Intra-urban segregation changes: An evaluation of three segregation frameworks with a case study of Columbus Ohio MSA, 1990 and 2000
race, ethnicity, segregation, neighborhood, spatial assimiliation, place stratification, resurgent ethnicity
There are three major frameworks on segregation changes: spatial assimilation, place stratification, and resurgent ethnicity. Previous efforts to evaluate the significance of each framework, dominantly relying on cross-urban metrics, fall short in shedding light on underlying processes of segregation changes within a city, providing only circumstantial evidences for each framework. The author diagnoses that this shortcoming is a result of neglecting variability of segregation at the neighborhood level. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that more attention should be given to local segregation measures and proposes a set of local segregation measures corresponding to two spatial dimensions of segregation: the Location Quotient (LQ) for concentration-evenness and Local Moran’s I (LM-I) for clustering-exposure. Using these local measures, the dissertation examines segregation change at the neighborhood level in terms of residential patterning of race/ethnicity and neighborhood characteristics of racial/ethnic clustering/segregation in the Columbus Ohio MSA, 1990 and 2000. The overall findings strongly support resurgent ethnicity as the most relevant of the three frameworks.
The battles of Germantown: Public history and preservation in America's most historic neighborhood during the twentieth century
American history, historic preservation, public history, public memory, Philadelphia
This dissertation examines how public history and historic preservation have changed during the twentieth century by examining the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1683, Germantown is one of America’s most historic neighborhoods, with resonant landmarks related to the nation’s political, military, industrial, and cultural history. Efforts to preserve the historic sites of the neighborhood have resulted in the presence of fourteen historic sites and house museums, including sites owned by the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the City of Philadelphia. Germantown is also a neighborhood where many of the ills that came to beset many American cities in the twentieth century are easy to spot. The 2000 census showed that one quarter of its citizens live at or below the poverty line. Germantown High School recently made national headlines when students there attacked a popular teacher, causing severe injuries. Many businesses and landmark buildings now stand shuttered in community that no longer can draw on the manufacturing or retail economy it once did. Germantown’s twentieth century has seen remarkably creative approaches to contemporary problems using historic preservation at their core. What was tried, together with what succeeded and failed, help to explain how urban planning, heritage tourism, architectural preservation and museum studies have evolved in the country overall. Each decade offered examples of attempted solutions and success stories, frequently setting standards for historic preservation nationally. In Germantown’s case, history was identified early and throughout the century as a useful tool to build into an economic engine for the neighborhood. And yet, history has not proved to be as beneficial to the neighborhood as had been hoped. Why did history not provide the development spark that people thought it would? The answer to this question is beset with many ironies to be explored in this study. Germantown’s greatest feature, its history, often got in the way. More specifically, the practice of history, locally and more generally, did not always help Germantown’s expressed goal to make its history more effective in the economic development of the neighborhood. Beset with many competing groups and unable to overcome entrenched traditions, Germantown’s primary selling point, its historic assets, often paradoxically served as a barrier to achieving those goals. Institutional, systemic, and cultural factors have all played in to how Germantown has not been able to take full advantage of its history for the benefit of the entire community. Germantown offers a way to study life in a twentieth century city through the ways that people think about history. Germantown history shows how thinking about preservation went from a notion of attempting to seal off the past in reverent isolation to one of the responsible management of change. The former required authority, the latter requires respect for multiple narratives. The process required the evolution, over many years and many contested issues, of the historical profession as whole.
The changing structure of neighborhood social conditions in Cleveland, Ohio, 1979-1989
changing structure, neighborhood social conditions, Cleveland, Ohio
This study examines the interrelationships and their location among a set of social conditions across the inner city neighborhoods in a northern industrial city over the decade of the 1980s. Specifically, it addresses the questions of whether there has been a change in the structure of neighborhood social conditions and how that change occurred over time. It extends the current literature to provide an understanding of the dynamic changes of neighborhood structure. A multivariate-structural approach is used to analyze the occurrence rates of ten social conditions between 1980 and 1989. Results of the analysis showed that the internal structure of the neighborhood social conditions had indeed changed over time. In the early 1980s, the occurrence of social conditions varied along three dimensions of difficulties related to adolescents, families and children, and crimes. By the late 1980s, these social conditions had become highly interconnected and could not be differentiated by the earlier structure. Three new dimensions, including the substantial difficulties to the families, children, teenagers, and young adults as a single dimension, together with safety and infant death, have emerged. The increasing family disruption and the involvement of d elinquent behaviors with drug activities appeared to be the major driving forces for such a structural change. The quality of life in inner city neighborhoods is worsening due to the increasing interdependence of these devastating conditions. Social conditions were not evenly distributed. In the early 1980s, five areas: stable, urban village, anomie, family breakup, and extreme-outlier were classified by the different problems that each area had encountered. By the late 1980s, four other areas were identified: stable, transitory, distressed, and extreme-outlier. They were differentiated by the overall deterioration levels of the social conditions. Although most neighborhoods have witnessed a decline in social conditions, some areas were more resistant to adverse change than the others. The stability in residential compositions and family structure, as well as the availability of local resources seem to play significant roles in the reversal process. To provide support and resources in the neighborhoods therefore becomes crucial. Prevention of further decline in neighborhood social conditions is recommended as the focus of policy and program planning in the future.
High technology and intra-urban transformations: A case study of Bengaluru, India
high technology, urban change, Bengaluru
High technology is defined as software and hardware firms, information technology enabled services and fiber optics. These firms locate in large cities and take advantage of cheap and high skilled technical skills with knowledge of English language to promote efficiency and productivity in global enterprises. The overarching question addressed in this research is why do some urban regions grow and others stagnate in the global economy? Why do high technology firms choose to locate in some urban areas and not other cities? Since the 1990s the Indian government implemented the policy of liberalization, deregulation and globalization. Large cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai have experienced a process of urban growth based on agglomeration economies and this has manifested several spatial changes such as specialization of urban regions, growing urban interdependencies, new patterns in the spread of technologies, changes in the product mix of regions and changes in the product mix of the local economy. This research is a study of the Bengaluru and examines the following two major questions: (1) Has the location of high technology in Bengaluru contributed to intra-urban transformations at the ward level? and (2) Have the high tech firms created social gaps within the different wards of Bengaluru? This research uses both quantitative, qualitative methods and geographic information systems (GIS) for analyzing data. Secondary data was collected from Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), Bangalore City Corporation (BCC), Bangalore Transportation Authority (BTA), Census of India, and Department of Information and Technology, Bengaluru. Primary data was collected through interviews. This research concludes that the location of high tech firms has increased the gap and has transformed the high tech wards and non-high tech wards socially and economically and even culturally. The high tech firms do not simply agglomerate in proximity to educational institutions within wards but coexist where wards are characterized by high literacy, illiteracy, slum population, high rise luxurious apartments, shopping malls, poverty and homelessness. An example of such a ward is Koramangala with the best residential locality, excellent educational institutions and cluster of slums are found.
Between city and suburb: The near urban neighborhood, technology, and the commodification of the American house, 1914-1934
architecture, housing, consumer culture, neighborhood, community, technology, urban history, planning, New Urbanism
This work offers a new perspective on the standard interpretation of suburbanization in the United States and provides a historical model within the literature of New Urbanism. The work investigates aspects of both the community and commodity of the “modern” home and what I refer to as the near urban neighborhood. During the early decades of the twentieth century, there was a fundamental change in the nature of housing in the United States. This change resulted in a new residential streets developed to be both automobile- and pedestrian-friendly; a new floor plan, what I refer to as a box for technology; and the commodification of the American home, equated with items such as the radio and automobile. The house itself, as it exists today, is a record of this change. In this study, architectural archaeology and an in depth investigation of one street in Columbus, Ohio, were used to gain historical insight about why the house changed. This study of eight primary artifacts (houses) was augmented by trade journals, plan books, and ladies’ magazines to show how the new house plan of the 1920s became standardized across the United States. These investigations showed that by the 1920s: 1. The house sat on a street. The street connected the house to services, often technological. And the neighborhood connected the house to community; 2. The house was a box for technology holding the appliances and artifacts connected to the systems on the street; 3. The box consisted of a series of rooms, each with its own technological appliances and devices; 4. Emergent middle-class families bought these homes. Evidence suggested that changes in technology became the common thread in the development of the new house type. The technological change within the near urban home was not a slow, progressive transition. The change was fast and revolutionary. By purchasing a near urban home, the homeowner bought and embraced the entire package of twentieth-century technology and culture. The home had become “modern” in both its plan and conception. And, builders and owners tied the idea of the “modern” home directly to the technology within.
Locating cultural economy and exploring its connections with urban policymaking: A case study of Columbus, OH
art education, public administration, sociology, cultural policy, cultural economy, urban policymaking
The cultural economy of American cities emerged as an important topic in cultural policy at the end of the 21st Century, when cultural policy makers started to highlight the multifaceted dynamics of cultural activities and city officials started to pay attention to their great potentials for the growth and well-being of the city. This moved cultural policy from the national to the local level and two main problems emerged. First, it is not always agreed what constitutes cultural economy; the academic literature and reports are not consistent in the language, and their object of analysis is defined by different boundaries. Second, the connections between the cultural economy and urban policymaking are unclear due to the lack of standardized structure in city bureaucracy and the intricacy of metropolitan governance, in particular, for what concern suburbanization. The purpose of my dissertation is to inform decision making for cultural planning by exploring the connections between cultural economy and urban policymaking. To this end, I develop a research strategy that entails two steps: (1) build a definition of cultural economy that can be operationalized, and (2) find an analytical approach that can link the data about the cultural economy to the complexity of urban policymaking. First, I review a broad range of literature, categorizing the different approaches and identifying three main domains: industries, institutions, and districts. They are characterized by three main differences - foundational concepts, economic functions, and interaction mechanisms - but merge in an inclusive definition of the cultural economy. Second, I use a geographical information system (GIS) as method of analysis. GIS is a powerful analytical tool; creating maps, it grasps the administrative, social, and economic aspects intertwined with culture. My empirical analysis focuses on Columbus, Ohio, USA, and its suburbs. I locate their cultural economy identifying its breadth and articulation. Then, I explore the connections of cultural economy with urban policymaking: I analyze the Neighborhood Liaison Areas and their socioeconomic characteristics, I map the situation in the suburbs, and, finally, I overlay and compare the Neighborhood Liaisons Areas with the suburbs.
Creating connections: Economic development, land use, and the system of cities in Northwest Ohio during the nineteenth century
nineteenth century, urban, rural, development, settlement, economics, historical geography, policy history, Ohio, Toledo
Examining how economics, geography, and politics interacted in the expansion and economic changes within the United States, this dissertation investigated the symbiotic relationships and their qualities among the economic transformations of an urban area and its surrounding hinterland throughout the nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigated how the economic and population changes within Toledo, Ohio, molded the development of agricultural hinterlands and how the condition and settlement of the surrounding rural areas shaped the economic changes of Toledo. The quality of transportation connections among Toledo and other nascent towns, market interactions among residents, and the relationships between land quality and usage provided for symbiotic economic development of urban areas and rural hinterlands. The ability to use certain transportation infrastructures, the condition of land, and the availability of natural resources determined the type, quantity, and strength of market connections among people, which influenced the amount and forms of economic change for the area. Conclusions of this study were drawn from analyzing census records, newspaper advertisements and editorials, agricultural reports, and business records and literature. This research introduced a new paradigm of regional economic change named the “subregional model” which included a hub, local economic centers, small villages and farms, and links of various qualities. The subregional model also contained an environmental character explaining economic change. Land conditions not only affected land use practices but also prompted policymakers to enact improvement plans supporting new market interactions among people. Integration and strength of connections provided generative economic development with cities on a subregional level extracting natural resources from the hinterland to stimulate urban expansion through new businesses and growing manufacturing establishments. The findings of this dissertation add to the understanding of economic changes through settlement, urban and rural development, and land use in United States history emphasizing connections whose number and quality greatly determined the pace and magnitude of economic change. Because most residents of the United States lived within systems of medium-sized economic centers surrounded by hinterlands, the study and interpretive analyses of places such as Toledo and northwest Ohio are fundamental to the understanding of the history of the United States.
Diverging paths: The determinants of neighbourhood change across space and time
neighborhood, neighborhood change, multilevel modeling, urban planning
The principal research question is “Why do some neighborhoods in U.S. urban areas stay economically healthy and others do not?” This study proposes three hypotheses on diverging paths of neighborhood change: first, neighborhood change is produced by interactions of factors at the metropolitan, municipal, and neighborhood scales; second, “the politics of scale”—city size and the homogeneity level of household interests in a municipality—is an important factor leading to different paths and outcomes of neighborhood change; and third, factors of neighborhood change have altered over time. The primary data set used in this study is the Neighborhood Change Data Base by GeoLytics that includes the decennial census data across the country from 1970 to 2000 at the census tract level. This study examines the proposed hypotheses with a random sample of 35 metropolitan areas and analyzes the data set using multilevel modeling. Using per capita income and average housing value in neighborhoods, this study develops an index of neighborhood economic condition and uses the change of this index as the dependent variable in the empirical analyses. The explanatory variables included in the model are based on the theories on neighborhood change and the comprehensive model of neighborhood change proposed in this study. This study finds clear evidence to support the proposed hypotheses. First, neighborhood change is produced by interactions of factors at the metropolitan, municipal, and neighborhood scales. Secondly, the politics of scale matters in neighborhood change in that neighborhoods are more likely improve economically in smaller and more homogeneous cities. Finally, factors affecting neighborhood change have altered over time. Based on the findings, this study suggests that it is essential to take metropolitan, municipal, and neighborhood contexts into account together in setting public policies for community development. With regard to the politics of scale, larger and more heterogeneous cities should learn from smaller and more homogeneous cities by, for example, working to increase community interaction, which is positively related to city growth. Finally, because the factors associated with neighborhood change were different in different time periods, local governments should plan in preparation for housing market change. By taking the municipal and metropolitan contexts as well as the neighborhood context into account, this study helps improve our understanding of diverging paths and determinants of neighborhood change. If we know why neighborhoods undergoing changes move in different directions and how the influences of neighborhood change have altered over time, we can do a better job of designing policies to ameliorate different conditions. In a more theoretical vein, this study contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive model of neighborhood change over space and time.
Impacts of urban containment policies on urban growth and structure
urban containment policies, greenbelts, urban growth boundaries, urban service areas, population and employment growth, urban spatial structure
Numerous communities have adopted some form of urban containment policies (UCPs), such as greenbelt, urban growth boundaries (UGBs), and urban service areas (USAs), as methods to prevent urban sprawl and protect open space. Although there is controversy over the negative and positive impacts of UCPs, little is known on their impacts on population and employment growth, and on the overall urban spatial structure. The purpose of this research is to (1) understand the system of UCPs, (2) empirically analyze their impacts on population and employment growth, and built-up areas in combination with housing values, and (3) examine their impacts on the location of industrial activities as well as population. Two approaches are considered to empirically analyze the impacts of UCPs on urban growth and urban spatial structure. In the first approach, a simultaneous equation model is used with, as endogenous variables, the changes in total population, total employment and sectoral employment, housing values, and land area at the municipal/city level. In the second approach, population and employment density gradients, estimated with both monocentric and polycentric models at the metropolitan level, are used to examine the impacts of different UCPs on urban spatial structure. The research finds that both the stringent containment policies (SCPs), including greenbelts and UGBs, and the less stringent containment policies (LSCP), including USAs, have significant impacts on changes in population, employment, housing values, and land areas. When both direct and indirect effects are taken into account, the SCPs have a positive effect on changes in population, employment, housing values, and land area twice larger than the LSCPs, suggesting that SCPs more successfully accommodate new growth within the growth boundaries, and that housing values increase with the tightness of UCPs. In terms of the urban spatial structure, statewide SCPs encourage metropolitan areas to move to a polycentric development pattern, locally-enforced SCPs support a monocentric pattern, and USAs produce sprawled development patterns.
The political economy of intergovernmental grants to cities
political economy, intergovernmental grants, grants, aid, local government, city budget
In 1988 cities and townships received $39.1 billion, or 25.9% of their total general revenues in the form of intergovernmental aid from the federal and state governments... Despite the importance of these programs their effects are often unclear. Many questions are not well understood. In particular: What effect does aid have on city expenditures and taxes? Are different categories of city expenditures affected differently by grants? What are the different impacts of different types of aid programs? And do the effects of aid vary systematically according to city political structure or city size and location?
Urban violence: A case study of three cities
riot, African-American, urban violence, ghetto, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, race
It is the writer's contention that there are existing weaknesses in the empirical literature on ghetto riots. One of the most serious weaknesses rests in the fact that many of the theories and/or assumptions put forth in attempts to explain aspects of urban rioting lack careful and rigorous empirical testing. An attempt will be made to examine systematically research material in the area of urban riots for the purpose of clarifying and testing several commonplace theories and/or assumptions. In the final analysis, this study will attempt to answer three basic questions: What theories have been offered to explain the emergence and evolution of rioting? Wjat is the relationship between the degree of riot severity and the level of black political representation? What did the riots accmplish for Black Americans?
Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans: Discursive spaces of safety and resulting environmental injustice
infrastructure, Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans, levees, flooding, environmental justice, hurricane, urban, mitigation, natural hazards, disaster
On August 29, 2005, a large tropical cyclone, named Hurricane Katrina, made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Despite following a track that mostly missed New Orleans, Katrina drowned this city by causing the failure of a protective levee infrastructure that surrounded population portions of the metropolitan area. In this majority African-American city, with a large number of impoverished people, Katrina caused over 900 deaths, tens of thousands of injuries, and left hundreds of thousands of residents displaced. However, the injustices of Katrina can be traced to the founding of New Orleans in 1718, when various government entities worked to alter the city's hazardous natural environment to promote development, beginning with French prison labor in the colony's earliest days, maintaining through a period of Spanish rule, and continuing to contemporary times under the administration of the United States. Indeed, the various infrastructural improvements serve as a discourse of safety, promoting capitalist development and residential settlement of a risky place. By the time Katrina struck, most of these residents, who took these discourses of safety very seriously, were generally of socioeconomically oppressed classes and least able to endure the consequences of that discourse's broken promise.
scale, metropolitan, land use, urban growth model, urban, population growth, spatial interaction, urban sprawl, world cities
An urban growth model is conceptualized as a metropolitan change model consisting of multiple scales: global, regional and local. The baseline model operates in a free trade environment, in a space initially without consideration of the regulatory and redistributive forces of national and state governmental levels. Space in this study is abstracted as a metropolitan envelope, which is defined to start at the beginning of the twentieth century with the emergence of the New York, London and Tokyo metropolitan systems, and expanded one hundred years later into a system of four hundred major central cities and their associated commuter hinterlands. The expectation is that this system will continue to expand in the twenty-first century, as the primary engine of global economic diffusion and development. The purpose of this research is to model economic spatial interactions that generate investment flows that in turn convert into economic activity after the construction and placement of private and public infrastructure. The global model provides a set of allocated investment flows to regions, and the regional model provides employment and residential allocations to the local model, which displays land use changes. One major goal is to test the systems ability (or not) to achieve partial convergence of per capita incomes across the set of metropolitan spaces over multiple scales. For a variety of tested scenarios, temporal convergence and rank-size rule metrics can be evaluated at multiple spatial scales.
Anchoring the city? Retail location and the politics of downtown development
regime theory, urban politics, retail location, location incentives
The purpose of this study is to understand variations in the municipal use of subsidies to attract and / or retain traditional department stores to CBDs in cities in the United States. The approach taken is urban regime theory, which claims that local policy is shaped by particular regimes or political coalitions. Two hypotheses are proposed. First, it is hypothesized that cities whose governing regimes or political coalitions reflect characteristics commonly referred to as “developmental” are more likely to offer subsidies for attraction / retention of department stores than other regime or political coalition types. Second, it is hypothesized that the composition of corporate communities in cities influences the types of regimes or political coalitions that cities are likely to develop. The study covers twenty-four cities across the United States. Utilizing lists of boards of directors across three major sectors, each city’s composition of business and community elites are profiled. Utilizing factor analysis for sectoral categories, prototype profiles are generated for three major regime typologies identified in the literature. Each city’s profile is then correlated with each of the three regime prototypes through scatter plots. Concerning the first hypothesis, eight of the twenty-four cities are identified as having provided subsidies for the attraction or retention of a ddepartment store to their respective CBD. All but one of these are identified as having developmental-type regimes by previous case studies, confirming the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis likewise appears to be confirmed by the results of the study. Correlations of sixteen of the twenty-four cities with the markers for regime prototypes strongly match their expected regime type. This study demonstrates the utility of fleshing out the corporate structures of cities to determine whether or not different mixes of economic activities predispose cities towards different regime types and policy agendas. Business elites afforded positions of influence may be biased in their expertise regarding urban development, thereby affecting urban policymaking in ways that could prove detrimental to the city.
The role of institutional factors in modeling the location of urban infill housing development in declining U.S. cities: A study of Cleveland, Ohio
urban modeling, urban infill housing development, institutional factors, Cleveland
The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of urban modeling by identifying factors associated with the location of infill housing development in declining American cities. The focus of this research is on the institutional factors that have not been considered in traditional urban land use models. The two main research questions were: (1) are the institutional factors significantly associated with the location of urban infill housing development in declining American cities? and (2) are the institutional factors more important than non-institutional factors, i.e., site and neighborhood characteristics, in determining the location of infill housing development? The study analyzed housing development patterns in City of Cleveland, Ohio, during the 1990s. Most of the institutional factors were found to be significantly related to infill housing development. The land bank and Neighborhood Reinvestment Agreement (NRA) programs were found to be particularly important in guiding the process of the infill housing development. Several non-institutional factors such as the quantity of vacant residential land were also found to be significantly related to infill housing development. Other non-institutional factors that have been traditionally used in urban models such as accessibility and proximity to amenities were found to not be significantly related to the location of infill housing development. Interestingly, the minority-concentrated, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, and population-losing neighborhoods which urban modelers have traditionally assumed would have little new housing experienced the most housing development activities. These rather surprising results reflect the fact that these neighborhoods were the focus of governments’ and other supporting institutions’ efforts to revitalize depressed urban neighborhoods. The study has several important implications for urban modelers and urban planners. It first suggests that urban models for the residential development in struggling older cities should consider the important role played by a city’s institutional support systems. Second, it suggests that these models should pay particular attention to land availability factors such as land bank programs and the amount of residential vacant land. Third, it suggests that urban modelers interested in urban infill residential development should not be as concerned with accessibility to employment or shopping centers as they are with other locational factors. Lastly, it indicates that governmental and institutional interventions can effectively guide the location of infill housing development in a weak inter-urban housing market.
Tracing the path of power through the fluidity of freedom: The art of parkour in challenging the relationship of architecture and the body and rethinking the discursive limits of the city
architecture, urban space, the body, architecture and the body, parkour, discourse, the city
This study explores the production of urban architectural space and investigates how the art of parkour attempts to (re)appropriate the spaces of the city. It interrogates the reflexive and continuously (re)negotiated relationship of power and freedom, as defined by Foucault, in and through the corporeal link of the traceur body, the practitioners of parkour, and urban architecture. Parkour forefronts the relations of power through a corporeal connection with architecture. This connection functions to offer more emancipated alternatives both to and within the hegemonic discourses disciplining the space of the city. Traceurs exercise agency as the discourse of the city creates limitations through regulatory norms; however, these limitations create the conditions for action. As a technology and technique of power, architecture’s participation in (re)producing regulatory norms is seen in the ways in which it informs individuals’ interpretations of everyday practices. Architecture embodies particular ideologies which communicate to a body of urban inhabitants. This embodiment communicates as a reflection and reinscription of the social actor’s position within social relations. In being formed by power even as one reworks it, traceurs continuously challenge the reiterative chains of discourse by inscribing their own truth or counter discourse. Parkour functions ontologically as it is a performance, and functions epistemologically as a performance. This study demonstrates how parkour offers insight into the intersections of the body and architectural space to bring to the fore the emancipatory potentialities therein. To understand the emancipatory power of parkour, epistemology of doing as a critical ethnography is employed as the method for investigation. Epistemology of doing centers on a learning-by-doing approach positioning the researcher as participant in the production of knowledge and experience, in the case of this study, immersed in a community of traceurs during a parkour training seminar at B.A.S.E. Fitness in Noblesville, Indiana. The ethnographic experience allowed for empirical insight into parkour’s relationship in the discursive formation of power and freedom. The experience, and the broader study, reveals insights about the practice of parkour and draws attention to how a traceur’s personal journey elicits emancipatory potential in and through ostensibly freer movement within architectural space.
From a puritan city to a cosmopolitan city: Cleveland Protestants in the changing social order, 1898-1940
puritan city, cosmopolitan city, Cleveland Protestants, social order, 1898-1940
This study examines Cleveland Protestants and the changing social order from 1898 to 1940. It argues the establishment of the Federated Churches of Cleveland was one of several Protestants' responses to the expanding pluralistic societal order. Its establishment was not the institutionalization of the Social Gospel movement but was a part of the general reorganization of social, benevolent, economic, religious, and political institutions into efficient and orderly units. This study examines the Protestants' response to the expanding pluralism by examining organizations and argues its organizations reflected Protestants' concerns and interests. Urbanization, industrialization and immigration challenged Protestants. They responded by using three types of organizations: 'denominational', 'voluntary society', 'church federations'. This study examined revivals and the Chamber of Commerce's contributions to the establishment of the Federated Churches. Revivals created the sense of urgency. The Chamber of Commerce provided the organizational model. This study has an Introduction and five chapters. Chapter One describes Cleveland Nineteenth Century religious and benevolent orders. Chapter Tw o describes Cleveland Protestants' failure in moral reform efforts, which contributed to the Protestants urging for a different method in urban, i.e., a federation of efforts. Chapter Three describes Cleveland Protestants' work with the Eastern and Southern European immigrants, which included helping to establish social settlement houses, establishing institutional churches, and making the extension society into a coordinating agency. Chapter Four describes four local conditions that led to the founding of the Federated Churches of Cleveland, which were: parallel federation efforts, revivals, search for better methods, and need for coordination in church extension. Chapter Five describes the Federated Churches of Cleveland's activities from 1911 to 1940, which included the reorganization of 1930s, women and African-Americans' participation in the Federated Churches of Cleveland.
Hard asphalt and heavy metals: Urban environmentalism in postwar America
civil rights, environmentalism, social movements, urban crisis
After World War Two, American cities began to break down. Their housing and industrial infrastructure fell into disrepair, and efforts to improve cities, including urban renewal and highway construction projects, only exacerbated the existing problems, destroying neighborhoods and increasing pollution. All of these problems exposed city residents to a unique set of environmental problems. By the 1960s many of them responded to this environmental breakdown with a series of dynamic local social movements. For almost a decade, residents of scores of cities, especially in the East and Midwest, forced local leaders to ameliorate the impact of a variety of local environmental problems. This dissertation provides case studies of three of these local movements. In St. Louis, the rapid decline of the city's housing stock exposed poor, predominantly African American city children to toxic levels of lead paint. A group of dedicated residents and social workers raised awareness about the issue, and pushed the city to enact and enforce a lead ordinance. In Baltimore, a coalition of African Americans and blue collar whites formed the Movement Against Destruction to fight the construction of the local highway system and articulate an environmental critique of the highway planning and construction process. In Chicago, the Citizen's Action Program (CAP) fought the local Democratic machine for five years over a variety of issues, including air pollution and highway construction. CAP's core constituency were ethnic, blue collar homeowners from the city's outlying neighborhoods who used pollution issues as an entry point into local political activism. Together, these studies are part of the hidden history of postwar environmental activism. Popular and academic research focuses on wilderness areas and national parks, and activism by a few national elites or middle class suburban groups. But by focusing on local issues and the malapportionment of environmental hazards and amenities, urban activism represents one of the major strains of the postwar environmental movement. It provided key connections to other social movements, particularly the African American Freedom Struggle, and was a precursor to the contemporary environmental justice movement.
The misuse value of space: Spatial practices and the production of space in Istanbul
misuse value of space, politics of space, urban space, Istanbul, spatial practices, Oda Projesi, Cool Istanbul, crude urbanization, spatial authorship
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the indeterminate political role played by the inhabitants’ spatial practices of misuse in the social production of urban space in contemporary Istanbul. My argument is that both established and emerging hegemonic representations of the city of Istanbul presume a normative definition of the capitalist production of urban space based only on the use and exchange values of space; and they fail to consider what I propose to call “the misuse value of space.” I define the misuse value of space as a potential value that is activated by the spatial practices of misusers. Considering the ways in which the normative definition of the production of space in Istanbul is complicated by the inhabitants of the city through their spatial practices of misuse, I find that the inhabitants are not merely passive consumers of the spaces of the metropolis but they have an active and constitutive role in molding the shape of urban social space. This entails a discussion on spatial authorship, which is normatively supposed to belong to the authorities including urban designers, real estate developers and the state. To show how the spatial practices of misusers are also implicated in the production of space in Istanbul, I turn to a set of vignettes, which I call ethnographies of spatial authorship. Finally, I focus on the art collective Oda Projesi and their public artworks which take inspiration from actual misuses in Istanbul. I explore the ways in which the public art of Oda Projesi rely on an activation of the misuse value of space. My dissertation closes with a demonstration of how Oda Projesi demonstrates the political possibilities that generate from this activation.
Town patriotism and the rise of Labour: Northampton 1981-1939
Northampton, politics, government, 20th century, social conditions, Labour Party, history, industrial management
The thesis seeks to determine the relationship between community feeling and political activity in one interwar town, Northampton. It is argued that localism continued to be an important dimension of social and political experience in this period for businessmen, employers and workers. The development of modern industrial relations and welfare policies in industry gave employers a renewed interest in their location of operations. Depression and decline in the private enterprise economy made municipal intervention important to both the lower middle class and the working class. At the same time central governments expanded the role of local authorities by giving them more mandatory responsibilities and greater funding. A public culture developed in Northampton which stressed service to the common interest and meritocratic leadership. In this context the Labour Party was able to gain some legitimate authority in the town community. Its leaders were accorded a grudging acceptance in the meritocracy. The ethos of public and political life was reflected in neighbourhood and workplace experience. Most Northamptonians defined their social identity in terms of citizenship rather than class. However, there were a number of social, economic and industrial factors which produced a crisis in the 1933 to 1935 period. That crisis increased Labour support and led to abstention by many non-Labour voters. A different approach to the study of society and politics in Britain from 1918 to 1939 is advocated on the basis of the Northampton evidence. It is noted that there already exists considerable material showing that there was a wide range of difference in local response to government social policy. It is also argued that the Labour Party's philosophy and electoral performance during these years may owe more to community influences than has previously been acknowledged.