This diploma thesis pursues the phenomenon of urban gardening. It especially focuses on urban gardening in the form of community gardens, whose number has multiplied in Prague in the recent years. This trend has also caused an interest of the media and thus its is natural to research the motivation of the people, who participate in this activity, whether it is deeper or if it is just a fad. As a theroretical footing the ideas of Manuel Castells about urban social movements as well as the ideas of Henri Lefebvre about the right to the city were used. These authors believed that in the city the human scale is the most important and not financial value of the urban space. In the next part of the theoretical work the problem of public space and its interpretation in social sciences is presented. The analysis is dedicated to urban gardening in Prague. It aims to find whether it is just a temporary fashion or if the gardens could become permanent part of the public space in Prague. The function of community gardens is analysed with the use of a case study of one such garden. The work also tries to find out if the gardens in public space only bring positives or if they can also cause conficts.

Secondary Mortgage Markets and Place-Based Inequality: Space, GSEs and Social Exclusion in the Philadelphia Region Michael H. Norton Temple University, 2015 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Dr. Anne Shlay In 2015 virtually the entire US mortgage market is subsidized by US taxpayers. When the Federal Government took control of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the summer of 2008, US tax payers assumed responsibility for the vast majority of outstanding mortgage debt in the country. This dissertation examined the historical development and contemporary activity of the secondary mortgage market to understand the way the secondary market contributes to the reproduction of place-based inequality in American cities. Specifically, this dissertation analyzed the political-economic history of the secondary mortgage market to ground a contemporary analysis of the impact of secondary mortgage market activity on neighborhood change in the Philadelphia region at the turn of the 21st century. At the turn of the 21st century secondary market institutions coordinated a financial production process referred to in this study as the financialization of space. This process transforms the individual spatial relationships between individuals and their homes into financial commodities that are bought and sold by financial institutions. Individual mortgage loans make the financialization of space possible by providing the raw material that transmits capital embedded in the social spaces of individual homes and communities through secondary market institutions and into the abstract spaces of international capital markets. However, the financialization of space itself is made possible by a number of key contradictions that created considerable tension between the ongoing expansion of finacialized space and mortgage lending to individual home owners. These tensions were built into the very framework of the legislative policies governing the secondary mortgage market. The evolution of the secondary mortgage market was informed by parallel streams of housing policy that alternately sought to expand and regulate the primary and secondary mortgage markets at the end of the 20th century. The confluence of these policy streams initially created the conditions for the GSEs to pioneer financial productions processes that led to the financializaiton of space. At the same time, the emergence of subprime lending in the primary market, combined with the expansion of the secondary mortgage market to unregulated, private institutions, created dual housing markets differentiated by the types of loans available in the primary market and the funding sources for these loans in the secondary market. Throughout the study period (1996 – 2007), the GSEs concentrated the vast majority of all their purchasing activity buying conventional loans in the more affluent areas of the region. On the other hand, private institutions steadily eroded GSE market share in the conventional market, represented virtually the entire secondary market for subprime loans, and were considerably more active purchasing loans made to borrowers in communities that had been historically excluded from the primary mortgage market. Secondary market activity from 1996 to 2007 was significantly associated with changes along key housing and socio-economic conditions from 1990 to 2010. GSE market share was significantly associated with changing homeownership levels in neighborhoods throughout the region from 1990 to 2010. Higher levels of GSE market share were associated with net increases in homeownership in neighborhoods throughout the region. In a similar way, GSE-informed changes in homeownership levels were subsequently associated with significant changes in the percentage of residents living in poverty in neighborhoods throughout the region from 1990 to 2010, particularly on the Pennsylvania side of the region. Unlike the relationship between secondary market purchasing and homeownership, the relationship between secondary market purchasing and poverty levels functions through housing - either by virtue of more affluent residents moving in, or poor residents moving out of these areas. In both instances, GSE market share, and GSE-informed changes in homeownership sharpened differences between the different communities depending on where the GSEs concentrated their purchasing activity. The region’s urban centers, where GSE market share was lowest, experienced the greatest reductions in home ownership throughout the region, and the greatest increases in neighborhood poverty levels. In addition, the spatial relationships between individual neighborhoods exerted significant influences on changes in each of the housing and socio-economic indicators assessed. These findings suggest that space itself, and the spatial relationships between neighborhoods, exerted a significant influence on both secondary market activity and changing neighborhood conditions throughout the Philadelphia region. Over the twenty year period observed in this study, the types of differences between neighborhoods in the region have remained largely the same, while the degree of these differences has intensified during this time. In this way, the spatial distribution of neighborhood types in the Philadelphia region informed secondary market at the turn of the 21st century, which in turn contributed to the intensification of the differences between neighborhood types throughout the region. The findings presented in this study point to a number of key implications for theorists seeking to explain the role of space and place in the (re)production of patterns of uneven-development in metropolitan regions, and for understanding the financializaiton of space. In addition, these findings also point to key insights for policy makers currently developing legislation to reform the secondary mortgage market. / Sociology

A presente pesquisa partiu de uma etnografia realizada na região conhecida como Cracolândia no centro de São Paulo, considerada a mais famosa territorialidade de uso de crack no país. Alvo de intervenções estatais desde seu surgimento, nos anos 1990, essa territorialidade continua no centro de muitos programas e instituições. Em 2012, com o conflito erguido em torno da Operação Sufoco, há, no entanto, uma mudança nas formas de gestão desse espaço: de uma racionalidade de dispersão, que visava impedir o agrupamento de usuários de crack por meio do uso da força, para uma lógica de governo que precisa desse espaço concentrado para executar seus programas. Minha hipótese é que a fixação territorial combinada a essa malha concentrada de programas e instituições assistenciais acabou por construir um campo de gravitação em torno da Cracolândia, de modo a atrair pessoas com trajetórias muito diferentes mas que se encontram ali por terem uma vida errante. A partir do percurso de uma jovem que conheci durante a pesquisa, argumento que o Estado produz espaços e territorialidades como a Cracolândia, ao induzir e condicionar o movimento de diversos sujeitos. Como a personagem dessa pesquisa evidencia, sua circulação é incessante e ilegível, como na imagem do labirinto, mas guiada por uma racionalidade de buscar um local seguro das investidas policiais para estabelecer suas malocas e modos de vida, e onde há concentração de recursos e possibilidades. Dessa forma, a Cracolândia só faz sentido dentro de uma experiência urbana mais ampla, o que envolve outros espaços não contingentes territorialmente. / This research started from an ethnography in the region known as Cracolândia in downtown of São Paulo, considered the most famous crack use of territoriality in the country. Target of state interventions since its inception in the 1990s, this territoriality remains at the heart of many programs and institutions. In 2012, the conflict erected around the operation Suffocation, there is, however, a change in the forms of management of this space: a rationality dispersion, which was intended to prevent the grouping of crack users through the use of force, to a logic of government that needs this concentrated space to run their programs. My hypothesis is that the territorial fixation combined with this concentrated mesh programs and charitable institutions eventually build a gravitational field around the Cracolândia in order to attract people with very different paths but they are there to have a wandering life. From the journey of a young man I met during the research, I argue that the state produces spaces and territoriality as Cracolândia, to induce and influence the movement of various subjects. As the character of this research shows, their movement is unceasing and unreadable, as the labyrinth image, but guided by a rationality to seek a safe place police invested to establish their \"huts\" and ways of life, and where there is a concentration of resources and possibilities. Thus, Cracolândia only makes sense within a broader urban experience, which involves other spaces not contingent territorially.

A presente pesquisa partiu de uma etnografia realizada na região conhecida como Cracolândia no centro de São Paulo, considerada a mais famosa territorialidade de uso de crack no país. Alvo de intervenções estatais desde seu surgimento, nos anos 1990, essa territorialidade continua no centro de muitos programas e instituições. Em 2012, com o conflito erguido em torno da Operação Sufoco, há, no entanto, uma mudança nas formas de gestão desse espaço: de uma racionalidade de dispersão, que visava impedir o agrupamento de usuários de crack por meio do uso da força, para uma lógica de governo que precisa desse espaço concentrado para executar seus programas. Minha hipótese é que a fixação territorial combinada a essa malha concentrada de programas e instituições assistenciais acabou por construir um campo de gravitação em torno da Cracolândia, de modo a atrair pessoas com trajetórias muito diferentes mas que se encontram ali por terem uma vida errante. A partir do percurso de uma jovem que conheci durante a pesquisa, argumento que o Estado produz espaços e territorialidades como a Cracolândia, ao induzir e condicionar o movimento de diversos sujeitos. Como a personagem dessa pesquisa evidencia, sua circulação é incessante e ilegível, como na imagem do labirinto, mas guiada por uma racionalidade de buscar um local seguro das investidas policiais para estabelecer suas malocas e modos de vida, e onde há concentração de recursos e possibilidades. Dessa forma, a Cracolândia só faz sentido dentro de uma experiência urbana mais ampla, o que envolve outros espaços não contingentes territorialmente. / This research started from an ethnography in the region known as Cracolândia in downtown of São Paulo, considered the most famous crack use of territoriality in the country. Target of state interventions since its inception in the 1990s, this territoriality remains at the heart of many programs and institutions. In 2012, the conflict erected around the operation Suffocation, there is, however, a change in the forms of management of this space: a rationality dispersion, which was intended to prevent the grouping of crack users through the use of force, to a logic of government that needs this concentrated space to run their programs. My hypothesis is that the territorial fixation combined with this concentrated mesh programs and charitable institutions eventually build a gravitational field around the Cracolândia in order to attract people with very different paths but they are there to have a wandering life. From the journey of a young man I met during the research, I argue that the state produces spaces and territoriality as Cracolândia, to induce and influence the movement of various subjects. As the character of this research shows, their movement is unceasing and unreadable, as the labyrinth image, but guided by a rationality to seek a safe place police invested to establish their \"huts\" and ways of life, and where there is a concentration of resources and possibilities. Thus, Cracolândia only makes sense within a broader urban experience, which involves other spaces not contingent territorially.

This thesis explores the role of expert-led policy processes in addressing water quality. It does so by drawing on the ‘peri-urban' as a setting which exemplifies contemporary social and environmental challenges associated with river and groundwater pollution, as well as the health and livelihood implications for the poorest citizens in peri-urban areas. The peri-urban area of Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of New Delhi, provides a good reference point for understanding those challenges, while India's environmental regulatory agency (the Central Pollution Control Board) demonstrates how policy experts influence such a setting by enacting their institutional role and mandate. The thesis examines the ways in which problems associated with deteriorating water quality in peri-urban areas are often neglected in expert-led policy processes, and the consequent implications for peri-urban poor communities. It argues that expert-driven policy approaches to addressing water quality are formulated almost exclusively on scientific grounds, while underlying ‘non-scientific' decisions and choices, emerging from actors operating at levels from policy framing to policy implementation, are not awarded the same importance, thus ignoring issues that pertain to the social, environmental and political implications of the problems. By drawing on qualitative research, the thesis focuses on two case studies. One examines the Central Pollution Control Board's framing of policy initiatives while the other follows the implementation of such policies in peri-urban Ghaziabad. The thesis demonstrates how the scale of monitoring water quality is heavily biased towards national rather than local level priorities. This leads to an understatement of important water quality problems that affect peri-urban areas in favour of large-scale analyses of pollution in river basins. This has the effect of understating important water quality problems that affect peri-urban areas in poorer localities such as villages within the Ghaziabad district. The centrality of technical discourses in the articulation of and response to water quality problems makes it difficult for non-technical perspectives (derived directly from those people who are exposed to pollution) to feed into formal decision-making. This research also identified the key influence of a number of actors (municipal engineers, public health officials and district magistrates) in shaping and implementing policy outcomes on the ground in local contexts (i.e. peri-urban areas), even though their roles are often not recognised formally. The thesis is original in its attempt to merge insights from policy studies and science technology studies (STS) and apply them to the domain of water quality, a field that has not traditionally been subjected to critical social science inquiry. It also unpacks ethnographically the Board's dual role as both a policy advisor and regulator, and further illustrates how the enactment of these roles can lead to contradictory outcomes on the ground, particularly for the poorest periurban citizens.

This thesis addresses the implications of Australian and South Australian government policies for the provision of online health information. It focuses on subjective meanings about internet use and access by questioning the use of information and communications technology (ICT) for health information. It analyses egalitarian approaches by government entities for universal access and explores how the phenomenon of the internet is claimed to be a potential conduit for social inclusion to reduce health inequalities.

It has long been acknowledged that housing is essential for access to employment, social services, healthcare, and other forms of assistance that help move people out of poverty. Through identifying dimensions of housing insecurity, policymakers, as well as researchers, will have a better understanding of the protective factors that make families more secure and the risk factors that raise their level of insecurity. These analyses use resident and non-resident, low-income, urban fathers’ responses to the five publicly available waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (n = 4378) dataset to examine the relationship between protective and risk factors and housing insecurity. As access to protective factors increases, fathers’ risk of housing semi-insecurity and insecurity decreases, and as fathers are more exposed to risk factors, both their housing semi-insecurity and insecurity risks increase.

The aim of this thesis is to explain the production of urban space at the southwestern periphery of Ankara between 1985 and 2007. It has been argued that urban development is not a self-regulatory process / on contrary it is a process produced by urban planning practice. In this respect this thesis asks how and what extent urban planning produces particular urban pattern at the peripheral areas. The southwestern periphery is taken into account as a field of case study due to the peculiar development dynamics. Historical development in this area reveals a contrast between planned development directed by master plans and problematic development that has been produced by fragmented and incoherent planning processes. The difficulties of urban plans and urban planning are intimately related with the legal and administrative structures of the planning system. A methodology offered in this thesis is devised to analyze the incremental and piecemeal nature of planning process with reference to these structures. The results of the research has shown that when confronted with legal and administrative conflicts and struggles, fragmented planning decisions manipulating the existing master plan intensify and become the root cause of dispersed, awkward and haphazard spatial patterns of urban expansion.

The aim of this thesis is to explain the production of urban space at the southwestern periphery of Ankara between 1985 and 2007. It has been argued that urban development is not a self-regulatory process / on contrary it is a process produced by urban planning practice. In this respect this thesis asks how and what extent urban planning produces particular urban pattern at the peripheral areas. The southwestern periphery is taken into account as a field of case study due to the peculiar development dynamics. Historical development in this area reveals a contrast between planned development directed by master plans and problematic development that has been produced by fragmented and incoherent planning processes. The difficulties of urban plans and urban planning are intimately related with the legal and administrative structures of the planning system. A methodology offered in this thesis is devised to analyze the incremental and piecemeal nature of planning process with reference to these structures. The results of the research has shown that when confronted with legal and administrative conflicts and struggles, fragmented planning decisions manipulating the existing master plan intensify and become the root cause of dispersed, awkward and haphazard spatial patterns of urban expansion.

This study is based on a comparison of the spatial choices of two middle class groups residing in &Ccedil / ayyolu and Ke&ccedil / i&ouml / ren in Ankara. Spatial choices include the residences and neighborhood, the consumption of various places and activities in urban space and evaluations of the urban space. To search for the effects of alternative factors on the spatial choices along with well-known economic capital, two upper middle class groups are chosen as the basis of comparison. In line with the effects of Bourdieu&amp / #8217 / s cultural capital and social and symbolic capital on the differentiation of middle class / the location choice, spatial use and evaluation differences of the two groups at hand are investigated. Based on the effects of consumption sphere in class formation, the influence of the concept of &amp / #8216 / taste&amp / #8217 / and the differentiating aspect of lifestyle is discussed and how the resulting spatial tastes and choices may affect the development of urban space is presented in the case of Ankara. The importance of considering theoretically the local variations in studies conducted in urban space based on the daily practices of urbanites is revealed by the discussions of cultural factors that are special to Ankara and Turkey.