Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 115-117. / by Claudette Gracelyn Young. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-126). / by Christine Mueller. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989 and (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Title as it appeared in MIT Graduate list, February, 1989: Prioritization : a critical study of the Transportation Improvement Projects (TIP's) Program of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), of the Boston region. / Includes bibliographical references. / Obukohwo Akporovwovwo Urhiafe. / M.S. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-58). / For a country that was closed till 1990, and regarded as a textbook case of a closed economy, it is surprising to find in Syria a rapidly increasing number of large garment producers, that are supplying multinational buyers from Europe, and are rapidly transforming the country's garment sector. The aim of this study is to understand (i) why and how Syria is increasingly becoming a production base for several multinational buyers and intermediaries and (ii) why and how large Syrian producers are the chief conduits of this contact between Syria and European export markets and (iii) why and how knowledge is diffused from the large producers to other small and medium firms in the garment industry. Two main factors explain the rapid growth of in the number of firms producing for multinational buyers. First, the pruticular features of a core group of local firms that are attracting multinationai buyers: (i) long years of experience (ii) large-scale (iii) ability to produce a variety of products. The state played an important historical role in shaping these features by (i) indirectly creating an industrial class (ii) promoting cotton and infrastructure (iii) allowing for links between outside buyers and local producers after liberalization. Second, the nature of information transferred from multinational buyers and intermediaries to local producers, and which varied according to the type of agreement a firm was involved in. In tum, the targe producers are transferring the information acquired from European buyers to other local firms in the industry under two main conditions. First, producers manufacturing under franchising agreements generally tended to depend more on local producers for the supply of raw materials. Second, the existing Alawi-Sunni struggle existing within the Syrian society intensified the transfer of information from large producers to other local firms. Many of the Sunnis who own the large firms saw in transferring information to other smaller producers an opportunity to gain the support of the small producers and to revive their role as an industrial elite in the Syrian society. / by Maysa N. Sabah. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 64-69). / In the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in grassroots innovation in India and beyond, both as an area of formal research and practice. Although many different explanations of grassroots innovations exist in literature, they can be understood as novel products and processes that solve an unmet need or pressing challenge for an individual or community in a particular local context. Grassroots innovators come from rural communities and have limited or no formal education, but are capable of developing innovative solutions within the constraints engendered by the context they are embedded in. Although there is recognition of grassroots innovation by the central government in India, the vibrant discussions and learnings from the researcher and practitioner community has not translated to its inclusion in state level innovation policies, as evidenced in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Through the narratives of four grassroots innovators, the thesis explores how grassroots innovation processes materialize in these two states. Analysis of the processes reveal that a confluence of resources (financial, material, physical, knowledge and technical), individual agency, and external-organization created networks is essential to transforming an idea into a product. Drawing on insights from the analysis, the thesis then proposes ways in which grassroots innovation can be recognized and supported within the existing innovation policy frameworks in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This includes linking formal education and grassroots innovation, leveraging college and university infrastructure as experimentation space, giving grassroots innovators access to incubator resources, and channeling corporate social responsibility funds to financially support them. / by Asresh Guttikonda. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture and Planning, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 342-374). / The 1937 Paris Exhibition, the "final European enactment of the ritual of peace and progress before the deluge," remains the least researched and most misunderstood in the history of the World's Exhibitions in France. This study deals primarily with the years that preceded the opening of the Exhibition and with the broad debates that led to its "invention." In order to establish the historical foundations of the Exhibition, attention is given first to the political, aesthetic and economic discourses developed throughout the nineteenth century in France on the occasion of its Expositions Universelles. This analysis reveals the existence of a specific typology of the French Exposition Universelle grounded in the French Enlightenment and in its encyclopedist ideals. The present study claims that this type culminates in the 1867 Exhibition, when, for the first time, the Dideroan encyclopedist ideal and the Saint-Simonian modernist credo--two theoretical premises of these exhibitions-- receive their most convincing spatial translation. Conversely, the 1937 Exhibition appears as the "end" of this long typological development when the specific spatial concept of the Exposition Universelle created in the eighteenth century finally collapses. This evolution reflects two different approaches to the Enlightenment. One stems from an authoritarian interpretation of the encyclopedist universalism which appeals to Napoleon Ill's regime. The other emerges as a populist, and perhaps Voltairian interpretation of the Siecle des Lumieres that reaches its full expression in 1937, hand in hand with the advent of the Front Populaire. The evanescence of the nineteenth century universalist authoritarianism, and its concomitant quest for a controlling style creates an ambiguous space for the emergence of a planned stylistic pluralism. Such relativization of the concept of style, evident in 1937, in turn announces the end of the concept of "style" altogether, or else of modernity understood as an issue of style. The principled openness to "all styles" propounded by the leadership of the 1937 Exhibition alienates from the outset, the most radical proponents of modernism in the arts, on suspicions of cultural fraud. Such accusations set the stage for still enduring misinterpretations of the event, namely for the belief that the leadership of the 1937 Exhibition was part of a conspiracy against "progressive" modernity. Under such circumstances, current scholarship explains the apparently paradoxical presence of many modernist architects and artists at the 1937 Exhibition as the work of the Front Populaire. The present study explains why this was not the case. The central place given here to Le Corbusier reflects the major role the architect played in his militant efforts to take control over the ... / by Danilo Udovicki-Selb. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture and Planning, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-250). / This dissertation is a critical analysis of the transformations in the definition of a modem architectural artifact and the artifact's changing status in an institutional context. This work develops on a series of themes which proceed on the assumption that various procedures performed by specialized institutions in architecture have been effective in the process of the definition of an architectural artifact. It starts from the proposition that transformations in the definition of architectural expressions are due to the confluence of specific institutional procedures. Since the 1970s, architectural culture was enriched with the rapid emergence and growth of a number of specialized institutions, namely, architectural museums, archives, research centers, and galleries. At the turn of the nineteenth-century, the field of architecture had witnessed a comparable process with the emergence of various architectural societies and professional organizations. Transforming the collector's practices of the enlightenment, these modern institutions sought to establish the foundations of an architectural knowledge based on documents. These institutional practices would also lead to the construction of an architectural culture based on monuments. In my study, I examine the continuation of this activity, arguing that our late twentieth-century institutions both inherited from and critically transformed these foundational projects. In the following six chapters, I examine different procedures taking place in these institutions: collecting, exhibiting, preserving, indexing, cataloguing, and instiTUtionalizing. Focusing on different materials, each thematic chapter investigates the shifts among the intellectual outcomes of these procedures. Their material and conceptual aftermath are the subject of every chapter. Each autonomous chapter is meant to gain precision from its contextual relation to the others and to the definition of the architectural artifact itself. It is not the intention of this dissertation to trace back the historical development of architectural institutions nor to choose its examples from a single geographic or historic location. Rather, by formulating the question as 'what are the intellectual consequences of a specific process and its effects on the definition of an architectural artifact?' it critically analyzes the working logic of specialized institutions in the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. Institutions function in the discipline not as instruments of self-powered or autonomous entities but as intellectual members of a larger cultural mechanism. Their operation regulates and is regulated by the dynamics of the discipline of architecture and is informed by a larger social framework. A concluding chapter relates the specific processes taking place in specialized institutions to disciplinary performance. It emphasizes the contradiction between process and product. This analysis will lead us to suggest that for institutionalized artifacts of architecture, there is no absolute state of being merely a document (a factual, formal, objective evidence) or a monument (a conditional, relativist, subjective interpretation). Rather, I argue that the various processes performed in specialized institutions coalesce into these two distinct statuses. This correlation suggests the integration of architectural culture into a larger cultural system. / by Aysen Savas. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-138). / Today, many communities located on the periphery of central cities confront traditionally "urban" problems. Detroit's inner suburbs struggle with aging infrastructure, limited governmental capacity, commercial disinvestment, population decline, poverty, failing schools, and racial and ethnic tensions. These challenges are compounded by growing fiscal difficulties fueled by shrinking revenues and increasing costs. This thesis asks what strategies an inner suburban government facing population decline, economic disinvestment, and fiscal constraints can use to retain local vibrancy. Focusing on three inner suburban communities, I describe how metro Detroit local governments are attempting to: redefine their community's identity; provide "good government" for residents; facilitate redevelopment; wage promotional campaigns; engage in inter-jurisdictional collaboration; and attempt annexation. I conclude that local government intervention can be a powerful catalyst for positive change in inner suburbs but that structural constraints limit success. / by Amy J. Kohn. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2010. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-139). / Planning has always interacted with issues of sexuality, but the failure of the literature to address these practices explicitly has led to the silencing of minority sexualities in planning discourse and the severe marginalization of many queer people in cities. To better understand the experiences of queer people (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) as a basis for creating new planning frameworks that address the realities and diversity of queer lives, this thesis explores how queer people experience everyday space in the city, particularly the places they feel the most and least comfortable being queer. This thesis asks: how do relationships between the design, management, and spatial characteristics of spaces communicate values about sexual orientation and gender identity? How could planners and designers create more inclusive spaces? To accomplish this, in-depth interviews were conducted with queer participants in Kansas City, MO and Cambridge, MA, the progressive cities in their respective regions. I utilize readings on design, politics, and identity to create a Lynchian framework for evaluating spaces based on fit, control, and access. Lastly, I document the performative characteristics of each space identified in interviews with respect to this framework. I draw conclusions from my research findings and discuss the implications for designers and planners and areas for future research. In particular I discuss the process that planners should go through to begin re-constructing the public realm as inclusive of queer sexualities. Finally, I speculate on the kinds of spaces that might exist in a non-heterosexist city. / by Sarah Nusser. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-113). / by Peter Sai-Kong Chan. / M.S.