My dissertation questions contemporary accounts of a transition from modern to global urbanization, as embedded in urban geography literature and in popular debates, policies, and urban planning practices in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. The dominant transition narrative argues that there has been a shift from forms of modern urbanization (localized, state-based transitions from rural to urban) to emergent and uncertain forms of global, even planetary, urbanization: that we live, for the first time in human history, in an urban world. These accounts claim, ultimately, that the spacetimes, forms, categories, and practices or experiences of urbanization have changed irrevocably, and that politics is changing with it. In other words, they offer what I call transition metanarratives of the spatiotemporality, ontology, epistemology, and phenomenology of both urbanization and politics. Despite these claims of radical transformations in urbanization and politics, the geographic and political imaginaries in these accounts rely on boundary practices that invoke distinctively modern arrangements. The patterns of progress and return that these boundary practices generate are characteristic of the aporia. An aporia is a line that, in the process of being drawn, simultaneous constitutes entities, categories, or concepts as mutually incompatible and jointly necessary (Derrida 1993). These entities can take the form of a traditional binary (rural/urban; nature/culture; local/global; whiteness/other), or of a presence and its limit (this body/that body; community/lack of community), or of what might be called the boundaries of authorization (spacetime, ontology, epistemology, phenomenology). In all cases, aporetic boundaries create inherently unstable relations that Foucault (2002: 371) characterizes as the “hiatus between the ‘and,’” the spatial gap and temporal pause within the dynamic of determination and redetermination. The instability of the aporetic hiatus generates a desire for sovereign security, even as it ensures that sovereignty is an impossible dream. My dissertation interprets development iii iv proposals and community plans in Kelowna as expressions of these patterns of aporetic boundary generation, degeneration, and regeneration. In the midst of this encounter with seemingly over-determined limits, the aporetic hiatus offers a productive site of under- determination, where the drive for the sovereign capacity to decide and determine is held, temporarily at least, in abeyance. I use local aesthetic productions – the ‘revitalization’ of the downtown main street; an artist’s residency/installation piece – to engage the hiatus as a site where the vulnerability of aporetic boundaries can be experienced not as threat but as possibility. Rather than a determinative politics of the alternative, the transition, or the escape, which reproduces dominant modern geographical and political boundaries as authoritative and inescapable, this aporetic hiatus opens modes of engaging with the unstable boundaries of politics, without the panicked return to sovereign decision- making. / Graduate / delacey@uvic.ca

This study serves as an introduction to three recent narratives in Spanish Science Fiction. While this literary genre has long been read in Spain in translation, it is only recently that Sci-Fi has been successful as a popular literature produced by native authors. Álex de la Iglesia, Gabriela Bustelo and Rafael Reig have worked in realist and genre fiction through their careers but chose to use Science Fiction to speak of the rapidly changing space of Madrid. Their criticism is centered on the changes to the physical, social, economic and political landscape of Madrid post-1992. My analysis is based on the works of the geographer David Harvey, among others, which helps to underline the importance of the urbanization of capital and consciousness that the three narratives disentangle. While being three very different texts - one film and two novels -, they all manipulate concerns of time and space to come to a similar conclusion. Their narratives serve as a warning about how the good intentions of humanist theories like feminism or scientific advancement can easily turn into a nightmare by instead serving the needs of capitalism rather than those of social justice.

Since the birth of democracy in South Africa, Urban Geography has experienced many paradigmatic and epistemological shifts; within Human Geography 'planning' faces various challenges in the new Millennium. Environmental management, in light of the emphasis on sustainable development, sees many urban planners and politicians strive to reconcile environmentalism with development that is equitable. The emergence of the environmental justice discourse is significant, since inter-generational justice (as enshrined in sustainable development) is a key issue, this research report used heritage as a lens to explore this complex relationship in regard to urban regeneration. Using a case study approach this report shows the nature and context of postmodern urban environmental management. Special reference to the significance and impact of environmental justice on the cityscape of Johannesburg is made, as this report suggests that environmental justice is a useful conceptual framework to give depth and meaning to sustainable development, in urban regeneration as a policy objective. The use of Constitution Hill as a case study placed the project in a post-apartheid South African context.

In the face of economic, demographic, and infrastructural decline, Detroit, Michigan has become a destination for tourists interested in viewing the city's iconic ruins. Using data collected through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this thesis examines these emerging practices of ruin tourism in order to understand how such tourism operates, how it is related to representations of the city in popular media, and how it contributes to economic redevelopment in Detroit. Situated in literature about ruination and liminality, tourism geography, and critical urban geography, the study contributes to understandings of urban redevelopment in the post-industrial United States.

Orientador: Silvia Aparecida Guarnieri Ortigoza / Banca: Roberto Braga / Banca: Geisa Daise Gumiero Cleps / Banca: Paulo Borges da Cunha / Banca: Tânia Maria de Campos Leite / Resumo: As cidades apresentam um nível de organização interna, cada vez mais complexo, caracterizado pela composição e diversificação de usos do solo urbano ao atingirem uma determinada forma urbana, em geral, média ou grande (metrópole). Esta complexidade é a expressão, de certa forma, da maneira dispersa com que o espaço urbano se configura. Por este padrão de formação da cidade, novos elementos espaciais com funções e abrangências diversas incorporam-se e redefinem a estrutura urbana, caracterizando determinadas áreas, conferindo-lhes uma diferenciação. Assim, nos estudos da organização espacial das cidades merecem destaque: o centro, por significar o ponto de onde essas se expandem e por ser a maior referência, em termos históricos, simbólicos e funcionais no conjunto dos elementos espaciais; e as novas centralidades ou subcentros, que se formam associados a um processo de crescimento urbano, representando uma descentralização/centralização territorial, significando que a cidade rompeu com seu modelo monocêntrico no início do processo, do ponto de vista da estrutura urbana, e, ao centralizar-se com estas novas áreas, reestrutura-se, indicando a ocorrência de policentralidade. Assim, este trabalho se propõe a analisar a formação de uma centralidade ou subcentro urbano, na região Sudeste de Teresina-PI, representado pelo bairro Itararé (área eu possui marcas mais visíveis deste processo), como novo elemento espacial da estrutura urbana capaz de significar o começo da ocorrência de policentralidade. As observações deste estudo estão relacionadas ao crescimento de Teresina a as mudanças na distribuição espacial das atividades do setor terciário, fato que denota a existência de uma descentralização, que por conseqüência gera uma centralização / Abstract: Cities present a level of internal organization very complex, characterized by the composition and diversification of the urban areas use, when they achieve a determined urban form, in general, medium or large (metropolitan). This complexity is, somehow, the expression of the dispersed way of the urban space formation. Because of this model of cities formation, new spatial elements with new functions and ranges are incorporated and redefine the urban structure, characterizing certain areas, making them different. In the studies of spatial organizational of the cities must be highlighted: the center, which is the point where the city starts and increases, being an important reference in historical, symbolical and functional terms at the set of spatial elements; and the new center or subcenters, that are formed associated with an urban increase process, representing a territorial decentralization/centralization, meaning, from a urban structure point of view, that the city brooked with its monocentric model in the beginning of the process, and, when the city centralize itself with new areas a restructure of the city happens, indicating the policentralization occurrence. Thus, this study has the objective to analyze the formation of a centrality or urban subcenter, at the Southeast region of Teresina-PI, where is located a district named Itararé (area that has more visible marcs of this process), as a new spatial element of urban structure, that should mean the beginning of the policentralization occurrence. This study brings some observations about the increase of Teresina that are related to the changes in the spatial distribution of tertiary activities, a fact which indicates a decentralization and, therefore, centralization / Doutor

This thesis explores questions of politics and public space through an examination of the experiences of people involved in Occupy protest camps and local officials who were tasked with managing the protests in Eugene, OR and Madison, WI. Using assemblage as an organizing theoretical framework, this work identifies the actors involved in the production of Occupy protest camps and traces the trajectories of two Occupy protests from their beginnings to eviction day. It highlights the role of space in the protests, the ways in which protesters negotiated with local authorities for long-term use of public spaces previously prohibited by law, and some of the factors that contributed to the eviction of the protest camps. Finally, it seeks to reframe the debate on public space and conceptualizes public space as an assemblage that is continually made, unmade, and remade through the interactions of diverse, heterogeneous actors. / 10000-01-01

Orientador: Andrea Aparecida Zacharias / Banca: Luciene Cristina Risso / Banca: Paulo Fernando Crinio Mourão / Resumo: Este trabalho propõe um estudo sobre a viabilidade da criação de parques lineares na paisagem urbana dos córregos Águas da Veada e Furnas no município de Ourinhos/SP. Em 2006 o plano diretor, instrumento fundamental do planejamento urbano, apresentado pelo Poder Público previa a criação de parques lineares no entorno dos recursos hídricos urbanos, surgiu então a oportunidade de pesquisar sobre este tema, buscando soluções para os problemas socioambientais e econômicos relacionados à questão dos parques lineares. A partir de 2008, empregando verbas federais do Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, Ourinhos canalizou parte de seus cursos hídricos urbanos, dentre eles o córrego Furnas, porém, os parques lineares não foram implantados. A partir da Abordagem Sistêmica da Paisagem, como fundamentação teórica, foi conduzida a pesquisa para propor ações concretas no sentido de criar os referidos parques. Ao longo do trabalho constatou-se que estes fazem parte dos espaços livres urbanos e têm capacidade de proporcionar benefícios como recuperação paisagística e ambiental, conectar fragmentos de vegetação nativa e favorecer o lazer conjugado ao desenvolvimento de atividades econômicas. Todo material bibliográfico básico ao desenvolvimento da pesquisa foi levantado e, mapeamentos sobre a evolução da mancha urbana, uso e ocupação do solo, espaços livres e seus raios de influência, arborização urbana e verde viário foram elaborados a fim de averiguar as potencialidades e fragilidades pai... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This work proposes a study on the viability of the creation of linear parks in the urban landscape of the streams Águas da Veada and Furnas in the municipality of Ourinhos/SP. In 2006, the master plan, a key instrument of urban planning, presented by the Government provided for the creation of linear parks in the vicinity of urban water resources, the opportunity arose to research on this topic, seeking solutions to the socio-environmental and economic problems related to the issue of linear parks. From 2008, using federal funds from the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC), Ourinhos channeled part of its urban waterways, including the Furnas stream, however, the linear parks were not implemented. From the Systemic Approach to the Landscape, as a theoretical basis, research was conducted to propose concrete actions to create such parks. Throughout the work it was found that these are part of the urban spaces and have the capacity to provide benefits such as landscape and environmental recovery, connecting fragments of native vegetation and favor leisure combined with the development of economic activities. All basic bibliographical material for the development of the research was collected and mappings on the evolution of the urban spot, land use and occupation, free spaces and their influence rays, urban greening and road green were elaborated in order to ascertain the potentialities and landscape fragilities of the studied microcatchments. After the cabinet stage, fi... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

This thesis examines the relationship between the production of urban space and the reproduction of capital. Taking the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a case study, I conducted ethnographic research during the London 2012 Olympics and the Park's first 'Legacy' year. My research proceeded from an embodied walking practice (which prompted reflection on my transgender presentation as a complicating factor), and also included interviews and archival research. My analysis centres on Henri Lefebvre, situating his work on space within a concern for the relationship between everyday life and the concrete abstractions constituted therein. Taking this relationship as essential to the reproduction of capital, I explore the production of the Olympic Park as an actually-existing abstract space that mirrors the dual character of the value form. I open my account of this production with the Olympic festival, a total social moment mobilised towards the realisation of value. I then examine each of Lefebvre's three formants of abstract space in turn. I present the construction of the Park as the materialisation of an abstractly conceived space designed to incorporate a disordered post-industrial space into a new mode of accumulation. I frame the inhabitation of the Park in its Legacy era as a temporalisation of empty space, arguing that abstract time is co-constituted with abstract space in internally contradictory everyday practice. And I address the incorporation of the Park into a set of post-industrial, anti-urban, and leisureoriented spaces that form a representational space reflective of the movement of capital in its ascendant, financialised, form. I conclude with a discussion of the Olympic Park as 'catalyst', securing the reproduction of capital by encouraging further redevelopment, but also sharpening capital's contradictions as an abstract space in conflict with its own concrete content, predicated on the subsumption of the utopian potential of everyday life.

Orientador: Silvana Maria Pintaudi / Banca: Arlete Moysés Rodrigues / Banca: Isabel Aparecida Pinto Alvarez / Banca: Glória da Anunciação Alves / Banca: Carlos Henrique Costa da Silva / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo fazer uma análise crítica sobre o planejamento do espaço urbano, numa tentativa de ir além dos estudos que o avaliam apenas sob o aspecto dos seus limites e, desse modo, apreender o que tem sido iludido em nome de sua pretensa objetividade. Para isso, tomando como referência o município de Ilhabela, arquipélago oceânico localizado no litoral norte paulista, problematizam-se duas questões que já há um bom tempo, aos olhos do Estado, somente podem ser resolvidas por meio do ordenamento territorial, a saber: a proteção de um dos últimos remanescentes de Mata Atlântica do estado de São Paulo, bem como dos ecossistemas a ela associados e de sua biodiversidade, e a preservação do modo de vida tradicional das populações caiçaras, tendo em vista as interferências oriundas de fora, diga-se, do mundo ocidental capitalista. Todavia, no decorrer da pesquisa, demonstrar-se-á como tais questões são ilusórias. Assim, o ordenamento territorial visando à preservação da natureza nada mais é que um álibi para a reprodução de um mercado imobiliário local de alta renda, num processo em que a "ameaça ao verde" é pretexto, a um só tempo, para privilegiar alguns poucos e punir muitos outros. Do mesmo modo que as medidas de proteção às comunidades tradicionais, além de imobilizar o caiçara a um passado idealizado, têm criado padrões urbanísticos e arquitetônicos cada vez mais restritivos e, consequentemente, mais exclusivos, bem ao gosto de um consumo turístico elitizado / Abstract: This study aims at critically analyzing the planning of urban space, attempting to go beyond studies that assess this planning solely under the aspects of its limits and, therefore, apprehend what has been deluded on behalf of its supposed objectivity. In order to do so, having the city of Ilhabela as reference - an island located on the northern shoreline of the state of São Paulo - two issues that can only be solved with territorial planning arise: the protection of one of the last areas of Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) still remaining in the state of São Paulo, as well as its ecosystems and biodiversity; and the preservation of the traditional lifestyle of the Caiçara populations, with regards to the interference from the western capitalist world. However, throughout the research process, such issues will prove to be delusive. Thus, territorial planning aiming at the preservation of nature is nothing but an alibi for the growth of a high-income, local real estate market, in a process in which the "threat to green" is a pretense meant to benefit a few and punish many others. Also, protection measures designed for traditional communities, apart from leaving the Caiçara stranded in an idealized past, have also spawned ever-restricting and consequently more exclusive urban and architectural standards, fitted for elite touristic consumerism / Doutor

In 2010, South Africa became the first country on the continent of Africa to host a World Cup. This thesis analyzes aspects of the planning process for this mega-event. My analysis focuses on three interrelated phenomena: public order policing and re-branding through the control of public space; policy transfer and the attempt to clone the 'world-class' city in South Africa; and, the influence of consciously planning for an external television audience on the uneven geographies and temporalities of the mega-event. First, in analyzing the processes of public order policing and its connection to city branding in Durban, South Africa during the World Cup, I trace three mechanisms: the regulation of nuisance behaviors, the restriction of social movement activities, and the introduction of welcome ambassadors. I argue that this policing strategy reveals what city planners believe to be appropriate uses of public space as well as a future vision of the city. Second, using “cultural cloning” as a metaphor, I argue that policy mobility and the valorization of “best practices” can reinforce hegemonic conceptions of a 'world class' city that exacerbate already existing social inequalities. Such notions, also, work to foreclose on alternative visions of how a 'world class' World Cup host city might act such as those articulated in the World Class Cities for All campaign. Third, I examine how the particular medium of television works to shape urban planning, the production of space and the processes of urban knowledge production during mega-events. Such a theoretical approach necessitates closer examination of the relationship between urban planning and urban knowledge production through television. In the conclusion of my dissertation, I put my work in context of recent events and struggles that have emerged in Brazil as that country gets set to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Additionally, I highlight what I believe to be the key scholarly contributions of this project and outline a future research agenda that emerges from this work.