This thesis examines the deeply layered genre of crime and detective fiction together with academic texts dealing, broadly, with urban geography. These apparently separated writings are read together and against one another in order to reveal answers to important questions of how the city is organized and arranged in its texts. In particular, this thesis analyzes certain structures in place in forms of textual representation, structures which have deep implications for the writing of the city. Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin stories appear alongside Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen novels, and Christopher Prendergast's study of Paris in the nineteenth century. Walter Mosley's series of Los Angeles mysteries are discussed in the context of particularly prominent academic representations of L.A. Reading such a diverse collection of texts together and against one another is a deliberate tactic, intended to draw out the similar structures in place in very different forms of writing. Those structures are the critical issue here, specifically with regard to the need for examinations of the city that consider not merely which components of the city appear in texts about the city, but also how the city appears in text. How the city appears in text has a good deal to do with the demands exercised by the medium of representation, and a key concern here is to draw out the need for doing away with an often unquestioned separation between places—cities—and their texts. Instead what is studied and ultimately proposed here is a focus on the intersection between subject and textual structure, and how that intersection actively produces the city. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

While many factors influence an arts scene, performance space shapes the scene in many discernible ways. Performance space is an integral part of the arts scene. Every artist, musician, actor and dancer must perform in order to participate in the arts scene. The spaces of these performances are often overlooked when considering how the arts scene functions or how to best support the arts in a community. Through interviews with owners and managers of performance spaces in Asheville, I determined how performance space shapes the local arts scene. I defined the arts scene as the quantity, variety and quality of art being displayed or performed publicly and the diversity and size of the artist and audience base. Based on this definition, I discuss aspects of performance space that influences the quantity, variety and quality of art and artists in Asheville, and the size and diversity of the audience base. I found that performance space was connected to the arts scene in many interesting ways. The availability of space influenced the number of performances and displays. A variety of space led to a variety of art forms, likewise, high quality space allowed high quality art to be performed. Each space impacts a part of the arts scene, and all together performance spaces shape the entire scene.

While many factors influence an arts scene, performance space shapes the scene in many discernible ways. Performance space is an integral part of the arts scene. Every artist, musician, actor and dancer must perform in order to participate in the arts scene. The spaces of these performances are often overlooked when considering how the arts scene functions or how to best support the arts in a community. Through interviews with owners and managers of performance spaces in Asheville, I determined how performance space shapes the local arts scene. I defined the arts scene as the quantity, variety and quality of art being displayed or performed publicly and the diversity and size of the artist and audience base. Based on this definition, I discuss aspects of performance space that influences the quantity, variety and quality of art and artists in Asheville, and the size and diversity of the audience base. I found that performance space was connected to the arts scene in many interesting ways. The availability of space influenced the number of performances and displays. A variety of space led to a variety of art forms, likewise, high quality space allowed high quality art to be performed. Each space impacts a part of the arts scene, and all together performance spaces shape the entire scene.

This research examines the transformations occurring in children and youth’s identity narratives as they engage dialectically with the recent public narratives of social and political inclusion. Employing children’s experiences of the favela, this thesis explores children’s ontological narratives as part of a place-based identity constructed within the public narratives of Rio de Janeiro. A range of public narratives are constituted and socially constructed by the state, media and culture industries. However, cultural, social and economic narratives from non-governmental organizations based in favelas have emerged as counter-production to the mainstream public narratives. This work captures the intersections of these narratives in children’s lives through empirical research in a favela in Rio de Janeiro using participant observation, a mini questionnaire, and photo-voice technique with children aged 10-13. It provides insight into the ways in which children face every-day boundaries enforced by relationships at the individual, the community, and the city levels. The findings show that children are caught in a web of disorder that is strongly influenced by both traffickers and the state, which contributes to their continued social exclusion from formal city space. / text

Across the world traditional forms of urban management are affected by economic restructuring and neoliberalization processes. These processes alter the government role in the provision of social services, give rise to multi-sector partnerships for social service provision by public, private and non-profit actors, and stimulate the creation of alternative approaches to social service provision. In this dissertation I discuss the impact of these changes on social housing provision in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. I provide a historically-grounded account of political-economic restructuring in Brazil that has emerged through neoliberalization, document how these policy shifts affect social service responsibilities and the fiscal capacities of local and state governments, and show how these transformations increased social housing needs but at the same time decreased overall capacity to deliver housing to the very poor. I also discuss the new proposals that attempt to replace the state’s withdrawal from several types of social service provision. Specifically I study partnerships among the public sector, private sector, and civil society, describe the emergence, structure, and functions of these partnerships in Brazil, and implicitly compare how these partnership approaches are used in northern nations such as the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, I look inside social housing organizations to examine alternative housing strategies that have emerged, and highlight the problems with these alternative strategies and suggest reasons for their failings. The arguments of this dissertation are developed from ethnographic research conducted in the Ribeirão Preto region of Brazil.

There is a fundamental shift in the way people are living on the planet. Over half of the world's population now lives in cities, yet many of these cities continue to struggle to provide basic services, infrastructure and food security for the billions of people who live in cities. Despite decades of intervention by international and national development agencies, cities in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly framed in apocalyptic and dystopian terms, serving as a warning of the dangers of overurbanization while being criticized for their lack of urban development. This contradictory framing poses the question of how a city and the people who live there actually survive. Building on emerging work in critical urban studies, this research examines how narrow definitions of what counts as urban hinder the understanding of cities in different regional contexts and limit our imaginations of how people survive and thrive in the face of the challenges that cities provide. To examine the idea of what is urban in the context of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I use the lens of urban open space farms, large lots of land in the built-up environment of the city used for farming, to explore what makes farming urban, how the practice of farming contributes to and is embedded within urban systems, and how farms and farmers can illuminate the material practices and ephemeral experiences that constitute the reality of people's daily life in cities. I employ a methodology based on interviews, photo voice, mental mapping, and observation over time to explore the dynamics of farms as spaces and farmers as agents in constructing these spaces over time. The purpose is to contribute to a definition of the urban that moves past associations with capitalism and industrialization as the defining processes of the city towards one more inclusive of the way people experience these spaces, how they remake them to fit the city, and what this means for interventions that focus on the marginalization of people and the ways that cities fail, rather than how they actually work.

Orientador: Pompeu Figueiredo de Carvalho / Banca: Lucy Marion Calderini Philadelpho Machado / Banca: José Francisco / Resumo: A dissertação faz uma análise crítica do processo autoritário de decisão no desenvolvimento urbano brasileiro tomando como estudo de caso a construção de um presídio em Horto Florestal de Limeira - São Paulo. A metodologia adotada é a análise da percepção na Geografia. Primeiramente é feita uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o método, baseando-se principalmente em Yi-Fu Tuan e seu conceito de lugar. Breves notas sobre a formação social urbana de Limeira são providas, focalizando a comunidade rural de Tatu, o processo de planejamento, o papel do setor publico e os espaços públicos e verdes. Uma pesquisa de campo realizada através de questionários foi feita a fim de resgatar a percepção dos moradores sobre o manejo ambiental do Horto, principalmente com referência à construção do presídio. Finalmente, o trabalho conclui sobre a importância de levar em consideração a opinião pública no planejamento das intervenções públicas nas cidades para garantir a otimização da qualidade de vida e a preservação da identidade do lugar e, enfim, da cidadania e da democracia. / Abstract: The dissertation is a critical analysis of the authoritarian decision-making process in Brazilian urbanization development taking as case study the construction of a presidium in a Forest Park in Limeira city - state of São Paulo. The methodology adopted is the perception analysis in Geography. Thus, firstly it is provided a bibliographic review on method, based mainly a Yi-Fu Tuan and in his concept of place. Briefs notes are rendered on Limeira urban social formation, focusing the rural community of Tatu, the process of planning, the role of the public sector and public and green space. A survey was made through questionnaires aiming to rescue the perception of the dwellers upon environmental management of the forest park, mainly referring to the presidium building. Finally, the work concludes about the importance of taking into account the public opinion on public interventions planning in cities so as to guarantee optimization of life quality, preservation of place identify and thus citizenship and democracy. / Mestre

Orientador: Pompeu Figueiredo de Carvalho / Banca: Cenira Maria Lupinacci da Cunha / Banca: Solange Terezinha de Lima Guimarães / Banca: Francisco de Assis Mendonça / Banca: Humberto Prates da Fonseca Alves / Resumo: Os rios urbanos no Brasil são sinônimos de ambientes degradados, desvalorizados e negados pela sociedade. Esses espaços se tornaram a alternativa de acesso à moradia para uma massa de pobres que não podem adquirir um espaço seguro na cidade. A junção de pobreza, habitação improvisada, pouca infraestrutura, com a ocupação de espaços expostos a perigos naturais, criou territórios de riscos e vulnerabilidades, que frequentemente coincidem com os ambientes fluviais urbanos. Assim, definiu-se como principal proposta desta tese analisar os riscos e as vulnerabilidades socioambientais de rios urbanos no Brasil, tendo a bacia hidrográfica do rio Maranguapinho, localizada na Região Metropolitana de Fortaleza - RMF, Ceará, como área de estudo de caso para compreensão das inter-relações das vulnerabilidades sociais e exposição aos riscos naturais, principalmente os riscos de inundações. A metodologia utilizada empregou técnicas estatísticas, sobreposição cartográfica, trabalhos de campo, para produzir um índice de vulnerabilidade socioambiental da área estudada. Concluiu-se que há fortes coincidências entre os espaços susceptíveis a processos naturais perigosos, como é o caso das inundações - processo natural atrelado à dinâmica dos rios e de suas bacias hidrográficas, e os espaços da cidade que apresentam os piores indicadores sociais, econômicos e de acesso a serviços e infraestrutura urbana / Abstract: The urban rivers in Brazil are synonymous of degraded, devaluated and denied environments for the society. These spaces had become the alternative access to housing for a mass of poor persons who cannot acquire a safe space in the city. The junction of poverty, improvised habitation, little infrastructure, with the occupation of prone spaces to the natural hazards, created territories of risks and vulnerabilities, that frequently coincide with urban fluvial environments. Thus, the main proposal of this thesis is to analyze the risks and the socioenvironmental vulnerabilities of urban rivers in Brazil, having being chosen the the Maranguapinho river hydrographic basin as case study area, located in the Metropolitan Region of Fortaleza - MRF, Ceará, to the understanding of the inter-relations between social vulnerabilities and exposure to the natural risks, mainly the risks of floodings. The methodology used statistical techniques, cartographic overlapping, field research, to produce an socio-environmental vulnerability index of the case study area. It was concluded that it has serious coincidences between the susceptibles spaces to natural hazards processes, e.g floodings - natural process linked to the rivers' dynamics and its hydrographic basin, and the spaces of the city that present the worse social, economic, access the services and urban infrastructure index / Résumé: Les fleuves urbains au Brésil sont synonymes d'environnements dégradés, dévalués et niés par la société. Ces espaces se sont rendus alternative d'accès au logement pour une masse de pauvres qui ne peuvent pas acquérir un espace sûr la ville. La jonction de pauvreté, d'habitation improvisée, peu d'infrastructure, avec l'occupation d'espaces exposés à des aléas naturels, a créé des territoires de risques et des vulnérabilités, qui fréquentement coïncident avec les environnements fluviaux urbains. Ainsi, il s'est défini comme principale proposition de cette thèse analyser les risques et les vulnérabilités socio-environnementaux de fleuves urbains au Brésil, en ayant le bassin hydrographique du fleuve Maranguapinho, localisé dans la Région Métropolitaine de Fortaleza - RMF, Ceará, comme espace d'étude de cas pour compréhension des interrelations entre des vulnérabilités sociales et exposition aux risques naturels, principalement les risques d'inondations. La méthodologie utilisée a employé des techniques statistiques, de la superposition cartographique, des incursions dans l'espace d'étude, pour produire un indice de vulnérabilité socio-environnementaux du secteur étudié. Il s'est conclu qu'il y a des forts coïncidences entre les espaces susceptibles à des processus naturels dangereux, comme est le cas des inondations - processus naturel remorque à la dynamique des fleuves et de leurs bassins hydrographiques, et les espaces de la ville qui présentent les pires indicateurs sociaux, économiques et de l'accès à des services et l'infrastructure urbaine / Doutor

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