our environments ethically, and improving our lots tends to be presumed as good. No need for politics, just planning. Mainstream, progressive, activist, and entrepreneurial focus on planning civil cities tends, however, to make the places where we live, places like Bridgeview BC – a neighbourhood on the fringes of Vancouver – invisible. In a sense, this dissertation is an extended set of reading notes to a case study based on archival research and fieldwork that is presented in an Appendix entitled Invisible Bridgeview. It shows what of the case study is highlighted when we take what I call the “civil city myth” seriously. Each chapter: (1) explicates an influential iteration of that myth (as articulated by Jane Jacobs, James C. Scott, and Le Corbusier) and shows how it positions Bridgeview (as backwards, on the margins of society, as a local site of global struggles, and as economically dependent); (2) illustrates a civil city myth at work (dumping on, mobilizing, ‘educating,’ and exploiting Bridgeview); and (3) taking our urban romanticism seriously, undoes a key distinction shoring up the civil/barbaric one, thereby rendering a civil city myth as an urban myth (that highlights Bridgeviewers’ capacity to negotiate conflict and self-govern, practical knowledge and commitments, kinship-based cultural movements, and ruralesque urban way of living). Thus the thrust of this analysis is from planning civil cities to engaging in urban politics – including struggles over basic infrastructure, community development, activism, and entrepreneurialism. Generous as it might seem to recognize Bridgeview (among all other places) as urban, it dismisses residents’ own sense of the place as “a small town in the big city.” So while taking the urban mythology as a point of reference, this dissertation concludes by crafting a mythology of intimate sub-urban politics – of gangs, affects, unintentional interventions, and squatting together. Seeking justice here, we are responsible in and to our relations, after all. / Graduate / 0615 / 0999

Stories about the civility through which diverse peoples have come to live peaceably in cities such as Vancouver are being used to launch Canada into the global urban future. The freedom promised by respect for privacy, mobilizing action for change, constructing our environments ethically, and improving our lots tends to be presumed as good. No need for politics, just planning. Mainstream, progressive, activist, and entrepreneurial focus on planning civil cities tends, however, to make the places where we live, places like Bridgeview BC – a neighbourhood on the fringes of Vancouver – invisible. In a sense, this dissertation is an extended set of reading notes to a case study based on archival research and fieldwork that is presented in an Appendix entitled Invisible Bridgeview. It shows what of the case study is highlighted when we take what I call the “civil city myth” seriously. Each chapter: (1) explicates an influential iteration of that myth (as articulated by Jane Jacobs, James C. Scott, and Le Corbusier) and shows how it positions Bridgeview (as backwards, on the margins of society, as a local site of global struggles, and as economically dependent); (2) illustrates a civil city myth at work (dumping on, mobilizing, ‘educating,’ and exploiting Bridgeview); and (3) taking our urban romanticism seriously, undoes a key distinction shoring up the civil/barbaric one, thereby rendering a civil city myth as an urban myth (that highlights Bridgeviewers’ capacity to negotiate conflict and self-govern, practical knowledge and commitments, kinship-based cultural movements, and ruralesque urban way of living). Thus the thrust of this analysis is from planning civil cities to engaging in urban politics – including struggles over basic infrastructure, community development, activism, and entrepreneurialism. Generous as it might seem to recognize Bridgeview (among all other places) as urban, it dismisses residents’ own sense of the place as “a small town in the big city.” So while taking the urban mythology as a point of reference, this dissertation concludes by crafting a mythology of intimate sub-urban politics – of gangs, affects, unintentional interventions, and squatting together. Seeking justice here, we are responsible in and to our relations, after all. / Graduate / 2015-04-23 / 0615 / 0999

The aim of this essay is to show how the novel Underdog by Torbjörn Flygt can be read as a critique of the Swedish folkhem. I use a geocritical perspective in my analysis to show that the novel criticizes the folkhem primarily through the portrayal of the characters Monika and Roger and their complex relation with the suburban area Borgmästaregården, in which the story takes place. By the history of the Swedish folkhem, I discuss how and why the development of the two characters, as well as the story of the novel, are influenced by Borgmästaregården. By focusing on the characters Monica and Roger, I discuss how the Swedish folkhem was inspired to help women and children by the ideas of Ellen Key and Alva and Gunnar Myrdal. During the folkhem era, functionalism was used to plan and modernize old city centers as well as new suburban areas, such as Borgmästaregården. But components of the functionalist city planning have been heavily criticized by Jane Jacobs. I argue that the story of Underdog shows how the characters are influenced by the suburban area in which they live, but in a way that is more in line with the negative consequences that Jacobs has described than the visions of the Swedish folkhem.