Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Rural communities across America are working to strengthen their economies, provide better quality of life to residents, and build on assets such as traditional main streets, transportation initiatives, and natural amenities and resources. Today, rural communities face an array of challenges. Small communities are vulnerable to the impacts of expensive commutes, lack of mobility, financial resources, and other services. According to the USDA, “Some small communities, have limited local government staff, experience, or funding, which can mean few resources dedicated to providing sustainable amenities, regional collaboration, and other efforts to identify shared community goals and visions that can help shape growth and development” (USDA, 2011). Small communities must work hard to compete with larger cities and other communities to sustain economically and become prominent. This is often noticeable when there is a lack of investment and economic prosperity. Many rural communities have limited transportation options. Most small communities are not fit to support multiple modes of transportation, which limits access to jobs, medical care, and educational opportunities. For those who do drive, commutes to distant employment centers can be time consuming and require a large percentage of the family budget to be spent on transportation (USDA, 2011). In addition, intercity and regional mobility are drivers of economic growth in rural communities and bring tourists and other consumers to community businesses. Rural communities and small towns should be valued for their distinctive and historic features. Communities that conserve and build upon these resources, such as historic downtowns and main streets, will be better positioned to enhance quality of life for their residents. Without revitalizing main streets we would not see the places of shared memory where people are suppose to come together to live, work, and play.

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There has been a continual emergence of shopping centres in the 21st century. In recent years the prevailing shopping centres have been designed as an indispensable part of city centres having all the urban elements and qualities of traditional streets in combination with convenience, commercial efficiency, and high functioning design. The evolving shopping malls are challenged to add diversity to the range of shopping facilities and add on to the new experience keeping up with the ever-changing trends in society. This study aims to investigate if shopping malls are over-managed consumer spaces embedded in privatisation and commercialisation, thus creating a hindrance for true public spaces to emerge, or do they have a possibility of becoming a real public realm with true public spaces. Two case studies of shopping centres provided valuable insights on how stakeholders pursued planned public spaces in shopping centres and how the public perceives them. The placemaking model, highlighting the fundamental rights in a public space by covering the tangible and intangible aspects, has been central to this research. The results indicate that the malls should integrate more into the cities. They should focus on incorporating adaptive flexibility with the diversity of usage inclusive of changing demographics and increased urbanisation, which means a greater need for public spaces for mingling and congregation. / Det har skett en ständig uppkomst av köpcentra under 2000-talet. Under de senaste åren har de rådande köpcentrumen utformats som en oumbärlig del av stadskärnan med alla urbana inslag och kvaliteter av traditionella gator i kombination med bekvämlighet, kommersiell effektivitet och hög fungerande design. De utvecklande köpcentrana utmanas att lägga till mångfald i utbudet av shoppingfaciliteter och lägga till den nya upplevelsen som följer de ständigt föränderliga trenderna i samhället. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka om köpcentra är överhanterade konsumentutrymmen inbäddade i privatisering och kommersialisering, och därmed skapa ett hinder för att verkliga offentliga utrymmen dyker upp eller har de en möjlighet att bli en riktig allmänhet med verkliga offentliga utrymmen. Två fallstudier av köpcentrum gav värdefull insikt om hur intressenter förföljde planerade allmänna utrymmen i köpcentra och hur allmänheten uppfattar dem. Platsframställningsmodellen, som belyser de grundläggande rättigheterna i ett offentligt rum genom att täcka de konkreta och immateriella aspekterna, har varit centralt i denna forskning. Resultaten indikerar att köpcentra bör integreras mer i städerna. De bör fokusera på att integrera anpassningsbar flexibilitet med mångfalden av användning inklusive förändrad demografi och ökad urbanisering, vilket innebär ett större behov av offentliga utrymmen för mingling och församling.

The Main Street Four Point Approach to commercial revitalization has been applied successfully in thousands of communities across the U.S. Starting in 1995, citywide coordinated programs began applying the balanced points of organization, design, economic restructuring and promotion to urban environments. This thesis focuses on the opportunities and challenges present in five citywide Main Street programs in Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Orlando and Portland through quantitative inquiry and interviews with program administrators. This thesis discusses density, capacity, volunteerism, vernacular culture, and politics as emergent themes of the urban application of the Main Street Approach and recommends expanding the breadth of definition and flexibility of each of the Four Points as to be more applicable and successful in the citywide context.

From September 19th through October 3rd, 2008, Congress debated the largest government bailout in America history—the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA). Those sixteen days generated a vibrant conversation regarding the nature and severity of America’s economic crisis and the proper role of government in responding to such juggernauts. In this dissertation I explore the rhetoric generated by this bill and its context in hopes of illuminating the more general role of rhetoric in mitigating and exacerbating crises in capitalism. My hypothesis is that, in a global capitalist economy increasingly dependent on immaterial production (i.e., finance, the Internet, mass media, etc.), economic crisis rhetoric has become as essential to economic order as monetary and fiscal policy. To explore this claim, I focus on two key rhetorical tensions that drove much of the crisis rhetoric produced. The first of these battles is a rhetorical struggle over the spatial delineation between Wall Street and Main Street, while the second is a conflict between Keynesianism and neoliberalism in a rhetorical contest over the values of government interventionism. By analyzing a variety of policy and expert discourses that constitute the parameters of these discrete areas of debate, I argue that all rely on moral and ethical appeals to substantiate their meaning and validity. At the same time, I contend that these discourses are indebted to logics of institutional form and therefore cannot be abstracted from the financial and political contexts in which they reside. This insight leads me to forward a new theory of economic crisis rhetoric called the economic imaginary. By beginning with real economic events and then taking into account the discursive and extra-discursive forces that “overdetermine” its mediated understanding, the economic imaginary offers us a more empirical and cartographic account of how economic rhetoric actually operates in society. / text

This thesis aims to contribute to the current academic debate on contemporary polarization in the U.S. Congress. The paper provides a brief overview of the relevenat existing literature and schools of thought on the issue. As part of the thought direction which steers away from definining roots and causes of polarization among the general public but rather sees them as issues of the political elite, this thesis highlights the need to focus on individual Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) in the House of Representatives and their connection to polarization. By applying an existing dataset accepted among political science scholars as the key tool for measuring polarization, the thesis seeks to affirm the presumed ideological differences among the individual CMOs (or caucuses). The main part of this thesis which adds value to further discussion is the case study of all roll call votes of the 114th House of Representatives examining voting cohesion of the studied caucuses. The aim of this study is to show to what extent the CMOs are in fact consistent voting blocs and how influential they can potentially be within the political elites in the House of Representatives and to what level they may be contributing to the contemporary polarization.

Landscape architects, many of whom practice the design principles of the New Urbanism, have become increasingly involved with the participatory planning process. A key principle of New Urbanism, the participatory planning process is incorporated in an attempt to ensure that any new development - or alteration of an existing development - meets the needs of the community for which the design is created. This study examines data gathered from a web-based survey addressing the alternate, stakeholderess charrette approach. It was distributed to participants of charrettes facilitated by the Mississippi Main Street Association and is an attempt to understand the perceptions of those actively involved in the process. The purpose of this study was to examine this alternate approach to charrette facilitation and identify trends associated within. The analysis of stakeholder perceptions may prove beneficial in identifying trends that threaten charrette efficiency while highlighting trends worthy of replication in future charrettes.

<p>Since the 1960’s, post industrial downtowns across North America and Europe have suffered economic and population losses. Downtown revitalization theory is now a major subject in urban geography. Although each city is unique and requires customized revitalization techniques, certain approaches have worked better than others. Hamilton, Ontario, is a city of roughly 520,000 located just outside the Greater Toronto Area. Its downtown has struggled since the 1970’s. In the last ten years, however, certain areas of downtown have shown signs of revitalization. Conversation about this change has largely focused on attracting creative industries. King Street, Hamilton’s most downtown street, has yet to experience significant improvement, but is surrounded by changing areas and expected to follow suit. This study looks at two theories of revitalization: the Creative Capital theory, and the Main Street approach. It also discusses commercial gentrification. City officials and business owners along King Street were interviewed about what they expect for King Street downtown. Business owners, this study found, are underutilized agents of revitalization in the area. They want and expect the area to improve, but have yet to make significant changes to their own establishments. More could be done to include incumbent business owners in King Street's revitalization processes in Hamilton, and to acknowledge them as agents of change within the commercial gentrification literature.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)