Focussing on Palestine refugee camps in the Near East, this dissertation aims to shed light on the potential relevance of urban planning to refugee camp environments worldwide. In particular, there is a focus on the role architects and urban planners…
The aim of this work is to question the notion of space that underlies the claimed ‘spatial turn’ in geographical and social theory. Section 1 examines this theoretical literature, drawing heavily on Soja as the self declared taxonomist of the genre,…
This study examines the reasons behind the decline in public transport patronage in Melbourne between 1950 and 1990, through a comparison with Toronto. The share of urban travel undertaken by public transport has declined since the Second World War…
In Universe of the Mind, Yuri Lotman proposes that some cities are "eccentric". These eccentric cities do not clearly correspond to the nation in which they are located because of discrepancies in architecture, geography, or politics, thus pushing…
This dissertation examines the production and experience of class and racial distinctions in contemporary Mexico City by focusing on encounter and proximity between different social groups in the country's most emblematic urban center. It draws on…
The urban waterfront is in the spotlight. During the last decades harbour facilities have been moved away from urban centres. Projects for the recovery and restructuring of obsolete industrial areas by the water are sprawling all over the globe. The…
The thesis deals with the formation of the post-Second World War reconstruction and planning machinery in Great Britain on the one hand, and on the other, with the replanning efforts undertaken in London and especially the redevelopment programme…
This research proposes to study spatial planning in a context of high social inequity. The analysis is focused on the possibilities that spatial planning has to attenuate conditions of inequity in urban development derived from urban growth process;…
This ethnography is based on fieldwork in two very different cities, Hong Kong and Sydney. It traces the movements of subjects from Hong Kong through the analysis of differing modes of inhabiting urban space. The texture of lived spaces provides an…
The aim of the proposed study is to investigate the emerging process of residential segregation within metropolitan cities with specific reference to two case studies.
The transition from deindustrial to post industrial city from the 1970s exposed how cities developed regeneration strategies as their traditional industrial base experienced terminal contraction. These strategies to re-make urban places positioned at…
The moral injunctions about beauty and order that attach to turn-of-the-twentieth-century urban reform and city planning derived from the era's concern with Domesticity and evangelicalism. Evangelical Protestant women believed they could protect…
One of the challenges confronting cities in non-industrialised countries today is the fact that cities are growing at unprecedented rates, sizes and densities. Growth trends in these cities are largely unregulated. In these countries, cities have…
Trends towards ‘informalization’ are looming large in the world today. African cities have long been characterised by the presence of an ‘informal sector’ but are now experiencing new waves of ‘informalization’. Policies of liberalisation and…
An increasing number of North American cities are demonstrating vocal resistance to perceived homogenization and corporatization of the urban landscape. In Austin, Texas, a grassroots movement has emerged as a form of resistance to these cultural and…
This study explores the factors urban residents consider when making residential location decisions. The context of the study is informal residential areas in a rapidly urbanising African city – the city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. A central…
This research presents the case of growth in Buenos Aires since the late 1970s, when the decentralization of urban planning powers in the Province of Buenos Aires began, until 2001, when an economic crisis submerged -even if transitorily- more than…
This study explores and reiterates the significance carried by the notions of place, multiplicity and experience in the approaches to the study of architecture, in the shaping of cultures, and in the construction of urban (hi)stories and…
This thesis is an interpretative ethnographic of two illegal hawker agglomerations sustained in the post-colonial Hong Kong. The focus of concern is on researching the everyday life resistance of the urban underclass living in a polarizing global…
The thesis examines the main factors that have led to changes in socio-spatial residential pattern in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, and its surrounding region in the post-socialist period, and analyses transformation of this pattern during…
