This thesis investigates the extent to which human rights law may be used to challenge the forced eviction of people who live in public space under public space laws. The specific case study is the operation of Darwin City Council By-law 103, which bans camping, or adults sleeping in a public place between sunset and sunrise. The by-law is used to criminalise or forcibly evict people who live in public space in Darwin in the Northern Territory. Darwin has the highest proportionate number of homeless people of any capital city in Australia. Indigenous people are significantly over-represented. The thesis charts recent legislative changes across Australia to demonstrate that public space laws, such as Darwin City Council By-law 103, continue to be popular public policy responses to law and order concerns. This legal regulation is being undertaken without ensuring compliance with international human rights standards. There has been a marked increase in Australia of the use of available domestic and international human rights tools to raise concerns about the enforcement of these laws against people living in public space. Through a review of secondary sources, the thesis establishes that some 15 human rights have been identified as potentially engaged by such enforcement but Australian jurisprudence has yet to emerge. The thesis selects the human right to privacy, family and home for detailed analysis. It interrogates available evidence from Darwin, international and comparative jurisprudence and secondary sources to determine whether the forced eviction of people living in public space under Darwin City Council By-law 103 may be found to violate the right to respect for privacy, family and home in a particular case. The study aims to make a specific contribution to growing endeavours to promote the human rights of people who are homeless, including people who live in public space. Its detailed analysis is designed to support a human rights litigation strategy at both domestic and international level, in order to challenge the extent to which people living in public space are subjected to criminalisation and forced eviction when they have nowhere else to live.

<p>The question of whether cinema is democratic is a vast one, which requires research limitations of time and place to actually find an answer for. In this study, the place will be the United States, because nowhere else is the industry of cinema so powerful and generates more elements of popular culture; where also the country is considered to be democratic and practicing freedom of speech. The time will be the period following 11th September 2001: a date after which American politics has been chaotic both inside and outside the country, consequently producing a very controversial subject matter to debate in films.</p><p>However, the question still remains huge as the answer might differentiate according to the varying scope different types of cinema productions may hold. Accordingly, we will limit our focus within the field of political alternative films; and apply and seek to verify Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere in analysing their content to reach inferences on democracy. Afterwards, enlarging our perspective to the American cinema industry by and large, we will argue that the economic value of a film and the subject it deals with undermine the democratic ideals of equal representation the public sphere carries, as capitalism enters the scene. Some other dilemmas will emerge on this path: are movies being imposed by a dominant class in order to make the audience passive towards their environment? Or is it the audience, the people themselves, who create the aspects of popular culture in cinema?</p><p>Finally, we are to put the first question in other terms: does cinema socially and democratically represent its viewers’ ideology? In the limit of our empirical means, giving responses to those questions will be the heart of this thesis.</p>

No description available.

Digital media technologies are becoming increasingly and extensively integrated into our way of living. We communicate, inform and entertain ourselves through media technologies in disparate spaces. When digital technology is integrated into our everyday environment, the border between media interfaces and physical environments is blurred. Traditional divisions of spaces dissolve and are rearranged, complicating the linkages between private and public spheres.   The key phenomenon shaping these experiences with digital media technologies is interactivity. Interactivity intersects these spaces allowing users of mediated content to be affected by the actual, and vice versa. This study has emerged through the need for further research focusing on the term interactivity in today’s media practices, contributing with more targeted research and theoretical work concerning the interconnection between space and digital technologies. The study pursues interactivity by taking on a different perspective than earlier research, staging a qualitative study from a grounded theory perspective complemented by phenomenological theory. In this way interactivity is approached from diverse angles, moving away from earlier fixations on technology and placing it within social and spatial contexts.   The study uses three contemporary Scandinavian interactive art installations, ‘Colour by Numbers’, ‘Emotional Cities’ and ‘Climate on the Wall’, to explore how interactivity plays into the relation between humans, technology and social space. The integration of interactive art installations in public space raises issues regarding humans’ sense of space and human relations vis-à-vis interactions with such artworks. The study finds evidence that interactive art installations can shift humans’ perceptions of space, allowing them to have social experiences and feel locally connected or anchored. Humans do not necessarily become placeless due to interactive technology. It may as well enhance space by converging with existing spatial references. The mediated and the actual may re-enforce each other expanding and transcending diverse spaces.

Public spaces are the core elements of shaping the social life in the cities, and design of public spaces is a key component of urban design. As tools of inclusive or exclusive design methods of public space vary, user group&rsquo / s publicness increase or decrease relatively. So, who is defined as public for the design of public space is the main concern shaping the built environment. Centers are the peak points of publicness in cities and as a central activity administration is indispensible for every settlement. Hence, in urban life the relation of the public spaces as parks, squares, streets, plazas with administrative places is the descriptive character of that society. Besides, capital cities have accumulated administrative landuses and their design has social, symbolic and cultural meaning as well as functional use. In this study, dimensions of publicness as ownership, control, physical condition, invitingness and welcoming aspect and social animation area discussed and comparative case study put forward these dimensions of Bakanliklar District of Ankara with regard to administrative city centers of Brasilia, Canberra, Islamabad which have similar historical background.

Urban public spaces have been considered an essential part of cities throughout history. Over the span of urban life, public spaces have continuously reflected the complexities of their cities’ cultural, social, and economic contexts. Public spaces play a particular role in the life of urban areas, whether as memorable, accessible, or meaningful places. However, recent researches on public spaces reveal that some are currently experiencing a decline in their physical design and in their use. Many writers and scholars of public spaces issues identify a general decline, for which the causes and prescriptions are different according to the context of urban planning and designing. Thus, in this period of change in using public spaces, it becomes important to evaluate and investigate actual use of contemporary public spaces, how and why they are used, particularly in terms of their physical deterioration and/or improvement. Therefore, an opportunity exists to reveal and understand the interrelationship between physical patterns of contemporary public spaces and people’s activity patterns within such spaces. This thesis relates to urban public spaces uses, particularly public squares, and to the relationship between their physical and activity patterns. It considers the design features of urban public space, focusing on people’s activities and various forms of use – from passive to active engagement to understand the activity-physical patterns relationship in a selected urban public space. It therefore asks: How do people’s activities relate to the physical patterns of an urban public space? And how are people’s activities affected and encouraged by urban public space’s physical features? In order to address these questions, this thesis employs a methodology that combines direct field observations, activity mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), as applied to a selected public space in Toronto, Mel Lastman Square to reveal the activity patterns that appear to be correlated with particular use of design features within the square. Thus, the value of this thesis is in studying the relationship between the activities and the physical settings of urban public spaces through using a proposed methodology and exploring GIS as an analytical tool to describe the activity-patterns relationship. Analyzing this relationship will add insights into and complement the application of urban design theories and practice which could lead to further studies to improve the public spaces design and planning process.

This study investigates the politics of public space and social fear that work to create new scenarios for social and racial segregation in the processes of gentrification, such as privatization, fortification, and symbolism in public art in a major southern metropolitan city. The Public Art Program of Atlanta, Georgia is implementing public art projects at various sites, chosen based on being in depressed neighborhoods in the hope that it will bring new life to blighted urban areas and change the current use of space. Through an applied anthropological and multi-perspective approach, this study explores how middle and upper class residents currently regard their in-town neighborhood, surrounded by historic black universities and neighborhoods, public housing, and having a highly visible homeless population. Fortification, privatization, and residents’ response to the public art project speak profoundly to the processes of gentrification that are occurring there.

After decades of cuts to federal funding, cities were left with few resources for public services, particularly parks and open spaces. Current trends of massive gentrification in New York City are changing the housing market and other components of the private sector. In addition to altering socio-spatial dynamics in the housing and consumer markets, gentrification can alter public spaces as well. By comparing three New York City neighborhoods at different stages of gentrification, I analyzed socio-spatial dynamics, public and private funding, event programming, and ethnographically observed changes in the physical and social landscape of the park, and neighborhood, over time.

La presente tesis estudia el uso que realizan los habitantes de los colectivos minoritarios en los espacios públicos del casco antiguo de Barcelona identificando las principales transformaciones de tipo funcional, significados, delimitaciones entre otros, que se realizan en forma diferenciada respecto al diseño original del lugar y/o respecto a los distintos grupos que pueden reunirse en él. De esta manera el espacio público aparece como un escenario donde se suceden distintas dinámicas, desde la participación de la multiplicidad de actores y actividades hasta la segregación y apropiación espacial. El estudio muestra que la participación y el conflicto, en el espacio público en Ciutat Vella, depende de numerosos factores, entre los cuales, la diferencia cultural es fundamental al momento de explicar los usos, símbolos y tipo de actores que allí se expresan. De esta manera, se hace necesario considerar la variable multicultural tanto en el análisis como en el diseño del lugar.Para el estudio, la comprensión de esta realidad es una forma de hacer visible distintas formas de habitar y entender el espacio público y sienta las bases para reflexionar sobre nuestro entorno, nuestros prejuicios profundamente enraizados y sobre la responsabilidad en la propuesta de nuevos proyectos integradores. / The present thesis looks at how minority groups are using public space in the historic part of Barcelona. It identifies the principal transformations characterized by the original functional use of the space, the intrinsic meaning that each space has in the end and the social and the cultural borders that the different groups end up creating in regards to the urban space. In this way, public space appears like a great stage where distinctive forces, from the performance of many actors and their activities to the inevitable segregation and seizure of the space interact.The study shows that the participation and conflict, that seems to occur at the same time in the "Old City" depends upon many different factors, among which, the fact that cultural differences are fundamental in the moment one has to explain uses, symbols and the people that are acting out their part in this great drama. It is therefore necessary that we consider the impact of the multicultural diversity both in the analysis and the design of the space in question.For the sake of the study, understanding this reality is one way to bring to light the different ways in which people have made the area their home, to understand the nature of the public space and to establish the base from which we are able to reflect on our environments, the profound character of our prejudices and about our responsibility in proposing new integrating projects.

En nuestra cultura el museo ocupa un lugar privilegiado simbólicamente, pero también físicamente, en la ciudad. Y no tan sólo lo ocupa, sino lo crea, lo define, lo cambia y le da significado. Esta tesis demuestra que ese lugar hoy está en el clúster de museos. Y en el clúster, fuera del cual deviene casi imposible contemplar el museo, el museo cambia; cambian el significado y la importancia de sus aspectos básicos. Mi hipótesis es que en el proyecto del museo el aspecto urbanístico –su lugar y relación con la ciudad– toma primacía sobre el aspecto museográfico y arquitectónico. El contenido –la colección y el montaje– y la arquitectura del museo se funden en la densidad cultural del clúster como lugar del museo, destacando ese lugar y urbanismo en primer plano. El lugar – el clúster– se convierte así en clave para una nueva lectura del museo y de la ciudad. Apoyando la idea de multi-lugar, con múltiples funciones, significados y públicos, el clúster de museos se desmiembra. Se considera como ubicación física en la ciudad, forma urbana que el clúster toma, dinámicas y relaciones que establece, y lugar público que crea en esta interacción con la ciudad. A través de un análisis histórico, comparativo y crítico de estas cuatro dimensiones del lugar de museos, en los cuatro capítulos, la disertación confirma la hipótesis, como también la teoría del locus genii, mostrando el papel fundamental del clúster de museos como fuerza que organiza, genera y transforma el sistema de museos y el sistema de ciudad. Demuestra que el boom de museos, creando, cambiando y acentuando los clústeres de museos, representa una revolución en la relación y concepción del museo y de la ciudad. Desde el clúster de museos se nota toda una sucesión de cambios e innovaciones radicales en el museo, en el mismo clúster de museos y en la ciudad, a través de los cuales se explica la primacía del aspecto urbanístico en el proyecto del museo, y la teoría se amplía a la importancia del aspecto museográfico en el proyecto de la ciudad. El clúster de museos se eleva a rango del manifiesto urbanístico, mostrando que los nuevos modelos del museo-clúster, del clúster de museos y de la «ciudad de museos» son diferentes escalas o niveles de un urbanismo de densidades y flujos que maximiza el uso e impacto de los museos y espacios públicos entre ellos en la movilización y la difusión de la cultura y de la información cultural.Aunque el estudio abarca un espacio histórico y geográfico más amplio para demostrar la extensión de este fenómeno todavía poco investigado e insuficientemente conocido, se acentúan las transformaciones de los museos y sus clústeres y sistemas en las últimas tres décadas, en las principales ciudades europeas, incluyendo también los casos notables de otros continentes que sugieren las posibles direcciones de un futuro desarrollo. / In our culture the museum occupies a privileged place symbolically, but also physically, in the city. And not only does it occupy it, but it also creates, defines, changes it, and gives it meaning. This thesis demonstrates that that place is in the museum cluster. And in the cluster, out of which it becomes almost impossible to contemplate the museum, the museum changes; the meaning and the importance of its basic aspects change. My hypothesis is that in the museum project the urbanistic aspect – its place and relationship with the city – takes precedence over its museographic and architectonic aspects.The content – collection and display – and the architecture of the museum merge into the cultural density of the cluster as the place of the museum, highlighting that place and urbanism in the foreground. The place – the cluster – thus becomes the key to a new reading of the museum and of the city. Supporting the idea of multi-place, with multiple functions, meanings and audiences, the cluster is dismembered. It is considered as the physical location in the city, the urban form the cluster takes, the dynamics and relationships it establishes, and the public place which it creates in this interaction with the city.Through a historical, comparative and critical analysis of these four dimensions of the place of museums, in the four chapters, the dissertation proves the hypothesis, as well as the theory of the locus genii, showing the fundamental role of the museum cluster as a force that organizes, generates and transforms the museum system and the urban system. It demonstrates that the museum boom, by creating, changing, and emphasizing museum clusters, represents a revolution in the relationship and conception of the museum and of the city. From the museum cluster is observed a whole range of radical changes and innovations in the museum, in the very museum cluster and in the city, through which the primacy of the urbanistic aspect in the project of the museum is explained, and the theory is extended to the importance of the museum aspect in the project of the city. The cluster of museums is raised in rank of the urban manifesto, showing that new models of the museum-cluster, the museum cluster, and the "city of museums" are different scales or levels of an urbanism of densities and flows that maximizes the use and impact of museums and public spaces between them in the mobilization and dissemination of culture and cultural information.Although the study includes a wider historical and geographic space to demonstrate the extension of this still little investigated and insufficiently well-known phenomenon, the accent is on the transformations of the museums and their clusters and systems during last three decades, in the principal European cities, including also the remarkable cases from other continents that suggest the possible directions of a future development.