This inquiry explores the notion of how an urban grocery store might improve its connection to the local community. Through interviews with four subject matter experts, sessions with the store management team, and an online customer survey, I assess the characteristics that allow the store to form a stronger connection to the community. Contributors were actual customers, allowing me to provide very specific feedback to the sponsor. My findings show that there is a strong link between positive one-on-one interactions that affect recurrence for grocery shoppers; cleanliness has significant interaction with high quality, fair prices, and good selection; and sporting team jerseys worn by the staff reflect positively towards the customer's view of the store being a good community citizen. I conclude that organizations cannot connect directly with communities; however, staff can connect with individual shoppers, thereby contributing to the store's association to the community.

Phenomenal readings are used to identify the distance between the apprehension of place and place as a repository of design intents, to test a thesis that modern urban developments manifest meaning as a built language containing all the processes of understanding integral with an orchestration of perceptive sense. The usage of the phenomenal reading as a method in operation should place facets of the positivistic model of architecture into question.

Tel Aviv's architecture and urban fabric were shaped by the forces of the nationalist movement of Hebrew Revivalism and the progressivist modern movements. A series of local circumstances including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the clash of values and memories introduced by different immigrant groups have also played an important role in Tel Aviv's identity. The search for a suitable architectural language capable of representing the New Hebrew collective identity entered a new phase when Modernism was adopted as the National Style. Tel Aviv's urban and architectural transformations mirror the changes in the collective identity of its residents as it rapidly evolved from its role as the locus of the Hebrew national revivalists to a cosmopolitan outward looking urban center. Progressivist obsessions brought about periods of amnesia during which the city failed to recognized some of its own "permanences" and as a result became self destructive. Whether these dynamics relate back to the Hebraic concepts of Space-Time is left open as a subject for speculation.

Architecture can be defined as the manifold of space, movements, and events. This project, located in the City, utilizes movement as the primary ordering device for the production of space and the encounter of events. Movement, both determined and aleatory, can be understood to have spatial consequences which locate and materialize the architectural project. The repertoire and methodology of this thesis utilizes analytic portraits of observed movements within an urban context to determine the location, extent, density, and program of the architectural project. This thesis posits that form and space which is produced in this manner will be primarily conditioned by the local contexts and has the potential to proliferate relationships with those contexts.

I analyse a two period model of urban development in which a non-neutral land value tax accelerates city growth by encouraging the development of vacant land in the first period and decreases the size of the city in the second period. In contrast, a wage tax decreases the size of the city in both periods by increasing the cost of labor. At the level of an individual city a non-neutral land value tax results in a smaller dead weight loss relative to a wage tax of equal yield. However, this result is not generally true when we study the relative efficiency of a land value tax and a wage tax in a system of identical cities. For this case a wage tax is relatively more efficient under a set of plausible restrictions. This analysis demonstrates the danger of making national policy prescriptions on the basis of results for an individual city.

A major determinant of energy conservation is the physical form of an urban area. Different forms and structures offer inherently different possibilities for conserving energy. This is particularly evident in the transportation sector where the conjunction of population density, employment opportunity, transportation system, and service characteristics largely determine the levels of savings that can be attained. With development and redevelopment, urban form and its structure change, sometimes making transitions to radically different "states". Thus, the problem confronting policy makers, interested in saving energy, might be seen as one of appropriately guiding development in the direction of various urban forms, or morphological "states", offering further opportunities for energy savings. This problem is complicated by the necessity of sustaining acceptable levels of social benefits, variously expressed by attributes such as mobility, development density and public expenditure. Furthermore, political pressure often constrains policy-making within a relatively short time-frame, yielding immediate gains that do not maximize longer term benefits. Data are developed, using a sequence of computer models, describing salient formal and performance characteristics of a number of theoretical urban forms, or morphological structures. These data are further related within an overall structure of transportation supply and demand (and the identified domains within the framework) within which maximum energy benefits are to be found. Estimations are then made of costs associated with moving from one morphological state to another. These estimations are portrayed as gradients, or surfaces, within a computer-generated three-space, where measures of "level of effort" (cost), morphological type and energy performance form the independent axes. Movement along the surfaces, occasioned by policy initiatives, are then dynamically represented by interchanging surfaces, depending upon the position within the three-space. As a policy-making objective, the aim might be to traverse the surfaces in order to attain higher levels of energy performance with minimum cost. The features of the surfaces also suggest sectors in which achievement of such an objective may be prohibitive. The results of the study suggest a planning approach towards managing dynamics rather than the achievement of some arbitrary end conditions. This issue represents a different view of planning, which may be regarded as a radical departure from traditional orthodox practices.

Men have been neglected in development discourse to the extent where, for example, demographic research on men and fathers has been sparse. As a result we do not know how many men in South Africa are fathers and there is no available survey that measures this statistic. This study attempts to fill a gap in our knowledge of fathers by asking how many men are fathers, whether they are resident or absent, and what type and level of involvement they have with their children. A household questionnaire (adapted from the General Household Survey) was used to estimate the number of biological fathers in 100 households in Clermont. Interviews were conducted to explore reasons for existing living arrangements between the father and his partner and children. Some key findings from the research include: the family structure of households in Clermont is extremely varied; a majority of men over the age of18 appear to have fathered a child; men willingly identified themselves as a father; and a significant number of men live apart from their children. With respect to absent fathers, the research supports Mott 's theory (1990) that there is a continuum of involvement with their children. Many of Clermont's absent fathers make a voluntary economic contribution to their children and they visit their children on a regular basis (usually weekly or monthly). In several cases where a father was not making an economic contribution this was because he was unemployed. Very few cases were recorded where a father had broken off contact with his children completely. Some fathers lived separately from their children because they had employment in another area. Others lived apart from their children because they were unemployed; it was clear from the research that while men perceived their role of provider as important this was not the only criterion to make for a good role model as a father. Tradition was another important reason why men did not reside with their children; cases were recorded where the father could not afford to pay lobola which would allow him to marry the mother. Another reason for father absence was because a new relationship had been formed by the mother or father, or both. A significant proportion of both resident and absent fathers stated they would like to spend more time with their children. This suggests policy and activities that promote increased involvement of fathers in the welfare of their children would be welcomed by the fathers of Clermont. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

Telecommunications liberalisation in India was embarked with the dual goals of promoting efficiency, through competition and establishment world class telecommunications networks, and maximise universal access to telecommunications services as a developmental goal. Interconnection norms are crucial to the success of the liberalisation policy and the thesis aims to analyse the factors that should be considered in designing an interconnection regime and, the role of the regulatory authority with respect to interconnection agreements and disputes in India. The thesis focuses on how interconnection norms could contribute to the above stated dual goals of India's telecom policy. The thesis also includes a detailed analysis of the liberalisation process and legal framework governing telecommunications in India.

The main aim of the study is to assess the success in performance of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Provincial Governmentâs strategic management of integrated development planning as was expected by the Constitution and subsequent developmental policies, legislation, programmes and projects from 1994 to 2006. The literature review indicated that strategic management consists of three phases, namely planning, implementation and control, each phase with its own sub-steps. These elements formed the basis for the development of a Strategic Management Model represented by the following âKeyâ: KEY TO STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT MODEL Phase Step Activity and Evaluation Criteria 1 Initiate and agree on strategic management process 2 Clarify organisational mandates 3 Identify strategic issues facing the organisation 4 Formulate vision and goals 5 Undertake SWOT analysis: determine internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats Planning 6 Formulate and adopt strategies to address strategic issues 7 Planning of plan Implementation implementation 8 Phased implementation 9 Monitoring 10 Evaluation Control 11 Review The Model is then applied to evaluate the strategic management of two KZN Provincial wide programmes, namely the KZN Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) from 1994 to 2000, and KZN municipal integrated development planning from 2000 to 2006, both of which aim to substantiate the following four hypotheses: (1) The KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Governmentâs execution of the strategic management of integrated development planning in KZN to advance development in KZN was successful; (2) The KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government undertook successfully an initiative to improve alignment and capacitating of Provincial Departments and Local Government for them to be able to undertake integrated development planning in a sustainable manner; (3) The Strategic Management Model for the management of integrated development planning set out in the study is a handy tool could be presented in a narrative format and/or in a matrix or table format, depending on the particular situation or management preferences; and (4) The application of the Strategic Management Model in KZN confirms issues and trends highlighted in the literature review of the strategic management of integrated development planning. The advancement of international theoretical thought on strategic management is also addressed. Several lessons learnt from the strategic management of integrated development planning in KZN are discussed. The study concluded by making several recommendations to improve KZNâs performance in the field of the strategic management of integrated development planning.

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