Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-91). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph.D.)(Agricultural Economics)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wid Web.

Thesis (MTech (Town and Regional Planning))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, 2006 / The research focuses on urbanising communities in the peri-urban areas of the Tamale Metropolitan Area (TAMA) of Ghana and the inability of the urban authorities to provide adequate basic infrastructure services. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research approaches, the author observed that the development planning paradigms practiced over the years placed urban planning and service delivery in a centralised paradigm which cannot respond adequately to the increasing pressures of urbanisation, nor offer opportunities for the involvement of communities due to this top-down planning approache. The research in fact identified that the communities, through their own initiatives have planned and executed service projects to improve their lives in some respects where the TAMA has failed. The communities have achieved this due to their spirit of social solidarity, self-help and communalism built around their traditional chiefs, which incorporates some of the principles of Local Agenda 21. The TAMA sees this development as an opportunity to henceforth forge collaboration and partnerships with the traditional authorities for improved service delivery in the urbanising communities. This represents innovative urban planning and management approaches, which in the context of low-income urban communities, includes participatory planning and service delivery. These innovative approaches have been initiated in the Habitat Agenda emanating from the UN Conference on Human Settlements in 1996. The study advocates the concept of sustainable development and Agenda 21, as a working model which presents a participatory and integrative process for local authorities and communities to work towards urban improvements. The Local Agenda 21 planning approach, it is argued, will integrate and strengthen the already existing local community initiatives and provide a basis for partnerships and improved service delivery. The case - studies examined are the Tamale Metropolitan Area and the peri-urban settlements Jusonayili and Gumah.

M.Com. (Business Management) / As a result of the cost of new infrastructure and the effect it has on tariff structures in developing areas, the term "cost recovery" tends to have a negative connotation. The fact of the matter is that the capital cost of creating infrastructural services, as well as the cost of operating them, must be recovered. There is no easy way to cut back on existing services and programmes, to charge user fees, or to raise taxes. Yet failure to devise a rational and effective way of investing in public works, as well as appropriate cost recovery mechanisms, will surely prevent any significant improvement in the standard of living, as well as in the local and national economy ...

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This document investigates a set of projects I call DIY Infrastructure, in which designers are building alternative infrastructural systems. Through these projects, new actors-often non-experts-reveal and re-imagine long-established social and technological relationships which were previously off limits to them. These projects are significant to the study of design and digital media for the following reasons: First, they detail a new area of design. The designers of DIY infrastructure present an expansion of the scope of design coupled with a nuanced and almost paradoxical understanding of infrastructure as an intractable and exceedingly complex problem. At the same time, their work reveals the extensive social and political effects of existing design decisions-the far-reaching consequences of the design decisions which formed existing infrastructure. These decisions are in play across a variety of scales of time and space, affecting individual bodies as much as continental ecosystems, and shaping personal behavior as much as global commerce and trade. Second, they expand the scope of digital media studies. Digital media studies often overlook infrastructure, in spite of their interdependence. Digital media are involved in areas including the control and monitoring of the electrical system, the treatment and movement of water and sewage, and the routing of freight through intermodal shipping systems. The study of DIY infrastructure design, and infrastructure more broadly, exposes the role of digital media in shaping these overlooked aspects of modern life. There is an invisible relationship between digital media, infrastructure, and political authority, and it includes the interdependence of infrastructure and the contingent nature of our ongoing reliance on these complex sociotechnical systems. For example, Cloacina is the project of two activists developing a new municipal waste disposal system in which a decentralized networked system significantly lessens the amount of water used in processing human waste. Another project, Feral Trade Courier, employs the sort of shipping database we might associate with FedEx or UPS to facilitate an alternative shipping infrastructure, in which volunteers transport goods in an ad hoc freight network. I begin by surveying and defining DIY practice, delineating the properties of infrastructure, and determining the ways that those properties and practices can be augmented or diminished by the affordances of digital media. Next, I review the attributes that these DIY infrastructure projects share before revealing their significance through in-depth case studies. Finally, each of these case studies highlights a particular lesson from DIY infrastructure. Feral Trade Courier exposes the role of the social and the subjective in the design of logistics systems. Village Telco and Fluid Nexus show us that the relationship between established infrastructure and DIY infrastructure can be both complementary and antagonistic. Cloacina provides us an example of a way that DIY infrastructure might scale up and effect lasting sociotechnical change. Whether motivated to reveal or overcome dependence on infrastructure, address flaws in its design, or correct externalities generated by its use, new designers have begun to engage with the problem of infrastructure in new ways. This document analyzes these design projects through a series of case studies, synthesizing a new perspective on the study of infrastructure through design and on the scope of digital media research along the way.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-99).

No description available.

Thesis (MAppSc (Project Management))--University of South Australia, 1995