Digital Commons Network^™

Facebook As A Way Oflife: Louis Wirth In Thesocial Network, Larissa Zip, Rebekah Parker, Elvin Wyly

The Geographical Bulletin

The rise of social networking practices has inspired widespread public debate and scholarly attention: a growing share of social relations began to take place online in the virtual worlds of social media sites at the same time that the ‘real’ world became majority-urban. What are the implications of these trends for how we understand the geography of urban society? In this paper, we re-engage one of the foundational contributions of twentieth-century Chicago School sociology, Louis Wirth’s article “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” (1938) to understand the socio-spatial implications of social media in an era of planetary urbanization. A growing …

Detroit Jazz Geographies: Marronage And Speculative Urban Futures, Denzel Amoah

Masters Theses

The Detroit Jazz Clubs of the 1920s-1960s existed as an emblem of marronage, or as an escape from a colonial world, becoming a spot of refuge and freedom for Blacks living in Detroit. There they were able to create a subculture that was antagonistic to hegemonic norms.

Currently, Detroit is on the precipice of a new development plan, titled ‘Detroit Future City” which aims to revitalize the city through the bolstering of industrialization and commerce. The history of Detroit has shown the dangers of what industrialization can do and alternative modes of development should be explored.

To honor the legacy …

Description Of Urbanism In Ibn Farkoun's Poetry, Afnan Zalloum, Salah Jarrar

Jordan Journal of Applied Science-Humanities Series

This study explores some aspects of what Ibn Farkoun documented in describing Andalusian architecture during the era of Bani al-Ahmar and the reign of King Yusuf III. The first section provides an introduction to Ibn Farkoun, focusing on his literary and poetic contributions. The second section discusses Andalusian architecture as depicted in his poetry, highlighting his descriptions of palaces, domes, niches, stadiums, and the shura councils held in the presence of Ibn Farkoun and King Yusuf III. The third section examines the technical characteristics of the poetry related to urban description. The study utilizes an inductive descriptive method by extrapolating …

Juxtapositions: Exploring A New High-Rise Topology, Jacob Powell

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The movement of people in urban areas creates a symphony of activity in public, private, commercial, leisure, work, and living spaces. However, high-rises often lack the public space found in more horizontal neighborhoods, with rows of nondescript doors leading to isolated floors. This thesis aims to challenge this narrative by bringing public space to high-rises, negotiating the boundary between public and private space, building internal and external connections, and uniting the city's horizontal movement with the high-rise's three-dimensional movement. By doing so, it seeks to create a sense of community within high-rises and enhance the urban experience for their residents.

Windows Of The World: Postmodern Urbanism In Los Angeles And Shenzhen, Calvin Horning

Senior Theses and Projects

This work draws upon the ideas of Edward Soja and other spatial theorists to compare the postmodern urban development of Los Angeles and Shenzhen, China. Both cities have undergone rapid growth and become major urban metropolises, offering potential paradigmatic forms for contemporary urban studies. The thesis is based on the ideas of the LA School of Urbanism, of which Soja was a part, and reviews the school’s collective case for Los Angeles as a paradigmatic city for the postmodern age. This work then compares this account of Los Angeles with Shenzhen, a city that has risen from nothing to one …

Waste In Relation To Populism: The Case Of Tunis, Aya Khadija Guen

Senior Theses

Throughout this body of work, I explore the challenges faced regarding proper waste management and its interconnectedness in political developments. Specifically, I examine this subject in the case of the greater metropolitan area of Tunis. Having lived in Tunisia each summer since I was born, I have seen the many stages of the country’s waste issue. I came to my research to discover the conditions that have led to illegal dumpsites and Tunisia’s growing waste management issue. The waste management sector regressed post-2011 revolution. With this, I have always assumed that the waste issue is intertwined with the country’s political …

Scattered Fragments: Art, Architecture, And Archives In Revolutionary Urban Cairo, Mounira M. Makar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how revolutions impact urban Cairo and its communities, specifically within artistic, architectural and archival practice while acknowledging the central role of public spaces in giving way to such revolutionary practices. Fundamentally, this paper highlights the foundational nature of such practices in developing urban communities.

Mobile Food Displacement And Formalization: A Case Study Of Portland’S Block 216, Marcello Ursic

Pomona Senior Theses

Portland has been on the cutting edge of American mobile food for over fifteen years, becoming a critical darling in the popular and academic press for its role in trailblazing progressive mobile food policy buttressed by broad-based civic engagement. In recent years, Portland’s mobile food landscape has begun shifting as downtown development has picked up post-recession, displacing some of the oldest and most prominent city center food cart pods with others likely to follow. Meanwhile, a new breed of formalized, purpose-built food cart pods has gained ascendancy. Called “food courtyards,” their armored, insulated, and bourgeois character is distinct from traditional …

تقييم تأثير وسائل الاعلام والدعاية على إدراک المستخدمين للعمارة والعمران "دراسة حالة مشروعات الاسکان في مصر" Evaluating The Impact Of Media And Advertising On Users' Perception Of Architecture And Urbanism "A Case Study Of Housing Projects In Egypt", محمود أمین على سليمان, ولاء احمد حنفی زقدان

Journal of Engineering Research

يعتبر الإعلام فرعًا من فروع الثقافة والفنون والعلوم داخل المجتمعات البشرية بشكل عام. وهذا يشمل فنون وعلوم العمارة والمستوطنة ، والتي تعنى بإقامة وبناء مساكن ومنازل أفراد هذه المجتمعات. وهكذا ، فإن جميع أنواع وسائل الإعلام المختلفة والمواد المذاعة ذات الصلة والرسائل المنقولة ، لها تأثير كبير على تشكيل ثقافة وعقلية ومعتقدات هذه المجتمعات البشرية ، فيبالإضافة إلى تأثيرها المؤثر على توجه سلوكهم. ومع ذلك ، فإن وسائل الإعلام لا تتناول علم وفن العمارة و ekistics - حيث همتمثل واحدة من أهم القضايا الثقافية والمعرفية - بدرجة كافية ، إذا ما قورنت بالعديد من الموضوعات الثقافية الأخرى. بعد ذلك ، …

Assessing The Impacts Of Increasing The Availability Of Non-Automobile Modes Of Transportation On Carbon Emissions And Accessibility In Worcester, William Schechter

Sustainability and Social Justice

Over-reliance on cars in Worcester, Massachusetts represents a significant barrier to the introduction of accessible and ecologically sound modes of transportation. Through increases in frequency, accessibility, and service area, bus transportation in Worcester can offer a viable alternative to personal vehicle usage. In conjunction with the changes to buses, improvements to infrastructure for non-motorist transportation modes such as cycling, walking and assistive equipment will further reduce reliance on personal motor vehicles. Additional policies discouraging the use of motor vehicles is also suggested, with limited traffic zones and vehicle weight restrictions being implemented. With the developments and policy outlined within this …

Toronto Rewilded, Forrest Meyer

Masters Theses

Global urbanism has left almost no room for native ecology, this has an adverse effect on biodiversity, so adverse that biodiversity has been lost at an alarming rate globally, accounting for between 50-70% of species eradication. Having witnessed firsthand on the land I grew up on, the immense positives of native plantings on the creation of biodiversity, I am eager to implement native plantings in an architectural thesis. Not only is this important to flora and fauna, and the environment, but also for the biophilic connection humans crave with their environs. The reintroduction and preservation of native plantings, species, and …

Springdale Arkansas' Form-Based Code: Analyzing Urban Dispositions, Nate Cole

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Springdale, Arkansas, has witnessed population growth, public and private development, and interest from stakeholders throughout the Northwest Arkansas region in the past six years. The impetus for this case study is the rapid urbanization of Springdale, catalyzed by the adoption of a downtown Form-Based Code in 2017. The study analyzes four projects representing a range of typologies and uses, selected from many new and upcoming projects in the FBC area. Utilizing multiple techniques to present each project's spatial and social characteristics, the study presents these nuances and provokes further discussions. A literature review covering complexity and complex adaptive systems supports …

Governing Smart Cities As Knowledge Commons - Introduction, Chapter 1 & Conclusion, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Madelyn Sanfilippo

Book Chapters

Smart city technology has its value and its place; it isn’t automatically or universally harmful. Urban challenges and opportunities addressed via smart technology demand systematic study, examining general patterns and local variations as smart city practices unfold around the world. Smart cities are complex blends of community governance institutions, social dilemmas that cities face, and dynamic relationships among information and data, technology, and human lives. Some of those blends are more typical and common. Some are more nuanced in specific contexts. This volume uses the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to sort out relevant and important distinctions. The framework grounds …

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

The Black Fourth Amendment, Charisma Hunter

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Policing Black bodies serves at the forefront of the American policing system. Black bodies are subject to everlasting surveillance through institutions and everyday occurrences. From relaxing in a Starbucks to exercising, Black bodies are deemed criminals, surveilled, profiled, and subjected to perpetual implicit bias when participating in mundane activities. Black people should have the same protections as white people and should possess the ability to engage in everyday, commonplace, and routine activities.

The Fourth Amendment was not drafted with the intention of protecting Black bodies. In fact, Black bodies were considered three-fifths of a person at the drafting of the …

The Beehive, The Favela, The Castle, And The Ministry: Race And Modern Architecture In Rio De Janeiro, 1811–1945, Luisa Valle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation deploys a multidisciplinary and decolonial framework to investigate the architecture of cortiços, the Favela Hill, the Castelo Hill, and the Ministry of Education and Public Health (MES) building as constitutive of the history of modernization and modernity in the Centro (city center) of Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1945. The first three chapters investigate the distinct geographies, formal and material qualities, and populations of cortiços, the Favela Hill, and the Castelo Hill, as well as their racialization and essentialization by the “unsanitary” and “degenerate” labels bestowed upon these landscapes by the state. Traditional narratives and practices of modern architecture and …

Borderline Re-Order: Negotiating The Edge Between City And Greenspace, Jeremy Taylor Morgan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Does development of urban areas naturally lies at odds with maintaining any memory of their historic character, e.g. historic artifacts, structures, land? If so, such a perspective may have warrant. The Atlanta area serves as an easy example: the Loew’s Grand was conveniently burned down by arsonists after it received historic status and protection; the Fox Theatre was almost redeveloped into a parking deck, and; the placard for the site of Leo Frank’s lynching was moved across the street to make room for an entrance ramp to a toll freeway.

But this single perspective, or prejudice rather, despite warrant, is …

Constructing Colma, Ethan Treiman

Library Map Prize

The American Cemetery Movement tells the story of American cemeteries in roughly four chapters, demarcated by the emergence of new cemetery forms: the rural cemetery, the memorial park, and so on. This paper identifies the salient features associated with each epoch of cemetery development and locates them within the city-cemetery of Colma, California — America’s only official necropolis — to demonstrate how Colma extends America’s cemetery tradition in familiar ways. In Colma, the trends of cemetery growth and ‘flattening’ reached their natural conclusions, throwing the uncertain future of earthen burial in America into the spotlight. This paper analyzes the societal, …

The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

This case study brings new attention to a critical but under-appreciated dimension of so-called “smart” cities: how smart city governance builds and relies on institutionalized sharing of data, information, and other forms of knowledge across all sectors of public administration. Those smart city practices are referred to here as knowledge commons and systematized using the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) research framework. That framework extends and modifies Ostrom’s research tradition as to community-based resource governance. As with other GKC-focused research, this work relies on a qualitative case study. It draws a detailed, context-specific portrait of a smart city as knowledge commons …

Protecting The University As A Physical Place In The Age Of Postdigitization, Ryan M. Allen, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Covid-19 forced higher education sectors across the world to digitize the entire university experience online. There are now calls for universities to continue chasing continued and further digitization, often from for-profit businesses and those in Silicon Valley who have been promising to disrupt the sector for decades. We argue that the pandemic has illustrated how crucial universities are to their local communities, and efforts should be made to emphasize their physical place and space. The destruction of American cities in favor of auto-centric suburbs provides a parallel for the possible future of higher education. The Cult of Efficiency mindset and …

Connection And Difference Between Urban Planning, Urban Design, And Urbanism, Blend Dema

UBT International Conference

Since the existence of humankind, planning was among the main issues to deal with; this is because planning helps organize activities and predict the future. So in this way, urban planning, urban design, and urbanism are traditionally seen as an expert discipline with little room for ‘soft’ values and concerns based on feelings rather than fact. At the same time the final product of the planning process, the built environment, is a habitat for a wide variety of people with equally diverse wants and needs. The question is, how does planning incorporate the needs, wants and visions of existing and …

Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Scaling Experiments In Urban Space – An Exploratory Framework, Eva Knutz, Kathrina Dankl

Nordes Conference Series

In this article, we outline an exploratory framework that attempts to capture different types of scaling practices in urban space. "Scaling" in this context is understood as a concept that involves a temporary intervention in public space that negotiates agency among human and nonhuman actors. The aim of this framework is to assist curators and researchers in conceptualizing site-specific interventions or exhibitions in urban contexts.

Examining The Ecological And Social Implications Of Parklets And Plazas Across Multiple Urban Scales, Joshua L. Muller

Master's Theses

Faced with population increases but stagnant capital improvements and impacts from global warming, cities around the world are experimenting with smaller-scale and cheaper strategies in order to accommodate the new influx of residents. New York City has led the way in converting low-efficiency intersection space into public plazas with a limited range of permanently installed elements and San Francisco has pioneered the concept of the parklet, which converts two to four street parking spaces into a modular and flexible pedestrian space. I seek to answer two questions about these spaces: What are common factors influencing the viability and successful implementation …

Access To Air: Generating Open Space In The Built Environment, Phillip Smith

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis project explores the balance between capturing the benefits of dense, urban design and the desire for residents to experience open space where healthy, active lifestyles are possible. The condition of humanity today struggles with both ecological degradation and social injustices reinforced by systemic segregation. By exploring density in a way that nurtures human dignity, our development patterns can allow us to grow in a more sustainable and equitable way.

Advisor: Mark Hoistad

Glitter Urbanism - Lgbtq Narratives In Architecture, William Dendinger

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores the concept of queer space in architecture to understand its relationship between queer social narratives and their impact on spatial conditions. LGBTQ culture is a complex mix of avant-garde character aesthetics contrasted with hidden, invisible identity traits. By exploring queer figures and spaces through the lens of "camp," we can begin to see sexuality and gender’s impacts on objects and space. I argue that queer space is critical in shaping LGBTQ individuals’ narratives by bringing their struggles, celebrations, and what it is to be queer to the forefront of the urban landscape.

This is approached is by …

Hip Hop Urbanist Reconstructions: Strategies & Tactics For Spatial Reparations, Isaac Howland

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Assimilation, Association, And Modernism In The Urbanism Of The French Third Republic, Thomas Bleeker

Honors Theses

The regime of settler-colonialism present in Algeria during the French Third Republic (1870-1940) facilitated a certain mythos of Republican French renewal. Given the value French culture places on aesthetics, the colonial architecture and urban forms in French colonies was treated quite seriously. the intense political conflict and directed acculturation which characterised European imperialism, the colonial city brings many of the interactions between culture and politics into sharp relief. This thesis adds to the previous literature concerning colonial urbanism by examining the colonial ideologies embedded within Le Corbusier's master plans for Algiers. His work remains influential and controversial within architecture and …

Urban Resilience: Urban Design Strategies For Addressing Climate Change In Waterfront Cities, Kathryn Stapleton

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Many of the world’s historic and notable cities grew on waterfronts taking advantage of transportation, protection, and resources. While water is essential, it can also bring great destruction where flooding and erosion leave universal damage. In light of climate change predictions, by 2050, 90% of the major waterfront cities in the world will face the challenge of rising sea levels. Waterfront cities must quickly adapt and answer to this influx of water before its effects become irreversible. Urban design should address how to enhance the resilience of coastal cities to flooding through the reintegration of nature and water into the …

Going Green: A Comparative Analysis Of Green Urbanism In Paris And Shanghai, Jeanne Torp

Honors Theses

As climate change becomes more pressing with each day and as we scramble to slow down the challenges it poses, adapting the means of operation within our cities will become an invaluable tool for reducing humanity’s carbon footprint. This paper seeks to study the ways in which green infrastructure in global cities can be used to do just that—adapting to and mitigating the effects of challenges resulting from climate change. In order to provide a broad overview of the effectiveness of such green infrastructure systems across the globe, this research will focus on two cities that vary greatly in their …