How do young South Africans assert agency? This study uses Emirbayer and Mische's (1998) theoretical conception of agency as temporally embedded and constantly reconfiguring; and combines it with the idea of shifting strategies as manifestations of agency. I introduce the seminal works in South African everyday youth literature to orient my study to explore how youth in South Africa assert agency through everyday strategies. Using qualitative methods - photo voice, focus groups, mapping and individual interviews - with four teenage girls from a high school in Mitchell's Plain, this study offers an enriched approach to a conception of youth agency, by overlaying a youth study with a theoretical conception of agency. The girls' everyday accounts show that as young teenagers they are waiting to enter the unknown prospect of teenagehood. To navigate their everyday lives, they draw on iterative (past), practical evaluative (present) and projective (future) agency in shifting configurations to maximise their agency in their lifeworlds. Although their agency is in tension with structures of safety concerns, familial expectations and culturally validated narratives of being a 'good girl'; the girls find ways around and through these limitations by strategically asserting their agency. This study applies a comprehensive theory of agency to a small youth study with rich everyday descriptions, in an effort towards enriching and grounding a conception of youth agency in an urban environment in the Global South.

As the first step in rethinking infrastructure configurations and their alternatives, this thesis aims at looking into the existing policy framework that governs electricity supply in Khartoum, its implementation and how it's experienced by Khartoum's residents. By zooming into one locality in Khartoum, the “Eastern Nile Locality”, the research has attempted to analyse the ways with which the limited electricity infrastructure is planned and allocated through its translation into policy frameworks in neighbouring areas falling under different zoning classification that correspond to their residents' income brackets. Review of the policy framework was conducted firstly, using a mix of desktop research and interviews with officials from the relevant institutions, investigating the key guidelines that govern electricity distribution across the various residential zones in terms of no/access to the grid, tariff regimes, contractual arrangements, alternative configurations and so on. The second part of the research was using ethnographic research methodologies to examine users' experience of electricity supply in its material and non-material dimensions. The studied cases revealed three main user categories; firstly, those grid-connected via the standard producers set by the Electricity Distribution Company. The second are those gridconnected via emerging models that could be classified as micro-financed co-production gridconnection. The third are those who remain off-grid and follow alternative routes. These varying regimes of service delivery are experienced by Khartoum residents on multiple levels, the most significant of which are firstly linked to users' experience of electricity as an unrivalled energy form that could be converted into a multiplicity of other forms, or its functional dimension as a modern technology that dis/enables greater space-time manipulation. Secondly, its more symbolic or representational aspects and their translation into social codes that define modern citizens and modernized states. Lastly, users' experience has pointed to the close link that the users make between electricity and the different relations that they form in their endeavors to access power services as in the different set of financial, legal, institutional and social relations and their implications in shaping subjectivities and articulating political positions.

Being a suggestive method of interpreting, and responding to the suburban context, my approach does not draw guidelines or promotes a personal agenda. In the same way that an architectural treatise is not a handbook, it is far from becoming a written code. It is an attempt at understanding how universal values, from our shared past, can contribute to our designs for the future. Therefore, let us first reinterpret the way we consider architectural history. Let us ask: How did certain patterns of development come about? Not what architectural style they belong to! In this case study, I carefully investigated regional, local, historical and cultural concerns, and responded to the current situation. I will not claim my response to this site as the solution, but one of many possible iterations that could be improved, grown, adjusted and modified. I present to you: The Alternative to Sprawl : A Civil consolidation. This thesis considers the redevelopment of three shopping centers, in Bailey's Crossroads of Fairfax, VA, into a transit-oriented mixed-use community. It is an interdisciplinary integrated approach, based on social issues. Although, it matters to admit that in order to draw a creative, yet informed architectural solution, one has to learn to step away from research and data to come up with truly inspired work. My approach is the alternative to the commonly accepted alternative to sprawl. I believe I can offer a thriving urban environment for every suburban individual, through the consolidation of buildings and public life. / Master of Architecture

This empirically- based research contributes to a vibrant debate on the role of occupations in city-making in the Global South. Much scholarly debate, however, fails to engage with the embodied nature of resistance to power, nor how cities are transformed through affective encounters of the everyday in what might look like contingent and precarious spaces. While most of the research on occupation in Cape Town have focused on land occupation in peripheral areas, a small, but growing area of research focuses on the occupation of existing buildings of the inner and central areas. However, scant attention has been given to the occupation of public space in the inner city to date. This case suggests some, emerging ways in which this Southern City is transforming through informal inhabitation of interstitial spaces. It does so at a time when the appearance of tents and makeshift shelters under bridges, along unfinished highways and pavements are initially associated, initially with the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the case study from which thesis departs is an unusual one: It began as an occupation of an abandoned building, but became a long-term land occupation outside it, after the group's eviction. Furthermore, it pre-dated the pandemic by several months and was part of an organised social movement insisting on the right to live close to the economic heart of the city and the social privileges this implies. Based on qualitative research over a five-month period, (including in-depth interviews, nonparticipant observation, and photography) this case study shows how the occupiers maintained a space that held not only lives but heterogeneous imaginaries, experimental practices. The micro-politics emergent from this site, forged through resisting efforts to regulate and displace them, is characterised, (inter-alia) by the insistence of being hom(ed) and homemaking – as opposed to “home-less”. In suggesting that an attentiveness to the everyday, affective politics of occupations moves beyond conventional readings of the occupations as a contestation between citizens and state, it will interest those engaged in social movements, occupations, and critical urban scholarship in the Global South.

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between the residents of Cosmo City, a mixedincome housing development in Gauteng, and green spaces in the development. It argues that the legacy of apartheid spatial planning has led to the unequal distribution of green infrastructure across the development, and this has disenfranchised the low-income residents. Segregation was the core of maintaining the apartheid regime. South Africans were not only divided according to race, culture and economically, but they were also divided spatially and so was the provision, proximity, and distribution of services. This segregation primarily affected the Black population negatively, as they were the ones moved to the outskirts of urban centres with little to no access to tenure or basic services. Access to green spaces was also limited as the history of South Africa was immersed in the displacement of the indigenous people out of their homes that honed their relationships between culture and nature. High economic status and access to green spaces have a positive relationship especially in the housing space. But what happens in the case of mixed-income developments? Since the change from apartheid to democracy, South Africa has implemented many housing plans and policies to undo fragmentation caused by apartheid spatial planning. Many of these plans failed over the course of implementation but their revision continues. Mixed-income housing policies have gained momentum in urban planning, especially in southern cities. These policies potentially not only bridge racial and economic disparities but they also confront issues of fragmented environmentalism through housing developments. South Africa's first mixed-income housing development, Cosmo City in Johannesburg has been the blueprint for many other mixed-income developments in the country. Cosmo City was successful in fulfilling its objectives of bringing people from the different socioeconomic backgrounds into the same neighbourhood. However, its objectives of promoting environmental sustainability across the development have not been realized. This research uses the stories of a group and middle- and low-income residents of Cosmo City as a case study to investigate the potential of mixed-income housing in South Africa to address the legacies of green apartheid through the equitable distribution of green infrastructure in mixed-income housing spaces. By investigating residents' greening aspirations, this research explores the ways in which the equitable distribution of green infrastructure in such developments can contribute to more egalitarian approaches to sustainability and facilitate social inclusion and cohesion among the residents. Qualitative research methods and desktop research were used to achieve the objectives of the study. A case study was conducted, which included regular visits to Cosmo City and open-ended interviews conducted with residents and an environmental officer from the developing company. The findings show that inequalities in the distribution and quality of green infrastructure in Cosmo City have led to reinforcing negative stereotypes and supress the livelihoods of low-income residents. In response, some residents have adopted diverse ways of breaking with the past through self-taught greening practices, even in complex situations that have already been pre-established for them. The recommendation which is made by this thesis in order promote a more holistic idea of environmental sustainability in mixed-income housing, is that stakeholders must understand the socioenvironmental dynamics of low-income residents in their respective urban spaces to accommodate their ecological needs.

Organized in three parts, this Master’s Design Study [MDS] book summarizes the efforts of a year-long exploration of finding a way to spatialize the lessons to be learned from the urban experiments of Michel Ecochard and members of Team 10 [ATBAT Afrique, GAMMA Group] that took place under the French Protectorate during the mid-twentieth century in Casablanca, Morocco. While a great deal of post-colonial scholarship exists on this topic [Avermaete, Cohen, Eleb, et. al.], missing from this body of work is a rigorous attempt to offer mappings, diagrams, architectural, and urban design strategies that can participate in the negotiation process between colonial modernism and the rich culture of Morocco. More pressing today is the necessity for strategies that can begin to negotiate between this existing culture and globalization. / text

New technologies have created a renewed interest in the places where we live and work by lessening the differences between the two. To address this issue, this thesis will consider the possibilities of returning to a suburban neighborhood that has been abandoned in recent history. Housing is introduced to a neighborhood which was predominantly commercial and retail throughout its history. As more people are brought into these miniature downtowns, the life of a neighborhood can be strengthened. / Master of Architecture

This thesis is concerned with reconnecting people to the land. It has been developed as a reaction to the current environmental crises concerning peak oil, urban sprawl, and the ongoing opposition between humans and the natural world. This thesis posits that the most direct way to reconnect people to the land is through the practice of agriculture. The thesis is written as a manifesto. The intent is to clearly declare the role that an agrarian development can play in our society. As a manifesto, it is written with the understanding that current political and economical considerations be suspended from the context of the thesis. It is a suggestion for the re-evaluation of contemporary agriculture, a new approach to development, and a new style for living. The thesis is broken into three sections. The first is an empirical introduction to the issues surrounding the thesis. Following this, a synopsis of readings concerning the work of a number of agricultural innovators is discussed. Large scale, rural based utopian precedents were studied more for their theory than for their architectural implications. The second section is the written Manifesto. The third is the design proposition of the thesis that follows the precepts outlined in the Manifesto. This design, which is a proposition for a new large-scale, hybrid urban/rural form of settlement, is named AGRARIA. This thesis is not meant to be a ‘back-to-the-land’ regressive social movement, but rather it suggests that current development of our arable land could be more in tune with its environment and still remain productive land after development. It is a proposition for the localization of production, and direct involvement in our food system. Following the precepts of the design proposal, a new alternative to urban sprawl can be discussed. This new typology will change the pattern of suburban development from consumptive elements into productive ones, and from isolationist environments into integrative ones. It is envisioned that this trend in development and lifestyle shall enable the spread of an agrarian ideology throughout rural areas and into urban centres.

This thesis is concerned with reconnecting people to the land. It has been developed as a reaction to the current environmental crises concerning peak oil, urban sprawl, and the ongoing opposition between humans and the natural world. This thesis posits that the most direct way to reconnect people to the land is through the practice of agriculture. The thesis is written as a manifesto. The intent is to clearly declare the role that an agrarian development can play in our society. As a manifesto, it is written with the understanding that current political and economical considerations be suspended from the context of the thesis. It is a suggestion for the re-evaluation of contemporary agriculture, a new approach to development, and a new style for living. The thesis is broken into three sections. The first is an empirical introduction to the issues surrounding the thesis. Following this, a synopsis of readings concerning the work of a number of agricultural innovators is discussed. Large scale, rural based utopian precedents were studied more for their theory than for their architectural implications. The second section is the written Manifesto. The third is the design proposition of the thesis that follows the precepts outlined in the Manifesto. This design, which is a proposition for a new large-scale, hybrid urban/rural form of settlement, is named AGRARIA. This thesis is not meant to be a ‘back-to-the-land’ regressive social movement, but rather it suggests that current development of our arable land could be more in tune with its environment and still remain productive land after development. It is a proposition for the localization of production, and direct involvement in our food system. Following the precepts of the design proposal, a new alternative to urban sprawl can be discussed. This new typology will change the pattern of suburban development from consumptive elements into productive ones, and from isolationist environments into integrative ones. It is envisioned that this trend in development and lifestyle shall enable the spread of an agrarian ideology throughout rural areas and into urban centres.

The primary objective of the research is to examine the attempt of new urbanism principles to promote a sense of community through its pedestrian-oriented design guidelines of neighborhoods. The following questions will be addressed to examine the subject. First, do residents of a new urbanism neighborhood have a higher level of sense of community than residents of a typical suburban neighborhood? Second, is there an evidential support that pedestrian-oriented design features of new urbanism enhance the sense of community in a neighborhood? Finally, do residents of a pedestrian-oriented design neighborhood have more out-of-door activities in their neighborhood than residents of a typical suburban neighborhood? To examine the relationship between neighborhood design and sense of community, a comparative study was conducted in four subdivision neighborhoods located in the Houston metropolis, Texas. The first two neighborhoods exhibit pedestrian-oriented design principles and features of new urbanism, although each to different degrees. The other two neighborhoods are typical suburban neighborhoods that are not specifically designed to accommodate pedestrians and usually have less public spaces. The methods of collecting data are self-administered questionnaires, systematic observations, and unstructured interviews of residents in the four neighborhoods. The research findings provide evidence that the residents in pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods have a higher level of supportive acts of neighboring (SAON) and neighborhood attachment & weak social ties (NA&WST) than those of typical suburban neighborhoods. The findings also provide partial support for the relationships between the design factor (pedestrian-oriented design) and two dimensions of sense of community investigated-SAON and NA&WST. Additionally, the findings strongly indicate that the social processes, measured through selected demographic and nonenvironmental design variables, have their own unique and vital role on the sense of community in the neighborhoods, and that physical design has no impact on the way the social processes work on the sense of community in the neighborhood. The roles of physical design and social process are independent from each other. Finally, the results partially support the hypothesis that residents of pedestrian-oriented design neighborhoods have a higher level of out-of-door activities than residents of typical suburban neighborhoods.