This thesis is an ethnography of how children of Holocaust survivors interacted and connected with the March of the Living and Holocaust sites in Poland. This work explores how considering individual perspectives allows one to understand how the March works in complicated and nuanced ways to intensify connections with relatives and Jewish identity. In three chapters this work situates the experiences of four participants within theories of place-making and post-memory to consider methods they used to connect with Holocaust sites and what effect that connection had on their sense of identity.

This dissertation investigates the transformative possibilities inherent in a contemporary urban artefact in Jeppestown, a significant historical suburb dating back to the settlement of early prospectors who sought a precious yellow metal beneath the red earth of a treeless veld. On this veld today stands the City of Johannesburg. The Johannesburg metropolis is scarred by the intersection of differences between those who have inhabited its streets. It has endured these differences and become a part of them through the multiple generations of its lifetime. Jeppestown or Jeppe to its residents, endures today with latent markings of apartheid as a transitional industrial buffer area west of the Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD). Jeppe exists today as a piece of this narrative and is one of the longest threads in the chronology of the habitation of the greater Johannesburg city. Imminent threats of gentrification and signs of poorly considered urban renewal schemes aimed at the transformation of public space in Jeppe provoke the following questions: What is the potential role of Jeppe within the greater metropolis? And how could the transformation of urban form in this context, through the act of design, begin to transform its potential value, meaning and significance as a place of belonging and becoming – to both those who currently inhabit it and the greater population of the fluctuating metropolis that surrounds it? The proposed intervention is situated in the vicinity of Jeppe market and train station. It forms a part of an investigative framework of architectural and landscape interventions along a regenerative urban spine that connects the station square to Gilfillan Park (Jeppe Park). The objective of the framework is defined as the conditional amplification of extant rituals, negotiated territories and lives & deaths through the introduction of responsive and constructive spatial interventions and the reconciliation of these with the existing fabric. Jeppestown is the subject of this inquiry and intervention, yet its post-apartheid predisposition in the urban context is not exclusive. The intention of the study through design is to postulate and identify a manner of working within the means of the architectural discipline, that itself is aligned with the endeavour of fostering an approach toward place making in the contemporary South African metropolis. This text serves as a record of events that have unfolded through the thoughts, actions and adopted processes for the design and investigation of a transformative urban artefact manifested as a social club in Jeppestown, Johannesburg. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The aim of this thesis is to serve as a comprehensive review of the literature on placemaking in higher education. To our knowledge, no comprehensive review of placemaking in higher education currently exists. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by answering two main questions: First, how is placemaking is implemented on college/university campuses and their surrounding communities? Second, what are the effects of these placemaking efforts? This literature review was conducted through a systemic search of three databases, in addition to references and general search engines. This review highlights the sparse, yet diverse, literature on this topic. Findings highlight how universities today strive to achieve cohesiveness within their campuses and in their surrounding communities.

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With more people in the United States renting now than at any point since 1965, there is an amorphous temporality in the dwellings of many Americans (Cilluffo, Fry, 2022). This provides flexibility and thus, more freedom for upward mobility, an enticing attribute for younger people living on their own for the first time. However, this lack of permanence can create challenges in establishing a “sense of place”. When residents don’t feel a strong connection to their spaces, they can feel as if they don’t belong. This issue is especially prevalent in dormitories, where a feeling of belonging is vital to student success (Strayhorn, 2019, p.217). These obstacles present a formidable design opportunity for architects to alter their existing planning and design of dormitories. This thesis explores the inherent power struggles dormitories present, as well as the shifting definition of “home” as both a space of belonging and a set of qualities imbued into a space. The goal of this project is to establish an understanding of the role of placemaking in temporary dwellings and discuss the difficulty one can face with creating a sense of “permanence”. and ultimately, to create a framework for designing student housing with a particularly strong “sense of place”. With a focus on housing solutions for university students who are currently experiencing both a shortage of on-campus housing, this thesis offers a set of guidelines for effectively designing student housing with a strong sense of place, with an emphasis on creating a sense of permanence in temporary dwellings.

This thesis addresses the need for a practical toolkit to facilitate community participation in place visioning workshops, aiding placemakers in driving change in placemaking. By integrating the place visioning pathway into the participatory backcasting framework, the proposed adapted framework for place visioning consists of four activities: (1) Orientation - Define the current challenge of the place, (2) Visioning - Develop a future vision, (3) Backcasting - Propose actions to actualise the vision, and (4) Elaboration - Choose feasible actions to create an action plan. An initial prototype toolkit was developed and tested with placemakers, leading to redesigning of the toolkit to address concerns of complexity, inclusivity, and playfulness. Lastly, the toolkit was iterated into a combination of tools and resources, of which four canvas tools are the main part, along with ideation cards for inspiration, and a handbook for guidance.  This research focused on the convergence of placemaking, visioning, and designerly tools, with the underlying aim of creating resources to support community-based participatory design. The actual implementation of the toolkit in a placemaking case was not realised throughout the process, but the resultant artefact, insights from research, and feedback gathered from its testing could provide a basis for future research of the concept.

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No description available.

The changes in technology and cultures of mobility within dense North American cities have resulted in a space that intervenes between one thing and another which often generates seemingly uninhabitable zones and problematic discontinuities in the physical and social fabric. Over time, the pattern of cities has changed; movement spaces have fractured the social spaces. The social dimension in the design of movement spaces has been neglected and thus these spaces have primarily become products of the functional dimension, i.e. traffic flow, circulation, and access for vehicles. These approaches to developments and prioritizing the movement space over the social space have contributed to the creation of fractured people spaces in between the fabric of cities. This thesis proposes to reconnect the broken fabric of cities that are shaped as result of the juxtaposition of movement infrastructure. Furthermore, the research studies the methods by which such spaces can become transformed into successful people place through literature review of what constitutes a successful urban space. Case studies of successful places adjacent to roads, waterfronts, and in between the fabric of cities were studied to understand the methods by which underused, and fractured spaces were transformed to successful urban places. This thesis further implements the methods of place making into creating the new physical, visual, cognitive, and ecological connection between the fractured spaces. / Master of Landscape Architecture

For the past several years, the term social sustainability has gained a strong foothold within urban studies and has become a pervasive and trendy term that seems to be on everyone’s lips. Public space is widely acknowledged as an important urban feature, often in association with the social sustainability. As cities around the world are experiencing rapid population growth, creating meaningful and enjoyable public spaces is more important than ever. The heightened interest in social sustainability, public spaces and placemaking (as a physical manifestation of social sustainability) has led to the emergence of several urban intervention movements, such as Tactical Urbanism. In 2012, for the first time in Los Angeles’ history, this tactic was used to transform a car trafficked street in Silver Lake into a pedestrian friendly public space: the Sunset Triangle Plaza. The aim of this thesis is to, by studying the use and function of the plaza after the conversion, highlight how a broad concept such as social sustainability can be understood from a relatively small-scale public space intervention. The case study was conducted during the spring and summer of 2018, using a variety of data sources including interviews and observations of the plaza during February and March 2018. Two interviews were conducted with managers of the businesses directly adjacent to the plaza. Moreover, street surveys were conducted on two different occasions to ask the public about their use and opinions about the plaza. The results from the case study are presented to illustrate the real-life experience of the theories about social sustainability, public space and a discussion regarding “Whose Public Space?”, when applied at a local context. The findings were then further divided into three categories: usage (what type of activities did the installation enable?), users (for whom were they enabled?) and change (indicators of how the site has changed), reflecting the notions of Tactical Urbanism. While certain changes have been merely “tactical”, others were more substantial; businesses flourished, traffic safety increased, the space has become a meeting place and therefore, it has now got an identity. Immediate change was evident in the process of the physical change when the plaza was constructed, but what has also followed is a continuous change. Even though the plaza with its painted dots may not look like much, a new space for engagement and interaction has been created, both physically and mentally. In addition, converting a street for the cars into a plaza dedicated to pedestrians is especially symbolic in a city like Los Angeles, where the automobile has been the predominant mean of transport for the last 60 years and instrumental in shaping the city’s layout. However, the case study also showed that it is one thing to launch a Tactical Urbanism initiative and another thing to maintain it and achieve long-term social changes. The examined concepts and models to evaluate whether a public space can be considered successful are not always useful. The Sunset Triangle Plaza has certainly changed, but it has implied a continuous change – for better and for worse. Thus, this study also shows that it is evident that the idea of the “organically emerged” city can imply both opportunities and limitations.