Critical writing on public art in the late 20th century in the UK and USA either legitimized public art as an extension of studio art intended to widen its public, or implied a new relation to public space - as demonstrated in texts by Cork (1995) and Phillips (1988) respectively. This suggests a polarization of art's aesthetic and social dimensions. A deeper understanding of the relation between these dimensions is found in the work of Marcuse, Bloch and Adorno. Marcuse, in his early work, sees art as serving the needs of bourgeois society by displacing ideas of a better world to an independent aesthetic realm; Bloch sees art as giving form to hope, shaping a recurrent aspiration for a better world; Adorno sees the tension between the aesthetic and social dimensions of art as unresolvable, and, like Marcuse in his later work, sees art's autonomy as a space of criticality. But, as Bloch argues, conditions for change are noncontemporaneous, fostering culture which is both progressive and regressive. In this respect, Gablik's appropriations of other cultures may be seen as regressive, whilst Lippard's concern for locality offers art a basis for progressive intervention. The introduction of the local, as a point of reference alongside the aesthetic and social, leads to consideration of three cases of art practice: Common Ground's Parish Maps (1986-96), the Visions of Utopia Festival coordinated by the Artists Agency (1996-8), and 90% Crude (1996--), a project by PLATFORM in London. The originality of the thesis is in its investigation of these cases; and equally in making connections between them and the elements of art criticism and critical theory noted above.

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Student Number : 9805976V - MSc research report - School of Architecture and Planning - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / This report explores the link between social housing and urban regeneration in Johannesburg. Social housing emerged to provide housing for people earning between R1 500 and R3 500, while regenerating and integrating the inner city. In Johannesburg social housing institutions operate in the context of the municipality’s Vision 2030, implemented through the Inner City Urban Regeneration Strategy whose focus is on renovating buildings in the inner city, with the increase property prices and attract investment. From this it is hypothesized that the objectives of social housing and urban regeneration are in conflict with one another because social housing is meant for low income a specific income group which will not be able to afford rent when property prices increase. The case study focus is the contribution that Johannesburg Housing Company as a social housing institution makes to property –led urban regeneration of the City of Johannesburg and the eKhaya Neighbourhood Programme it initiated in the Pietersen Street, Hillbrow. The report flags out the issues of who the beneficiaries of social housing are, whether the objectives of social housing and urban regeneration are in conflict or in synergy with each other, the implications of urban regeneration o property prices and the impact of this on the ability of social housing to accommodate low income earners in the inner city. This report is looked at from the theoretical angle, which acknowledges multiculturalism, communication and power struggles and conflicting rationalities.

The thesis examines the emergence and operation of public-private partnership for economic regeneration in Sheffield since c1985. The argument advanced is that changes in approach to economic policy over this period were part of a process of economic and political restructuring and fragmentation in the local state. The original contribution of this research is that it offers a detailed insight into one aspect of this process - the development of local economic policy that drew on a range of institutional and individual actors, producing both formal and informal mechanisms for articulating this approach. The co-operative framework that emerged was one which allowed the local authority a key position in the mediation of local interests, but that also magnified business input into local economic policy. This framework produced a politics that was about how the partners established co-operation, sought to resolve conflicts, and develop a consensus package for the city's regeneration. Acknowledging the emergence of a system of fragmented government suggests the need to tie together some general theoretical insights about the process of restructuring with the experience of change in particular places. Several perspectives are considered, but the thesis focuses on local corporatism, growth coalition and regime theory. The thesis suggests that despite some limitations, coalition and regime theory are useful for developing our understanding of partnership in Sheffield. The thesis is divided into two main sections. Firstly, it discusses some theoretical and interpretive issues within the literature on local government restructuring. Secondly, the thesis analyses the empirical investigation into the development and operation of the partnership in what was its formative stage. It considers why cooperation developed around the issue of economic regeneration, how such co-operation worked in practice, and the degree to which it represented a realignment in the structures and mechanisms for coping with urban economic change.

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