The built environment should facilitate a meaningful experience for a user by intellectually engaging their perceptual and cognitive abilities. In 1983, Howard Gardner published his cognitive theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner theorizes that human intelligence is not one single capacity, but is comprised of multiple capacities. Many teachers use the multiple intelligences theory as a tool to reach a larger number of students by engaging their unique learning styles. The theory of multiple intelligences is one way to interpret how an individual might understand, perceive or experience their surroundings. I used Gardner's theory as a framework to develop design criteria that can be used by designers to create landscapes or environments that engage people in an intellectual and meaningful way. By designing a site that will engage different individuals' unique methods of understanding, a landscape architect can create landscapes that will capture attention and promote a unique personal experience through the creation of sense of place. I believe that this in turn can also be used as a tool for articulating design ideas and analyzing current landscapes. My research begins with a review of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow and what is needed to achieve this playful state. The answer is to engage a user with a challenge. This led me to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. After a review of his work, I used his theory to analyze several case study landscapes. Based on this research, I developed a set of preliminary design criteria that can be used as an outline or a starting point for designers. I chose the Joe L. Evins Appalachian Center for Crafts (ACC) in Smithville, Tennessee as my site for beginning my understanding of the range of uses that the multiple intelligences possess within a landscape. The ACC is a visual arts school whose mission is to preserve and educate people about the culture and techniques of Appalachian crafts. The mediums that are taught are clay, glass, metal, fibers, and wood. My design exploration lead me to concluded that the outcome of a multiple intelligences landscape will be shaped by several factors: the personal strengths and weaknesses within the multiple intelligences of the designer, the sites will determine which intelligences should be designed for, and that the design process should be a collaborative effort. Therefore, the design solution produced is not the strength of this research project, but rather the development, process, and conclusions that reveal a strong case for the inclusion of engaging users' intellectually. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Many rural village schools have closed over the years, both in Sweden and internationally, because of urbanisation, centralisation and the quest for efficiency. This study shows the impact of two school closures in the rural area of Ydre, south-east Sweden, and describes the reactions of children and families concerned. The aim is to analyse what rural village schools mean for everyday life and how such meaning is based on time-spatial everyday stories. How the children and families view the school closures emerges in the time-geographic perspective, on their own terms, given their opportunity to demonstrate how they use different time-space components. This was studied by interviewing and sketching mental maps with 28 pupils of various ages, and by interviewing and drawing up weekly time schedules with 12 families. This also enabled the analyses to be extended, using the time-geographic conceptual framework, and in particular the interplay between structural changes and individuals’ day-to-day lives, and the interconnections between school and private life, to be clarified. One conclusion is that a school is no mere teaching venue. It is also a key meeting place for children, part of community life and a space for social networking and daily decision-making: a local community hub for the children and their parents alike. When a local school closes and the pupils need to travel further for schooling elsewhere, it affects their travel and activity patterns and social networks. Children’s drawings express their perceptions of place, time and distance. This study shows that the locations where children spend time and have their social networks, as well as how and how often they travel on particular routes, are crucial for their assessment of distance, both temporal and spatial. Describing the value of the closure-threatened school, parents express concern about their local village. They stress the importance of the village school, which they regard as excellent, unique and a resource for the family, but also for the community as a whole. Thereby, they highlight their hope that their community will be attractive to visitors, and also to themselves, the residents. The threats of closure upset them and provoke discussions on how to sustain a living countryside. Studies of children’s and families’ experience of school closures pinpoint the complexity of rural life and show it in a more human-centred, everyday light. Since children are absent from the municipal closure procedure, views of children’s participation are also discussed.

Denna uppsats har syftat till att undersöka downshifting som en livsstilsmigration till landsbygden samt belysa downshiftares flyttmotiv till landsbygden i förhållande till deras valda livsstil. Frågeställningar som uppsatsen har utgått ifrån är: vilka motiv påverkar downshiftare att flytta till landsbygden? samt hur upplever downshiftarna landsbygden som plats och hur möjliggör landsbygden deras livsstil? Forskningen beskriver downshiftning som en motrörelse till ett högt livstempo där det förespråkas att “växla ner”. Vi har uppmärksammat en trend där människor som downshiftar ofta flyttar till landsbygden som följd av sin livsstil och vi ville därför fördjupa oss i ämnet utifrån ett kulturgeografiskt perspektiv då detta inte undersökts tidigare. Vi har även uppmärksammat att det finns mindre forskning som rör intern livsstilsmigration inom Sverige och specifikt om livsstilsmigration till landsbygden. En stor del av forskningen kring livsstilsmigration har hittills behandlat internationell migration. I förhållande till de nämnda observationerna syftar därför studien till att undersöka downshifting som en livsstilsmigration.  Tidigare forskning kring downshifting, livsstilsmigration och plats utgör den teoretiska referensramen. Uppsatsen har utgått ifrån en kvalitativ undersökning med semistrukturerade intervjuer med downshiftare som flyttat från en större stad till landsbygden. Sammanfattningsvis genomfördes åtta intervjuer med endast kvinnliga respondenter, detta eftersom vi använde oss av snöbollsurvalet som uteslutande länkade till kvinnliga nätverk. Resultaten visar bland annat att de flesta flyttar till landsbygden för att kunna växla ner och hoppa av “ekorrhjulet” som de upplever är påtagligt i storstaden. I studiens slutsats har vi kommit fram till att flyttmotiv till landsbygden bygger på flera olika motiv som inte skiljer sig nämnvärt från de motiv som framkommit i tidigare forskning. Att flytta till landsbygden har fungerat som strategi för att kunna styra över sin egen tid eftersom de låga boendekostnaderna möjliggör för downshiftaren att kunna gå ner i arbetstid.

This research explores the role of co-learning in addressing water issues, being both context sensitive and responsive to the needs, lived experiences and symbolic representations of people at the local level in the case of the West Bank. Water is essential to the wellbeing of all societies, not only due to the necessity of water for life, but because it connects us to stories about place, beliefs and norms, identity and others, through the meanings that it invariably comes to embody. This research critically examines the significance for learning of freshwater: as a physical necessity; as a metaphor; and, as a source of meaning in the context of community-based water interventions. The dominance of particular narratives around water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are discussed, as these have resulted in the acceptance of specific understandings about the problems and solutions to the water shortages that are experienced across the West Bank in differentiated ways. The effects of these narratives on water intervention processes and outcomes are observed, being most adverse in relation to local ownership, agency and identity as well as sustainability. A meaning-based framework is proposed based on an understanding of sense of place and a socio-political perspective of water shortages, as a way to reconnect the discourse with Palestinians' own accounts of water and place, and to provide opportunities to explore NGO engagement with divergent knowledges, perspectives, and priorities during interventions. It is argued that water interventions can be understood as a social learning process, which NGOs may be ideally situated to mediate. A model of learning and sustainable development is revisited and revised in order to consider the relationship between participation, agency and sustainability in relation to community-based water interventions.

The historic place is the result of a uniqueness that characterises and differentiates it from other places. It holds both tangible and intangible features that creates its sense of place, which is a lifelong process whereby it gradually constitutes our historic city and its character. This study aligns with the growing recognition by the international heritage community to expand our understanding of cultural heritage to include tangible and intangible values, agenda of sustainability, the role of local culture, and sustainable development. It, thus, initiates a critical dialogue between heritage conservation and sustainable urban development, to examine the concept of sense of place and its implications for conservation theory and practice. By drawing on a variety of methodologies and sources, it seeks to understand how effectively sense of place can contribute to the management of historic urban areas in a globalised world. The theoretical phase of the research traces relevant literature and studies, presenting the latest debates on heritage management at the international level, and explores selected collaborative projects in Europe at regional level. While the practical phase, focuses on Edinburgh as an in-depth case study, exploring its policies and practice at a local level. The methodological approach adopted in this study has enabled combining literature from different disciplines, through categorising the main features of sense of place, to a grid of main goals for any development project: conserving the physical structure, the suitability of the use, and the development of local community and improving the quality of life. This takes us beyond issues of conservation and towards a recognition of the central role sense of place and local community have in (re)configuring shared values, practices, collective memory and identity in a specific cultural cluster. To illustrate the validity of the approach, the analytical framework was applied to selected development projects across Edinburgh to explore the sense of place, unpack the complexity of local values of various users, effectively engage more users and stakeholders, and redefine heritage management and the way it can be integrated within the planning system. This was possible by using various methods to acknowledge its multiplicity: exploring the evolution of Edinburgh’s historic place in history and the role of planning system and policies into shaping the present character; and conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and focus groups in local communities.

It is widely assumed in both popular and scholarly imaginaries that Travellers, due to their 'nomadic mind-set' and non-sedentary uses of land, do not have a sense of place. This thesis presents an ethnographic account of an extra-legal camp in Southeast London, to argue that its Traveller inhabitants do have a sense of place, which is founded in the camp's environment and experientially significant sites throughout the city. The main suggestion is that the camp, its inhabitants, and their activities, along with significant parts of the city, are co-constitutionally involved in making a Travellers' sense of place. However, this is not self-contained or produced by them alone, as their place-making activities are embroiled in the political, economic and legal environment of the city. This includes the threat and implementation of eviction by a local council, the re-development of the camp's environs, and other manifestations of the spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban regeneration. The thesis makes this argument through focusing on the ways that place is made, sensed, and lived by the camp's Traveller inhabitants. It builds on practice-based approaches to place, centred on the notion of dwelling, but also critically departs from previous uses of this notion by demonstrating that 'dwelling' can occur in an intensely politicised and insalubrious environment. Therefore, I consider dwelling in the context of the power asymmetries of place and urban precarity, as well as how it is crucial to making a home-in-the-world. Depicting a family fiercely and desperately striving to hold onto place in the time-space of the late-liberal city, a situation that affords them little promise of a future, the thesis destabilises established understandings and analysis of Travellers' experience, in a contemporary context. Chapter one considers how men's skilled activity, building materials and machinery are involved in creative acts of correspondence, which coalesce to make the camp a liveable place for its inhabitants. The central suggestion is that, through making and inhabiting the camp, it also comes to make and inhabit those involved in such activities. However, the family's ability to structure their own world, by building themselves a place to live, is contingent on a range of socio-political constraints that subject them to infrastructural violence. Chapter two turns from the camp's built environment to examine women's caregiving and home-making practices. It considers women's haptic involvements with their caravans, suggesting that these activities are not simply practices of creative homemaking but, due to the central role they play in raising families, they position women as world-formers. It also examines the ways that women's caregiving activities are intensified by the camp's insalubrious environmental conditions, and how these are involved in the unmaking of the family's matriarch. Chapter three considers the relationship between men's economic activity and the city. It draws correspondences between men's economic transactions with non-Travellers, and hunting, suggesting that each practice consists of the skilled capacity to procure resources from particular environments. Chapters four and five turn from Travellers' own place-making activities, to examine how a sense of place is produced from, and fractured by, the threat of eviction. In the first of these, I consider the role that state-administered documents, definitions and imaginaries play in shaping the spatial parameters of place for the Cashes. In the second I examine the ways that eviction, and the broader spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban redevelopment, coalesce in the camp to produce a sense of place and time that is charged with affect and uncertainty.

The five stories in this collection are an exploration of realist fiction through a variety of narrative points of view and a diversity of characters. The stories explore issues of class, age, work and family, but in each piece, the characters struggle in their own way to discover a sense of belonging in their own lives. Central to each of these stories is a sense of place. All are set in the American west, most in rural California and the land and activities of place provide not only a specific landscape, but often a limitation, a narrative element against which the characters both resist and find their truest home.

Drawing from literature on place, this dissertation studies place dynamics in relationships between people and a mixed amenity place. Using Great Salt Lake (GSL), Utah, as a case study, I use a social constructionist approach to examine the sense of place held by those who live nearest to the lake. I analyze qualitative interview and focus group data as well as quantitative survey data to discern the meanings the lake holds for these nearest neighbors and to examine distinctions between people who see the lake differently. This study is relatively unique in its examination of relationships with a mixed amenity place, as prior place research has focused on high amenity places such as resort locations. A number of distinctions were found. Place attachment to GSL was less widespread than seen with high amenity places, and there were some residents for whom the lake held negative meanings. The lake held multiple meanings for many research participants, including combinations that appeared incongruous in mixing both positive and negative lake images. Some participants appeared to have no sense of the lake. Additionally, there was evidence of social stigma related to living near the lake. This study can help natural resource managers, community leaders and policy makers to better understand the relationships between local residents and GSL, which prior place research has shown to be a useful indicator of environmental concern, commitment to the place, and support for resource management. There were many things residents did not appear to know about the lake, including, for example, the natural workings of the lake ecosystem, the effect built features have had on this ecosystem, and the economic contributions to local communities, counties and the state from lake-related enterprises. Also of interest, these nearest neighbors talked about how changes related to the lake have affected them. This study provides justification for further work on people-place dynamics with mixed amenity places, as it revealed dynamics not be seen in research on higher amenity settings. The study also demonstrates the need for continued social science research on GSL, to provide further understanding of people's relationships with this important place.

This thesis examines four regional community cultural festivals in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. It reveals the complex interplay of a sense of place and community, a destination’s identity and representation, host guest relationships and the underlying nature and role of celebration expressed in each festival. It examines the regional context in which the Jacaranda Festival in Grafton, the Beef Week celebrations in Casino, the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Byron Bay and the Mardi Grass Law reform rally in Nimbin are conducted. An extensive literature review provides a global perspective on theories, issues and trends in the sectors reflected in the case study festivals. The phenomenological approach to the case study methodology is explained before each festival is closely scrutinized, addressing the study’s aim.The thesis aims at a better understanding of the elements of resilience fostered by festivals when communities take intentional action. This resilience dimension emerged as a major outcome of the initial investigation of the nature and role of festivals in regional communities.The thesis argues that festivals allow people to reflect and determine a sense of community and place, represent their image and identity and contribute to cultural tourism. Community festivals involve the local population in a shared experience to their mutual benefit by providing both social functions and symbolic meanings. This study contends that community-based festivals celebrate the community’s social identity, its historical continuity and its cultural resilience. They are socially constructed and negotiated phenomena and can be staged in everyday places that also become tourist places. Festivals provide a forum for creativity, custom, heritage and cultural practices for both resident and guest.Investigating community cultural festivals from multiple perspectives allows for greater understanding of the nuances of the relationships between stakeholders. By identifying the patterns, structures and meanings of the contexts that festivals represent we are better informed of the distinctive values, interests and aspirations held by residents when they host festivals. Perspectives on community festivals and resilience were canvassed from diverse perspectives as demonstrated by the following typical responses:Nourishing resilience through Festivals and CommunitiesThere are many intangible reasons why a community chooses to host a festival such as socio-cultural, economic, political and environmental and each reason is not mutually exclusive (Backman et al, 1995).The Northern Rivers region stands apart from the rest of rural Australia as living as if the future matters. This is a very powerful attractor in these times of urban decay and environmental despair (Dunstan, 1994:2).Sense of place, can be described as, the common ground where interpretation and community development meets in a concern to create or enhance a sense of place, to establish what is significant and valued in the environment or heritage of a particular community, and to provide action for its wider appreciation and conservation (Binks, 1989:191 cited Trotter, 1998).Democratic communities take responsibility for their future. It is undeniable that cohesive community events based on ideals create a sense of community. The excitement and joy that people feel when they work together for their community and future means that they will attempt to recreate that experience. It becomes their preferred way (Emery, 1995:70).…the notion of community is always something of a myth. A community implies a coherent entity with a clear identity and a commonality of purpose. The reality is that communities, more often than not, are made up of an agglomeration of factions and interest groups often locked in competitive relationships (Smit, 1995 cited in Joppe, 1996:475).Community, the custodians of the content of Australian tourism, must be enabled to participate in tourism by forming its content. Only if Australians are involved in tourism will it survive, (Wood, 1993:7).Through direct contact and interaction with each festival, the qualitative exploratory study reveals how in formal and informal ways participants at the four case study sites demonstrate the diverse and fragmented nature of festivals. Although none of these festivals is identical, some consistent patterns do emerge to demonstrate that comparisons can be developed. These patterns have their own advantages and disadvantages and it is evident that success or failure is not linked to a particular model for such festivals. Each community has an ongoing challenge of determining how their festival can best meet its needs presently and into the future. Each is trying to keep pace with the changes that are taking place within their communities, within the region and from external forces. This is where the study also generates new knowledge: tracking the changes occurring in community festivals in contemporary regional Australia.Through a systematic analysis of data the study significantly contributes to our understanding of the character of community festivals. Through surveys, interviews, media analysis, photographic images and critical observation, it clearly observes that social, economic and environmental issues currently presented in the literature require greater deconstruction and critical engagement. Rich and quilted description of the festivals informs this research providing grounded scholarly investigation. This approach leads to a greater understanding of significant social and cultural agendas in regional communities. Festivals add value to communities. They creatively produce and embed culture. They can be viewed as celebrations of resilience.Through a systematic analysis of data the study significantly contributes to our understanding of the character of community festivals. Through surveys, interviews, media analysis, photographic images and critical observation, it clearly observes that social, economic and environmental issues currently presented in the literature require greater deconstruction and critical engagement. Rich and quilted description of the festivals informs this research providing grounded scholarly investigation. This approach leads to a greater understanding of significant social and cultural agendas in regional communities. Festivals add value to communities. They creatively produce and embed culture. They can be viewed as celebrations of resilience.At the core of the investigation is an analysis of how the process of nourishing resilience by making inclusive celebrations, unleashes relationships between many stakeholders. Each participant contributes to the program, traditions, cultural practices, impact and reach of events with differing voices and emphases.In principle, festivals and their host communities offer individual members a framework for attending to general aspects of life. This study reaffirms that community festivals particularly hold a significant position in three areas of the human condition. They celebrate a sense of place through organising inclusive activities in specific safe environments. They provide a vehicle for communities to host visitors and share such activities as representations of communally agreed values, interests and aspirations. Finally, they are the outward manifestation of the identity of the community and provide a distinctive identifier of place and people.

The Australian landcare movement is considered to be a major success, with an extensive community landcare network developed, raised levels and depth of awareness, and a range of demonstration projects undertaken. It has inspired people across Australia and has been emulated overseas. However, negative trends in environmental conditions continue unabated. If the approach of the Australian landcare movement to date has not addressed the current unsustainable farming practices, what approach will? This Australian study explores the history of the ‘mechanistic’ worldview, its influence on the attitudes to and treatment of landscapes and indigenous knowledge from colonisation, and the ongoing impacts on current social and natural rural landscapes. Increasing tension between the mechanistic worldview and the growing landcare ethic based on relationships is apparent. Through the focus project, Watershed Torbay, a different way of seeing and treating the world is explored by praxis. A worldview based on relationships and connection as the end purpose is proffered. Strengthening connection with one’s own moral framework, and relationships with people and place in community, are seen as the path to achieving sustainability based on ecological and values rationality. It is recognised that there are multiple ways of seeing and experiencing the world, and it is important to give voice to all players with a connection to decision making. This also means that there are different forms of knowledge; these can be grouped under the typology of epistemic or scientific knowledge, techne or technical/practical capability, and the central form of knowledge about values and interests. I have worked with the focus project as a reflective practitioner undertaking action research; this is evident in the movement between theory and practice through the thesis. The thesis concludes in praxis taking the learning from the focus project, and exploration of theory, to answer the question posed at the outset by outlining how the relational worldview can be applied to the regional bodies now delivering major landcare programs.