abstract: The dynamic nature of Navajo or Diné culture is continuing to be constrained by a mechanistic planning paradigm supporting delivery of colonial subdivisions across the land. Poor housing and subdivision conditions levy pressures on the Navajo People that reduce their ability to cope with environmental, financial and social pressures. This study has taken this complex social justice related health challenge to heart through a 2015-2016 school year of Arizona State University dissertation driven, community-based participatory action research with high school students from Navajo Preparatory School (NPS) in Farmington, New Mexico and community participants from the Shiprock Chapter of the Navajo Nation. Fieldwork focused on case study analysis of cluster settlements across the Navajo Northern Agency and existing subdivisions within the town of Shiprock to develop the Framework for a transformational Navajo model of the Pattern Language (Alexander et al, 1977) for new neighborhood design. Pattern data supporting the Framework was generated at the linked scales of the Navajo nuclear Family Camp, the extended family Cluster Camp, and the community-scaled Constellation Settlement “spatial model” that is proposed by this study as new neighborhood planning model. An ethnographic research methodology was employed with students, faculty, Board leadership and neighboring Shiprock Chapter and Shiprock Planning Commission research participants. The study’s research methodology was anchored by a pioneering Indigenous Planning high school course that was housed within the School’s International Baccalaureate curriculum. Goals for student education in Indigenous Planning theory and much needed Diné planning-based language building were married with practical aims for use of the Diné Pattern Language and Constellation Settlement spatial model for anticipated Shiprock Chapter housing projects. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Design 2017

The author Mike Davis has labelled our entire globe as a planet of slums. This hesis aims to provide some insights to the research field of slum rehabilitation, and thus contribution to efforts to make our globe slum free. The United Nations states that security of tenure is one of the essential preconditions for improvements in slums. The statement comes with support from academic research, which highlights the relation between secure tenure and a slums physical quality. Out of these messages two hypotheses are formulated and tested throughout the thesis; one theoretical, the other empirical. The theoretical section holds that tenure should be studied according to property rights and tenure status, that interventions for slum rehabilitation should support the dwellers efforts of incremental development, that tenure is granted in both the informal and formal land market, and that there are several causalities between secure tenure and the quality of housing and infrastructure. The case study examines 208 informal settlements in terms of their living conditions in the city of Pune, India. The thesis draws on empirical data in the form of a citywide slum survey that has been made available by the non-governmental organisations, Maharashtra Action League and CHF International, both of which operate in Pune. The empirical section reveals that secure tenure does not influence housing quality at all, that secure tenure just slightly influences available infrastructure in a settlement, and that urban planners are able to support a sustainable and incremental rehabilitation of slums by focusing on tenure security.