The Johannesburg, Cottesloe, Gas Works is located within the Witwatersrand zone of integration, between the University of Johannesburg and Witwatersrand. According to the Johannesburg Metropolitan Open Space System (JMOSS), there is a high priority to link secondary open spaces such as the educational premises. The Johannesburg Gas Works forms part of Jozi’s cityscape and the three remaining 45meter high gas cylinders represents a visual iconic landmark in the city. The site is currently inaccessible. The aim of this dissertation will be to determine the manner in which a user experience can be created as a palimpsest of meaning between the tangible and intangible elements on site. This implies a dialogue between the polluted areas of industrial waste, the layers of historical significance and the remnants of nature. The dissertation specifically focuses on awareness creation through the landscape experience on a post-industrial site of the associated social exploitation and environmental contamination. The Open Narrative approach will be used as part of the methodology which implies multiple interpretations by users and recognizes the presence of embedded narratives inscribed by past and future cultural practices and natural processes. A new narrative is inscribed onto the site and provides multiple experiences with each visit to the site through a phased intervention that opens up areas and processes for experience as they become decontaminated. To facilitate the palimpsest of tangible and intangible meaning, the user experience is proposed to consist of three realities: a lower, in-between and upper reality with increasing elements of transience. The essence of the design and its programme becomes mutualistic (as opposed to exploitative), based on the principles outlined by Klein (2014) namely, “interdependence, reciprocity and cooperation”. The goal of the design intervention is to foster a renewed community identity and social and environmental health through the range of active and passive activities proposed but also through the particular experiences that open up the site for renewed interpretation to all users. The dissertation demonstrates that new meanings can be applied to spaces that once posed a cultural limitation. A mutualistic relationship between the site and the people can and should co-exist. / Mini Dissertation ML(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Architecture / ML(Prof) / Unrestricted

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the past 50 years, we have seen significant public and philanthropic investment in building civil society in countries around the globe. This includes initiating community foundations to support the development of vibrant communities and civic life. Yet we have little knowledge about why some initiatives bear fruit and others fail to do so. More specifically, why some community foundations initiated by institutional funders are able to garner local giving necessary to sustain themselves and others are not. This dissertation contributes to our knowledge about such initiatives by researching the Lilly Endowment’s GIFT Initiative (Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow), a project providing incentives to start nearly 60 new community foundations and revive 17 existing community foundations in Indiana since 1990. I employed mixed methods and three sources of data: historical archives, statistics of community foundations’ financial information and community demographics, and case studies of four community foundations. First, I found two existing explanations offered in the literature did not account for the lack of local support for the community foundations I studied. More specifically, I found that high level of income and wealth does not necessarily lead to high level of giving to community foundations and the lack of community identity is not the primary reason explaining community foundations’ struggles in attracting local donations. Rather the study shows that social capital is crucial for garnering local giving through the mechanism of facilitating information sharing. Second, I examined the long-term effects of matching grants, a key strategy used by Lilly Endowment to leverage local giving. I found that long-term provision of matching grants might reduce organizations’ incentives to seek funding sources on their own. My dissertation lends further insight into the sustainability of civic infrastructure organizations, a popular institutional model for building local civil society even today.

Social media usage is a paradigm shift in mass communication history, and members of the diasporic communities use social media for building and maintaining relationships. Social media have taken an important step by allowing the users to communicate in their native languages online. Because of this new step, communication through social media has become easier for the diasporic people who lack language and communication skills in their host countries. The diasporic people can communicate with the members of the same diasporic community in the host society and also with friends and family back home by using their native languages. Diasporic people have various motivations for using social media including gratifications. This dissertation examines patterns of use of social media among the South Asian diaspora living in the U.S. In doing so, the study uses a broader framework of bridging and bonding social capital to examine how South Asian people in the U.S. maintain relationships with friends both back home and in their host society via social media. Moreover, the influence of language for socio-cultural adjustment of the South Asian immigrant people was also explored in this study. An online survey following a snowballing technique was conducted among 535 South Asian people in the U.S. The results found that bonding relationships are related to native language use in social media, information sharing about back home and frequencies of social media use. Bridging relationships are related to relationship maintenance with friends in the U.S. and frequencies of social media use. The results of this study show the English language preference is not related to cultural and psychological behaviors in social media. However, English language preference is related to home country media related behaviors.

This dissertation investigates the role of architecture in the emergence of community identity with specific reference to the spontaneous surfacing and expansion of informal settlements within the South African context and the need for fundamental public service infrastructure provision. The aim is to understand and illustrate the significance of contextual infrastructure provision as catalyst in the emergence of social and cultural networks. In analysing the current innovative survival strategies induced by the community themselves, a theoretical premise will be established regarding the implications of an "African urbanist" approach to infrastructure and means of applying it in design. The current rate of urbanization within the South African context has resulted in several human settlements expanding organically, attempting to meet the increasing housing demands whilst neglecting the provision of platforms for various interwoven layers of urban fabric and public services. These platforms are integral in the shaping of cultural and community identity. The intent of the proposal is to provide an interface between the public and the built fabric that serves the needs of, as well as enhances the quotidian praxis within the Eastern Mamelodi precinct. The proposal intends to disclose an existing cultural language and identity by establishing physical loci that host and exhibit quotidian social practices unique to Mamelodi. Through theoretical and contextual enquiry the study provides an understanding of the role as well as the necessity of infrastructure architecture manifested into an appropriate solution which will facilitate the corroboration of a unique cultural identity. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

This thesis is set in St. Catharines Ontario, a mid-sized city of 132,000 people, situated in the heart of the Niagara Region. Once a thriving manufacturing centre, St. Catharines has experienced two decades of traumatic economic contraction due to the collapse of the local automotive industry. Like other cities that have experienced the loss of their predominant industry, St. Catharines is struggling not only with unemployment, economic uncertainty and environmental degradation, but also with issues concerning the city’s very identity. As industrial activity played a critical role in shaping the form and character of the city, its steady disappearance has left both a functional and symbolic void in the community. The challenges associated with deindustrialization and decentralized urbanization have had a devastating impact on St. Catharines. The city’s historic core has not only lost its role as the symbolic centre of the community, unrelenting suburban expansion has also led to the destruction of some of Canada’s most productive agricultural terrain in the surrounding vicinity. This thesis argues that the current economic crisis offers a unique opportunity to radically reconsider St. Catharines’ urban environment. The thesis looks to the earth – the terroir – as the basis for the development of a robust vision to transform the city’s underappreciated historic core into a hub for the Niagara Region’s expanding wine industry. Essential to this vision is the extensive cultivation of urban vineyards and the planning of key pieces of urban armature around which future development will occur. The design aims to improve the overall quality-of-life offered in St. Catharines, and build a broader sense of community by enhancing the unique experience of the place and engaging citizens in the local wine enterprise.

This thesis is set in St. Catharines Ontario, a mid-sized city of 132,000 people, situated in the heart of the Niagara Region. Once a thriving manufacturing centre, St. Catharines has experienced two decades of traumatic economic contraction due to the collapse of the local automotive industry. Like other cities that have experienced the loss of their predominant industry, St. Catharines is struggling not only with unemployment, economic uncertainty and environmental degradation, but also with issues concerning the city’s very identity. As industrial activity played a critical role in shaping the form and character of the city, its steady disappearance has left both a functional and symbolic void in the community. The challenges associated with deindustrialization and decentralized urbanization have had a devastating impact on St. Catharines. The city’s historic core has not only lost its role as the symbolic centre of the community, unrelenting suburban expansion has also led to the destruction of some of Canada’s most productive agricultural terrain in the surrounding vicinity. This thesis argues that the current economic crisis offers a unique opportunity to radically reconsider St. Catharines’ urban environment. The thesis looks to the earth – the terroir – as the basis for the development of a robust vision to transform the city’s underappreciated historic core into a hub for the Niagara Region’s expanding wine industry. Essential to this vision is the extensive cultivation of urban vineyards and the planning of key pieces of urban armature around which future development will occur. The design aims to improve the overall quality-of-life offered in St. Catharines, and build a broader sense of community by enhancing the unique experience of the place and engaging citizens in the local wine enterprise.

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The thesis explores differences among values and traditions of various (christian and jewish) social services run by religious NGO and focuses on strategies how non-religous employees cope with their work in such organizations. The thesis is focused on two Christian organizations (Charita, Diakonie) and one jewish organization run by Jewish Community. The thesis describes a history of church social services and their present state, questions of interactions between individual and corporal identities, culture of organization, faith and influence of the group. The specific characteristics of organizations run by church are part of their culture and should be a part of the way they are being managed too. Besides describing strategies used by employees who do not belong to the church, the thesis also describes some recommendations for the management, which would be also benefitial for employees' support. The aim of the thesis is not to compare Christian and Jewish institutions, but to focus on their specifics, which influence workers from the outside. In the research part the thesis tries to map attitudes of these employees, their strategies of managing differences, which they meet while working for religious NGOs. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The aim of this work is to introduce a new concept of children's home which seeks to find a relationship between family environment, specific needs of children or necessary architecture requirements which are important in perceiving the space in which children are.

No description available.