Research indicates that mistakes in site selection in public and private facilities result in less than maximum potential effectiveness. For the public library, suboptimal location can mean reduced access and reduced user patronage. This study demonstrates a methodology for construction of location modelling for public library facilities in diverse urban environments. Six metropolitan library markets are included in the study. / The location models in this study are site-specific, practical, inexpensive, and useful planning tools for library managers facing a plethora of location-related problems that require analysis. / The study utilizes population, spatial, library use and library "attractiveness" variables to: (1) estimate the dispersion of the population and size of market areas; (2) to quantify use levels at an existing facility location based on the estimated market area; (3) to forecast use levels of other locations, i.e., for purposes of siting a new facility, or for closure or re-siting; and (4) to descriptively estimate potential use levels of targeted markets of sub-groups within the population in order to develop new services or to ascertain service levels at any given or new location. / Standard marketing planning and research methods are employed. A computerized geographic information system comprised of U.S. census data facilitated the analysis. / The research conducted and reported and reviewed in this study is meant to set a precedent regarding location analysis for public library facilities. The precedent is simply stated. Location of library facilities effects use and cannot be treated in a cursory or descriptive manner. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 3939. / Major Professor: Mary Alice Hunt. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

The development of computer-based modeling systems has allowed the operationalization of cognitive science issues. Artificial intelligence, the emulation of high-level human capability on the computer, has led to incorporation of systems that model human behavior. Human cognition has become one of the most interested research areas. An approach to handle human cognition by means of personal construct systems is presented in this dissertation. / The dissertation describes a methodology well-suited for designing of a non-traditional knowledge-based system to evaluate personal cognition derived in urban planning as an application field. The research investigates how to elicit and represent cognitive knowledges obtained from individual urbanites through the application of fuzzy relational theory to personal construct theory and repertory grid techniques. / Crucial to this research is to formalize and process the psychological cognition of the urbanites who interact with an urban environment in order to offer useful advice on urban problem. What is needed is a technique to analyze cognitive structures called Hasse diagrams which are instantiations of these perceptive knowledges of human being. This requires a theory of similarity to deal with underlying problems; identification of individual cognitive structures, comparison of structures and investigation of a group of structures. Unlike standard approaches to similarity based on the statistical techniques, the method presented employs a fuzzy relational approach which centers on the fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic, to cover issues of similarity and dissimilarity. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-08, Section: B, page: 4427. / Major Professor: Wyllis Bandler. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This thesis work addresses two research questions regarding sustainability that may be of interest to the planning profession, namely, is it useful and meaningful to measure the sustainability of residential neighborhoods in terms of their long-term viability? And if it is, is it then feasible to design an instrument for measuring neighborhood sustainability that can be used to inform neighborhood-scale planning and decision making? Interpreting from a review of planning literature regarding sustainability at the neighborhood scale that efforts to measure neighborhood sustainability provide insight and knowledge to planners about neighborhood conditions, I followed a step wise process to construct an instrument. This process involved defining sustainability as is relevant at neighborhood scale, identifying forces that influence it, defining the unit of analysis for the measurement instrument, and operationalizing the instrument. It is my conclusion that while it is feasible to construct an instrument for measuring sustainability, it is through additional research work outside of the graduate thesis that such an instrument can successfully be constructed. Due to time and resource constraints, I have only been able to develop an instrument of measurement that may be useful to planners chiefly as a heuristic tool rather than a policy making analytic tool. / Thesis / Master

This dissertation comprises two essays in the field of public finance and urban development. The first essay, 'Interdependence among Municipality, Firms and Households', tackles a contentious issue in local taxation and urban development--whether business development increases the residential tax burden. The second essay, 'Does Tax Competition Exist at the Municipality Level?', examines existence of tax competition at the municipality level Community planners and development officials tend to believe that business development would lower residential property tax burdens by drawing taxes from nonresident business owners. However, these beliefs have recently been challenged by some urban planners and other analysts of the suburban growth process. The first essay provides the first effort to assess relations between residential property tax rate and urban development in a simultaneous framework. It examines not only the impact of business and residential development on the residential tax burden, but also the effect of local fiscal decisions on the intra-metropolitan location of firms and households. Using the data collected from suburb Chicago, business development, especially manufacturing projects, is found decreasing the residential property tax burden while taxes are found detrimental to business development. The diagnostic testing results confirm that taxes, firm and household location decisions are simultaneously determined. That is, empirical studies without modeling them simultaneously would generate biased results It has long been recognized that local governments engage in fiscal competition either for resource or for political support. However, while we observe many cases of fiscal competition, we also notice that some seemingly highly-profit development projects are rejected by locals due to environment concerns. So far, few empirical efforts have been made to address the issue of fiscal competition and none of these studies used the data collected at the municipality level. Using the significance of Moran's I spatial autocorrelation coefficient as an indication of tax competition, the second essay examines property tax rate increases over last 10 years in 109 Chicago suburban municipalities. We find that, although tax rate movements among neighboring communities do cluster, the sources of the observed clustering are not physical proximity. That is, tax competition does not exist / acase@tulane.edu

The Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the core of the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), saw building socialism as its fundamental task. This dissertation elucidates the means by which the regime constructed 'socialism' and evaluates both the effects and the effectiveness of the procedure, using the city of Eisenhuttenstadt as a prism The city was founded in 1950. It provided a tabula rasa, upon which the policies and practices of the SED and the GDR could be engraved and exhibited. It was not 'average,' but representative. Stalinstadt, as the city was known from 1953 to 1961, is instructive as a model for what socialist life actually was in the German Democratic Republic. What happened in Eisenhuttenstadt happened in other cities across the GDR; policies affecting the lives of Stalinstadt's citizens likewise affected East Germans everywhere The official historiography suggests that a new and better type of community was created in Stalinstadt. The collective memory and pride of the residents and builders of the city in their community reinforces the image. Recent studies of the city in all fields, however, have uncovered discordant notes and revealed many of the claims regarding the city as partial truths at best. Why and to what extent Stalinstadt failed to meet the expectations of its founders is one of the central questions of this dissertation By using the extensive records of the SED and the city administration, it evaluates success against the standards they set for themselves. Because the city was a social experiment in which external, historical factors were minimized, the effects of government policy are more clearly distinguishable in Stalinstadt. It may be true that Stalinstadt eventually came to resemble most other cities in East Germany, but it can also be said that most other cities in the GDR came in many ways to resemble Stalinstadt. By examining the city and asking big questions of a small place, this history will contribute to a clearer understanding of life in East Germany / acase@tulane.edu

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Buenos Aires was the site of social conflict in both material and symbolic terms. After Peron's ouster, different groups carried out their struggle for power by reorganizing the material city, by altering urban practices, and by representing Buenos Aires in particular ways in literature and film. There were new types of buildings and new trends in urban development. Lifestyles were more quickly paced. Writers focused on alienated middle-class protagonists wandering the city streets as did a new generation of filmmakers called the Nueva Ola. In this shifting urban landscape, residual and emergent discourses represented the city in distinct ways Certain sectors tried to reassert classic liberal ideology. In texts about Buenos Aires, authors and filmmakers criticized the alienating nature of contemporary urban life while expressing nostalgia for lost humanist principles. Blaming the supposed deterioration of Buenos Aires on the Peronist administration, oligarchic and middleclass sectors attempted to bolster certain spatial configurations that protected them from the working-classes. A concern for maintaining the public/private divide could be seen in both literature and film as well as the practices of the middle classes, particularly in the construction of high-rise apartment buildings and the increased use of automobiles over public transportation At the same time, new types of magazines and new publishing houses were reworking the patterns of cultural production and consumption and circulating their goods to ever wider sectors of the urban population. Incorporating trends in the business world, the new cultural institutions advocated timely consumerism and equated democracy with consumption. The increasingly prevalent and explicit treatment of sex and sexuality in literature, films, and magazines was the ultimate sign of the breakdown of the traditional notions of the private. While experiencing a backlash in the form of government censorship, the new articulations of the social meaning of the city and urban life were the basis of a new hegemonic formation / acase@tulane.edu

Statement of the problem. In 1990, citizens in Leon County voted to establish a commission to propose a consolidation of the County and the City of Tallahassee. In 1992, the charter proposed by the commission was defeated by a 3-2 margin. / Purpose of the study. With the 1990 vote, a two-year effort to fashion a consolidation proposal was begun. It was comprehensive, inclusive, and seemed to have wide community support. Yet it was resoundingly rejected by the citizenry. The goal of this study is three-fold: (a) to provide a thorough written record of one of the most major efforts in Florida's history to achieve consolidation; (b) to place this undertaking in the broader context of consolidation initiatives in the U.S.; and (c) to identify the learnings about consolidation dynamics from this experience. / Methodology. The concentration on a single experience with metropolitan reform indicated the case study as the appropriate methodology. Within this general framework, however, the inquiry was broadened by reference to comparative experience, as well as to theories of change and reform. The inquiry was greatly aided by access to many local data sources. / Analysis and findings. There was much in the strategy of the Tallahassee-Leon reform to commend. The framing of the charter did provide for much community participation. However, such an event is basically political; and there was a failure, both in charter writing and in the campaign, to appreciate the significant political and economic obstacles to be overcome. It is clear, too, that the defeat cannot be explained simply by the fact that there was no significant crisis in local governance. / Conclusion. This study reveals that (a) the presence or absence of crisis is insufficient to explain the complex dynamics of efforts at consolidation of local governments, and (b) even failed reform efforts can do much to build insights on the perverse problems of governmental change. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1521. / Major Professor: Frank Sherwood. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Working with and designing with other, non-human, biological species is one of the deepest challenges facing architecture today and human development in general. Rather than to preserve, or cater to outside species "How to Design with the Animal" demonstrates that Architecture can actively participate in the life around it. By directing, responding and intervening in the sensorial (audible, olfactory, or haptic) ranges of individual species, architecture and infrastructure can become redefined as animal players in a much larger system. As a sensorial device architecture would become part attractor, part program container and part animal/architecture interface. Animals and ecosystems would then begin to influence the siting and design of individual buildings and they in turn would attract individual species while also being subject to larger migratory, or environmental patterns. And, more than providing a space for program, a new posthumanist architecture could offer the visitor with the experience of participating in a conversation with another animal.

Urban plazas, together with streets, and parks, constitute the remaining public realm of our cities. Their function, as facilitators of social interaction, is most evident in areas where urban structure still prevails in relation to pedestrian use. Since pedestrians represent the majority of potential users, use of these spaces is intimately related to surrounding population and activities, and may be affected by how the immediate context is configured. This study examined two urban plazas in downtown Tucson, with their context, to develop methods of analysis and evaluation of potential effects of contextual elements in their use. Overall, this study found that combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches was useful in the generation of data, as well as analytical tools. Although this study's results are limited to the spaces analyzed, potential relationships are suggested between aspects of plaza use and specific elements of the human and physical context.

Research has shown that women perceive, use, and experience space differently than men, in part, because of gender issues and fear of victimization for violent crimes. Recent research has focused on the built environment, violence against women, and the social context of a university. The research study described here investigated women's perception of and actual safety from assault and rape on The University of Arizona campus. Sites perceived as safe and unsafe were identified from responses of 100 women students and administrators. Police reports of 132 campus assaults of women were used to identify sites of past rapes and assaults. Two outdoor sites were assessed in a preliminary study of two environmental audit methods. Findings from this study indicated that respondents perceived the campus as being very safe during the day but unsafe at night. Sites of previous assaults on women overlapped little with the areas women associated with fear.