Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people’s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people’s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants’ view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers.

This thesis focuses on constraints for membership in formal languages under both the systematic search and stochastic local search approaches to constraint programming (CP). Such constraints are very useful in CP for the following three reasons: They provide a powerful tool for user-level extensibility of CP languages. They are very useful for modelling complex work shift regulation constraints, which exist in many shift scheduling problems. In the analysis, testing, and verification of string-manipulating programs, string constraints often arise. We show in this thesis that CP solvers with constraints for membership in formal languages are much more suitable than existing solvers used in tools that have to solve string constraints. In the stochastic local search approach to CP, we make the following two contributions: We introduce a stochastic method of maintaining violations for the regular constraint and extend our method to the automaton constraint with counters. To improve the usage of constraints for which there exists no known constant-time algorithm for neighbour evaluation, we introduce a framework of using solution neighbourhoods, and give an efficient algorithm of constructing a solution neighbourhood for the regular constraint. In the systematic search approach to CP, we make the following two contributions: We show that there may be unwanted consequences when using a propagator that may underestimate a cost of a soft constraint, as the propagator may guide the search to incorrect (non-optimum) solutions to an over-constrained problem. We introduce and compare several propagators that compute correctly the cost of the edit-distance based soft-regular constraint. We show that the context-free grammar constraint is useful and introduce an improved propagator for it.

A case study of Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood examines the cultural, structural, economic and political impacts of a glbtt (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and two-spirited) community and a gay urban village on its city. This work also queries the role of municipal government in the regulation and maintenance of the social composition and identity of a neighbourhood. Finally, the future of gay urban villages is discussed as their role in promoting solidarity and safety transitions toward a commercial and nodal one. This research involved three local key informant interviews and nine community residents who participated as photographers in a community visual analysis. Results unveiled a neighbourhood intrinsically well suited to serving a transient gay male community with an increasing dispersion of the identifying demographic. For the foreseeable future the significance of the Davie Village in the socio-sexual landscape of Vancouver appears secure through the nodal nature of gay retail, bars and services, reinforced by business interests. As an urban typology supporting a comparatively young glbtt culture, the gay urban village plays a unique role in the city, providing spaces of experimentation and invention — a stage for new systems of cultural (ex)change to emerge.

This thesis focuses on the design of field experiments with blocks to study treatment effects for a number of treatments. Small field plots are available but located in several blocks and each plot is assigned to a treatment in the experiment. Due to spatial correlation among the plots, the allocation of the treatments to plots has influence on the analysis of the treatment effects. When the spatial correlation is known, optimal allocations (designs) of the treatments to plots have been studied in the literature. However, the spatial correlation is usually unknown in practice, so we propose a robust criterion to study optimal designs of the treatments to plots. Neighbourhoods of correlation structures are introduced and a modified generalized least squares estimator is discussed. A simulated annealing algorithm is implemented to compute optimal/robust designs. Various results are obtained for different experimental settings. Some theoretical results are also proved in the thesis. / Graduate

Background: Obesity and physical inactivity rates have reached epidemic levels in Canada, but differ based on whether they are self-reported or directly measured. Canadian research examining the combined and independent effects of social and built environments on adult physical activity (PA) and body mass index (BMI) is limited. Furthermore there is a lack of Canadian studies to assess these relationships using directly measured PA and BMI. Objectives: The objectives of this thesis were to systematically compare self-reported and directly measured PA and to examine associations between neighbourhood built and social environmental factors with both self-reported and directly measured PA and overweight/obesity in adults living in Ottawa, Canada. Methods: A systematic review was conducted to identify observational and experimental studies of adult populations that used both self-report and direct measures of PA and to assess the agreement between the measures. Associations between objectively measured neighbourhood-level built recreation and social environmental factors and self-reported individual-level data including total and leisure-time PA (LTPA) and overweight/obesity were examined in the adult population of Ottawa, Canada using multilevel models. Neighbourhood differences in directly measured BMI and PA (using accelerometry) were evaluated in a convenience sample of adults from four City of Ottawa neighbourhoods with contrasting socioeconomic (SES) and built recreation (REC) environments. Results: Results from the review generally indicate a poor level of agreement between self-report and direct measures of PA, with trends differing based on the measures of PA, the level of PA examined and the sex of the participants. Results of the multilevel analyses identified that very few of the built and social environmental variables were ii significantly associated with PA or overweight/obesity. Greater park area was significantly associated with total PA in females. Greater green space was shown to be associated with lower odds of male LTPA. Factors from the social environment were generally more strongly related to male outcomes. Further to the recreation and social environment, factors in the food landscape were significantly associated with male and female PA and overweight/obesity. Results of the directly measured PA and BMI investigation showed significant neighbourhood-group effects for light intensity PA and sedentary time. Post-hoc tests identified that the low REC/high SES neighbourhood had significantly more minutes of light PA than the low REC/low SES. BMI differed between the four neighbourhoods, but the differences were not significant after controlling for age, sex and household income. Conclusions: Results of this dissertation show that the quantity of PA can differ based on its method of measurement (i.e. between self-report and direct methods) with implications for the interpretation of study findings. It also identifies that PA and BMI can differ by neighbourhood and recognizes that the relationships between neighbourhood environments and PA and body composition are complex, may be differ between males and females, and may not always follow intuitive relationships. Furthermore it suggests that other factors in the environment not examined in this dissertation may influence adult PA and BMI and that longitudinal and intervention studies are needed.

The collection of crop yield data has become much easier with the introduction of technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), ground-based yield sensors, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This explosive growth and widespread use of spatial data has challenged the ability to derive useful spatial knowledge. In addition, outlier detection as one important pre-processing step remains a challenge because the technique and the definition of spatial neighbourhood remain non-trivial, and the quantitative assessments of false positives, false negatives, and the concept of region outlier remain unexplored. The overall aim of this study is to evaluate different spatial outlier detection techniques in terms of their accuracy and computational efficiency, and examine the performance of these outlier removal techniques in a site-specific management context. In a simulation study, unconditional sequential Gaussian simulation is performed to generate crop yield as the response variable along with two explanatory variables. Point and region spatial outliers are added to the simulated datasets by randomly selecting observations and adding or subtracting a Gaussian error term. With simulated data which contains known spatial outliers in advance, the assessment of spatial outlier techniques can be conducted as a binary classification exercise, treating each spatial outlier detection technique as a classifier. Algorithm performance is evaluated with the area and partial area under the ROC curve up to different true positive and false positive rates. Outlier effects in on-farm research are assessed in terms of the influence of each spatial outlier technique on coefficient estimates from a spatial regression model that accounts for autocorrelation. Results indicate that for point outliers, spatial outlier techniques that account for spatial autocorrelation tend to be better than standard spatial outlier techniques in terms of higher sensitivity, lower false positive detection rate, and consistency in performance. They are also more resistant to changes in the neighbourhood definition. In terms of region outliers, standard techniques tend to be better than spatial autocorrelation techniques in all performance aspects because they are less affected by masking and swamping effects. In particular, one spatial autocorrelation technique, Averaged Difference, is superior to all other techniques in terms of both point and region outlier scenario because of its ability to incorporate spatial autocorrelation while at the same time, revealing the variation between nearest neighbours. In terms of decision-making, all algorithms led to slightly different coefficient estimates, and therefore, may result in distinct decisions for site-specific management. The results outlined here will allow an improved removal of crop yield data points that are potentially problematic. What has been determined here is the recommendation of using Averaged Difference algorithm for cleaning spatial outliers in yield dataset. Identifying the optimal nearest neighbour parameter for the neighbourhood aggregation function is still non-trivial. The recommendation is to specify a large number of nearest neighbours, large enough to capture the region size. Lastly, the unbiased coefficient estimates obtained with Average Difference suggest it is the better method for pre-processing spatial outliers in crop yield data, which underlines its suitability for detecting spatial outlier in the context of on-farm research.

This thesis investigates the relationship between access to public gathering spaces and self-reported health with indicators of community life as the intervening variables. This study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between the access to public space and self-rated health status in multicultural communities. A survey of 785 randomly-selected households was conducted across four low-income Toronto neighbourhoods. The investigation is framed by the 'production of healthy public space' model, which conceptualizes the pathways between the lived experience of space and health as impacting an individual’s likelihood of establishing place attachment. The results support the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the lived dimension of space and health. Mental health appears to be the outcome most affected by indicators of place attachment. Several of the aforementioned relationships were found more commonly in the densest of the four neighbourhoods and variations were found between foreign- and Canadian-born subpopulations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

A dissertação que se apresenta é uma investigação realizada a partir da experiência de ativismo de bairro desenvolvida entre os anos de 2012 e 2014 no bairro Jardim Universitário, em Viamão – RS. A experiência foi construída na relação entre moradores, estudantes acadêmicos e militantes de organizações sociais que primaram pela produção do espaço a partir da concepção dos próprios sujeitos que vivem no bairro. Esta proposta diverge da lógica de produção do espaço gerenciada pelo Estado ou pelo setor privado que, em geral, produzem intervenções na perspectiva tecnocrática, negligenciado os interesses dos sujeitos que possuem acúmulo de vivências em determinado espaço. Com este pressuposto, colocamos em movimento o seguinte questionamento: ―como a produção do espaço é condicionado e condicionante dos sujeitos que o vivenciam?‖. Pela ótica teórica de Henri Lefebvre com a Produção do Espaço e de Cornelius Castoriadis, com o Projeto de Autonomia, além de um referencial conceitual composto por autores de matrizes afins, objetivamos sistematizar e refletir a produção do espaço originária de relações sociais inspiradas na geração de autonomia. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa é organizada em uma parte descritiva, que serve de base para o diálogo entre o discurso dos sujeitos que participaram da experiência e o referencial teórico e conceitual. A Geografia como uma ciência do pensar-fazer epistêmico e político dos sujeitos na transformação do espaço e de suas relações sociais. / The presented dissertation is based on an investigation performed since an experience of neighbourhood activism developed between 2012 and 2014 in the Jardim Universitário district, part of Viamão city - RS. The experience was built over the relations among the dwellers, the academic students and militant members of social organizations, which aimed to achieve a production of space established according the concepts of the own dwellers of the district. This proposal diverges from the management applied by the governmental logic for the production of space or by the private sectors that, in general, produce interventions under a technocratic point of view and that neglects the individual ambitions of those who have accumulated experiences in an specific space. According to this assumption, the following query emerges: "How is the production of space a conditioner and it is conditioned by the individuals that experience that?". Regarding to the theoretical perspective of Henri Lefebvre with the concept of Production of Space, and the Project of Autonomy, developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, it is aimed to systematize and to reflect the production of space that is generated by social relations inspired by the production of autonomy. Methodologically, this research is organized with a descriptive section that bases the dialogue between the individuals' speech that took part in the Jardim Universitário experience and the conceptual and theoretical references of this work. The Geography, as a science, belongs to the epistemic and politic "thinking-making" of the individuals in the transforming process of space and about their social relations.

This thesis is an attempt to better understand the inter-relationship between deprivation, locality and health. This study explores the views of different residents in St Ann s, a deprived neighbourhood in Nottingham, to find out how they make sense of their health. The thesis is based on some participant observation in the area but mainly draws on qualitative interviews with diverse residents in St Ann's: (including, in particular, working-class older adults of different ethnicities; some working-class parents with children; middle-class younger adults living in the area; and activists and professionals providing services to the area, such as volunteers running the food bank, the local priest and GPs. As I asked all of my participants questions about their lives and their health, as well as their perceptions of what health was like in St Ann s generally, I realised they did not mention what talk about things that I, or public health professionals, would expect them to i.e. whether they took regular exercise or ate fruits and vegetables. Rather than individual lifestyle choices , people mostly talked about places, doing rounds and routines. They also talked about other groups, which allegedly were less healthy than them. Further, different groups of people in the area spoke about health quite differently. It is these broader discussions and concerns, and differences between groups of people, that I make sense of throughout my thesis. I argue that existing quantitative research on health, deprivation and the physical environment typically focuses on how health varies across different neighbourhoods. Some of these studies examine how factors, such as the proximity of supermarkets or leisure facilitates, produce health inequalities. However, while I found residents in St Ann s mentioned the proximity of shops, I also found that health and place had broader meanings to people in terms of gathering together and structuring routines. Additionally, I found that different people had conflicting ideas about health, place and one another. Addressing health therefore needs to take these conflicts into consideration rather than implementing public health policy that mainly articulates the views and habits of the middle-class. I use concepts from Bourdieu (1979), such as habitus , field and symbolic violence to make sense of these conflicts, arguing that the reasons why people act as they do is beyond their cognitive and rational understanding. In circumstances such as those in St Ann's, where the working-class residents were most at home in their given social space where habitus meshes with field - their apprehension of their social environment is more practical than it is theoretical and more tacit than it is explicit. In other words, I argue that residents in St Ann s are curtailed by their habitus. Additionally, I argue that there is insufficient previous work which has acknowledged and validated the experiences of residents in deprived neighbourhoods. Residents may articulate deprivation and lack of understanding of what constitutes health, but they also draw attention to important issues that, whilst often mentioned in the literature (e.g. social cohesion and health), have not been sufficiently accounted for, such as the importance of sociability, community activities, amenities and services. Finally, it should be acknowledged that these issues are not equally or similarly important for all residents, so that middle-class residents are unlikely to mix with locals at the community centre for example and that also older and younger residents considered different places important. So, instead of accepting the premise inherent in much public health research that seeks to identify the barriers to change with individuals, there first needs to be a more rigorous examination of the practices and lifestyles of the working-class residents within deprived communities such as St Ann s. We should seek to understand that their current practices are important for their well-being and sense of community. However, and, at the same time, we should seek to identify appropriate approaches that can improve their health that does not only fit the middle-class agenda. A key element of this is to take the various elements of their practical, tacit knowledge more seriously as part of these conditions of possibility. Then, it may be possible to more fruitfully identify how and why such practices are created, and what might be the conditions of possibility for change.