Begreppet social hållbarhet innebär att människor lever i jämlikhet och rättvisa. För att en stadsmiljö ska anses socialt hållbar ska människorna som lever där ha anständiga boendemiljöer, nära till service och grönområden och det ska finnas tillgång till kollektivtrafik och arbetsmöjligheter. Människor lever och verkar i den urbana miljön och påverkar den precis som den urbana miljöns sammansättning påverkar människor, deras val och levnadsmönster, därmed behövs även ett samspel mellan människa och miljö för att samhället ska fungera. I en studie om social hållbarhet inom fysisk planering och en fallstudie av stadsutvecklingen av Ulleråker i Uppsala, analyserades begreppet social hållbarhet inom fysisk planering. Intervjuer genomfördes med personer insatta i branschen, planeringaktörer inom Ulleråkerprojektet samt medborgare i Ulleråker. Resultatet visade att social hållbarhet är en dynamisk process som tar tid att uppnå och ansträngning att bevara. Social hållbarhet innehåller många olika delar och handlar om delaktighet och inflytande, men även om möjlighet och rättighet till likvärdiga och fullgoda levnadsförutsättningar. För att ett samhälle ska vara socialt hållbart behöver den fysiska planeringen utgå från alla medborgares möjligheter och rättigheter i samhället. Dessa mål kan uppnås genom ett samlat helhetsperspektiv, vilket innebär att planeringen i en kommun eller stad har en övergripande strategi för att undvika att bli uppdelad per bostadsområde eller stadsdel. Övriga aspekter som är nödvändiga för ett socialt hållbart samhälle är medborgardialog och medborgarinflytande under planeringsprocessen, mötesplatser för alla genom fokus på den allmänna platsen, samband mellan stad och stadsdel, varierat bostadsbestånd samt fokus på sociala nätverk. / The concept of social sustainability implies equity and justice. For an urban environment to be considered as socially sustainable local citizens should have decent living environments, easy access to services and green spaces, public transportation and job opportunities. People affect the urban environment as much as the environment affects them and their lifestyle. Therefore an interaction is needed between humans and the environment for the society to function. The concept was analyzed through a study of social sustainability in spatial planning and a case study of the ongoing urban development of Ulleråker in Uppsala. Interviews were conducted with people working in the field of spatial planning, planners associated with the Ulleråker project, and residents of Ulleråker. The results showed that social sustainability is a dynamic process that will take time to achieve and effort to maintain. Social sustainability includes many different issues, and deals with participation and influence, but also the inhabitants’ opportunities and their right to equal and adequate living conditions. In order for a society to be socially sustainable, planning based on all citizens' opportunities and rights in the society is required. This goal can be achieved through a comprehensive perspective, which means that the planning of a municipality or town should be based on a broad integrative strategy rather than a collection of strategies and neighborhood plans. Other aspects that are necessary for a socially sustainable society are public dialogue and participation in the planning process, meeting points for everyone by public places, relations between cities and neighborhoods, varied housing and a focus on social networks.

Sustainable development has created new demands and led to a new way of thinking within the community-planning realm and has grown in use due to the increasing and changing awareness of environmental issues and their connection to growth within communities. As part ofthe Canadian Federal Gas Tax Fund requirement, municipalities must develop an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP). Currently, many municipalities are working towards a sustainable or environmental vision for their community and have developed master plans and policies to implement environmental practices. The issue facing municipalities is how do existing bodies of work support and integrate into the development of an ICSP? The Town of Oakville is used as a case study to investigate the method of reconciling master plans and policies to develop an ICSP. The research methods include a case study, interviews, the analysis ofICSP toolkits and municipal ICSPs. The research identifies successes, limitations, and improvements for the proposed approach.

This study presents a framework for assessing settlement patterns and trends to guide sustainable settlement development planning in South Africa. The rationale for the study is the persistence of multi-faceted interrelated, settlement challenges. At the beginning of the post-apartheid period in 1994, the new democratic government in South Africa adopted progressive policies to promote sustainable human settlements that integrate the various facets of human activity such as transportation, housing and socio-economic facilities. However, unsustainable and inefficient patterns of apartheid era planning persist more than 15 years into the post-apartheid settlements. Compounding this situation are new, unsustainable emerging trends such as the peripheral location of mono-functional low income housing developments in cities. This study argues that the main reason for the persistence of settlement challenges is the absence of comprehensive frameworks for the formulation of sustainable development plans that are informed by substantive theory, best practice and also the dialectical relationship among various settlement facets. It therefore develops a new framework and model for assessing settlement patterns and trends to guide sustainable development plans. The operational method is informed by a new synthetic theory of settlement patterns and trends, application of the theory to international and local patterns of policies and dynamics, empirical synthetic techniques for assessing settlement patterns and trends including the deductive formulation of sustainable development plans in localities, based on these interrelated components of the framework and model. Empirical synthetic techniques for the practical assessment of settlement patterns and trends are based on the translation of key theories and concepts of the synthetic theory into measurables. The synthetic empirical techniques use EThekwini Municipality in KwaZulu Natal province, South Africa as the case study since the municipality contains settlement typologies and systems that are typical of the province. The analysis of EThekwini Metropolitan Municipality revealed that prevailing settlement patterns and trends are not sustainable. On the other hand the municipality‟s development plans are not responsive to the heterogeneous socio-economic characteristics of the population in different settlement typologies including Local Economic Development (LED) potentials in the nodes in different functional regions of the municipality. On these grounds, the research study proposes alternative sustainable settlement development plans for EThekwini Municipality. The thesis recommends a dialectical deductive formulation of development plans based on the new framework of assessing settlement patterns and trends developed by this research. As such socio-economic investment priorities must be informed by the potential of economic growth in different town centres and functional regions all the same being responsive to social, economic and physical characteristics of the population. Pro-growth and pro-poor LED strategies should also be adopted, depending on the nature and extent of heterogeneity in the factors of production in the different town centres and settlement typologies they serve. Therefore, sustainable development plans can be achieved in South Africa if this new framework and model is adopted to guide future settlement patterns and trends. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011

Integrated organic waste management, based on the door-to-door collection and decentralised processing of organic waste for urban agriculture, can be conceptualised as a socio-ecological process of re-circulating environmental amenities for social equality and environmental sustainability. In this thesis, a framework for participatory integrated waste management is presented, based on the findings of an empirical study carried out in the Brazilian city of Diadema, in 2008. The results reveal that the capacity exists for the collection and processing of organic waste, while civil society is sufficiently mobilised to ensure a reliable supply of good quality food waste. The quantity and quality of the resulting fertiliser helps enhance community food security through direct production for self-provision, reciprocal distribution networks, and increased income generation. Barriers include conflict over land and insecure political support. Such insecure support is characterised by the paradox of Brazilian politics, whereby rhetorical support for social policies contrasts their neoliberal implementation. This thesis addresses the ways in which the national political paradox affects the potential for integrated organic waste management in Diadema, paying particular attention to the need for combined social and environmental policies, the political culture of project implementation, the rhetoric of public participation versus neoliberal policy enforcement, and the contested nature of deliberative decision-making spaces. The thesis concludes with suggestions for progressive policy reform, such as a remuneration agreement with the recyclers and firm land tenure arrangements with the gardeners.

Alternative agriculture and counter-cuisine movements have grown to a strong cultural current in Western European and North American societies. In recent years,these movements have begun to converge and coalesce around the concept of localizing agri-food relations and commodity chains as a way of redressing the deleterious environmental, social, and economic consequences of what are seen as dominant globalized food relations. This dissertation reports on a regional study in Eastern Kansas of the political economy of local food relations that has arisen through this producer and consumer response. It is an effort to recognize the regional interplay of disparate forces in constructing local food systems in the interest of framing more contextualized and nuanced questions about the environmental, social, and economic outcomes of alternative agri-food development. Network, conventions, and spatial analysis theories and methods were customized and put into practice in the service of these aims, using triangulation among them to mitigate each of their individual weaknesses in representing the variable embeddedness, politics, and spaces of local food in Eastern Kansas. It was found that local food generally represents a marketing niche in urban consumerism that is served primarily by regional rural producers. The distances, agricultural and food ecologies, forms of organization, and values underpinning local food linkages were all found to vary quite considerably throughout the region, creating a diverse combination of development agendas and impacts from local food networks and making food localization a highly contested concept. Local food development in its current form is thus highly dependent on urban/rural dialectics and projects of urbanization that lack open, transparent, and reflexive governance. Critical acknowledgement of these development interdependencies is important as a step toward encouraging social, economic, and environmental justice through local food development.

Im Sommer 2012 führte das IÖR im Rahmen eines BMVBS/BBSR-Forschungsvorhabens eine bundesweite Umfrage zur Erhebung von Innenentwicklungspotenzialen (IEP) durch. Neben der Konzeption und Durchführung der Befragung und ergänzenden Experten-Interviews in ausgewählten Fallbeispielstädten beinhaltet das Projekt die Erarbeitung von Grundlagen und Konzepten für eine Verstetigung eines bundesweiten Monitorings von Innenentwicklungspotenzialen sowie die Berücksichtigung neuer Daten-Quellen und automatisierter Verfahren. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden ausgewählte Ergebnisse aus der Befragung vorgestellt. Schwerpunkt bildet dabei die Ermittlung und Validierung der Quantitäten von Innenentwicklungspotenzialen in Deutschland. An der bundesweiten standardisierten Online-Befragung beteiligten sich rd. 4 % der deutschen Städte und Gemeinden aller Größenklassen in proportionaler geographischer Verteilung nach Regionstypen und Bundesländern. Große Städte verfügen über gute Kenntnisse über zu vorliegenden Potenzialen, Kleinstädte und Landgemeinden sind dagegen oft auf Schätzungen angewiesen. Etwa die Hälfte der beteiligten Kommunen sieht sich in der Lage, die Daten regelmäßig fortzuschreiben. Tendenziell unterschätzen die befragten Kommunen die Potenziale in ihrem Territorium. Die Analyse möglicher Ursachen hierfür erlaubt die Auslotung von Bandbreiten nach oben. Vorliegende Hochrechnungen weisen IEP in Höhe von mindestens 15 m² je Einwohner (oder 120 000 ha) auf Brachen und Baulücken aus. Diese Größenordnung entspricht ca. 5 % der Gebäude- und Freifläche. Unter Berücksichtigung von Korrekturschätzungen kann der Gesamtwert auf ca. 20 m² je Einwohner (165 000 ha) steigen.

Decision-makers in cities have realized their pivotal role in addressing climate change, and they are responding accordingly. This thesis presents three papers that explore the process of responding to climate change in cities, highlighting the situation in selected global cities with varying economies and development priorities. The methodology for conducting an urban greenhouse gas inventory in three Chinese cities is detailed in the first paper, illustrating issues of economic development and climate change mitigation in a transitional economy. Next, the greenhouse gas emissions savings of various strategic mitigation plans are quantified for Toronto, demonstrating the aggressive actions needed in developed cities to approach carbon neutrality. The third paper explores issues associated with climate change in three developing cities, emphasizing the need for synergic development incorporating strategies for both mitigation and adaptation. The thesis concludes with an overview of the importance of innovation and further research to future responses to climate change.

Decision-makers in cities have realized their pivotal role in addressing climate change, and they are responding accordingly. This thesis presents three papers that explore the process of responding to climate change in cities, highlighting the situation in selected global cities with varying economies and development priorities. The methodology for conducting an urban greenhouse gas inventory in three Chinese cities is detailed in the first paper, illustrating issues of economic development and climate change mitigation in a transitional economy. Next, the greenhouse gas emissions savings of various strategic mitigation plans are quantified for Toronto, demonstrating the aggressive actions needed in developed cities to approach carbon neutrality. The third paper explores issues associated with climate change in three developing cities, emphasizing the need for synergic development incorporating strategies for both mitigation and adaptation. The thesis concludes with an overview of the importance of innovation and further research to future responses to climate change.

Today, it is observed that shopping centers that are increasingly growing in number, especially in metropolitan cities, are used as public spaces by many urban inhabitants. Shopping centers have become places where social life is experienced and leisure time is spent through a wide range of activities offered besides shopping. On the other side, city centers that can be regarded as the most essential public spaces of urban areas are in a process of deterioration both in terms of physical quality and functional features. These two developments are essential indicators of a change and transformation concerning the public space&rsquo / s role and its features like openness to everyone&rsquo / s use, high accessibility and social integration. Within this context, in this study, finding the direction of this transformation and the extent that shopping centers possess the characteristics of public space are aimed. In this respect, after a literature review about public space, city center and shopping center within the context of the aim, the development of city centers and public spaces of Ankara is examined. After the development of shopping centers that flourished within the last ten-fifteen years in Ankara and their socio-spatial effects upon the city are discussed, hypothesis is tested through the findings of the questionnaire survey made in Migros Akk&ouml / pr&uuml / Shopping Center. Lastly, findings and conclusions are summarized and interpretations for future and policy proposals are made concerning the changing functions and uses of public spaces and shopping centers.

The recent developments in urban conservation and urban archaeology have given considerable importance to the presentation of urban archaeological remains to the public in order to raise public awareness for conservation. Parallel to this, in the last decade, urban planners have begun to seek for alternatives for creating sustainable places with the emphasis on sustainable urban development. These two goals of different disciplines meet themselves in the integration of urban archaeological remains to modern town and to modern life in historic town centers. In this context, this thesis aims to discuss how these urban archaeological resources can be integrated to everyday life in historic town centers. This is achieved by investigating two successful European cases Tarragona and Verona, and then discussing their possible contributions to a Turkish case Tarsus.