published_or_final_version / abstract / Urban Design / Master / Master of Urban Design

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

Port-au-Prince, la ville la plus peuplée des Caraïbes est ceinturée de quartiers précaires connus sous l’appellation de bidonvilles. Ces quartiers construits généralement sur des terrains dangereux, envahis par une population en quête de logement, abritent la plus forte proportion des habitants de la ville. Ils constituent en même temps des lieux d’observation de l’inimaginable capacité des populations locales à garantir l’accès à certains services. À travers l’action d’une association locale évoluant à Village solidarité dans la zone métropolitaine de Port-au-Prince, nous avons étudié les apports et les limites des stratégies utilisées dans l’organisation de services publics d’électricité. L’analyse repose fondamentalement sur une approche de développement local reposant sur cinq notions complémentaires et interreliées qui sont les suivantes : le projet commun, l’appartenance et l’identité collective, les ressources, le leadership, l’opportunité politique. Les résultats de la recherche font état d’un projet commun aux contours assez flous qui reflète des insuffisances au niveau des modes de pensée, et au niveau des ressources matérielles et financières mises en jeu. Le style de leadership en place au sein de l’association est teinté de déterminisme religieux, pris au piège des manœuvres clientélistes des politiciens locaux et infantilisé par l’action des agences gouvernementales. A la fin de l’étude nous dégageons des pistes pour dynamiser les forces du milieu et réorienter l’action associative afin d’aller vers un projet collectif. Ces pistes reposent fondamentalement sur la transformation des modes de pensée influençant l’action et la transformation des pratiques organisationnelles. / Port-au-Prince, the biggest city of the Caribbean considering the size of its population, is mostly constituted in precarious neighborhoods generally named “bidonvilles”. Those neighborhoods generally built over dangerous fields, by a population that is looking for affordable housing are the place of living of the majority of the inhabitants of the city. At the same time, they represent the true places to observe the unthinkable imagination of the local populations to organize access to some basic services. Through the action of a local association in Village Solidarité in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, we studied the contributions and the limits of the used strategies to organize public services of electricity. The overall analysis is conducted under a local development approach that is constructed around the concepts of common goal, belonging and collective identity, leadership, resource and political opportunity. A sample of association members and residents has participated in group focus and individual interviews during the field study. The results of the research are expressing an imprecise common goal and an insufficiency of the ideological instruments, and the material and financial resources. The leadership is prisoned by religious frame of thinking, local political tricks, and infantilized by the action of governmental actions. At the end, we propose paths to strengthen the power of the neighborhood toward a collective project. Those paths are constructed fundamentally over the transformation of the sets of thinking and organizational practices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1986. / Also availalbe in microfilm.

Background: Injury is an enormous public health problem in Canada. Recent studies have suggested that characteristics of the residential environment, particularly neighborhood marginalization, may be important in determining injury risk. Objective: To determine whether there is an association between neighborhood marginalization and injury in the largest urban cities of Ontario. Methods: A retrospective, cross-sectional, ecological study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between neighborhood marginalization and injury in 0-64 year olds who resided in the ten largest cities of Ontario between 2003-2005. Results: Neighborhoods with high levels of ethnic diversity had significantly lower rates of unintentional injuries, neighborhoods with high levels of material deprivation had significantly higher rates of assaults, and neighborhoods with high levels of residential instability and material deprivation had significantly higher rates of self-inflicted injuries in adults. Conclusions: The association between neighborhood marginalization and injury differs depending on the type of injury examined.

Background: Injury is an enormous public health problem in Canada. Recent studies have suggested that characteristics of the residential environment, particularly neighborhood marginalization, may be important in determining injury risk. Objective: To determine whether there is an association between neighborhood marginalization and injury in the largest urban cities of Ontario. Methods: A retrospective, cross-sectional, ecological study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between neighborhood marginalization and injury in 0-64 year olds who resided in the ten largest cities of Ontario between 2003-2005. Results: Neighborhoods with high levels of ethnic diversity had significantly lower rates of unintentional injuries, neighborhoods with high levels of material deprivation had significantly higher rates of assaults, and neighborhoods with high levels of residential instability and material deprivation had significantly higher rates of self-inflicted injuries in adults. Conclusions: The association between neighborhood marginalization and injury differs depending on the type of injury examined.

[Truncated abstract] BACKGROUND This thesis explored the relationship between social capital, sense of community and mental health and wellbeing; and factors that may influence these within the environments in which people live. Area variations in health are well documented and are mirrored in emerging evidence of geographic and neighbourhood variations in social capital. Little is known, however, about the specific facets of the impact of local physical environment on social capital; or about the mechanisms by which these are linked with each other, and with health determinants and outcomes. Despite the recent proliferation of social capital literature and growing research interest within the public health realm, its relationship to mental health and protective factors for mental health have also been relatively unexplored. AIMS The overall aim of this thesis was to explore the potential associations between social capital, health and mental health, and neighbourhood environments. In particular, the thesis considered whether the physical attributes and street network design of neighbourhoods are associated with social capital or particular dimensions of the social capital construct. It also examined the relationship between social capital and demographic and residency factors and pet ownership ... CONCLUSION The combined use of qualitative and quantitative research is a distinguishing feature of this study, and the triangulation of these data has a unique contribution to make to the social capital literature. Studies concerned with the measurement of social capital to date have tended to focus on dimensions pertaining to people’s involvement, perceptions and relationship with others and their community. While these constructs provide insight into what comprises social capital, it is clear that each is in turn influenced by a range of other factors. Elucidating what fosters trust and neighbourly interactions in one community and not in another, and by what mechanisms, is one of many research questions unanswered in the published literature to date. The consideration of measures of social capital that relate to the physical environment is therefore of relevance to the growing research and public policy interest in identifying what might build or restore social capital in communities.

This thesis is exploring the association between childhood neighborhood and the time of the transition to parenthood. In addition, it also explores the relationship between neighborhood and individual attitudes related to fertility behavior. For this purpose, two different datasets were combined. The Swedish Housing and Life Course Cohort Study (HOLK) was used to attain longitudinal housing data, as well as individual level attitudes and control variables for the year 2005, from birth cohorts 1964 and 1974. Neighborhood variables for the year 1990 were attained from the research project ResSegr – Residential segregation in five European countries. By using the same methods as earlier research concerning scalable neighborhoods, five different neighborhood characteristics were identified for parishes in Sweden in 1990; elite, foreign-born, low income, high employment and social assistance. These characteristics were used as independent variables in order to explore any association that might exist between neighborhood at age 16 and the transition to parenthood, using ordinal logistic, logistic and cox proportional models. The result indicated an association between neighborhood characteristic at age 16 and transition to parenthood. Where growing up in a neighborhood characterized with high income and completed tertiary education causes a delay in the timing of the transition to parenthood. Attitudes were also observed to be affected by neighborhood characteristics from age 16. Indicating neighborhood characteristics having a long-lasting effect of influencing the individuals attitude even 15-25 years later.

This study examines the LEED-ND pilot rating program created by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), the Congress for New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 2007. The rating system is evaluated based on its application as a broad set of national standards meant to encourage green neighborhood development. The main case study is a master planned community in semi-rural Paso Robles, California. Among other things, the study discovers problems related to the application of the rating system in semi-rural and rural regions of the Western United States. Both the standards used by the rating system and the certification process itself were considered through a case study methodology.

This project is a comparative case study of five Community Development Corporations (CDCs) that emerged in the seven central neighborhoods of Inner North/Northeast Portland, Oregon in the late 1980s. Of the five organizations that began at that time, only two exist currently. Analyzing how and why these organizations rose and fell, merged and failed, struggled and survived in a compressed time frame and geographic area will elucidate the different paths that each organization chose in a neighborhood that changed from derelict to gentrified. Drawing on the overlapping bodies of literature that cover low-income and affordable housing development, CDC structure and evolution, and neighborhood revitalization, this study will highlight issues of local government participation in the expansion of CDCs and a changing community context. The choices that organizations made, or were compelled to make, in response to these particularly local conditions contribute either to their fortitude or their demise. This case study is intended to fill in gaps in the existing CDC and gentrification literature and to contribute an understanding of survival strategies for CDCs in an intensely competitive environment.