abstract: The jobless recovery of the Great Recession has led policymakers and citizens alike to ask what can be done to better protect regions from the cascading effects of an economic downturn. Economic growth strategies that aim to redevelop a waterfront for tourism or attract high growth companies to the area, for example, have left regions vulnerable by consolidating resources in just a few industry sectors or parts of town. A promising answer that coincided with growing interest in regional innovation policy has been to promote entrepreneurship for bottom-up, individual-led regional development. However, these policies have also failed to maximize the potential for bottom-up development by focusing on high skill entrepreneurs and high tech industry sectors, such as green energy and nanotechnology. This dissertation uses the extended case method to determine whether industry cluster theory can be usefully extended from networks of high skill innovators to entrepreneurs in traditional trades. It uses U.S. Census data and in-person interviews in cluster and non-cluster neighborhoods in Dayton, Ohio to assess whether traditional entrepreneurs cluster and whether social networks explain high rates of neighborhood self-employment. Entrepreneur interviews are also conducted in Raleigh, North Carolina to explore regional resilience by comparing the behavior of traditional entrepreneurs in the ascendant tech-hub region of Raleigh and stagnant Rustbelt region of Dayton. The quantitative analysis documents, for the first time, a minor degree of neighborhood-level entrepreneur clustering. In interviews, entrepreneurs offered clear examples of social networks that resemble those shown to make regional clusters successful, and they helped clarify that a slightly larger geography may reveal more clustering. Comparing Raleigh and Dayton entrepreneurs, the study found few differences in their behavior to explain the regions' differing long-term economic trends. However, charitable profit-seeking and trial and error learning are consistent behaviors that may distinguish traditional, small scale entrepreneurs from larger export-oriented business owners and contribute to a region's ability to withstand recessions and other shocks. The research informs growing policy interest in bottom-up urban development by offering qualitative evidence for how local mechanics, seamstresses, lawn care businesses and many others can be regional assets. Future research should use larger entrepreneur samples to systematically test the relationship between entrepreneur resilience behaviors to regional economic outcomes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Administration 2013

This dissertation proposes that a literary corpus surrounding the configuration of Latin American national subjects conditioned the spatial organization of the region's capital cities. I use novels, manuals of good manners, journal articles, and maps to explain how the normative behaviors prescribed by discourses of political subjectivity gave rise to a fragmented cartography of the city. This cartography served to legitimize the elite's right to governance and limit the participation of those with non-normative identities within the political borders of the national community. Although this dissertation mainly concentrates on the spatial relations of power and domination that emerged from the construction of an ideal model of citizenship, it also explores the way subaltern peoples resisted their place in the city by claiming urban space for their own cultural practices.

Critical urban studies has shifted in recent years toward a focus on inequality and identity-based tension in developing countries. These theories have evolved alongside pressure for inclusive urban governance that recognizes a right to difference for minorities in cities. In the rapidly urbanizing People's Republic of China, these complex issues threaten the inclusiveness of future development. Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), has been the site of social unrest between the Han Chinese majority and the Uyghur minority for more than a century. Economic growth and urbanization have resulted in increasing inequality and tensions between Han and Uyghur people that periodically erupt in violence, as did in Ürümqi in July of 2009. These tensions are complicated by the socio-economic marginalization of minorities, and the exclusion of the overall population from urban governance processes. Following the July 2009 riots, the Xinjiang government expressed willingness for more inclusive urban development; however the local government lacks the necessary tools to facilitate participation, and as such resident perceptions go unheard. This study adapts critical urban theory and Chinese political thought for the non-democratic context of Ürümqi, China. The perceptions of local residents are evaluated using a questionnaire and focus groups, through which it is shown that resident perceptions and use of urban space are heavily affected by ethnic identity. This, coupled with the banning of Uyghur cultural practices and exclusion of residents from public affairs, exacerbates urban inequalities and identity-based tension. It is important that critical urban studies take residents' inability to participate in urban governance processes (particularly in non-democratic contexts) into account when studying the link between identity and urban space.

No abstract available / Dissertation (ML (Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Architecture / unrestricted

Fast urbanization all over the globe has resulted in the need of sustainable urban development. The European Union that has been aiming to become a leader in sustainability globally, has answered to this need by creating an Urban Agenda that aims to guide the EU member states and cities to develop in sustainable matter. However, the document itself is not that powerful, since it cannot bind the EU member states to execute urbanization in sustainable matters.Hammarby Sjöstad is one of the leading sustainable urban development projects in Sweden. This project has managed to draw attention globally. It is visited from different parts of the globe, and it’s one Stockholm City’s largest neighborhood projects. The project has even been part of creating a sustainability model on a Swedish national level, this model is called the Hammarby model. The case study of Hammarby Sjöstad is an interesting way to approach sustainable urban development in European level. With the theory of New Urbanism, the project neighborhood is scrutinized, to find out how sustainable it actually is and how well it relates to the EU’s Urban Agenda. From an environmental perspective, it has a lot of in common with the EU’s Urban Agenda, while from a social point of view, the Hammarby Sjöstad project has not managed to become as sustainable that it has been aiming to become.Key Words: Hammarby Sjöstad, EU Urban Agenda, Sustainable Development, Urban Development, City Planning

The thesis project is an urban developement project in the centre of Milan.

When neighborhoods and cities fall in decline, cities and investors see an opportunity to turn the declining sites into profitable new projects, this happens all over the world in different renewal projects, or under the term gentrification. The outcome of gentrification can be considered to be both positive and negative, and the term is widely discussed in today's media. This study aims to get an understanding of how a small neighborhood in Cape Town called Bo-Kaap, that is famous for its rich culture and strong community, is affected by investors wanting to develop the neighborhood. With a problematic history of apartheid and oppression the threat of gentrification creates a new threat for the residents of Bo-Kaap. During the last couple of years the property prices in the neighborhood have increased dramatically resulting in a large flow of new residents. This has caused many locals to fear for the safety of the neighborhood as well as the fear of losing its strong community and their identity as a muslim neighborhood.

Etableringen av köpcentra i Malmö har medfört en ökad konkurrens gentemot handeln i stadskärnan vilket märktes tydligt vid Emporias invigning 2012. Handeln i staden tappade kraft och problem med vakanser uppstod. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur centrumhandeln har utvecklats och hur fastighetsägarna ser på problemet med vakanser idag och om man fortfarande har problem med vakanser.Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod där totalt sex intervjuer genomförts med både fastighetsägare och en samverkansorganisation för att få en bild av hur man arbetar med gågatan. Studien har presenterat teorier kring utbud, efterfrågan, konkurrens, hyror och samverkan. Resultatet av studien visade att stadskärnans attraktivitet avgör om andra handelsplatser är ett hot eller inte och att attraktiviteten är direkt kopplad till vakansgraden. Det är därför viktigt att stadskärnan utvecklar sina starka egenskaper och skapar något unikt som de andra handelsalternativen inte kan uppnå. För att utveckla staden till en attraktivare plats krävs det att alla aktörer i området skapar gemensamma mål och arbetar tillsammans. Citysamverkan gör det möjligt för fastighetsägare, butiker och kommunen att samverka för att göra staden attraktivare. Fastighetsägarna har även en stor roll i hur staden utvecklas då valet av butiker är en välplanerad process som följer den gemensamma vision man har i de olika delområdena. Studien visar på att samverkan är helt avgörande för attraktiviteten och att attraktiviteten påverkar hur stora vakansproblem man får. / The establishment of shopping malls in Malmö has resulted in increased competition, which was clearly noted at Emporia's opening in 2012. The trade in the city lost power and problems with vacancies arose. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the center trade has evolved and how property owners look at the problem of vacancies today and if you still have problems with vacancies.The study has been conducted with a qualitative method where a total of six interviews were conducted with both property owners and a collaborative organization to get an idea of how to work with the street. The study has presented theories about supply, demand, competition, rents and collaboration. The result of the study showed that the city center's attractiveness determines whether other trading venues are a threat or not and that the attractiveness is directly linked to the vacancy rate.It is therefore important that the city center develops its strong qualities and creates something unique that the other trading options can not achieve. In order to develop the city into an attractive location, all actors in the area need to create common goals and work together. Citysamverkan enables property owners, shops and the municipality to work together to make the city more attractive. Real estate owners also play a major part in the development of the city, as the choice of stores is a well-planned process that follows the common vision of the various sub-areas.The study shows that collaboration is crucial for attractiveness and that the attractiveness affects how much vacancy problems one gets.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / American cities are rampant with structural inequities, or “unfreedoms,” which manifest in the forms of poverty, housing instability, low life expectancy, low economic mobility, and other infringements on people’s abilities to do things they value in their lives and meet their full potential. These unfreedoms affect historically and systemically disenfranchised communities of color more than others. Too often, economic development that is supposed to remediate these issues leads to disproportionate economic growth for people who already have access to opportunity, without adequately creating conditions that equitably remove barriers, extend opportunities, and advance freedoms to all people. This dissertation investigates why this pattern persists. In this work, I describe the significance of the differing ways in which economic development is perceived by people living and working in an historically and systemically disinvested urban neighborhood facing socioeconomic transformation near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and city decision-makers in governmental, nonprofit, and quasi-governmental organizations. The ethnographic research methods I used in this study revealed that: many residents described economic development as a process that takes real and perceived neighborhood ownership away from the established community to transform the place for the benefit of outsiders and newcomers, who are, more often than not, white people; and city decision-makers contend that displacement is not a problem in Indianapolis but residents consistently see economic development leading to displacement. I contend that the type of disconnect that persists between the perceptions of people who live and work in the neighborhood and those of city decision-makers is the result of exclusionary development practices and helps perpetuate inequities. This work concludes with a solution for rebalancing the power between well-networked and well-resourced decision-makers and residents facing inequitable and exclusionary development.

This study investigates the development of Plant City, Florida as a railroad town developing on the Southwest Florida frontier from 1885-1940. The study chronicles the town's origins and economic, political, and social development in relationship to the broader historical theories of southern urban development, specifically those put forward in David Goldfield's pioneering work, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region 1607-1980. Goldfield contended that southern cities developed differently than their northern counterparts because they were not economically, politically, philosophically and culturally separated from their rural surroundings. Instead, they displayed and retained the positive and negative attributes of southern society and culture, including a commitment to maintaining a biracial society until the 1960s, an affinity for rural lifestyles and values among urban residents, and an economic dependence on outside markets and capital. Since Goldfield derived his findings from research that centered on the cotton producing regions of the Old South, this study sought to determine whether the tenets of his thesis applied to the urbanization process in the frontier areas of Florida, a region often considered an anomaly to the greater South. In the end analysis it was determined that Goldfield's theory generally fits Plant City with some exceptions derived from regional differences found in Florida.