La présente thèse concerne les mutations sociospatiales introduites par des tendances de financiarisation du système du logement grec au cours des deux dernières décennies. Comment les processus mondiaux de financiarisation se sont-ils accommodés à un contexte local pour développer leur version grecque ? Le but de notre travail est de mettre en lumière la transformation d’une économie autofinancée et basée sur les réseaux familiaux en marché hypothécaire. Notre hypothèse est que ces bouleversements du financement de la fabrique résidentielle, c’est-à-dire l’apparition de la finance comme un « nouvel acteur » sur les circuits de production du logement, vont de pair avec des dynamiques de précarisation du logement et des nouvelles géographies sociospatiales.Dans les années d’après-guerre, Athènes, ville méditerranéenne et périphérique de l’Europe du Sud, est caractérisée par une forte mobilité sociale, sur laquelle les circuits de production du logement ont fonctionné comme un «ascenseur social ». Depuis le début des années 1990, Athènes doit faire face à la fois à un nouveau contexte et à la persistance des structures préexistantes. C’est la première période d’un véritable développement du crédit au logement en Grèce qui fait notablement augmenté les prix des logements. L’analyse quantitative et qualitative, le cas d’étude ainsi que les entretiens semi-directifs mettent en valeur de nouveaux acteurs, représentations et pratiques, mais aussi de tendances de l’exclusion bancaire. Cette étude souligne l’importance de l’aspect géographique ainsi que le rôle signifiant de réseaux familiaux, de l’échelle du quartier et de la vie quotidienne dans l’analyse de la finance ainsi que l’interdépendance entre système financier et l’économie informelle. / The present thesis concerns the sociospatial mutations produced by the financialization trends of the Greek housing system in the past two decades. How are the global processes of financialization accommodated in a local context in order to generate a Greek version of financialization? Aim of the thesis is to shed light on the transformation of a self-financing economy, based on family networks to a mortgage market. The hypothesis is that these changes in the field of financing the residential urban fabric, or the emergence of finance as a "new actor" on housing production circuits, are associated with the precarization of housing and new sociospatial geographies.During the postwar decades, Athens, a Mediterranean city and, at the same time, a south European peripheral urban center, is characterized by strong social mobility, when housing production circuits functioned as a “social elevator”. Since the early 1990s, Athens is facing both new challenges and the persistence of pre-existing structures. It is the first time of a crucial expansion of housing credit in Greece, when housing prices have significantly increased. The quantitative and qualitative analysis, the case study and the semi-structured interviews highlight new actors, their actions, representations and practices as well as tendencies of financial exclusion. This study highlights the importance of the geography as well as the significant role of family networks, the scale of neighborhood and everyday life in analyzing finance and the interconnections of the financial system with the informal economy.

In this dissertation, I explore ‘green’ urban development and urban agriculture projects from the perspective of residents of an African American majority neighborhood in Kansas City—who reside in an area referred to as a ‘blighted food desert’ by local policy makers. In Kansas City, extensive city government support exists for urban agricultural projects, which are touted not just as a solution to poverty associated issues such food insecurity and obesity, but also as a remedy for ‘blight,’ violence and crime, and vacant urban land. Specific narratives of Kansas City’s past are used to prop up and legitimate these future visions for, and development projects in, the city. This dissertation lays out an argument for how, in Kansas City, the dominant narrative surrounding urban sustainability, agriculture, and history came to be constructed and informed by white voices, and documents how these narratives, primarily constructed by upper-middle class white local ‘foodies’, are harnessed to support green development projects that marginalize and displace people of color and the poor. Specifically, I draw on 26 months of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how this narrative was constructed and elevated in local policy circles, document the lived consequences of this whitened narrative from the perspective of residents of “food deserts,” and describe historical and current minority-led agricultural projects—which aren’t included in dominant accountings of Kansas City’s development. I also explore agentive actions of racialized groups in opposition to this dominant whitened discourse, documenting how one neighborhood council in Kansas City strategically utilizes urban food project funding to acquire other, more urgently needed, community resources. I bring light to important acts of resistance by some black and brown urban farmers, who explicitly work to shape city space by reinscribing spatialized histories of displacement and racism in Kansas City. In this project I understand racialization and representation as active, not passive, processes, that have the power to determine whose voices are heard, and who has power to shape city space and its use. By untangling the racialized construction of history and space, and drawing on narratives shared by oft-silenced groups, this dissertation project contributes to scholarly work committed to disrupting hegemonic spatialized whiteness (McKittrick 2011).

This study uses complexity theory to examine the space of the street. In a morpho-ecological city, process creates form just as form creates process. The process of movement is a critical form generator within the urban system. In this thesis, the urban system comprising streets/ car/pedestrian is examined. If this collection of urban modes of mobility is a complex system capable of selforganising behaviour, what effect does the ordering imposed by traffic engineering have on this system? I look at the driving body and the walking body as co-creating the city by their movement through urban space. I suggest that, through attention to the fragments of interactions enacted during these movements, we can, through design, allow for the emergence of selforganising behaviour. Urban shared streets, descendants of the ‘woonerf’, appear to function more efficiently than engineered streets, without the usual traffic ordering. The counterintuitive success of these streets implies a self-organising behaviour that is generated by the density of interaction between the inhabitants of the street. These designs potentially work as a change agent, a catalyst, operating within a complex system. This has the potential to move systems from one attractor state to another. A city built with these spaces becomes a city of enfilades; an open system of spaces that are adaptable to uses that fluctuate with time and avoid thickening the palimpsest of traffic engineering. I look at siting shared streets in Wellington, based on jaywalking, a transgressive use of the streetspace that prefigures a shared space, and changes to urban networks associated with such designs. Interaction within the city is a creative force with a structure. City design needs to consider and address this infrastructure and design for it. The infrastructure of interaction has been subsumed by the infrastructure of movement. Shared streets indicate there may not be a need for this – they can be integrated. The process of movement creates instances of interaction; therefore designing spaces of/for movement must be designed to enhance the infrastructure of interaction. The result of such interaction is not just somewhat better; it may be a phase change - catalytically better .

Cities are not merely inanimate objects. They are complex living environments, built over time by cultures and civilisations. This thesis argues that cities have a central place in human history and civilisation because they are imbued with meaning and meaningful activity. Thus, cities are inherently political spaces, and it may be reasonably expected that they will be important sites of social transformation in the postmodern era. In order to understand the relationship between urban space and political consciousness, this thesis traces several different interpretive paths within the marxist tradition. First, we examine the work of Henri Lefebvre, who argues for an understanding of urban space as socially produced. Next, the thesis looks at the contributions of Guy Debord, particularly at his understanding of the relation between time and the city. Both writers struggle to understand the urban in the context of the shift to what we now call postmodernity. Despite their many strengths, Debord and Lefebvre ultimately fail to theorise a social subject capable of resisting capitalist domination of the city. As a result, the thesis turns to a consideration of the work of Antonio Negri. Negri’s analysis of the fate of contemporary subjectivity has reinvigorated marxist critique with a return to the question of political change. His figure of the multitude takes leave of traditional marxism in challenging and productive ways, and helps us better understand the nature of subjectivity and resistance in a world of immaterial labour and virtuality. Nevertheless, this thesis argues that there is still work to be done before Negri’s work can be mapped out onto the contemporary metropolis.

The aim of this thesis is to explain the production of urban space at the southwestern periphery of Ankara between 1985 and 2007. It has been argued that urban development is not a self-regulatory process / on contrary it is a process produced by urban planning practice. In this respect this thesis asks how and what extent urban planning produces particular urban pattern at the peripheral areas. The southwestern periphery is taken into account as a field of case study due to the peculiar development dynamics. Historical development in this area reveals a contrast between planned development directed by master plans and problematic development that has been produced by fragmented and incoherent planning processes. The difficulties of urban plans and urban planning are intimately related with the legal and administrative structures of the planning system. A methodology offered in this thesis is devised to analyze the incremental and piecemeal nature of planning process with reference to these structures. The results of the research has shown that when confronted with legal and administrative conflicts and struggles, fragmented planning decisions manipulating the existing master plan intensify and become the root cause of dispersed, awkward and haphazard spatial patterns of urban expansion.

The aim of this thesis is to explain the production of urban space at the southwestern periphery of Ankara between 1985 and 2007. It has been argued that urban development is not a self-regulatory process / on contrary it is a process produced by urban planning practice. In this respect this thesis asks how and what extent urban planning produces particular urban pattern at the peripheral areas. The southwestern periphery is taken into account as a field of case study due to the peculiar development dynamics. Historical development in this area reveals a contrast between planned development directed by master plans and problematic development that has been produced by fragmented and incoherent planning processes. The difficulties of urban plans and urban planning are intimately related with the legal and administrative structures of the planning system. A methodology offered in this thesis is devised to analyze the incremental and piecemeal nature of planning process with reference to these structures. The results of the research has shown that when confronted with legal and administrative conflicts and struggles, fragmented planning decisions manipulating the existing master plan intensify and become the root cause of dispersed, awkward and haphazard spatial patterns of urban expansion.

Thesis aims to elaborate the urbanism ideology developed in the early republican period of Turkey and its reflection on the development of factory campuses. In Turkey after the Ottoman Empire, new state with its own ideology has impact on shaping urban space, politics of urban forms development, urban morphology and urban metamorphosis. This thesis examines various factory campuses designed and built after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, and focuses on a later campus development / namely Iskenderun Iron and Steel Factory Campus. The study notes the dissolution of factory-housing togetherness, and points to the design values in the case study presented.

Examensuppsatsen syftar på att utreda hur folk uppfattar en bostadsmiljö av en viss karaktär utifrån de konstvetenskapliga områdena arkitektur och bebyggelsemönster. En undersökning genomförs där allmänheten värderar tio områden från tre olika städer. Resultatet presenteras bland annat med hjälp av polära diagram, i diagrammet bildas en värderos, vars bild illustrerar den upplevda känslan av området. / The undergraduate thesis aims to investigate how people perceive a residential environment of a particular character based on the art of scientific fields of architecture and urban design. A survey is carried out, in which the public evaluate ten areas from three different cities. The results are presented by the use of polar diagrams, the values forms an image which illustrates the perceived sensation of the area.

The immense scope of Sir Thomas Malory¡¦s Le Morte Darthur has long kept daunting his readers. In terms of space, Malory includes both historical locations and imaginary and unnamed natural locales in his work. These places have different functions and therefore transmit different dimensions of spatial imagination. This dissertation examines three kinds of space¡Xwater as space, urban space and mystical space, and the aesthetic relations to these spaces in Le Morte Darthur. These named spaces and the selected locations in each category will be analyzed in the framework of microspace and macrospace, a structure proposed by Dick Harrison in conceptualizing medieval spatial experiences. Chapter one explores water as space. Some geographical sites, such as harbors, lakes, wells and rivers, and an imaginary space of Lancelot¡¦s tears as a qualitative concept are discussed in relation to the aquatic regenerative power. Particular interests are in how Malory accentuates differences which water exhibits in these sites and how water functions as a link to the past and to the future via language and spatial verticality. The second chapter moves to urban space, localized in specific places. This chapter aims to explicate how some medieval cities in Le Morte Darthur are consecrated or deconsecrated as a result of the city¡¦s association with distinct social and moral/immoral activities. The final chapter discusses mystical space. The places of sojourn of the Grail knights during their quest are marked by spatial verticality and horizontality, in proportion to each knight¡¦s moral worthiness. These locales form a preparatory path towards the space where the Grail vision and a divine message are ultimately revealed. An analogy between the interior space of the Grail and the extracosmic void space is drawn in order to convey the essence of the Grail in spatial terms. The progression from chapter one to three reflects a tendency from the physical to the mystical world of the human existence imagined in Malory¡¦s work. Moral dimension plays an important role in that it enables the transformation from microspace to macrospace in some instances. The term ¡§aesthetic spaces¡¨ will include both microspace and macrospace, in which Malory employs real and imaginary sites to fulfill his aesthetic ideal. ¡§Aesthetic spaces,¡¨ when taken in a broader sense, will also apply to ¡§poetic space¡¨ when language results in the transference of space which characters experience. Three categories of texts will be employed in the discussion: literary, historical and theoretical texts. The first group includes Le Morte Darthur, some major medieval English romances and chronicles and the Old French prose Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles; the second, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century philosophical, religious and historical documents; and the last, theories of medieval spatial thinking from Harrison and Mircea Eliade. Through comparisons of a number of passages in Le Morte Darthur and these two French versions, this writer attempts to show that Malory, as the first writer to incorporate the Grail narrative into Arthurian romance in England prior to the late fifteenth century, succeeds in presenting microspatial and macrospatial thinking in Le Morte Darthur.

Privatization debate in urban planning literature is accelerating as commodification of urban space increases by the tension between urban planning and privatization. The limited number of studies on the privatization of public lands and its impacts on urban planning processes as well as the theoretical framework in terms of rent, rights to property, and public interest issues has stimulated the aims of this thesis. All these provided a base for this thesis. This Thesis aims to clarify the relationship between capitalist production and public property, which has been created in urban space through privatization within a historical context. Critical evaluation is centered around the differences in implementation, related planning approaches and processes, the roles of the actors, and spatial impacts on the neighboring areas and the urban macroform in case of a de jure-privatization of a public land in the city of Ankara: Meat and Fish Products Firm (EB&Uuml / A.S.) Akk&ouml / pr&uuml / Slaughterhouse Area. How and why market mechanisms functions and reacts is analyzed in this case study. This Thesis argues that de jure-privatization and de facto-privatization conceptual differentiation might be meaningful for urban planning as the related processes and implementation function separately. Even though every de jure-privatization (privatization) experience has its own dynamics and is a unique case, the practice in Turkey differs from the world cases: Firstly, under the same legislation, Turkey exercised liquidation, donation, privatization, and socialization. Secondly, de jure-privatization is public land privatization oriented. Thirdly, as a nodal intervention, privatization has direct impacts on urban planning and the planned growth of the cities. Urbanization processes are not under the control of rational planning as these are completely left to market forces. In this de jure-privatization process, urban space is (re) produced by market-led planning approaches and public interest issue (in urban plans) is neglected. Market-led planning approaches became an act of controlling the means of power, ended the production functions of the state, and produced spaces of consumption while decreasing competitiveness of other spaces and treated public land as a commodity. Public space defined by the urban plan has become private space publicly used. As a result, public good characteristic of public space is lost. In other words, the demands of the market institution have priority for private interests and the rationality of the capitalist (re) produces urban space. The decision to continue production is left to the capitalist. Therefore, urban planning in the privatization process becomes an action to determine the real land value, to generate rent, and to transfer development potential and privileged development rights. This refers to a paradigm shift in urban planning. These outcomes challenge the legitimacy of both planning and market institutions. This thesis stresses that if de jure-privatization is inevitable, purely market-critical comprehensive rational planning should not be left aside for the legitimacy of the market institution and urban planning. This must be because / market cannot also be legitimate and trustable without the emergence of urban planning. Market should also be for public interest otherwise it would shake its own legitimacy. Articulation of urban planning with privatization for public interest could be than spelled. In other words, privatization can be accepted as an ideology by urban planning in spatial terms, if public interest is the objective in all plan hierarchies. In the de jure-privatization process, there are uncertainties, dualisms, and problem areas in terms of administrative action, (re) production of urban space, economic issues, and public interest issues. Without the awareness of these, (re) production of urban space market-critically is irrational. Conclusively, the de jure-privatization related planning processes are defined in this thesis to strengthen urban planning as an institution and ideology.