No description available.

This document examines the public spaces created by the built environment of the city and asks: How is it that the apparently benign and benevolent activity of designing public space can in fact reinforce values that effectively marginalise and exclude significant groups of people? It contrasts the consequences of design decisions that are based on a value system of ???either/or??? with the possibility for designs based on ???both/and???. The perception of boundaries, the desire to dwell, the need to belong and the relationship of these phenomena to an understanding of ???self???, is proposed as the key means for analysing how public space is experienced by the user. The document uses the language of barriers and boundaries to interrogate how the value systems of those with the control over resources is manifest in the built environment of the city, and examines the impact such environments have on the user???s desire to ???dwell??? and need to belong. The potential for an alternate paradigm based on a system that recognises ???both/and??? to produce beneficial outcomes is then proposed, with a focus on an ethic of care to complement the ethic of justice that currently guides design decisions for public space. Personal interviews with architects, town planners, representatives from relevant government agencies, and users of public space, participation in public meetings and systematic observation of specific sites have been used to inform the argument and assess the validity of claims. The document is extended by a body of visual work that further interrogates the need to belong and broader issues of the primal significance of ???sanctuary??? to the ability to ???dwell???. The making and maintaining of boundaries, necessary to form a sanctuary, is portrayed as a process fraught with insecurities and vulnerabilities necessitating, in circumstances where personal power or the ability to influence one???s environment is diminished, the use of subversive tactics in order to create a space in which one can belong.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Geography. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-171). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR19639

Thesis (M. U. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-261).

Zugl.: Berlin, University der Künste, Diss., 2004 u.d.T.: Pepchinski, Mary: The American model?

Thesis (M.Arch.(Prof.))--University of Pretoria, 2000. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Robert E. Lyons, Dept. of Plant & Soil Sciences. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2007. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Ralph Johnson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-89).

The contemporary city is driven by private interests, leaving the public spaces as a weakly woven system. In such a system public space making is usually the left-over in the composition. By shaping the publicly accessible spaces through the section of the tower, a series of relationships of public/ private occur. Elevating the public ground throughout the city through remedial and new developments brings the public space to a more direct confrontation with the typology of the tower. The site chosen for this exploration of building and public space making is the municipal address of 900 Burrard St. in downtown Vancouver. The block already contains two existing buildings, which represent excellent regional examples of early Modernism; the former BC Electric Building and the Dal Grauer Substation. A programme of hotel, residences, office space, fitness club, cinema, and branch library generate specific scenarios around which the public space negotiates as transitional space. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate