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ABSTRACT    This thesis discusses the changing society and how the urban setting affects how and where people spend their time socializing and eating. The city of Hanoi has undergone changes, which have had an impact on people’s movements, consumption choices and street traders’ livelihood in the city. There are also issues with housing that have arisen, mainly because the city’s expanding growth. The youth of today are living in quite a different social context society than their parents and especially grandparents, due to economic reforms that have rapidly increased the foreign investment and flow of information from the outside world. This has led to some diverging and sometimes conflicting opinions arising from people of different ages possibly having other ideals and values than their parents and grandparents. The state ideals and global influences also affect people’s behaviour and opinions and food choices. I will describe the food scene and changes that have happened to it, due to foreign influences and trade. This study is mainly based on secondary sources, combined with a case study of young people’s eating out food choices based upon my own fieldwork in Hanoi, Vietnam from February to April, 2013. I will situate and contextualize what part food plays for the youths and exploring the difference between street food and fast food and why people would choose one over the other.

Recent trends in planning and landscape architecture are moving the two disciplines closer together, yet there persists a lack of awareness of each discipline to the other. Planning’s roots in street design and landscape architecture’s new theory of landscape urbanism, which focuses on infrastructure, provide common ground for a fruitful dialogue between the two – a dialogue that could have particular significance given the historical influence of design theory on streets and urban form. To investigate these relationships, this report considers the history of street design, landscape urbanism, the planning framework, and the implementation of street design in two cities, Colorado Springs and Austin. This report explores how planning and the new ideas of landscape urbanism in landscape architecture can mutually inform each other to address street design. / text

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

INTRODUCTION: Healthcare needs among homeless populations are difficult to meet within the scope of a standard healthcare model. A street medicine model addresses the specific needs of those experiencing homelessness; healthcare professionals seek to build trust and rapport with people who are living unsheltered by taking their clinical practice to the streets. The street medicine program evaluated in this study provides primary and behavioral care in a metropolitan area in the Southeastern United States. AIM: This program evaluation aimed to answer the following questions: how has the street medicine program affected the perceptions of ill-health and access to healthcare among its current patients? Further, how would the current patients of the street medicine program rate their satisfaction with the program and are they aware of all available services? METHODS: Using a mixed methods approach, 40 semi-structured interviews and participant observations were conducted with patients of the street medicine program. Participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with the program and their overall health status on a 5 point Likert scale. Informed by Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) analysis methods, the qualitative data were transcribed and coded. All quantitative analyses were done using SPSS. RESULTS: Overall, 70% of participants rated their satisfaction with the street medicine program as excellent (n=28). For self-rated health status, there was a normal distribution across the Likert scale with 43% reporting their overall health status as moderate (n=17). Using CQR, four key domains emerged from the qualitative data: community trust, rapport building, needs addressed, and needs not addressed. These domains encompassed specific participant responses. Examples include: heard about the street medicine program through word of mouth (community trust), team showed kindness (rapport building), received diagnosis and treatment (needs addressed), and needing help getting into housing (needs not addressed). CONCLUSION: Overall, this study validated the effectiveness of the street medicine program in building trust and rapport with its patients. Satisfaction with the street medicine was high across patients. This study contributes information regarding patient experiences within an alternate healthcare model serving a highly vulnerable population.

The labor market is a key aspect of democracy and the country's economy, it is part of human life that affect us all the time linked to the economic and social aspects such as standard of living, class, identity, welfare etc. Labor market policy results in policies that are used to increase employment and thus reducing unemployment and improving labor market functioning. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how the implementation of labor market policy measures goes to and how much leeway employment agents on AF (arbetsförmedlingen) in Västerås have. We have chosen both quantitative and qualitative methods in our study. First we did a quantitative survey where we had a questionnaire survey with agents employed at the AF in Västerås. In terms of qualitative approach, we did a half - structured interview with the employment office manager in Västerås, where we used the same questions that we had the quantitative survey. This will also help us to detect if street-level bureaucrats and top officials (bureaucrats) have different perceptions / views regarding how much leeway employment agents on AF in Västerås have.

User involvement is generally regarded as something positive within social work, and is something social authorities in Sweden (as in many other countries) propagates for. This study aims to highlight social workers perceptions and experiences of user involvement within the specific context addiction treatment. A context where users individual status has proved needed to be strengthened. Five social workers, all working within Swedens national government-funded social service agency, are given a voice on the subject. By using semi-structured interviews, the results show how broad and ambiguous the concept of user involve-ment is, when the respondents is asked to define it. This found is supported by earlier studies results, in which researchers also declare the concept unclear. This studys result includes se-veral examples of what the social workers comprehend the involvement consists of in their daily work. The conditions for user involvement to take place in this study’s specifik practice, shows to be closely associated with factors such as the bureaucratic regime, organizational framework agreements and with assessments of the client in question knows its own good (on the basis that drugs affect the human cognitive system in different ways).

Space syntax has been considered to be an important theory and analytical tool to study the correlation between spatial configuration and human social activities. But its traditional Axial Model has limitations in representing street. The conclusion got form Axial Model，that spatial configuration of street network can well predict the traffic flow, has been widely doubled. In order to testify the conclusion, the thesis sets out to use Axial, Stroke and Named Street Models to model and analyze Hong Kong street network. Our research methodology is first to create and study different models of street network in pilot study area- Kowloon peninsula of Hong Kong, from the perspectives of space syntax theory and properties of complicated network. Through the pilot study, tentative correlations and conclusions could be derived, which are verified through the case study of whole street network of Hong Kong by taking samples from three different sampling criteria. Through analysis, we find out that local integration best correlates with vehicle flow, and this correlation is called predictability of street network. Through comparisons of different models in terms of predictability, we conclude that stroke model has the best ability to predict vehicle flow. By analyzing the axial model of Hong Kong street network and comparing its result to early study, we prove that axial model does have limitations to represent street network. Also we find out all models of street network have properties of small world network and scale free, from the topological studies of these models. In the research of this thesis, we develop an extension of ArcGIS, named Axwoman 4 in order to calculate and extract space syntax parameters from different models. And important implementation algorithms are introduced in this thesis. The thesis is summed up at the end, and future research directions are given.

Whether in the rich Western countries, or the Southern Hemisphere developing countries, street trading is a socio-economic phenomenon which provides employment to millions of poor and marginalised communities, allowing them to survive despite socio-economic and political constraints. Well aware that their empowerment cannot come or be initiated except by themselves, they find in organising an empowerment will-power which triggers collective action toward influencing change of institutional practices and processes which often marginalise and put them under unnecessary pressure. In this environment, street traders’ organisations’ role tends to be limited to meeting the direct causes of their current concerns as crises arise and therefore leave in the oblivion deep causes which lead to their marginalisation. Weakened by their constituencies’ economic situation, they often fall into fatalism and often become easy-targets and victims of non-inclusive municipal processes. By organising and building strong organisations they are likely to emancipate themselves from exploitative practices and processes and to claim a share in matters concerning their interests as equal stakeholders without any discrimination or exploitation but for the sake of empowering disadvantaged communities. Therefore the choice of this study was instructed by the feeling that empowered street traders’ organisations in Durban-CBD can play a major role towards the integration of street traders in the city socio-economic framework. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.