Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-220).

Architecture is the embodiment and concretization of the structures of freedom, domination, capitalism, democracy, and other institutions that have an effect on people (West, 1997). Among these institutions is the construct of race. Race is a classification system derived from the color of human skin, with economic and symbolic value attached relative to skin color on a continuum from “dark” to “light”. This system was invented by Europeans in order to justify their enslavement of Africans. Within the Euro-American race construct, Black and other “colored” bodies are “raced”, whereas White bodies are the default, the norm, and considered “raceless” (Kendi, 2016). Forms, spaces and places are also assigned racial classifications. The racialization “Black” and “White” forms, spaces and places are recognized explicitly by people called Black and indirectly by people who need to believe that they are White, even as they choose to obscure or ignore that recognition (Lipsitz, 2007); to enforce racelessness is, to abhor Toni Morrison, itself a racial act (Savelson, 1997). This racialization of space can be seen in the designation of Congo Square as “Beauregard Square” in 1893, honoring the memory of a Confederate general who fought for the continuation of the practice of slavery in the very year of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision’s enshrinement of the farcical doctrine of “separate but equal”. The site was a social and commercial gathering space for indigenous people before the founding of New Orleans (Walker, 2004) and became one of the foremost sites of African cultural expression in the Americas. Attempts to destroy the Blackness of the space continued with the erection of a Beaux-Arts style Municipal Auditorium used for White supremacist rallies on the site; and the fencing off of the square to hinder its free use by the people called Black who inhabit the Treme neighborhood today (Crutcher, 2010). Such characterizations have profound effects on the lives of the people who inhabit, occupy and move through that space, enforcing White privilege and White supremacy while continually degrading the economic and social value of Black life. The denial of access and opportunity enabled by the racialized characterization of space leads to death, economic, social and literal, for people called Black in America, death as visible in household wealth statistics as in videos of police murder (Ellison, 1952; Patterson 1982; Rankine, 2014). Whitney M. Young, Jr, in his speech to the 1968 convention of the AIA, castigated the profession for its “thunderous silence and callous indifference to the cause of civil rights”. I repeat Young’s charge and add that the White-dominated discipline of architecture fails to consider or willfully ignores the capacity of the built environment to perpetuate systems of White privilege and White supremacy, thus implicating the discipline as an accessory in the deaths above enumerated. In the face of this implication, architecture faces a crisis of moral and political legitimacy (West, 1997). Through conversation with scholars, activists, artists, architects, educators and students, the author aims to raise consciousness of architecture and education’s roles in perpetuating White privilege and White supremacy. The author aims to speculate on what a built environment encouraging opposition to and dismantling of these systems - an actively antiracist built environment - might look like. The vehicle for this thesis is the Freedom School of Design, a public high school for architecture and design in New Orleans, Louisiana following the tenets of “freedom education” employed by civil rights workers in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The FSD will include a design- build residential component for a limited number of students and a variety of outdoor spaces of varying degrees of publicness and privacy, activity and passivity. The FSD will respond to the architectural object of the Robert E. Lee monument and to other manifestations of White supremacy in the built environment of its context. The design of its forms an spaces will balance the consideration of architecture’s ability to reinforce or dismantle political systems within a matrix of practicality and symbolism. / 0 / SPK / archives@tulane.edu

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 21, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 218-225). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 132-145).

In the context of South African poverty and unemployment, the government implemented various poverty alleviation programmes with the aim of lifting the poorest people out of their worst situation. This research evaluated the EPWP infrastructure sector in Tshwane in trying to understand its effectiveness, sustainability and relevance as a poverty alleviation tool. The study applied a quantitative approach with interspersed with that of qualitative research for statistical information as well as in-depth insight from experts in the field. Data collection was done through document analysis of reports, published papers and structured interviews with experts within the EPWP. The findings revealed that the EPWP is managing to partially meet its objectives; however, it has also shown that the question of its sustainability is still a concern as it only serves limited long term needs. It has shown that its policies replicate that of international practices; however, the implementation part is still a challenge that needs to be addressed. The recommendations were also made to contribute towards the improvement of the infrastructure.

To the average American citizen, the thought of constructing a public building is completely unachievable. With price points in the millions of dollars (Building Journal), average citizens rely upon the government, wealthy individuals, or corporations to construct the communities they live in. However, the contemporary landscape of financing buildings has provided an alternative: crowdfunding. Crowdfunding, or the pooling of money from a large number of individuals in order to collectively reach a larger funding goal (Davies), injects a democratic system into the traditional construction process, allowing individuals to vote on projects they support by either choosing to fund or not to fund the project. At this time, buildings that use crowdfunding strategies are designed in the same manner as those funded from traditional sources. However, this reliance on traditional design methods is proving to be detrimental to crowdfunded projects with 70% of all projects failing. By divorcing crowdfunded buildings from e design methodologies that are used to design traditional buildings, a new mode of design can be created that is more beneficial to crowdfunded projects. This new mode of design will capitalize on the differences in how these types of projects and traditional projects are funded. Crowdfunded projects are formed through the accumulation of resources over a length of time whereas traditional projects are given all of their resources at once. In order to take advantage of this rate of accumulation, crowdfunded projects should be defined by the aggregation of individual parts which can be funded independently. As parts are funded, they are added to a growing whole. While the final form will be unknown to the advocates of the project and the project designer, they will be responsible for designing the elements that will amount to the building and composing the strategy for how the elements will be organized. This process will allow the project to adapt the resources at hand and the desires of the community, gene ting a manifestation of the project's support by the community in real time. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Advances in networking and communications technology have changed the way we operate within cities and how cities are linked to the larger national context. Communication technology is becoming increasingly Internet hosted and is increasingly demanding of physical space. As communication technology advances, the typologies within our cities made to host these technologies must also advance. Inequitable access to Internet is widening the gap between higher-income professionals and struggling lower-income people. The successful city of today is one that acts as a system for producing and inciting human success for both the individual and the community. A city's success is determined by the quality of its creative innovation. New Orleans is a city of creative people, but many lower income people lack the resources they need to get ahead in an increasingly connected and competitive creative market. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Thesis (MDev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2007 / Refer to document

published_or_final_version / Surveying / Master / Master of Science in Construction Project Management

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-292). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.