The aim of the research is to demonstrate architectural design strategies and outcomes that provide alternative ways of considering the futures of areas under high developmental pressure. These areas are where the potential detrimental effects of unmediated, rapid change and development are at their most immediate and in need of consideration. Urban environments are complex physical manifestations of economic, environmental, social, cultural and political pressures represented by the often competing desires of public and private interest groups. Given the enormity of scale and complexity of these pressures, it is problematic to think of architecture as something that can design everything (perhaps as seen in traditional master planning) and in doing so, solve the problem. What may be more constructive is the consideration of architecture having the potential to be involved strategically in these issues, over a number of scales to work towards positive outcomes for the public domain. In recent years, both Victorian and Queensland state governments have released policy guiding the future growth of key regions within their borders. Each attempts to address accommodating large population increases over relatively short time periods by proposing consolidation in and around existing urban centres. This consolidation is seen as part of a strategy to limit urban sprawl and curtail its associated negative social, environmental and potential economic impacts. These targeted 'Activity Centres' become places of immanent transformation, points of pressure within the disaggregated field of the contemporary Australian city. Left un-mediated, developmental pressure in locations such as these is likely to create the same detrimental physical and social effects evident in the general prevailing homogeneity, commercialisation and piecemeal nature of current urban development. Through several architectural design projects, the research aims to explore the role of architecture as an urban mediator within these pressured locations. Through bridging scales from the broad metropolitan, to the finer grained specific, this mediation may begin to strategically 'set things up' for the public domain, towards facilitating valuable social exchange.

The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area faces numerous transportation challenges now and in the future: congestion, population growth, and an inadequate public transit network. The metropolitan region has also changed in form in past decades, shifting from a monocentric to a polycentric region, further compounding the challenges. Currently, the public transit service is delivered by 9 different agencies comprised of 6 municipal providers, 2 sub-regional providers, and 1 regional provider. A region possessing a multiplicity of agencies suggests an overabundance of jurisdictional borders - borders that can potentially restrict travel across them. This thesis seeks to determine the impact of the presence or the omission of jurisdictional borders on transit patrons. A comparative approach is employed to investigate the benefits and costs to patrons and agencies through greater integration of specific origin-destination (OD) pairs. The chosen methods selects OD pairs that are known to be transit competitive, possess a high travel demand, and cross a transit-jurisdictional border. The relationship between transportation and land-use is relied upon to select clusters of dense employment or population, called activity centres, where public transit is known to compete well with the private auto. The travel demand between these centres is obtained using the 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Survey and the current optimal transit routing is determined using Google Trip Planner. Three OD pairs are selected that possess the most onerous transfers, a proxy for poor integration. Another three OD pairs are selected that possess seamless or no transfers using a variety of modes. In both cases, the existing transit routing is compared to an alternate routing to understand the benefits achieved through inter-jurisdictional integration; the first compares existing trips to improved inter-jurisdictional routes while the second compares existing trips to exclusively intra-jurisdictional routes. Through identification of 40 employment and 29 population activity centres in the region, and the acquiring of travel demand between them, the six case study OD pairs are selected. The three OD pairs investigated, with onerous transfers, are comprised of trips between Brampton-Mississauga, Hamilton-Burlington, and Brampton-Toronto. The remaining inter-jurisdictional case study OD pairs are made up of three different modes: conventional bus, express bus, and regional rail. They comprise trips between Toronto-York Region, Brampton-Mississauga, and Mississauga-Toronto respectively. This study finds that in all cases, the routes with greater integration reduce total travel time and the generalized cost to patrons. Additionally, the penalty due to transferring is reduced through integration implying a current barrier existing at some jurisdictional borders. For the agencies, the cost of delivering the suggested inter-jurisdictional service varies dramatically. The costs are translated into a quantity of additional patrons necessary to justify the operation investment while maintaining the current revenue/cost ratio. These findings provide insight into the current transit network. Promoting integration throughout the network will help attract new riders as the generalized cost of travel is reduced. Also, when inter-jurisdictional connections are made, such as in the case of the Brampton-Mississauga Zum service, the beneficiaries of that service are widespread and not limited to the corridor in which the service operates.

The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area faces numerous transportation challenges now and in the future: congestion, population growth, and an inadequate public transit network. The metropolitan region has also changed in form in past decades, shifting from a monocentric to a polycentric region, further compounding the challenges. Currently, the public transit service is delivered by 9 different agencies comprised of 6 municipal providers, 2 sub-regional providers, and 1 regional provider. A region possessing a multiplicity of agencies suggests an overabundance of jurisdictional borders - borders that can potentially restrict travel across them. This thesis seeks to determine the impact of the presence or the omission of jurisdictional borders on transit patrons. A comparative approach is employed to investigate the benefits and costs to patrons and agencies through greater integration of specific origin-destination (OD) pairs. The chosen methods selects OD pairs that are known to be transit competitive, possess a high travel demand, and cross a transit-jurisdictional border. The relationship between transportation and land-use is relied upon to select clusters of dense employment or population, called activity centres, where public transit is known to compete well with the private auto. The travel demand between these centres is obtained using the 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Survey and the current optimal transit routing is determined using Google Trip Planner. Three OD pairs are selected that possess the most onerous transfers, a proxy for poor integration. Another three OD pairs are selected that possess seamless or no transfers using a variety of modes. In both cases, the existing transit routing is compared to an alternate routing to understand the benefits achieved through inter-jurisdictional integration; the first compares existing trips to improved inter-jurisdictional routes while the second compares existing trips to exclusively intra-jurisdictional routes. Through identification of 40 employment and 29 population activity centres in the region, and the acquiring of travel demand between them, the six case study OD pairs are selected. The three OD pairs investigated, with onerous transfers, are comprised of trips between Brampton-Mississauga, Hamilton-Burlington, and Brampton-Toronto. The remaining inter-jurisdictional case study OD pairs are made up of three different modes: conventional bus, express bus, and regional rail. They comprise trips between Toronto-York Region, Brampton-Mississauga, and Mississauga-Toronto respectively. This study finds that in all cases, the routes with greater integration reduce total travel time and the generalized cost to patrons. Additionally, the penalty due to transferring is reduced through integration implying a current barrier existing at some jurisdictional borders. For the agencies, the cost of delivering the suggested inter-jurisdictional service varies dramatically. The costs are translated into a quantity of additional patrons necessary to justify the operation investment while maintaining the current revenue/cost ratio. These findings provide insight into the current transit network. Promoting integration throughout the network will help attract new riders as the generalized cost of travel is reduced. Also, when inter-jurisdictional connections are made, such as in the case of the Brampton-Mississauga Zum service, the beneficiaries of that service are widespread and not limited to the corridor in which the service operates.

Enligt lagen om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade (LSS) har de som tillhör personkrets 1 eller 2 rätt till insatsen daglig verksamhet. Av samtliga tio insatser enligt LSS är daglig verksamhet vanligast. De övergripande målen med daglig verksamhet är meningsfull sysselsättning, delaktighet i samhället, stärka individens självbestämmande och att brukaren ska tillförsäkras goda levnadsvillkor. Trots stora framsteg i funktionshinderpolitiken visar forskning att dessa mål kan vara svåra att uppfylla och att dessa människor ännu marginaliseras. Syftet med denna studie är att förstå och öka kunskapen om hur personal inom daglig verksamhet arbetar för att möta brukares individuella behov. Studien är baserad på åtta kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med personal på åtta olika dagliga verksamheter i Stockholms stad. För att analysera resultatet utgick vi från teori om empowerment och paternalism. Vi identifierade tre huvudteman under kodningen; Lära känna brukaren, Genomförandeplan och Vems behov styr som presentationen av resultatet sorterats efter. Resultatet visade att daglig verksamhet är ett forum där personer med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning har möjlighet kan få sina individuella behov tillgodosedda om rätt förutsättningar ges. Vi identifierade att personal stöter på hinder för att kunna tillgodose brukarens individuella behov som vanligtvis är av organisatorisk karaktär. Det är felaktiga nivåbedömningar, brist på ekonomiska resurser, handledning och vidareutbildning samt lokaler som inte var anpassade för brukarna. Vidare fann vi att det finns stora utmaningar med att kommunicera med personer som har kognitiva svårigheter varför det är av vikt att personal har tillgång till olika kommunikativa hjälpmedel samt kunskap för att använda dessa. För att kartlägga individuella behov använder personal olika verktyg men den huvudsakliga och centrala som vi fann var genomförandeplanen. I denna studie kommer vi beskriva närmare om personalens arbetssätt, möjligheter och dess utmaningar för att möta individuella behov som visat sig vara mycket komplext. / According to the Swedish act concerning support and service for people with certain functional impairment (LSS) those who meet the criteria 1 or 2 specified by the act have the right to daily activity centres. Of all ten initiatives according to LSS, daily activity centres are most common. The overall goals of daily activity centres are meaningful activities, community participation, strengthening the individual's self-determination and ensuring that the user is guaranteed good living conditions. Despite major advances in disability policy, research shows that these goals can be difficult to achieve and that these people are still marginalized.  The purpose of this study is to understand and increase the knowledge of how staff in daily activity centres work to meet users' individual needs. The study is based on eight qualitative semi-structured interviews with staff at eight daily activity centres in Stockholm. We used the theory of empowerment and paternalism to analyse our results. We identified three main themes during coding; Get to know the user, Implementation plan and Whose needs is in control? by which the presentation of the results is sorted. The result showed that daily activity centres is a forum where people with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to get their individual needs met if given the right conditions. We identified that staff encounter barriers to being able to meet the user's individual needs, which are usually of an organizational nature. There are incorrect level assessments, a lack of financial resources, guidance and further education as well as facilities that were not adapted for the users. Furthermore, we found that there are major challenges in communicating with people who have cognitive difficulties, which is why it is important that staff have access to various communication aids and knowledge to use them. To identify individual needs, staff use different tools, but the main and central one we found was the implementation plan. In this study, we will describe in more detail about the staff's way of working, opportunities and its challenges in meeting individual needs that have proved very complex.