The dissertation investigates the effect of the new bus rapid transit lines on school choice at the high school level in Mexico City. Since 1996 all public high schools in the Mexico City metropolitan area have an open enrollment policy based on the result of a common test and the stated preferences of students on what school they wish to attend. I raise four questions: 1) Are students applying to public high schools that are in line with their academic potential? 2) Is the time required to commute to school a determinant factor in the students’ choice of high school? 3) Can improving access to public transit modify the set of schools to which students apply in their senior high school application process? And 4) What effects do the transit improvements have on students’ allocated school? The time difference in the introduction of four new bus rapid transit lines is used as source of variation to mass transit availability. A difference in difference technique is used to compare these groups across time. I find that about one of every five students in Mexico City in the last 12 years was allocated to a school below her academic capability potentially damaging her future performance (under-matching). This is most prevalent among students from low income areas where academic attainment is low. Transit improvements led students living in areas that previously had little access to transit to apply to schools that were farther from home. The greater benefits are for students in the middle and lower part of the academic distribution. Transit improvements decrease the level of under-matching for these students. Students in wealthier areas see the quality of their school peers decrease after transit lines start operations. The same happens for high achievement students from low to middle income areas. I carefully document with maps how transit modified the location of schools to which the students applied and also to which school they were allocated. The findings highlight an equity dimension of transit availability as a mean to access quality education and a fundamental element to exercise school choice.

This study of the West Side Urban Renewal Area (WSURA) in New York City examines the motives, preferences, and values of a selected group of householders residing in the WSURA. The findings should benefit social work and other planners in decision-making roles. The study identified a group of householders who had the option of choosing to move into urban integrated housing during a period when many of their counterparts were choosing the suburbs in order to escape urban problems such as deteriorating neighborhoods, the high cost of living, poor schools, a rising crime rate, and integrated neighborhoods. In order to better appreciate the householders' decision-making, the study explored the householders' reasons for moving from their previous homes to the WSURA, their expectations concerning life in the WSURA, some of their living experiences in the area, and their satisfaction with the decision to move into the WSURA. In order to effectively answer these questions, the variables of age, income, occupation, family cycle, and race and socioeconomic status were analyzed. The population from which the selected sample was drawn consisted of 774 black and white households located in the Stage I area of the WSURA project. The area was conducive to investigation because it had the physical and socioeconomic characteristics envisioned by the WSURA planners. A research instrument, the questionnaire, was prepared to conduct the study. A total of 173 householders were interviewed: 82 white and 91 black. The items in the questionnaire were coded, edited, and rechecked. Open-ended questions were coded according to a scheme developed from a content analysis of the first fifty questionnaires. The coded data were then keypunched and processed on an IBM 360 computer. The findings of the study demonstrated that the variables of age, income, occupation, family cycle, and race and socioeconomic status did define certain preferences and values of the respondents. The WSURA project was fortunate in its location in an area where highly valued amenities such as theaters, shopping facilities, and restaurants were already located. But the respondents were dissatisfied with schools, health and medical services, and police protection. Differences by race were distinguishable. Less racial tension was perceived in the WSURA than is evident nationally. But the respondents reported a lack of interracial contact on other than a superficial level. An additional survey of key informants. eight people who had been involved professionally in the WSURA project, revealed that the planners hoped to remove the stigma of urban renewal. They revealed also that because of citizen participation the planners and planning recipients had common areas of agreement. It was found that consideration of economics and social attitudes resulted in tradeoffs by the respondents in terms of their moving into the WSURA project. Detailed planning is viewed as a significant component of effective housing policy. No recipient group should be taken for granted. The most visible planning flaw is seen as a lack of sensitivity toward the poor. Limited income, poor education, and inequality in opportunity constituted a cycle that is not fully appreciated by planners. Past methods used by planners should be viewed skeptically. Plans for future housing and neighborhoods should reflect a more realistic view of the needs and preferences of all groups and a greater appreciation of the quality of life.

Hui Ka Wai. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2004-2005, design report." / Introduction --- p.001-011 / Research Study --- p.012-047 / Precedent Study --- p.048-079 / Model Study --- p.080-117 / Final Presentation --- p.118-158

Culture is expanding and has greater weight and explanatory potential in our culturalised age. Following the earlier literature of the ???cultural turn???, culture is now perceived as ubiquitous in society, the economy, and theory, and with the capacity to intervene on itself. Further, it may be seen to characterise both the nature and the progressive potential of a range of contemporary social and intellectual technologies such as planning, education, health, and organisational development. While this general process of ???culturalisation??? proceeds apace, the capacity of culture to act as an organising idea and category for sectors such as planning is still largely underdeveloped, most particularly in planning itself. A new Culturised Model for planning that is reflexive and ethical is proposed. Differentiated from the trend to culturalisation and its association with commodification, ???culturisation??? has true sustainable and transformational potential. The thesis consists of three main parts ??? each of three chapters - with a substantial scenesetting Introduction and a Conclusion. Part One examines culture and planning, Part Two develops a new Culturised Model for planning, and Part Three illustrates the Model. In Part One the grounds of culturisation are prepared by: 1) describing our culturalised age; 2) developing a new positionality for planning; 3) presenting a critical analysis of neomodern and postmodern planning theory; and 4) outlining an original history of culture and planning in the 20th and 21st centuries. In Part Two a practical Culturised Model for planning is developed, based on the three elements of 1) principles for culture; 2) a planner???s ???literacy trinity???; and 3) a methodology. The Model employs an integrated concept of culture and an integrated approach to research, and is applicable to the full spectrum of planning forms, scales and purposes. In Part Three the Culturised Model is illustrated in principle through a range of global examples, and in specific terms, for two major Australian places. The first study illustrates culture and urban and regional planning for metropolitan Sydney, NSW, at four nested geographical scales. The second illustrates strategic planning in its aspatial form for the Port Arthur Historic Site, in Tasmania, a major international convict heritage site proposed for UNESCO World Heritage listing. The thesis represents an original multi-dimensional synthesis on culture and planning. It also presents a ???breakthrough??? paradigm for the sustainable integration of culture in planning, previously only foreshadowed in the planning literature, and developed in randomised practices internationally.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1988. / Vita. Bibliography: leaves [404]-454.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.-.)--Washington State University, May 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-192).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-132).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-197).