Bridging is considered as a formal, spatial, referential, and tectonic articulation of connectedness between architecture and context. The question is probed through a mixed architectural program situated in the interstice of an urban downtown and residential neighborhood. The architecture originates from singular or hybridized combinations of these characteristics: whereas formal defines the compositional relationships through, for example, orientation, grids, scales, proportions, and contrast or balance among the parts; whereas spatial indicates a gradient of boundaries established through anchoring, intersecting, overlapping, projecting, interlocking, and parallel elements; whereas referential draws connections through an interpretation of distinct characteristics from the present, past, and future environmental context; and whereas tectonic consists of the underlying structure, frame or mass, and materiality without which the formal, spatial, and referential concepts cannot become physical. / Master of Architecture / Bridging is considered as a formal, spatial, referential, and tectonic articulation of connectedness between architecture and context. The question is probed through a mixed architectural program situated in the interstice of an urban downtown and residential neighborhood.

Space is different from place, as space becomes place when endowed with meaning and values. Space is therefore not a neutral backdrop for people’s lives, but intertwined with their daily lives. Before attempting to create place, the particular space first has to be understood. Place-making (transformation from space to place) refers to the empowering process during which inhabitants of a setting tend to represent, renovate and upgrade their physical surroundings. This process includes the views and opinions of direct site users in terms of decision-making. This participatory process relates to an open, accountable process during which individuals and groups can exchange views and influence decision-making processes. In previous bureaucratic, top-down planning practices (‘Blueprint’ planning theory) the involvement of participants within decision making was limited. Therefore, a communicative turn towards a ‘bottom-up’ process was needed, including affected role-players by communicating and negotiating any developmental decisions. Planning is an important change agent in addressing social and economic inequality by means of inclusive planning processes, especially in South Africa with its recent transition to democracy and post-apartheid reconstruction aims. There is currently an emphasis on the need to examine particular ways in which practices of participation in development play out in concrete situations. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research method that proactively aims to develop equal distribution of power in terms of decision making by embracing values such as empowerment, social justice and equity, collaborative relationships, mutual learning and respect towards diverse opinions. Constant reflection and self-reflection within a participatory informed study is used to benefit the decision making process to create change. Change implies the promotion of the physical and positive social transformation. This research describes how PAR is used as a method in the place-making process to create change in a community that had previously been subjected to forced removals. The research context includes an existing open space (previously utilised as a dumping site) in Ikageng, Potchefstroom, South Africa, and surrounding land owners who interact with the site daily. A qualitative research approach was appropriate in this case as the research was carried out in a natural context where no extraneous influences occur and the research focused on obtaining in-depth understanding of a process rather than focusing on presenting evidence in quantifiable terms. While the planning procedure followed included numerous phases - Focus group 1, Focus group 2, Collaborative Design Workshop and Focus group3 (see Annexure B for Focus group questions) - the primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the process of place-making in planning by using PAR. Secondary aims include: (i) the understanding of the concept of place-making, (ii) giving an overview of theoretical paradigms in planning, (iii) to develop guidelines for using PAR in a planning process, and (iv) to develop planning guidelines for the process of place-making. Findings reveal that experienced change can be described as threefold. Levels of change included: (i) the physical level (Transforming the space physically (beautification and upgrade)), (ii) the social level (Transforming the community socially), and (iii) the psychological level (Transforming the community psychologically). During the experiencing of change, PAR values were unlocked progressively by the place-making process, which included empowerment, collaborative relationships and mutual learning. In later stages of the research, the PAR values of respect towards diversity and social justice and equity were revealed. Based on the above, the study offers planning recommendations by means of the development of guidelines for a place-making process. These guidelines (as informed by PAR), refer to (i) Phase 1 - Gaining community entrance, (ii) Phase 2 - Conceptualising the space, (iii) Phase 3 - Establishing partnerships, (iv) Phase 4 - Transforming space to place, (v) Phase 5 - Implementation and, (vi) Phase 6 - Monitoring/Reflection. When following these recommended guidelines with regard to a place-making process, research challenges should be taken into consideration. These challenges relate to the time-consuming nature of place-making, as well as the necessary flexibility regarding the context of the research. Furthermore, financial resources should be seen as important when attempting to transform space into place. Therefore, these planning recommendations should be seen as a guideline and not a fixed master-plan. / MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Space is different from place, as space becomes place when endowed with meaning and values. Space is therefore not a neutral backdrop for people’s lives, but intertwined with their daily lives. Before attempting to create place, the particular space first has to be understood. Place-making (transformation from space to place) refers to the empowering process during which inhabitants of a setting tend to represent, renovate and upgrade their physical surroundings. This process includes the views and opinions of direct site users in terms of decision-making. This participatory process relates to an open, accountable process during which individuals and groups can exchange views and influence decision-making processes. In previous bureaucratic, top-down planning practices (‘Blueprint’ planning theory) the involvement of participants within decision making was limited. Therefore, a communicative turn towards a ‘bottom-up’ process was needed, including affected role-players by communicating and negotiating any developmental decisions. Planning is an important change agent in addressing social and economic inequality by means of inclusive planning processes, especially in South Africa with its recent transition to democracy and post-apartheid reconstruction aims. There is currently an emphasis on the need to examine particular ways in which practices of participation in development play out in concrete situations. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research method that proactively aims to develop equal distribution of power in terms of decision making by embracing values such as empowerment, social justice and equity, collaborative relationships, mutual learning and respect towards diverse opinions. Constant reflection and self-reflection within a participatory informed study is used to benefit the decision making process to create change. Change implies the promotion of the physical and positive social transformation. This research describes how PAR is used as a method in the place-making process to create change in a community that had previously been subjected to forced removals. The research context includes an existing open space (previously utilised as a dumping site) in Ikageng, Potchefstroom, South Africa, and surrounding land owners who interact with the site daily. A qualitative research approach was appropriate in this case as the research was carried out in a natural context where no extraneous influences occur and the research focused on obtaining in-depth understanding of a process rather than focusing on presenting evidence in quantifiable terms. While the planning procedure followed included numerous phases - Focus group 1, Focus group 2, Collaborative Design Workshop and Focus group3 (see Annexure B for Focus group questions) - the primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the process of place-making in planning by using PAR. Secondary aims include: (i) the understanding of the concept of place-making, (ii) giving an overview of theoretical paradigms in planning, (iii) to develop guidelines for using PAR in a planning process, and (iv) to develop planning guidelines for the process of place-making. Findings reveal that experienced change can be described as threefold. Levels of change included: (i) the physical level (Transforming the space physically (beautification and upgrade)), (ii) the social level (Transforming the community socially), and (iii) the psychological level (Transforming the community psychologically). During the experiencing of change, PAR values were unlocked progressively by the place-making process, which included empowerment, collaborative relationships and mutual learning. In later stages of the research, the PAR values of respect towards diversity and social justice and equity were revealed. Based on the above, the study offers planning recommendations by means of the development of guidelines for a place-making process. These guidelines (as informed by PAR), refer to (i) Phase 1 - Gaining community entrance, (ii) Phase 2 - Conceptualising the space, (iii) Phase 3 - Establishing partnerships, (iv) Phase 4 - Transforming space to place, (v) Phase 5 - Implementation and, (vi) Phase 6 - Monitoring/Reflection. When following these recommended guidelines with regard to a place-making process, research challenges should be taken into consideration. These challenges relate to the time-consuming nature of place-making, as well as the necessary flexibility regarding the context of the research. Furthermore, financial resources should be seen as important when attempting to transform space into place. Therefore, these planning recommendations should be seen as a guideline and not a fixed master-plan. / MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This thesis evaluates one Hopi oral tradition-Tiyo, the boy from Tokonavi-as a meaningful geographic discourse that reveals a landscape extending from the American Southwest to Mesoamerica and beyond. Hopi's understanding of their past and the significance of the land have evolved within larger struggles between Western and Native American views of time, space, and history. Instead of a static cartographic rendering, the story of Tiyo presents the land as a dynamic entity differentiated through religious and social relations. Theories of place making and materiality help validate a space coterminous with Hopi history and religion, and support a multi-vocal approach to the land. This work has implications for anthropological scholarship, and for the process of decolonizing dominant understandings of Hopi culture. It is equally relevant for historic preservation, indigenous sovereignty, and land claims. Most importantly, this research can assist the Hopi people in communicating cultural knowledge to future generations.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning / Jessica Canfield / Kansas City is in the midst of an urban renaissance, with a construction boom within the downtown core in excess of $4.5 billion over the past several years (CVA 2012). In 2010, Kansas City’s Greater Downtown Area Plan (GDAP) was implemented to guide the future transformation and development of the city. Despite its long-term vision and specific goals, including activating the public realm and fostering a strong urban community (City Planning et al. 2010), the GDAP fails to address opportunities for short-term strategies for interim ‘place-making.’ Yet, temporary gatherings are critical to fostering and sustaining a sense of ‘place.’ Kansas City currently has an emerging, vibrant urban culture, but it lacks amenities and spaces to support and celebrate spontaneous social activity. To address this issue, this project proposes a series of prototypical fluxspaces – small, temporary interventions activated by the presence of food trucks - throughout Kansas City’s downtown area. These new temporary acts exploit the potential of underutilized urban surfaces in the short term while re-invigorating social activity and celebrating an emerging urban culture in the long term. Sites are linked to existing mobile food vending hot spots and interventions are timed in conjunction with major Kansas City events and festivals; this grounds the proposed system in Kansas City’s population of temporary users. A detailed schedule ensures that Kansas City’s fluxspaces feature a dynamic, rotating population of food trucks, while fluctuating amenities promote diverse, exciting, and attractive temporary places. Kansas City’s new fluxspaces accommodate spontaneous social gatherings and celebrate their vital importance in fostering a vibrant urban environment. //fluxspace activates Kansas City’s latent urban surfaces, filling the gap between Kansas City’s immediate need for places of temporary gathering and the long-term goals inherent in the vision for Kansas City’s future.

It is widely assumed in both popular and scholarly imaginaries that Travellers, due to their 'nomadic mind-set' and non-sedentary uses of land, do not have a sense of place. This thesis presents an ethnographic account of an extra-legal camp in Southeast London, to argue that its Traveller inhabitants do have a sense of place, which is founded in the camp's environment and experientially significant sites throughout the city. The main suggestion is that the camp, its inhabitants, and their activities, along with significant parts of the city, are co-constitutionally involved in making a Travellers' sense of place. However, this is not self-contained or produced by them alone, as their place-making activities are embroiled in the political, economic and legal environment of the city. This includes the threat and implementation of eviction by a local council, the re-development of the camp's environs, and other manifestations of the spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban regeneration. The thesis makes this argument through focusing on the ways that place is made, sensed, and lived by the camp's Traveller inhabitants. It builds on practice-based approaches to place, centred on the notion of dwelling, but also critically departs from previous uses of this notion by demonstrating that 'dwelling' can occur in an intensely politicised and insalubrious environment. Therefore, I consider dwelling in the context of the power asymmetries of place and urban precarity, as well as how it is crucial to making a home-in-the-world. Depicting a family fiercely and desperately striving to hold onto place in the time-space of the late-liberal city, a situation that affords them little promise of a future, the thesis destabilises established understandings and analysis of Travellers' experience, in a contemporary context. Chapter one considers how men's skilled activity, building materials and machinery are involved in creative acts of correspondence, which coalesce to make the camp a liveable place for its inhabitants. The central suggestion is that, through making and inhabiting the camp, it also comes to make and inhabit those involved in such activities. However, the family's ability to structure their own world, by building themselves a place to live, is contingent on a range of socio-political constraints that subject them to infrastructural violence. Chapter two turns from the camp's built environment to examine women's caregiving and home-making practices. It considers women's haptic involvements with their caravans, suggesting that these activities are not simply practices of creative homemaking but, due to the central role they play in raising families, they position women as world-formers. It also examines the ways that women's caregiving activities are intensified by the camp's insalubrious environmental conditions, and how these are involved in the unmaking of the family's matriarch. Chapter three considers the relationship between men's economic activity and the city. It draws correspondences between men's economic transactions with non-Travellers, and hunting, suggesting that each practice consists of the skilled capacity to procure resources from particular environments. Chapters four and five turn from Travellers' own place-making activities, to examine how a sense of place is produced from, and fractured by, the threat of eviction. In the first of these, I consider the role that state-administered documents, definitions and imaginaries play in shaping the spatial parameters of place for the Cashes. In the second I examine the ways that eviction, and the broader spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban redevelopment, coalesce in the camp to produce a sense of place and time that is charged with affect and uncertainty.

This research project was designed to analyze the relevance of place and the physical environment to the adjustment processes of refugees. This dissertation contains the results of qualitative research with a group of 30 refugee urban farmers living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Seventeen of these individuals—from Burundi, Sudan, Bhutan, the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, and Cuba—participated in interviews and a photography project focused on their experiences with agriculture in their home countries and since their arrival in Utah. The results of the research show the connection between the refugees’ work as farmers and their sense of place since arriving in the United States. Participants reported material and emotional benefits from their farming work, as well as challenges. The research results also provide insight into the process of cultural hybridization and cross-cultural exchange experienced by the participants. A discussion of some challenges inherent in doing research with refugees is included, and policy implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, a city with a long history of serving as a magnet for immigrants, the Cambodian community is both the most recent and most populous immigrant group that has helped transformed this postindustrial city into one of the most ethnically diverse in New England. This research seeks to explore the ways in which the development and growth of an ethnic community can influence the place-making process and built environment of cities. Specifically, this thesis conducts a case study of the Cambodian community in Lowell, Massachusetts, and examines the ways in which the development of this specific urban ethnic community has helped to shape the post-industrial city in which it is found, and how Lowell has influenced Cambodian-American ethnic identity.

The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive look over the domestic space in the scope of the case study held in Ankara. The key notion of the evaluation is that home is a &amp / #8216 / place&amp / #8217 / and it can not be evaluated comprehensively when abstracted and degraded into classifications of size, location, cost, or generalized user profile, without considering its place-specific qualities and the experience of its users. Starting from this point, the thesis provides a detailed observation and documentation of the physical qualities of home, followed by the appreciation of its users depicting their own experiences and interventions on the place. The &amp / #8216 / reciprocal&amp / #8217 / character of the relationship between the household and the home, the concepts of place-identity and sense of belonging are traced and discussed. The research is conducted in a privileged example of modern residential architecture in Ankara / YeSiltepe and Yildiztepe Blocks in Emek District and its method constitutes of three parallel stages which are the archival study made on written and visual documents, in-depth interviews done with the households, and on-site observation and visual documentation study of the research field.

The important positions and proposals of the thesis are firstly the framework posited for a socially sustainable urban environment, and secondly a proposal for the parameters of place formation for sustainable urban design. Research into social sustainability has provided a variety of approaches among which Castells&amp / #8217 / model for urban movements have been adapted as a matrix for social organization in terms of placemaking, highlighting the goals of an urban movement, in this case of a place, with the citizen as urban actor, against its adversary the historical actor. As for the parameters of place formation a matrix of place is developed as a tool for urban design and for measuring urban sustainability. The matrix delineates the six dimensions of place in terms of the three sustainabilities most strongly involved in each / to be measured by the indicators of sustainability which are to be achieved by applying various strategies for urban design. As a result of the study of the underlying dynamics of the paradigms of sustainability, place, and place-making, and the shifting role of urban design necessitated by problems of urbaproposed within a discourse that prefers to see the three sustainabilities in conjunction and, believes socially sustainable communities to be also environmentally and economically sustainable- the issue becomes how to facilitate a place process through urban design. Place as a social product, and place as an experiential, cognitive construct, place as object and subject of place-making, and place as a geographically specific, historical materialist formation are the four vantage points from which to inspect the juxtapositions and differences of the concept / and may be arrive at a theory of place. The predilection that sustainability and urbanization can be evaluated via placemaking stems, on one hand, from a study of the city/urbanization through the works of Harvey, Castells, Lefebvre and Bookchin who emphasize social space/process in the face of physical/geometric space / and an architectural background/disposition which finds place congenial on the other hand. The paradigm of sustainability and place, and place-making as urban design is applied to the case of Temelli, Ankara for a critique of sustainable/unsustainable urbanization. As a geographic, social, economic and historical location within the Greater Municipality of Ankara, Temelli has been a region of attraction for investors since the 1990s. What was once a small village planned for settling Balkan immigrants, became a municipality in 1994 / the land within the municipal boundaries were increased tenfold, and the region was earmarked for an overspill of 650,000 people from Ankara Metropolitan Area in the next 20 years. Four residential areas in the region have been assessed comparatively in terms of sustainable urban forms / and an evaluation of everyday lives have been conducted through surveys and interviews with residents to observe how and if place as social product evolved / how the conceived, perceived and lived spaces interacted.