Planning has evolved from being viewed as a discipline that can be quite technical toone of humanistic and social reproach. Collaborative planning within this same reference claims to be all-inclusive with collaborative planning theorists believing that community forms of planning offer a progressive way forward since they incorporate public participation in the planning issues they face. Public participation is defined by the World Bank as an active process by which beneficiary groups influence the direction and execution of a development project, with a view to enhance their well-being in terms of income, personal growth, self reliance and other values they cherish. Duncan Village is one of the largest and most dense shack settlements' in the Eastern Cape. An Urban Renewal Programme that later became known as the Duncan Village Redevelopment Initiative (DVRI), was designated for the area with the aim of upgrading and were necessary redeveloping section of the township that were hazardous to human settlement. The Flood Line Pilot Project is a sub-section to the overall DVRI with the aim of moving resident living along the Umzonyana River banks within the 1:100 year flood line and experiencing major flood and fire disasters and relocating them while at the same time redeveloping the area as open, green and environmentally friendly space. Public participation models and approaches are being assessed within the flood line pilot to illustrate whether within the planning phase, were one would initially argue for public participation, residents became participants and owners ofthe projects or merely passive receivers of information concerning their areas. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

The purpose of this study is to assess the developmental impact of the Mzinyathi access road in Durban (eThekwini) and to establish whether the construction of the road contributes to the poverty alleviation or not. The study begins by focusing on a review of literature on road infrastructure. Of importance is that the literature review provides a foundation for the study through the assessment of the existing literature on road infrastructure. Further, research gaps are presented allowing to this and other future researches to make new contributions to the existing literatures. Fifteen households were surveyed, a number of interviews were organised and two focus groups were organised. The information from all utilised techniques were analysed through the thematic approach. The results of the study indicate that the construction of the Mzinyathi access road has contributed significantly towards poverty alleviation in Mzinyathi area. The conclusion and recommendations drawn from the findings reveal that there is a crucial need for moving away from the former conception or way of thinking that the public works specifically the roads have to be constructed only for job purposes. The road is able to address many more developmental issues than job opportunities. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

A alteração dos processos produtivos da metrópole contemporânea encontra na Vila Leopoldina um exemplar bastante ilustrativo. O distrito abriga em seu território a estrutura da metrópole industrial no que diz respeito à circulação e tecidos viários e significativa presença de galpões desocupados, fruto da diminuição da atividade industrial no processo produtivo contemporâneo da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. A estrutura industrial não representou um impeditivo para as transformações espaciais. Ao contrário, tornou?se uma importante peça na estratégia de ação do capital imobiliário sobre o bairro. Essa pesquisa identifica três territórios invisíveis que em alguns momentos se sobrepõem, em outros cooperam e em outros conflitam, em meio às contradições sociais e às diferentes estratégias de apreensão do espaço. Os territórios da Permanência, Ruptura e Resistência são tratados como o resultado da relação entre segmentos sociais específicos e o espaço urbano onde se inserem. A fim de compreender o papel de cada um deles no processo de alteração de padrões do distrito, a dissertação apresenta uma pesquisa histórica, enfatizando o surgimento e as dinâmicas dos três territórios, ancorada no processo de produção cartográfica descrito na metodologia. Para compreender as relações que estabelecem entre si, o trabalho é concluído com a análise das camadas materiais e imateriais dos territórios, com ênfase na Permanência, identificando dois padrões distintos de exclusão sócio?espacial, resultantes da ação do mercado imobiliário ao longo das últimas décadas. Estudar um bairro em profunda transformação oferece a oportunidade de compreender como se dão as relações interpessoais e as lutas pela conquista de espaço onde os marcos físicos, os padrões, os usos e ocupações se alteram. / The transformation of productive processes of the contemporary metropolis finds in Vila Leopoldina an illustrative model. The district shelters in its territory the structure of the industrial metropolis as what concerns the circulation and transport\'s network and meaningful presence of unoccupied barns, as a result of the decrease of industrial activity in the productive contemporary process of São Paulo metropolitan region. The industrial structure did not represent an obstacle to the transformation of its space. Instead, it became an important part in the strategy for action of the real state capital upon the neighbourhood. The present research identifies three invisible territories that at times overlap, at times cooperate, at times enter in conflict due to social contradictions and towards different strategies for the perception of the space. The territories we named as Permanence, Disruption and Resistance are considered the result of the relationship between specific social groups and the urban space in which they operate. In order to understand the role of each in the process of changing patterns of the district, this dissertation presents a historical research, underlining the emergence and the dynamics of those three territories, based on cartographic production process described in the methodology chapter. To understand the relationships established between them, the text concludes with the analysis of the material and immaterial layers of those territories, giving emphasis on Permanence, identifying two distinct patterns of socio?spatial exclusion, resulting from the action of the Real?estate market over the past decades. To study a neighborhood in deep transformation process offers the opportunity to understand how the interpersonal relationships occur and the struggles for the conquest of space where the physical landmarks, patterns, uses and occupations is in constant transformation.

The fact that social problems cluster in space is not new. Spatial clustering of social problems has been described for several issues such as low educational achievement, crime and drug use, among others. One key factor that has been linked to those problems is the geographical concentration of contextual disadvantage. It has been argued that this observed correlation is only to be attributed to the fact that housing and labour markets create incentives for vulnerable people to cluster in space. Some believe that this clustering generates additional effects leading to poorer outcomes that would not have been observed in the absence of spatial clustering. The literature is unclear on the question of whether there is a "neighbourhood effect" of contextual disadvantage on problems like antisocial behaviour, and how this effect might be transmitted. Neighbourhood studies have been subject to persistent methodological and conceptual shortcomings. These may be partly related to the high costs involved in producing new datasets with adequate spatial measures. The availability of datasets with contextual data is scarce, thus many of the published papers on the subject have drawn on a low number of different studies (usually from the US and Europe). Consequently, the possibility to generalize their findings seems to be limited. In addition, the availability of high quality data (e.g. longitudinal datasets) that can help to rule out known methodological problems is even more restricted. In order to contribute to improving the understanding of how contextual characteristics might influence adolescent antisocial behaviour, firstly, a systematic review of longitudinal neighbourhood effects studies was conducted. In the first part of the thesis, results from the review suggest that the evidence supporting the existence of a direct neighbourhood effect of poverty and concentrated disadvantage on antisocial behaviour is mixed. Contextual effects of concentrated disadvantage also seemed to be highly dependent on model specification, whereby most studies finding significant main effects usually failed to include potentially relevant confounders in regression models. Commonly omitted confounders were related to baseline antisocial behaviour, parenting and peer differential association. Furthermore, evidence was generally unsupportive of the idea that neighbourhood level residential instability, neighbourhood disorder and incivility, social capital and collective efficacy or exposure to violence may have a direct effect on antisocial behaviour. Regarding institutional resources, mixed results were found. Some evidence pointed to the idea that "subcultural" variables (e.g. community level tolerance to deviance) may have an effect on reduced individual level violence. At times, it seemed that more complex models regarding how neighbourhood influences may influence behavioural outcomes might be needed. In the second part of the thesis, data from a longitudinal study, representative of the school population of Santiago de Chile, was merged with independent contextual level information (Census tract, schools and police records) and analysed. By examining the case of Santiago de Chile, a series of ideas regarding how contextual characteristics of activity spaces might relate to the growth of antisocial behaviour diversity over time were explored and tested. Specific attention was paid to examine and discuss how contextual effects might operate, in particular, how contextual disadvantage may influence criminogenic processes of strain, social control and contagion (peer effects). In order to test the proposed hypotheses, a series of hierarchical linear growth models were estimated. No evidence supporting the idea that different types of activity spaces (home based or school based activity spaces) may have differential effects on antisocial behaviour was found. However, results suggest that higher levels of contextual concentrated disadvantage across activity spaces significantly predicted a steeper growth of antisocial behaviour diversity over time. In spite of this, no support was found for the existence of a direct contextual effect once other covariates (i.e. baseline antisocial behaviour, strain, family level social control, contagion effects, among others) had been controlled for. The effect of concentrated disadvantage on antisocial behaviour appears to be mainly indirect; that is, mediated by other covariates. Baseline antisocial behaviour and contagion effects (peer effects) seem to play a relevant role in explaining away the effect of contextual concentrated disadvantage on the growth of antisocial behaviour scores over time. Only partial support for the idea that strain indicators may predict growth in antisocial behaviour diversity over time was found. Additionally, mediation analysis suggests that it may seem unlikely that the effect of contextual concentrated disadvantage on antisocial behaviour would be mediated by increased levels of strain. In spite of this, the effect of family level SES on the growth of antisocial behaviour diversity does seem to be partially mediated by some of the measured strain indicators. Measurement limitations (antisocial behaviour scale could only increase or remain stable) made it difficult to interpret some unexpected findings regarding strain effects. Regarding social control variables, evidence suggested that, even though family level monitoring predicts antisocial behaviour, neither parental attachment nor monitoring seemed to mediate the effect of contextual disadvantage on antisocial behaviour. In relation to school level social control, none of the relevant measures (school value added education and school attachment) significantly predicted antisocial behaviour in the fully specified model. Moreover, none of the hypothesized mediation effects held up, after controlling for other covariates. Regarding contagion effects (measured using peer variables), macro level concentration of juveniles with arrest records failed to predict individual level growth in antisocial behaviour diversity over time. Nevertheless, micro level concentration of antisocial peers in school and/or in activity spaces did predict growth in antisocial behaviour diversity. Results on micro level concentration of antisocial peers where subject to multicollinearity problems and thus were assessed separately. The effect of both variables (concentration in schools and concentration in activity spaces) was partially mediated by best friend's antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, concentrated disadvantage and concentration of deviant schoolmates in activity space interacted to predict a stronger relationship between affiliation to deviant peers and antisocial behaviour . Results are consistent with both geographic propinquity and co-offending process. , because of a low ecometric reliability found for "concentration of antisocial peers in activity space", results regarding this variable are regarded as tentative. An explanatory hypothesis of observed effects was proposed. Results may suggest that the effect of contextual disadvantage on antisocial behaviour is mainly indirect. Contextual disadvantage might be regarded as an expression of spatial clustering (social sorting) of low SES families due to housing and other governmental policies. In average, low SES families display poorer parenting skills, which might provide at least a partial explanation as regards to why higher concentration of antisocial peers (in school or activity spaces) and increased baseline antisocial behaviour scores are observed in disadvantaged contexts. In turn, higher concentration of deviant peers may be facilitating contagion effects. Results suggest that effects of concentrated disadvantage on antisocial behaviour might be due to simultaneous occurrence of compositional and contextual effects. / Study limitations, policy implications, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

A alteração dos processos produtivos da metrópole contemporânea encontra na Vila Leopoldina um exemplar bastante ilustrativo. O distrito abriga em seu território a estrutura da metrópole industrial no que diz respeito à circulação e tecidos viários e significativa presença de galpões desocupados, fruto da diminuição da atividade industrial no processo produtivo contemporâneo da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. A estrutura industrial não representou um impeditivo para as transformações espaciais. Ao contrário, tornou?se uma importante peça na estratégia de ação do capital imobiliário sobre o bairro. Essa pesquisa identifica três territórios invisíveis que em alguns momentos se sobrepõem, em outros cooperam e em outros conflitam, em meio às contradições sociais e às diferentes estratégias de apreensão do espaço. Os territórios da Permanência, Ruptura e Resistência são tratados como o resultado da relação entre segmentos sociais específicos e o espaço urbano onde se inserem. A fim de compreender o papel de cada um deles no processo de alteração de padrões do distrito, a dissertação apresenta uma pesquisa histórica, enfatizando o surgimento e as dinâmicas dos três territórios, ancorada no processo de produção cartográfica descrito na metodologia. Para compreender as relações que estabelecem entre si, o trabalho é concluído com a análise das camadas materiais e imateriais dos territórios, com ênfase na Permanência, identificando dois padrões distintos de exclusão sócio?espacial, resultantes da ação do mercado imobiliário ao longo das últimas décadas. Estudar um bairro em profunda transformação oferece a oportunidade de compreender como se dão as relações interpessoais e as lutas pela conquista de espaço onde os marcos físicos, os padrões, os usos e ocupações se alteram. / The transformation of productive processes of the contemporary metropolis finds in Vila Leopoldina an illustrative model. The district shelters in its territory the structure of the industrial metropolis as what concerns the circulation and transport\'s network and meaningful presence of unoccupied barns, as a result of the decrease of industrial activity in the productive contemporary process of São Paulo metropolitan region. The industrial structure did not represent an obstacle to the transformation of its space. Instead, it became an important part in the strategy for action of the real state capital upon the neighbourhood. The present research identifies three invisible territories that at times overlap, at times cooperate, at times enter in conflict due to social contradictions and towards different strategies for the perception of the space. The territories we named as Permanence, Disruption and Resistance are considered the result of the relationship between specific social groups and the urban space in which they operate. In order to understand the role of each in the process of changing patterns of the district, this dissertation presents a historical research, underlining the emergence and the dynamics of those three territories, based on cartographic production process described in the methodology chapter. To understand the relationships established between them, the text concludes with the analysis of the material and immaterial layers of those territories, giving emphasis on Permanence, identifying two distinct patterns of socio?spatial exclusion, resulting from the action of the Real?estate market over the past decades. To study a neighborhood in deep transformation process offers the opportunity to understand how the interpersonal relationships occur and the struggles for the conquest of space where the physical landmarks, patterns, uses and occupations is in constant transformation.

本論文通過十二個月的田野研究，探討城市化進程中，鄉鎮、城鎮與城市等三個處於不同城市發展階段的地方，信息化進程中的性別政治有何異同。本研究的核心問題是：城鎮化與信息化的交互作用如何進行？在城鎮化與信息化同時推進的當下中國，個體，尤其是個體的性別化身體，如何與以電腦、互聯網爲代表的數字科技之間産生脫嵌與再嵌入的"雙向形塑關係？ / 本研究運用科技馴養、個體化和性別-科技共創理論，分析城鎮家庭中電腦和互聯網的社會化生活。本研究發現中國社會現代性建構中，城鎮用戶通過在家庭內部採用電腦和互聯網，逐步形成一種數字化家庭關係，其中互聯網本地化特徵明顯。此外，本研究還發現，性別化的網絡互連的個體化是當下中國社會中的城鎮化、信息化發展過程中的主要特徵。本研究採用綫上與綫下相結合的多點民族誌的混合方法，探討在中國城鎮化過程中研究性別與互聯網的共創關係。 / Based on ethnographic data collected in 12 months of field work, this thesis studies the gender politics in the process of digitization and urbanization by comparing the phenomenon in a village, a town, and a city. The three main research questions of this study are: How are the interactions between urbanization and digitalization? How do digitization and gender relations mutually construct each other in the process of urbanization? / Using theories of technology domestication, individualization theory and the mutual construction of gender and technology, I analyze the use of computers and internet in the social life of rural and town families. This research found out that in the process of modernization, as rural and town families adopted the use of computers and internet; they gradually transformed themselves into, digitalized families. Furthermore, the individualization of gendered networks stood out as the key characteristic of urbanization and digitalization of post socialist China. This research pioneered the combination of multi-sited ethnography and virtual ethnography in exploring the interplay between gender and the internet in Chinese urbanization. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 任珏. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-228). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Ren Jue.