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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hidden In Plain Sight: Tehran's Empowering Protean Spaces, Sara Khorshidifard
Hidden In Plain Sight: Tehran's Empowering Protean Spaces, Sara Khorshidifard
Sara Khorshidifard
As a recent citizen I noticed Tehran's urge for new kinds of public spaces. So, I initiated a dissertation that outlined a call for "protean space." Cities need protean spaces as a means to empower people, places that offer social interaction and support--spaces that are safe, accessible, and intriguing. Protean spaces empower people to create places for personal and interpersonal relationships, make social connections, gain information, and build trust across varied networks. My dissertation examined how planning and design practices can enhance the possibility of protean spaces and therefore increase their number. While my research concerns Tehran, all cities benefit …
Lawn Dissidents: Performing Whiteness Through Sustainability In Urban Residential Yards, Amy Lebowitz
Lawn Dissidents: Performing Whiteness Through Sustainability In Urban Residential Yards, Amy Lebowitz
Geography Honors Projects
“Lawn dissidents” are people who violate norms of turfgrass yards often found in suburbia. This thesis uses ethnographic methods to examine how these subjects’ sustainability-oriented lawn alternatives create meaning by manifesting values and performing identities. I argue that such lawn alternatives operate as positional goods that inscribe exclusion into landscapes. “Green” yardscapes yield social and environmental benefits to “dissidents” while burying the ways capitalism codes lawn alternatives, enacting a regime of whiteness no better for equity and inclusion than suburban lawns. Nonetheless, I turn hopefully to sharing economies as tools to expand sustainability initiatives beyond elite, eco-conscious whiteness.