The master-planning of large-scale neighbourhood development has become a central part of strategies to stimulate changes in local urban economy and property markets in Britain. However, the 2007-08 economic crisis severely disrupted urban development and created uncertainty affecting market conditions and the availability of investment, as well as policy change, and demographic and social change. Whilst researchers expounded on contemporary master-planning practice in the UK as too formal, inflexible, static, and misleadingly proximate to respond to these challenges, little is said about stakeholders’ susceptible values and actions tied to dominate sources of complex urban development pressures. In that context, this research aims to explore the significance of ‘value’ in master-planning at the residential neighbourhood and the pre-application planning phase of development, and further the understanding of strategic values-rich and value-based planning and design processes in both theory and practice. To achieve this purpose, a multidisciplinary constructive reasoning approach is adopted to iterate between theory and empirical observation to obtain new insights. This thesis is sub-divided into three main phases. The first phase explored meaning, concepts, and theories of master-planning, strategic choice decision-making, value, and values to propose a theoretical framework. The second phase adapted a survey method, following a review of key policies and literature, aiming to define the strategic role and the value of master-planning in Scotland. It was piloted with 7 experts and tested among 112 professionals who are involved in neighbourhood’s development in Scotland. To illustrate the effect of development pressures on stakeholders’ decisions, the second phase evaluates two carefully selected case studies in Scotland, focusing on different forms of master-planning, typical developer-led and private-public partnership development. Through detailed review of planning application documents and the conducted semi-structured interviews, the effect of the 2007-08 economic crises was analysed showing how decisions and actions are/were tied to a complex web of development forces at the macro, micro, and meso levels. Subsequently, a strategic values-rich and value-based view of master-planning is proposed through theoretical triangulation. This draws on theory to reach past the rational preconceptions that hobbled previous research efforts into defining the value of master-planning in planning and urban design. The main original contribution in this research is the development of an evolutionary ‘strategic value-based’ lens that re-defines the role of master-planning, revealing complex contradictions internal and external as a force of major hidden pressure on stakeholders taking decision. This work opens new horizons for spatial planning and urban design into the research field of value and values.

Recent research suggests that, besides traditional socio-demographic and built environment attributes, the attitudes and perceptions of parents toward walking and bicycling play a crucial role in deciding their children’s mode choice to school. However, very little is known about the factors that shape these parental attitudes toward their children actively commuting to school. The current study aims to investigate this unexplored avenue of research and identify the influences on parental attitudes toward their children walking and bicycling to school, as part of a larger nationwide effort to make children more physically active and combat rising trends of childhood obesity in the US. Through the use of a multivariate ordered response model (a model structure that allows different attitudes to be correlated), the current study analyses five different parental attitudes toward their children walking and bicycling to school, based on data drawn from the California add-on sample of the 2009 National Household Travel Survey. In particular, the subsample from the Los Angeles – Riverside – Orange County area is used in this study to take advantage of a rich set of micro-accessibility measures that is available for this region. It is found that school accessibility, work patterns, current mode use in the household, and socio-demographic characteristics shape parental attitudes toward children walking and bicycling to school. The study findings provide insights on policies, strategies, and campaigns that may help shift parental attitudes to be more favourable toward their children walking and bicycling to school. / text

Thèse écrite en cotutelle (Université de Montréal ; Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne) / Afin de mieux saisir le rôle de certains phénomènes affectifs au sein des rapports dits de reconnaissance - tels que les émotions de l’estime mais aussi la colère ou le sentiment d’injustice -, ce travail cherche à cerner la nature des actes recognitifs à partir de l’analyse conceptuelle d’énoncés idéal-typiques de reconnaissance. Qu’est-ce que représente un énoncé de reconnaissance ? Que se produit-il lors d’un énoncé de reconnaissance ? Ou, en d’autres termes, que dis-je et que fais-je lorsque j’énonce reconnaître x comme p ? De cette analyse, il ressort que les actes recognitifs correspondent à des actes communicationnels particuliers, en termes habermassiens, des actes régulateurs. Plus spécifiquement, elle permet de mettre en lumière que la reconnaissance fonctionne, au plan normatif, comme un concept régulateur des interactions humaines et, au niveau pratique, qu’elle représente une obligation éthique au sens développé par Hegel dans les Principes de la Philosophie du droit. Comprendre les actes de reconnaissance comme des processus d’attribution de statuts - via l’octroi logiquement antérieur d’une valeur - visant à instaurer un certain type d’interaction entre agents libres présente un double avantage. Le premier, de proposer une unification des différents sens attachés au concept de reconnaissance autour des notions de valeur et de statut. Le second, de permettre des hypothèses explicatives quant à la présence de phénomènes affectifs lors de ces processus. Ces derniers semblent découler, d’une part, du type de processus que sont les actes recognitifs et, d’autre part, de la double fonction que paraissent exercer ces émotions, entendues comme des « perceptions de valeur ». / In order to understand better the role of certain affective phenomena within the so-called relations of recognition - such as the emotions of esteem but also anger or the sense of injustice -, this work seeks to discern the nature of acts of recognition as of the conceptual analysis of the ideal-typical statements. What represents a statement of recognition? What is produced during a statement of recognition? Or, in other words, what do I say and what do I do as I state: “I recognize or acknowledge x as p”? It results from this analysis that the acts of recognition correspond to particular communicational acts, in habermassian terms, of regulatory acts. More specifically, at a normative level, it reveals that, recognition functions as a regulatory concept of human interactions, and at a practical level, it represents an ethical obligation in the sense developed by Hegel in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Understanding the acts of recognition as the process of attribution of status - through a prior logical bestowal of a value - aiming at establishing a certain type of interaction between free agents, features a double advantage. The first is to propose a unification of different meanings attached to the concept of recognition around the notions of value and status. The second is to allow some explicative hypotheses regarding the presence of the affective phenomena during those processes. The latter seem to stem, on the one hand, from a type of process that are acts of recognition, and on the other, from the double function that these emotions seem to be practiced, understood as “perceptions of values”.