This study aims to describe and analyze changes over time in the degree of relative crowding in preschools within the urban area of a medium-sized city in the northern part of Sweden – and does so by examining the size of the available open space per child. Further, this work explores the spatial variation of open space dimensioning in relation to the urban center in order to decide whether shrinking of children’s open space should be considered to be limited to the major metropolitan areas of Sweden. With the basis in an assumption of increasing competition over land as a consequence of neoliberal governance and densification as strategies to promote urban growth, it’s hypothesized from recent literature that these ambitions increasingly risk confining children’s right to adequate areas of open space for outdoor play. Using a combination of quantitative approaches of analysis, with the use of regression analysis the study concluded that the coefficient of the independent variable Building age is positive, and therefore matches the expected direction. However, no statistically significant linear relationship was observed even with the use of relevant variables – highlighting a complex relationship surrounding the understanding and prediction of land use in general and urban open space in particular. A comparison of mean values using grouping based on both the aspect of time and centrality found that preschools built after 1998 generally contains 0,85 m2 larger open space per child than those built before 1987, whereas preschools within the urban center had 6,18 m2 larger open space per child than those located in more peripheral locations. When controlling for the share of preschools that undercuts and exceeds the recommendations related to dimensioning of open space communicated by the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, units within the city center was found to meet these recommendations to a greater extent. Preschools built after 1998 seem to be more prevalent among units that undercuts the said recommendations. The results call for further research within this field of study in order to determine whether or not children’s shrinking open space can be limited to be a phenomenon encompassing solely major metropolitan areas.

For the past several decades, the neoliberal school of economics has dominated public policy, encouraging American politicians to reduce the size of the government. Despite this trend, the power of the state to surveille, criminalize, and detain has become more extensive, even as the state appears to be growing less powerful. By allowing information technology corporations such as Google to collect location data from users with or without their knowledge, the state can tap into a vast surveillance network at any time, retroactively surveilling and criminalizing at its discretion. Furthermore, neoliberal political theory has eroded the classical liberal conception of freedom so that these surveillance tactics to not appear to restrict individuals' freedom or privacy so long as they give their consent to be surveilled by a private corporation. Neoliberalism also encourages the proliferation of information technologies by making individuals responsible for their economic success and wellbeing in an increasingly competitive world, thus pushing more individuals to use information technologies to enter into the gig economy. The individuating logic of neoliberalism, combined with the rapid economic potentialities of information technology, turn individuals into mere sources of human capital. Even though the American state's commitment to neoliberalism precludes it from covertly managing the labor economy, it can still manage a population through criminalization and incarceration. Access to users' data by way of information technology makes the process of criminalization more manageable and allows the state to more easily incarcerate indiscriminately. / Master of Arts / Since the era of President Reagan, the American economic and political tradition has been committed to opening trade, limiting government regulation, and reducing public benefits in the interest of expending freedom from the government. Despite this commitment to shrinking the size of the government, the government still considers it responsible for public security, including both national security and criminalization. At the same time as this wave of deregulation, information technology companies such as Google have expanded their ability to collect and store data of individual users—data which the government has access to when it deems such access necessary. The deregulation of private markets has ushered in an era of extreme labor competition, which pushes many people to use information technology such as computers and cell phones, to market their labor and make extra money. However, whenever a person is connected to GPS, Wi-Fi, or uses data on their phone, their location information is being stored and the government has access to this information. Neoliberalism therefore encourages people to use technology that allows them to be watched by the government. Location information is one of the main factors of criminalization; historically, a persons’ location informs the police’s decision to arrest them or not. Enforcing laws against vagrancy, homelessness, prostitution, etc. require law enforcement agencies to know where someone is, which becomes much easier when everyone is connected to their location data by their cell phone. This gives the state a huge amount of power to find and criminalize whoever it wants.

All street hawkers are not the same in many Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) of the global south as often portrayed by the media and documented in extant literature. This perception has created a gap in knowledge as researchers explore street hawking activities in NICs. In this study, I investigated a new informality trend of street hawking is coming into being within the capital city of Accra, Ghana. As governance is increasingly becoming entrepreneurial, informal activities are gradually becoming formal. Formal and registered businesses are increasingly capitalizing on hawking activities to occupy public spaces. The advent of the informality trend, I term corporate street hawking opens up new issues for the political economy, labor, and urban studies. By employing semi-structured interviews with 47 street hawkers in Accra, this paper sought to investigate three broadly interrelated questions. First, how do neoliberal policies impact the production of public space in Accra? Second, is corporate street hawking a form of creative destruction? Finally, how do corporate street hawkers practice agency within Accra?

The economic crisis of 2008 and subsequent implementation of austerity policies in Greece has had profound negative socio-economic impacts on Greek citizens. One way people seek to improve their socio-economic conditions is through participation in community organisations that have been studied for their ability to provide access to resources and representation. Through the application of a conceptual framework that connects the concepts of Social Capital and empowerment, this thesis investigates in what ways participation in Urban Agricultural Gardens (UAGs) in Thessaloniki benefits citizens. Specifically, the research aims to identify in what ways the formation of social relationships on these organisations produces and distributes Social Capital and whether this has empowering effects on individuals. The research positions itself within an ongoing discussion in what is referred to as a ‘neoliberal transition’, where in the last two decades social movements have increasingly contested forms of neoliberal governance and sought alternative forms of social organisation. Using empirical data from two Urban Agricultural Gardens in Thessaloniki, this thesis further investigates in what ways citizen empowerment may lead to contestations of neoliberal governance. While Social Capital was found to be generated at both organisations, there were differences in the ways it was produced and distributed. Stronger social ties were formed at PERKA due to an organisational structure that was conducive to social interaction. Similarly, narratives of contestation were found to be intensified by the physical and ideational practices at the organisation.

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