Through my Creative Non-Fiction Writing thesis, I have attempted to challenge the boundaries of the genre, after D’Agata and the works of other contemporary creative non-fiction writers. However, I have also challenged the boundaries of our own frame for reality that defines the human experience. As I began writing this, I asked myself: can we write about spaces or do we write spaces ourselves, interlacing the city into an imagined space? I didn't realize that I had forgotten the most important question of all: do spaces write us? These stories are predominantly about my search for “authentic” space, for the “real” city—and I have tried to challenge the idea of authenticity through the style of my writing, in addition to the narratives, lyric essays, and arguments in my thesis. I’ve lived in six cities over the past five years, and yet, each time, in the end, I return to Munich. There is something about the urban fabric there, a tear I can sense, or perhaps it is inside of me, waiting to be filled. And somewhere along the way, I started to have this idea that I could write about this city, collecting the pieces of my experiences. I was left with a collage of moments, moments of a city that was mine—not knowing that the city is bigger than any of us, a character that cannot be captured by any means. Not knowing the impact the city might have on me.

Urban exploration is a practice of researching, discovering and physically exploring temporary, obsolete, abandoned, derelict and infrastructural areas within built environments. Through charting the rise to prominence of a London urban exploration crew between 2008 and 2011, of which I became an active member, I posit that urban explorers are one of many groups reacting to increased surveillance and control over urban space by undertaking embodied urban interventions in the city that undermine clean spatio/temporal narratives. The primary research questions stem from my attempts to interrogate the practice from the inside out: Who are urban explorers? What does it involve? Why do they do it? What do they think they will accomplish? While the thesis focuses primarily on 220 explorations undertaken with my primary ethnographic group in London between 2008 and 2011, it also speaks to the urban exploration "scene" that has developed over the past twenty years in cities all over the world. The results that emerge from the research both compliment and complicate recent work within geography around issues of surveillance, resistance, hacking and urban community building and lays out a new account, never before outline in such detail, of the tales of urban exploration taking place in temporary cities across the globe. This visual ethnography is comprised of text (75,000 words), photographs (200) and video (10 shorts). the ethnographic video components can be found on the Place Hacking video channel located at http://vimeo.com/channels/placehacking . I suggest watching all 10 short videos before reading this thesis.

The German government is experiencing difficulties housing and assimilating Syrian refugees in its borders. Erecting temporary shelters on location is one way to deal with the current crises. This thesis attempts to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the optimum combination of materials and construction methods to be used in the shelter’s walls in order to improve the living conditions of the refugees and to ensure that the cost is acceptable to the German government. This thesis compares six existing wall panel products from China, which have the lowest cost on the worldwide market. The R-value, strength, price, weight, durability, ease of assembly, assembly time, maintenance costs, comfort, resale value, and appearance were evaluated. Assumptions were made on what the German government would require and on standard building practices in Europe and America. The analysis indicates that the steel frame house from YONGYANG Steel best satisfies the needs in this situation. This thesis produced an AHP template, which is flexible. This model that was developed for the German scenario can be effectively applied to differing emergent situations in other parts of the world.

Making up one quarter of the current United States population, some 80 million Generation Y-ers are changing the ways in which we live, work and play. Dubbed “Millennials” this population is comprised of those individuals born between 1980 and 2000. This generation is the first to have been raised with cell phones, the internet, and reality television. The “Selfie” or “Me Generation” is snubbed for narcissism and an instant gratification attitude. Yet on the whole Millennials have progressive values, are well educated, are conscious of their health and are optimistic about the future despite coming of age during the Great Recession. Millennials are also the most diverse, most informed and most well connected generation the United States has ever seen.They are supporters of the locavore movement and conscious of the environment. Their habits and tastes - constant Facebook status updates and Instagram posts - are much more communal in nature than narcissistic, the highest value of which is not “self-promotion, but it’s opposite, empathy -- an open-minded and hearted connection to others.” In this way Millennials are using social media and technology to build community in a new way - virtually. Before there was Facebook or Instagram, people found community in “third places” - social places independent of work or home in which to fraternize and build relationships. In his book, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg examines the difference between the sociological functions of first place (the home), second place (the workplace) and third place. Third place can be described as the social place, a place independent of the home and workplace in which to fraternize and build community. Oldenburg argued that these places are in general decline, and more recent articles have noted that those brick and mortar third places are now being “hollowed out” by “cyber nomads”, those people in coffee shops and bookstores listening to headphones, typing away on a computer or talking on the phone. James Katz of Rutgers argues that these “physically inhabited by psychologically evacuated” places leave people feeling “more isolated than they would if the cafe were empty.” How do designers create spaces that support Millennials empathetic desire connection, that encourage interaction and that overcome the obstacle of becoming "psychologically evacuated" places?

The project suggests an alternative means for living in Qatar. It proposes the development of a transient, floating community a man-made, transitory archipelago of floating housing units located at the ‘soon to be abandoned’ docks a short distance from the Museum of Islamic Art and the Doha Corniche. The design, through a variety of bespoke dwelling options, can provide both more and less nomadic housing to accommodate a variety of dif- ferent lifestyles and social units. Clustered around three permanent islands (containing a cultural/activity center, three adaptable ‘work-unit’ towers, and a park/commercial area), the design provides a wide set of adaptive layout patterns within which the mobile units can be arrayed. Directly plugged into the city, the community functions as a floating appendix to downtown Doha: an adaptable and flexible city-supplement that can expand or contract ac- cording to need, whether to aid in the accommodation of guests for various large-scale sporting or other events, or merely to provide an alternative locale for long or short stay visitors to Doha alike.

The St. Charles streetcar is an important transit line in the city of New Orleans, with about 65,000 people living within a ½ mile walking distance from it. However, the line experiences a very high streetcar/automobile crash rate due in large part to the large number of grade vehicle crossings over the tracks that lack signalization. Through traffic modeling, the closure of many of these vehicle crossings and the diversion of automotive traffic to the remaining, signalized crossings is analyzed to determine traffic impacts on street network. The result is a modest increase in traffic, about 7-8%, at the remaining signalized intersections.

As cities worldwide plan for increasing urbanization levels, new challenges in mobility will arise. Any approach taken to address these new issues will need to consider how to move more people with declining resources, thus the need for a sustainable solution arises. This thesis examines the growing trend of cities creating public bicycle systems as a means to add sustainability to a transportation system and identifies what are the criteria and indicators of a sustainable public bicycle. The criteria and indicators are used to examine data collection techniques of three Public Bicycle Systems in the United States: Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., Nice Ride in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Denver B-Cycle in Denver, Colorado.

Land use grain is a commonly-used measure of the mixture of land uses in the urban environment in transportation planning and public health, but there is no standard measurement practice in place. This thesis examines the meaning and common measurements of land use grain in these subfields. The entropy-based equation, the jobs-to-housing ratio, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) are among the most common measures of land use grain, but results from these metrics differ depending upon how researchers choose a sample area and upon how land use categories are defined. All three metrics are performed, in a single context with varying assumptions, using the neighborhoods of Roxbury and Dorchester in Boston, MA. The entropy-based equation was deemed the most appropriate measure in a general context, with the HHI and the jobs-to-housing ratio potentially appropriate in specific contexts.

This research examines the feasibility of a gasoline and diesel consumer subsidy phase-out in Venezuela from a transportation planning perspective. It surveys the literature and discusses case studies from Iran, Brazil, and Bolivia in order to identify the lessons that Venezuela can learn from these countries’ successes and mistakes. It examines how strengthening and investing in the public transportation system can be used as a means to gain public support for the reform. I discuss the current political, social, and economic conditions that make a fossil-fuel subsidy reform difficult, and offer suggestions from a transportation planner’s perspective on how the transition can be made as smoothly as possible. Finally, I explore the opportunities that present themselves to transportation planners in shaping the country’s future approach toward transportation.

Beginning with the development of Seaside (Walton County, FL), Kentlands (Gaithersburg, MD), and Laguna West (Elk Grove, CA), New Urbanist developments have set aside parcels for civic structures, many of which now house congregations. Using interviews with developers, planners, and church officials, this thesis examines the rationale behind including congregations within New Urbanist developments in four southeastern states (Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina). The expectations of New Urbanist developers largely mirror those found within key New Urbanist texts: congregational structures help create a legible landscape through typological architecture and conspicuous siting while providing space for public gathering. The thesis ultimately argues that New Urbanism requires a more robust sociological model, one which captures the influence of institutions on forms of social interaction. Moreover, such a model might provide insight into the ways in which developers and congregations might collaborate to fulfill the social goals of New Urbanism.