This project includes a small study of Västerås city's housing needs, and a proposal on theuse of the property 1:207, Lantmännens silo in the Eastern Harbour, Västerås.The project intends to produce a basic study of the useful systems for this rebuilding projectwith regards to sustainable development and energy saving light buildings.The end result, which consists of a detailed visualization of the proposal, intends to becomean iconic natural focus for the Eastern port of Västerås and an example of the use andadaptation of existing structures.The property must also link the eastern parts of Västerås with the center through anextension of Mälarleden.The work has been performed through literature studies, site visits, contacts with the City ofVästerås and by calculations.The proposal consists of architectural proposals drawings and visualizations.Furthermore, a suggestion is given of how the property can be used and fitted into theoverall plan for urban density development currently underway in the city of Västerås.Computer programs used have been Microsoft Office Excel, AutoCAD and ArchiCAD.

A world class sports complex will impact on the neighboring communities by providing grounds for interaction. The idea of an economic lift through international exposure and athletic competitions such as soccer, swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, tennis, basketball, golf, track and possibly the Summer Olympic Games, as the Peace Games is enticing to a nation which is just now starting to rebuild its cities and is facing a stagnate economy. Many of the sports facilities in Sarajevo and other parts of old Yugoslavia have been destroyed. The opportunity exists, to create a complex where the most basic characteristics of sport are show - cased - camaraderie, healthy competition, sportsmanship and above all, human interaction. All key factors in the conflict resolution arena. Children are the most viable direction to follow. They do not know about war and ethic cleansing. By creating facilities which are designed for interaction, children who latter become adults, realize that ethnicity is irrelevant in a persons character. The other group to be targeted is that comprised of people who are asking themselves the question: what have we done? to our families, neighborhoods, cities and country? The ideas of the self serving leader who uses ethnicity as a means to power are becoming less and less appealing. When these groups are pared with the people who always new that war is wrong, specially when racially or culturally motivated, an healthy atmosphere can be achieved. People from one group will see their children and friends trying their best - sometimes wining, sometimes loosing. The emotional responses associated with it is critical. They will witness other parents from other groups having the same feelings for their children and friends. The observer can't help but notice that regardless of race or creed we are equal. We can expect that some of the residents from different cultures and social backgrounds will interact and become more tolerant if not friends as children and as adults. A teammate in sport, a teammate for life. This is where architecture and sport can be the most effective. / Master of Science

Many U.S. communities experience tornadoes each year, causing a significant number of deaths and injuries. Proper community preparation and response can help reduce human suffering and psychological trauma that occur following a tornado. However, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology most U.S. communities in tornado-prone areas are unprepared for a violent tornado, and there are few national, state, or local tornado-related definitions, standard or code to guide preparations. Social constructionism was the underlying theory of this qualitative study. The purpose of this study was to improve tornado preparations by examining the experiences of community leaders following a rare category 5 tornado occurring in Joplin, Missouri in 2011. The key research question considered the experiences of Joplin community leaders following the tornado. Twelve community leaders, 4 females and 8 males participated in individual face-to-face interviews, and were asked about preparations, emergency responses, trauma services and rebuilding. Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological method was used to analyze data. Findings include specific recommendations to improve community preparation, emergency response, trauma service and rebuilding. Community leaders experienced difficulty in coordinating appropriate resources to meet individual victim needs. They described ways in which the community was unprepared and changes that could be made in the future. This study may contribute to positive social change by providing communities with knowledge about tornado preparation and response to improve networks, reduce fatalities, injuries, trauma effects, and property damage in tornado prone areas.

This thesis examines the relationship between the Jerusalem temple rebuilding and agriculture in the Book of Haggai. The Hebrew text is replete with agricultural terminology. However, very few have seen that this terminology is central to understanding Haggai’s promulgation that the temple must be rebuilt. In Haggai, agriculture provides crucial insights into Judean agricultural economy within the context of the Achaemenid Empire. This study also throws light upon the importance of agriculture as an economic factor in 6th century BCE Judah. In chapter 1, I situate my research within current critical work on Haggai. I show how earlier research primarily has concentrated on the “independent” sub-province of Judah without attempting to understand the Book of Haggai within the political and economic context of Achaemenid Judah. I also discuss methodology. Chapters 2 and 3 give overviews of the pertinent agricultural background for my study. In chapter 2, I survey agricultural developments in ancient Israel and in the ancient Near East. Archaeological excavations and surveys have revealed a considerable agricultural material culture in Judah. The archaeological record shows that olive and vine production was of great economic value in ancient Israel. The olive and the vine belonged among the most important agricultural products, highly sought after all over the ancient Near East. In chapter 3, I discuss Achaemenid imperial administration and economy under Darius. My claim is that Darius’s imperial policy was the same for all the different parts of the empire. Subsequently, I show how Judah constituted a vital part of the larger economic structure of the Achaemenid Empire. In chapter 4, I demonstrate how Judah, together with numerous other subordinate provinces, contributed to the economy of the Mesopotamian Empires. From an imperial, military, and economic point of view, Judah functioned as a buffer zone between the Mesopotamian Empires and Egypt. Accordingly, my interest is in the Judean political and economic situation in the early period of Darius, as described in the book of Haggai itself. Following the introductory chapters, chapters 5 and 6 provide an exegesis of the Book of Haggai. The purpose of my exegetical work is to demonstrate the relevance of agriculture for the Jerusalem temple rebuilding. Attention is particularly paid to terms like “drought” or “desolate” (Hag 1:4, 9, 11), “time” (Hag 1: 2, 4), “house” (Hag 1:2, 4, 8, 9; 2:3, 7, 8, 9, 15, 18), and “build” (Hag 1:2, 8; Hag 2:18). Chapter 7 contains the conclusion of the dissertation. Summing up, this thesis shows the importance of a prosperous temple economy in Jerusalem for all of Judah. Darius wanted to maximise the economic contribution of Judah. However, in his second year (520 BCE), the Judean agricultural economy was depressed because of drought, crop diseases, blight, mildew, and hail (Hag 1:5–6, 9–11, 2:16– 18). For this reason, Haggai encouraged the Judean people strongly to restore the Jerusalem temple. This would be the only possibility to expand the agricultural industry (Hag 1:7–8; 2:3, 8– 9). However, the temple still remained in a bad state (Hag 1:4; 2:3). Instead, the people wanted to rebuild the Davidic dynasty through Zerubbabel (Hag 1:4, 9; 2:4, 5–6). The Judean preference for the Davidic dynasty caused the end of Zerubbabel (Hag 2:20–23).

Recurring extreme events of nature challenge disaster-prone settlements in complex ways. Devastating property damages are one of the tests of survival for such settlements in both economic and social terms. It also provides unique opportunities to rethink the environment cleared by massive natural disasters. However, rebuilding for long-term resiliency is one of the least investigated areas, particularly when employing tacit knowledge in the sustainable recovery process. This study examines the post-disaster rebuilding process in spatial terms for Bolivar Peninsula in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. It further investigates the nexus between connectivity among open space networks to various levels of surge damage among Bolivar spontaneous settlements. The study uses syntactical methods to measure axial connectivity of the Bolivar Peninsula access grid and one-way Analysis of Variance to interpret the way connectivity varies along the no damage to destroyed damage scale. In addition, the permeability rubric analyzes the elevation characteristics of houses that demonstrated higher probabilities of survival through a logistic regression. The conclusions are based on two basic premises. Local knowledge demands an indefinite time to be adapted and mobilized because of the increasing intensity of natural disasters. In addition, the high frequency of disaster events significantly challenges the versatility of local coping and survival strategies. The results reveal that the connectivity of the access grid has an inversely proportional relationship with various damage levels, particularly for no damage and destroyed. Furthermore, out of a number of resiliency characteristics listed in the literature, only ground elevation and ground enclosure demonstrated probability significances for survival. Potentially, the results of this research could support three significant outcomes pertaining to sustainable disaster recovery: preserving place character, social justice among affected groups, and promoting rapid recovery.

abstract: Great disasters can often serve as birthing grounds for national transformation. As communities work to recover and rebuild, opportunities to reassess of prevailing development theories and programs may arise. As traditional development programs, supported by top-down development theories and billions in foreign aid, have not changed Haiti's impoverished status, such an opportunity has been presented to the Caribbean nation. Just a few months removed from the devastating 7.0 earthquake of Jan 12, 2010, this study identified the emergent thinking about development as expressed by key informants (N=21) from six entity types involved in Haiti's rebuilding efforts - government agencies, social ventures, grassroots, diaspora, foreign, and hybrid nonprofits. Findings were supplemented by participant observation of a civil society meeting in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) Framework was used as a lens with which to understand the causes of Haiti's social, institutional, environmental, and economic vulnerabilities. Modified grounded theory was used as the qualitative data analytical method from which five themes emerged: Haitian government, rebuilding, aid work and its effects, Haitian society, and international interference. Participants called for a refoundation, the building a nation from the ground up, of Haiti. Based on these findings, four transformative processes were identified as fundamental to Haiti's refoundation: 1) communication and collaboration with the Haitian government, 2) engagement of the Haitian people and the Haitian diaspora in the redevelopment work, 3) a broad vision of development for the nation, and 4) coordination and collaboration among NGOs. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Community Resources and Development 2010

No description available.

“The flight from neighborhoods, the flight from local communities, into networking, it erodes democracy. It is in the local meetings where civic virtue and democratic discourse are practiced.” Christopher Lash writes this in his book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.  Encounters between people of different backgrounds, experiences, and ideologies are on the verge of extinction in a society where community has been replaced with networking. The neighborhood is just a container for our home, but we go elsewhere to work and socialize. We are to a lesser extent tied to a specific place. With locality as a point of departure, I chose my hometown as the base for my project. Tranås is a small town in southern Sweden with about 15.000 inhabitants. There, anonymity is not an option. Encounters take place. Whether you like it or not, people are united by the mere fact of physical proximity. I wanted to favor locality by making it easier to stay in the local community and enable for more people to settle outside the big cities. My answer to this is a remote working place. An office where you can work remotely full time, or as a complement to your regular workplace. The user group is people in Tranås that usually commutes to other cities, and people that would like to move to Tranås. Through contact with local actors, I got introduced to a building in the very central part of Tranås that I decided to adapt and reuse. The building was originally built as a nursing home during the first half of the 20th century but has now been empty for some years. The size and location of the building opened up new possibilities. In addition to the offices, the building will also house studio space, exhibition space, and a café. With a few interventions and modifications, the building becomes a new meeting place, where the courtyard gets an important role in the public space.

History many times over has shown when war and internal conflicts erupt, communities are forced to flee their homes and leave behind all they cherished until, if ever possible, the time and conditions re-align to return. In such conflict zones with countless uprooted communities news of refugees often gets more coverage in the media. Yet, alongside them are internally displaced people (IDPs) seeking as much help if not more, and not to mention can be significantly larger in number. Research also shows the majority of these groups end up being women and children exacerbating the problem and adding to the urgency. None the less, such post-conflict zones with widespread need seldom receive sufficient support for resettlement, from basic shelter and food to achieving a resemblance of some self-sufficiency. Shelter in post-war zones is a critical issue. But, due to challenging conditions on the ground like shortage of resources against the high demand among others, organizations participating in the rebuilding and assistance effort often resort to temporary and transitional settlements. Unfortunately, such displaced populations end up living in these potentially deteriorating settlements for many years with their lives at a standstill, while support and resources dwindle. The matter of creating shelter being of architecture, a question then follows how can architecture alleviate the problem of resettling displaced populations in post-war zones? And in the process how can it help communities restore what they lost and potentially establish a better future? And is there perhaps a practical approach to resettlement that spurs a positive change in motion to what would be a long process of rebuilding a community and then a nation as a whole? The issue of post-war resettlement being a complicated one, and requiring many hands, this thesis strives to propose a resettlement model from an architectural standpoint. As a case in point, the thesis looks at the extensively damaged city of Raqqa in Syria, following the ongoing civil war of more than 7 years. The thesis furthermore aims to propose a model that can serve as a catalyst towards much-needed rebuilding in this historic city and beyond. Besides this, the thesis makes an effort to identify and translate what post-war resettlement specific to the area in question could mean and design a communal campus at the end of which. Also, contrary to a temporary relief typology, the thesis attempts to break down and respond to some of the contextual issues present through targeted questions of why what and how towards a potentially evolving and flourishing housing and community rebuilding campus. / Master of Architecture / In the aftermath of conflicts and war, communities are forced to abandon their homes along with all they cherished into the worst of circumstances that leave them in limbo for many years. A majority of these displaced populations become Internally Displaced People(IDP) while others become refugees in near and far lands. Adding to that, women and children make up nearly 80% of these groups. Yet, during and post-conflict, the support for resettlement continues to be a no match to the extensive need created from basic housing to reaching a level of self-sufficiency as communities rebuild their lives piece by piece. While issues surrounding post-war resettlement are intricate and need all resources possible, this thesis identifies and puts forward a proposal towards architectural responses. Particularly looking at one of the extensively bombed city of Raqqa in Syria, the thesis furthermore suggests a model that can be a catalyst towards the extensive need for rebuilding communities against the predicament that continue to cloud the hopes of the nation and its people. Besides this, the thesis brings forth solutions potentially suitable for a post-war campus taking into consideration material resources to human factors like labor. The thesis, unlike temporary and transitional shelters that could leave behind settlements into a slum-like state, proposes a permanent rebuilding model to help lay a foundation to what is urgently needed and will be a long term undertaking.

Garden Hill is a remote fly-in First Nation community in Northern Manitoba with a very high incidence of food insecurity. This study examined food security and food sovereignty of the Garden Hill community by reinvigorating an environmental stewardship-driven food system. This research used community-based participatory research approach, and both qualitative and quantitative research tools to generate data and information. Findings reveal that only 3% households are food secure, 66% households are moderately food insecure, and 31% households are severely food insecure. Once self-sufficient with foods gathered from the local, natural foodshed, the community experienced a radical shift in food habits with a greater dependency on processed market foods. Such transformation in food habit and dietary balance, coupled with limited economic opportunities, made the inhabitants increasingly food insecure and vulnerable to multiple health complications. This research demonstrated the community has potentials for local food production. A pilot agricultural farm collaboratively established with a local social enterprise Meechim Inc. grew local food to help address the food insecurity situation. / February 2017