This project is interested in the ways that second-generation Muslim women experience public space, in particular with respect to how their identities and sense of belonging are shaped through everyday encounters in public. This implicates the reactions and behaviours of strangers who they meet in public, their own bodily comportment, and the ideas and values communicated by their parents and other co-ethnics about women’s place in public space, as well as the ways that religiosity may enhance or hinder everyday belonging. Through the use of qualitative, one-on-one interviews, this research seeks to investigate daily experiences within Ottawa, Canada, particularly with respect to how such interactions inform a sense of (dis)comfort and belonging in public space in Canadian society. Moreover, this project is interested in the negotiation that many second-generation Muslim women undertake between family and ethno-religious community values and those of mainstream Canadian society in urban public spaces. In order to address these topics, the study examines Muslim women’s everyday experiences in public – the ways in which visibility and generational status can influence daily encounters and (dis)comfort, as well as women’s ability to actively negotiate their identity and belonging through engagement with strangers and acquaintances.

This thesis aims to describe in depth the Network of Provision Services to Public Space Users (REDEP), which is a new formalization program for street vendors in Bogota. The development of this study contributes to the research about street vending policies in Bogota, which have been studied little by the academy. To achieve a depth description of this program, this study approached three important aspects of the REDEP: the rationale behind its creation, its legitimation and its outcomes. In order to do this, this thesis has used Foucault’s concept of Discipline and the policy approach Aestheticization of Poverty described by Roy. In addition, Bogota’s street vending policies between 1990 and 2005 has been analyzed. Finally, 22 vendors working in REDEP’s kiosks and two officials working in REDEP’s management were interviewed. This thesis concludes that the creation of the REDEP has as main cause the negative perception of peddlers as threatening population to development of the Bogota as a “democratic” and ”equalitarian” city. Like other formalization initiatives, the program has aimed to formalize and discipline street vendors through the construction of kiosks and points of sale. REDEP’s outcomes according to vendor’s perceptions have not been completely positive in aspects like sales, working conditions and levels of participation.

“It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question ‘Who am I?’ than by some such riddle as ‘Where is here?’” - Northrop Frye Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity. – Marshall McLuhan As Canadians we struggle with issues of identity. Our land is so vast that it can never be simply categorized and our culture is so diverse and rich that it can never be reduced to a single group or ancestry. In Ontario, the question of identity is equally complex. Larger than many counties, Ontario is made up of three distinct geographic regions, its edges defined by borders on five US states and two provinces, and it is home to one of the most culturally diverse populations in the world. Ontario holds 40% of Canada’s population and Toronto, it’s capital, is the largest city in the country. Sitting at the very centre of Toronto’s educational and ceremonial core is Queen’s Park, home of the Provincial Legislature the place from which Ontario is governed and the place which is tasked with embodying and representing all of Ontario. Composed of a 19th century building and a generous public landscape, Queen’s Park is easily recognizable at a distance, yet it suffers from a deficit of meaning and identity. The park may ‘work’ in the most basic sense but leaves much to be desired for one of the most prominent, and symbolically significant places in both the city and the province. Over the course of its 150 years of history, the park has seen the disappearance of Taddle creek, various alterations in the landscape, the accrued collection of monuments and memorials, the demolition and construction of several buildings and countless public gatherings. All of these manipulations, deletions, additions and events fail to suggest anything other than our society remains supplicant to greater powers, disconnected from its environment and unsure of its identity. Yet, in spite of all these issues, Queen’s Park is full of potential. The goal of this thesis is to test the capacity of architecture to give voice to a new vision for Ontario’s capital that more fully reflects the forces at work in society. Equally significant for this thesis has been my own parallel quest for meaning and identity as a woman in the 21st century who is both prospective architect and engaged citizen. I deeply felt a need to find architectural sources of inspiration founded on compassion, empathy and an engagement with the land. This desire for meaning has led me to discover the ancestral heritage of Ontario and to take ownership of my own roots. These two streams, one architectural and one personal are woven together to build a design approach for Queen’s Park. The thesis is organized in four parts, completing one cycle of design. Part 1: ‘Stories of Migration’ uses female voices extending back to the land’s geological formation in order to invent a mythology for Toronto and to engage with the voice of the other. Part 2: ‘Capitols of Identity’ uses case studies of civic architecture and public space in Ontario to explore the relationship between power, landscape and place in cities. Part 3: ‘Messages of Queen’s Park’ recovers the lost identity of this urban artifact by forging more meaningful connections to its physical and metaphorical context. And finally, Part 4: offers a concluding vision to the building and landscape which create memorable spaces for civic engagement and play for the people of Ontario.

The contemporary North American believes that you can purchase happiness. We search in boxes labeled new and improved, looking for products that are forever bigger, stronger, and faster. We want these things because they will make our lives easier, make us look prettier, and bring us social acceptance. It is our social insecurities that blindly drive this lifestyle. Happiness cannot be sold, and we have become mindless in our consumption. It is in the heart of the suburban world where you can find the beginning of the end. It is the North American shopping mall. We created it as means to meet our demands for more convenient access to stores and services. Its design was manipulated, unapologetically perfected, and rigorously overproduced. The mall has replaced our town squares and main streets with fields of asphalt, yields of the same giant signs, neon lights and brand names. The public realm has been privatized and commercialized. The zombie apocalypse is upon us. The shopping mall stands among us as the reanimated corpse of the dead downtown and represents the loss of great space. Through horror films and personal inflection, a biography of the mall, and a literary dissection of its contemporaries, this thesis examines the misconceptions of North American public spaces through the shopping mall and branded culture. This thesis rediscovers the practise of creating great space through an architectural discourse of the Humbertown Shopping Centre. We desperately need spaces for the living. I argue for public spaces that serve no commercial intent, but rather nourish our desires for authentic human interaction.

The reality of cities is that, no matter how designed, controlled, or planned they are, people will do as they like. They will find ways to live and move through them that suit their purposes, even if this means going against a ‘designed’ system. In the case of South Africa during apartheid, this movement was obstructed by institutionalised segregation and State oppression. Apartheid, which means ‘apart’ and ‘hood’ in Afrikaans, was an attempt to inscribe a power structure into the spatial framework of a territory, based on notions of capitalism, race, and hygiene. As a mechanism of social control, it relied heavily on concepts of space and power to achieve the white ideal of racial segregation. Although the spaces of apartheid may be seen as fixed and concrete, internal contradictions contested their authority. While apartheid legislated, controlled, and monitored the movement of all South Africans, the actions of many of its citizens created counter mechanisms which diminished its effect. Despite the official days of apartheid now being over, the question remains: how do people create and maintain public life in the face of an administrative system of control? The spaces created by the everyday actions of those living under apartheid - the stories, music, dance, and protests that were part of the country’s culture of subversion and resistance - were, for years, the site of public life in South Africa.

Thesis (MArch(Prof)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

A spontaneous act is done because of a sudden urge to do something. I am interested in creating a space that exists with the purpose of hosting opportunities and action that are not predefined. My point of departure is a green area in Axelsberg where I have created a proposal for a type of public space, that differs from current ones. In my process I have actively worked with the site by physically being there to experience it. I have transformed the space in various ways both by combining improvisational and performative techniques with more planned actions. Afterwards, I have analyzed and learned from people’s reactions and behaviors towards the changes.

Children have long been one of the biggest user-groups of public space. Children’s experiences of public space have not been fully explored by the planning practice. Children’s viewpoint regarding the city have often been overlooked by the adult world, since children are often seen as lacking rational thought and dependent on parents.  A relatively new planning method for public open space, called Sociotop Mapping has long been used in the city of Stockholm. The Sociotop Mapping have been an effective way of implementing people’s experiences into the process of planning.  The aim of this study was to explore children’s experiences of Public Space by using the Sociotop Method, as developed in Stockholm. The Sociotop Mapping gives actual meaning to human experiences of the city by describing its public space with qualitative values. This study was performed with a qualitative method consisting of two parts. The first part gathered data on public space with placeinventories in the district of Ålidhem in Umeå. The second part of the study derived the experiences of children with in-depth focus group discussions with 14 children living in Umeå. The study concluded that children often find enjoyment in public space, but sometimes might the public space be in crisis, since it cannot handle people that are strangers to one another.

In this dissertation I examine the social functions of neighborhood plazas by tracing the development of a Classic Maya (AD 200-900) ritual and residential complex at the ancient city of Xultun, Guatemala. In ancient as in modern times, public open spaces were essential to urban life; yet their functions and meanings could vary within and among societies. Using archaeological and architectural data from three plazas and an adjacent residential complex, I identify a shift towards increased public spaces in the Late Classic period, and link this to the rising importance of displays of power for Xultun's growing population. Located on the northern periphery of Xultun, Los Aves, the focus of the study, is an architectural group consisting of a central residential area with three adjacent plazas to the east, west and northwest. During the Early Classic (AD 250-600) period, only one of the plazas had been built and the layout of the complex was balanced between public and private space. Residents carried out domestic activities within six modest patio groups and used a round platform in the western plaza, Plaza Colibrí, for group rituals. The construction of two new plazas during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900) dramatically changed the composition of Los Aves, tripling the amount of public space. Dominating the neighborhood was a new, larger plaza, Plaza Tecolote, with monumental, ritual architecture that opened to the south towards the city center, easily accessible to those outside of Los Aves. An increase in population at this time necessitated the construction of more domestic structures within the house groups, reducing the amount of proximate patio spaces. Such activities now took place in a new, smaller plaza, Plaza Loro, located in the northwest of the complex, that contained broad steps for seating. In the Early Classic period, Los Aves contained equal parts public and private space, while in the Late Classic period public plazas dominated. I argue that as populations grew, public displays of power became increasingly important, and new, larger plazas were built to accommodate these events. This development broadens our understanding of Classic Maya urbanism.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF UMIT KARTAL, for the Master of Arts degree in PHILOSOPHY, presented on September 29, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: PUBLIC SPACE MUST BE DEFENDED. HANNAH ARENDT'S CONCEPTION OF POLITICS AND THE PUBLIC SPACE: ITS PROMISES AND LIMITS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Kenneth Stikkers This thesis is an examination of Hannah Arendt's reconsideration of the meaning of politics and her systematic search for the recovery of the public spaces. Her scrutiny of the meaning of politics is determined by the disastrous outcomes of totalitarian experiences from both ends of the political spectrum, namely, Nazism and Stalinism. For Arendt, the phenomenon of totalitarianism deserted the human world and brought new issues forth, such as statelessness, rightlessness, homelessness, and worldlessness. These phenomena, Arendt holds, run parallel to the collapse of the essential articulations of the human condition, which can be distinguished in sheer thoughtlessness, speechlessness, and lack of judgment. It is due to these unprecedented and unanticipated issues, which cannot be addressed by traditional political categories, Arendt invites us to grapple with the meaning of politics anew. The basic definition of politics, for Arendt, is human plurality, namely, our coexistence in a common world which enables differences and diversities of perspectives to appear. The question what politics means, for Arendt, is inextricably tied to what its distinctive locus is, namely, the public space or space of appearances. The emergence of the social resulted in blurring the distinctive line between the public realm and the private realm. Then, the recovery of the public space is of a central place in Arendt's political theory. Through Arendt's reconsideration of the meaning of politics and the recovery of the public space we are provided a comprehensive framework to think about a more inclusive and democratic politics. Nevertheless, we are challenged by a set of problems: a very sharp distinction between the public realm and the private realm, a contrast between the social and political, and a lack of systematic interest in democracy. First, I concentrate on Arendt's insightful analysis of politics and the public space in turn. Then I focus on the problematic aspects of her political theory. Finally, I argue that these problematic aspects can be complemented by a comparative reading of Arendt with John Dewey. I conclude that Dewey offers us a more dynamic criterion to decide the line between the private realm and the public realm. Instead of opposing the social to political, Dewey extends the scope of politics by taking every aspects of social life into consideration. The recovery of the public, for him, depends essentially on democracy, which is identified to the experience of local community.