Continuous information technology development changed traditional ways of management and business operations. Nowadays there is a high demand for new innovative business solutions and the ways of managing people that enables to fully elicit their potential. Physical boundaries are removed; work is becoming incredibly dispersed around the world enabling growth of 24/7 customer service, home banking, online shopping and other services that were seemed incredible just a few years ago. In this fast paced environment the companies are seeking for any possibility to increase their competitiveness. Implementing flexible working is considered by most of organizations as a tool to adapt to never-ending changes. This paper aims to test the hypothesis that flexible working increases organizational productivity from the perspective of the property as well as from the perspective of employees. In current work organizational productivity from the perspective of property is analyzed from economic standpoint when flexible working decreases operational and real estate costs per employee, thus, allowing saving and investing in other business areas that would increases profitability of the company. Productivity from staff perspective is measured by employee's satisfaction of his working environment, work-life balance, and increased efficiency through team collaboration, flexible hours and telecommuting. Methodology used is case study and literature review. Case study was performed on-site in Alcatel-Lucent in Singapore. It is limited to six months from planned full year of 3 implementation project. Set of interviews with company managers was conducted to support the case results. The thesis suggests the hypothesis, according to the literature review and overview of some cases in different countries, that flexibility in property as well as in working mode increases productivity both in terms of real estate costs savings and in terms of employee’s increased productivity due to better team collaboration in open space, flexible working hours, ability to choose preferred location for work, telecommuting that creates a positive work-life balance. The case study performed for this paper in Alcatel-Lucent Singapore shows that the aforementioned benefits are not there yet due to the project timeline but are highly anticipated by local and global management. Nevertheless, thorough assessment of business requirements and the needs of employees should be undertaken before deciding on flexible working. It is extremely crucial to secure efficient and open internal communication and employees’ involvement in all stages of the project in order to achieve fast acceptance and adaptation to new environment. Based on the current example, future research suggests investigating in cultural aspect of global strategy deployment by corporate decision in different countries.

The diploma thesis is focused on the phenomenon of processes of appropriation in public space. The analysis draws upon urban anthropology with the aim to point out that some appropriative tactics may help to improve a quality of life in a city. The thesis is based on the theoretical concepts of French scholars, namely Marc Augé, Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre, who share the common interest in a man as the everyday user, but also the creator of public space. Another methodological tool is the qualitative criteria of public space established by Jan Gehl. After the introduction to the urban anthropology the thesis concerns with the public space itself, defining it, putting it into the practical framework and outlining the main problems of its crisis. The next part is about the processes of appropriation and their forms. In the applied part of the thesis are then described the examples of four Prague public spaces which are appropriated by their inhabitants and it is evaluated their importance for the whole city. In the last part is the theory turned into the practice in the form of micro- project in the Prague public space. Key words Appropriation, city, urban anthropology, public space, open space.

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My master's project is updating the Conservation Plan for the Bishop Peak Natural Reserve (BPNR) in San Luis Obispo, California. It is a professional project for the City of San Luis Obispo, supported by City policy that requires continued management of its open space network through management plans unique to each property. As one of the city's most visited open spaces and one of its most visible natural landmarks, the Bishop Peak Natural Reserve is in need of continued management and oversight. While much of the work in developing the plan focused on identifying issues and developing responsive policy, this background report takes a step back, focusing on the underlying principles and municipal policies which direct those efforts. This paper serves as a background report for the planning process including an overview of methodology and policy development. One of the primary goals set forth in the BPNR update process is to improve of management capacity and increase the potential for successful implementation. To accomplish this, the reports shows how aspects of an Adaptive Management approach can be integrated into plan review and development. This background report is intended to complement the plan itself and therefore issues not covered within this report are covered within the plan.

The prevailing urban planning strategy in the 21st century in many European cities is urbanisa-tion by densification. The strategy, which has obvious consequences for green and open space, has commonly been described as “Compact city” or “Smart growth”. Densification has mainly been initiated by large building companies, often in conflict with local lobby groups with strong social capital. This has frequently led to deadlocks in planning, especially concerning green space exploitation. This paper suggests new tools for understanding and measuring how urban structuring affects open space accessibility, not only because urban structure distributes open space to people, it also creates users and stakeholders. Since the 1950:s Swedish urban planning has been led by normative open space guidelines developed by research and national ministries, guidelines that are still present but has lost in power. Generally these guidelines are based on either density, i.e. sqm green space/person within a defined area, or range, i.e. maximum metric distance to a minimum park size. Planning practice has essentially dealt with size and qualities, often confusing, in micro economic terms, use value and non-use value (e.g. the “ecological”). This paper introduces new ways of integrating use value (sociotop) and orientation (axial lines) into new measures of open space accessibility. A new GIS-application “The Place Syntax Tool” (PST), developed within the research project, makes it possible to calculate the ‘topological’ open space accessibility from every place (address or plot) in an urban area, current or planned. ‘Topological’ accessibility analyses handles the “modified area unit problem” (MAUP) discussed in geography. A questionnaire from 2001 (TEMO) states that, citizens in some dense inner-city-districts experience higher park and nature accessibility than in some low-density “green” sub-urbs in Stockholm. This peculiar result was the starting point of testing old and new measures in ten different city districts, using PST. The conclusion is that a new measure, which take range, orientation, green space size and number of use values into account, correlates consid-erably better to the questionnaire (R2=0,75 p<0,001), than any conventional measures. It shows that the 19th century “deformed” inner city grid with defined urban parks connected by green boulevards more effectively distributes open space to many citizens compared with the “interrupted” grid and segregated green structure of the post war “modernist” suburbs. Another finding is that axial lines seem to capture movement to and within open space better than any metric measure. Correlation was found when comparing observed pedes-trian flow and calculated population accessibility (Södermalm dij=3, R2=0,682, p<0,001; Hög-dalen dij=6, R2=0,442, p<0,001). Correlation was also found when comparing a questionnaire asking “How often do you go to your favourite green area?” (USK 2002) and axial line distance between all addresses in the study areas and the closest green area (R2=0,77, p=0,018). These results can also be explained by the Space syntax integration analysis which shows that the green spaces in the inner city grid is much more integrated than in the post war suburbs. This means that orientation plays a big part in determining if, and how often people visit open spaces. Consequently, better measures could promote understanding of open space planning as an asset to city development, help overcome the deadlock in densification planning and change the common opinion of open space and “green” from a static to a dynamic urban entity. / QC 20101221

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