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The extensive literature on public open space illustrates that it is of great importance to the quality of life. This is particularly true in Syria where public open spaces play a critical role in the urban structure of cities and in the inhabitant’s daily existence. There is published evidence that improving the quality of public open spaces requires a comprehensive analysis of these spaces in order to be able to evaluate their quality. This thesis is concerned with investigating and evaluating public open spaces in Hama, Syria both in terms of the quality of the spaces themselves and the process of creating and managing these spaces in order to offer suggestions for improving the quality of life in Hama through improving the quality of its spaces. The research strategy, the social spatial approach, involves understanding the investigative context as: (a) a social phenomenon, by exploring the residents’ perceptions, professionals’ perceptions and users’ behaviour, (b) a spatial phenomenon, by exploring the physical and spatial structure of Hama. The research adopts a case study method choosing three parks as examples for their distinctive features, and a range of different qualitative and quantitative techniques are applied systematically to these parks and their wider context. These techniques comprised: a questionnaire survey with residents in Hama; observation and behavioural mapping in the parks; semi-structured interviews with professionals involved in the design and management process; land use and urban form surveys; space syntax applied at micro and macro scale; and a desk-top study of documents. The findings of the evaluation illustrate that the qualities of the three selected parks could be enhanced. In addition, they show the there is scope for a participatory process of design and management to ensure that the final delivery of new parks and the development of existing ones meet the users’ expectations. The research draws a number of conclusions, which are developed into a set of general recommendations. Two of the key suggestions are (a) the provision of good quality public facilities which meet residents’ needs in the parks (b) the provision of training programmes by Hama City Council for those involved in the development and delivery process of public open spaces. Both are vital if the quality of the public open spaces is to be improved.

This ethnography draws upon fieldwork experiences in South Manchester, England. The central theme is an exploration of the everyday relatedness of mothering practices, class, space and belonging. I examine mothering as practiced in both the politics of state intervention and through the mundane experiences of women living in a specific social space: the Wythenshawe Council Estate.This research explores how support programs for raising children and a specific home-visiting volunteer project to support mothers promote the production and reproduction of a particular kind of moral citizen (individualised, autonomous, and disciplined selves). I argue that volunteering schemes come to play a key role as government technology. Women volunteers who live in the community in which they volunteer (indigenous experts) come to act as a model for other local women, who are usually defined by the authorities (professional experts), as lacking the right kind of knowledge The volunteers are thus challenged to enhance and empower their neighbors and friends. However, this transmission does not occur in a linear fashion, but in quite subversive ways. While local women are actively involved in the use and appropriation of the resources provided by these programs, at the same time, they resist and transform them according to their own needs and desires.I also argue that mothering functions as metaphor and metonym for the imagined nation-state. The experience of living on the Estate is not just a physical act, but a permanent negotiation of who you are as a person in the defined social space of the Estate. I learned what it means to belong to Wythenshawe through its spatiality, but I also learnt a particular mode of belonging through my own racial and class background. My experiences of being a Latin-American ethnographer living on the Estate, whose population is mostly white and living on low income, significantly shaped my fieldwork experiences

This dissertation argues that early medieval palaces were not passive expressions of royal power, but agents in the constitution of new forms of political authority in post-Roman Europe. Focusing on palaces in the territory of the Roman Empire’s western provinces between the fourth and ninth centuries CE, this study adopts an interdisciplinary methodology to reinterpret how palaces were conceptualised by contemporaries, their role in early medieval societies, and how these characteristics changed over time. Drawing on the approaches of architectural history, archaeology, and social theory, I reinterpret palaces as simultaneously architecture designed to assert the ruler’s power and social spaces where the foundations and limits of political authority were negotiated. My investigation is divided into two co-ordinating parts with complementary analytical perspectives. In Part I, ‘Architecture and Space’, I show that a coherent ‘grammar’ of Late Roman palaces precipitously broke down following the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire. In its wake coalesced a new spatial configuration which responded to a changed lexicon of material display and to new ideals of legitimate authority. The architecture of the palace was not just a stage for ‘royal ideology’, however, but a medium of symbolic communication between the ruler and the elite that was given expression in ritual. In Part II, ‘Infrastructure and Landscape’, I draw on archaeological theories of landscape to examine the broader political structures in which palaces were embedded. In two case studies, I explore how royal authority was ‘spatialised’ through networks of palaces in the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and in the Frankish kingdoms of Gaul and Germany. By charting the fluctuations of these geographies over time, I demonstrate the instrumental role played by palaces in the reordering of political space in the post-Roman West.

In the nineteenth century, amidst the rise of anti-Catholicism in the Western world, narratives served as a persuasive medium to influence the reading public. Anti-clerical sentiment was conveyed in various forms of text, often depicting the Catholic convent as a place of sinister confinement. This thesis offers an alternative representation of the French nineteenth-century convent. Considering the prevailing social, economic, and political environment in France, along with the conception of social space, I argue that the convent represents a place of sanctuary and opportunity for some women and girls. Further, in view of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, I examine the representation of the convent as a place for rebirth. Likewise, in analyzing George Sand's autobiography Histoire de ma vie, I explore the representation of the convent as a haven for reviving creativity. Thus, by close reading and critical examination of these literary representations, I contend that the nineteenth-century convent can provide a place of refuge.

This thesis explores the relationship between architecture and social interaction. In today’s society, the need for the built environment to encourage social interaction is more pertinent than ever. Social interactions are increasingly taking place through social media. Unfortunately, these interactions are less honest and meaningful than those that occur in person. Although technology has allowed social interactions to reach further, it has also decreased the quality and quantity of face-to-face social interactions. People have developed the tendency to retreat while in public, to rely on personal technology for entertainment, therefore denying the possibility of face-to-face social encounters. Space has the ability to either encourage or inhibit social interaction. Thus, architects have the responsibility to create social space. The relationship between architecture and social interaction is a topic that has been studied for years. This thesis introduces five influential thinkers and their opinions on the topic and demonstrates the importance of social space.In order to more effectively analyze the relationship between architecture and social interaction, this thesis focuses specifically on the mover: one who is in the process of moving to a new city. Unfamiliar with the geography, culture, and inhabitants of the city, the mover has a strong need for social interaction. After careful analysis of existing theories, typologies, precedents, and neighborhoods, this thesis defines design guidelines for creating social space. These guidelines are then implemented in the design of a transitional housing facility in Chicago, Illinois that addresses the needs of the mover and provides for the local community. The set of design strategies defined in this thesis are exemplified in the design of a transitional housing facility, but can be implemented in any architectural typology.

El Barrio Lindo: Chicana/o and Latinx Social Space in Postindustrial Los Angeles explores how youths and young adults cognitively map and physically traverse space in the postindustrial city. In the neoliberal era, when dominant social groups promote a world that revolves around materialistic gain and hyper-individualism, I reveal how artist activists author and authorize multiple and diverse visions of social membership. El Barrio Lindo focuses on how Chicanas/os and Latinxs re-appropriate social space through painting, music performances, poetry readings, marches and other forms of collective activity, carried out in the backyards of houses, in alleyways, in freeway culverts, in the areas that surround taco trucks, in common areas in public housing projects, and along busy boulevards across the city. I document and analyze repertoires of expressive culture that include “alternative archives” about race, gender, class, and power. These archives provide a critical reading of methods used by Chicana/o and Latinx communities for waging material and symbolic struggles for visibility and mobility. My sources include oral history interviews, community newspaper stories, archival documents, poems, song recordings, visual art, and observant participation.

The hutongs of Beijing have existed for centuries. A hutong is the street, lane, or alleyway located in Beijing’s old city center, comprising the circulation space between the grid-based courtyard houses known as Siheyuan. A hutong street or lane separates two parallel rows of Siheyuan. A hutong alleyway is the space between two individual Siheyuan. The hutongs are more than just circulation pathways for the residents and visitors of these old neighborhoods; they also act as the social binding element which allows for the residents to become neighbors.

For most parents, the goal for their child is to finish high school and attend a fabulous university and for students, this is begins a new chapter in their life. However, as some students go off to ivy-league schools and other stay home to attend local in-state colleges, more often than not, the fate of the student and their relationship to their respective college has been decided. Students that participate in an active, energetic student life will often times, have a ‘more enjoyable’ college experience, resulting in school spirit, pride and respect; not to mention future alumni donations. Alternatively, students who don’t have that ‘enjoyable experience’ readily available will withdraw to focusing on a single goal; to get out of school as soon as possible. Particularly looking at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UH Manoa), there are many university-guided offices and student-run organizations that facilitate and promote student life and recreation, but because a majority of students at UH Manoa are resident commuter students, most commute to school just for class, then leave. This mentality consumes most commuter students because they are able to freely come and go as pleased and this problem has eluded the University because the student lifestyle and recreational facilities don’t provide any benefits to commuter students. After reviewing existing literature, I have gathered “that what students gain from their college experience depends a lot on how time and effort students put into their studies and other purposeful activities.”1 A prediction geared towards commuters students theorize that they are distracted by competing demands on their schedules. This project aims to focus at providing design solutions to further enhance social spaces around the university campus, through both technical integration of data and theory and also user participation. Social spaces throughout the campus help facilitate student progress and outreach.

The presence of spatial theory in the domain of academic disciplines can be easily overlooked, perhaps discrediting the relevance of interdisciplinary studies. A case in point can be made about fiction writing, an art form which clearly demonstrates the process of generating imaginative spaces and buildings in order to evoke the social conditions experienced by human beings. This thesis looks at writer Georges Perec and theorist Henri Lefebvre, and highlights an obvious similarity in their ideas of space, albeit one in theoretical writing and the other fictional. A cross-interpretation of Perec's fiction with reference to Lefebvre's theory can help us identify how social spaces in fiction, specifically, are created as a story is written. This can be demonstrated by juxtaposing the settings, characterizations, and narrative voices of Perec's novels Things: A Story of the Sixties and Life A User's Manual. If this link between the theory of social space and the craft of fiction can be exemplified, the potential for using fiction as a means to critique humans in their built environment may become more effective. Theoretical underpinnings, by example of this study, can be creatively rendered. More generally, this project intends to demonstrate that spatial theory can and does appear across disciplinary boundaries.

Social spaces, those designed to bring multiple people together, are some of the most frequently encountered environments. However, they routinely fail to encourage social interaction, arguably the reason for which they have been designed.Part of the problem is the designing of social spaces according to preconceived notions of how those spaces are supposed to appear or function. By understanding them through notions of movement, pause, and encounter, these places can better serve the variety of needs of their inhabitants.Using an urban brewpub as an example, a design will be developed via a logic that employs these themes at multiple scales in a way that can directly impact its visitors. Lessons from this investigation can be applied to other buildings and spaces that benefit from the interaction of people with each other and their environment.

In its serial space, David Simon’s The Wire season two relates the seemingly “disconnected” union men, foreign sex worker women, and African-American drug traders and crosses constructed boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, and geography to evoke the possibility of a transnational working class. The Wire’s serialized narrative trespasses the limitations of money and numbers games and of individual characters to build, scene by scene, what Roderick Ferguson calls in Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique “the location for new and emergent identifications and social relations” (108).

This study investigates Discourses of language use (Gee, 2005) in a community of artists and artistic promoters associated with the Centre culturel Aberdeen in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Members of this network are described as Acadian social actors, those who have cultural and linguistic capital, thus the potential capacity to influence Discourses of language use circulating in Acadian society, through language use accompanying their art and artistic promotion (Bourdieu, 2001; Heller, 2003; Heller & Labrie, 2004). This study specifically explores this group’s discursive constructions of their roles within social spaces (Lefebvre, 1991) in which they participate as artists, beginning with the Centre Aberdeen itself, expanding to Greater Moncton, Acadie, Canada, and finally, to the international space of la francophonie. Their discourse shows these roles to be highly dependent on the linguistic marketplace associated with each space. The findings indicate that in the space of the Centre culturel Aberdeen, formerly conceived of as a minority language space, French remains the dominant language of practice; however, many participants affirm that the use of other languages in the Centre is not censured. Some participants even refer to Aberdeen as a bilingual space. In the social space of Greater Moncton, the discourse of bilingual participants demonstrates their inner conflict between using French in their art to affirm their Acadian identity and using English in order to have a greater audience. In Acadie, the participants’ discourse focuses principally on how to represent regional varieties of French in writing, including Chiac, the variety of French local to Southeastern New Brunswick. In the space of Acadie and beyond, participants speak to the need for a normative register of French in extra-regional communications. In the national Francophone social space, participants express their frustration at lack of exposure and the essentialization of their identity in Canada’s Francophone media. In speaking of la francophonie, participants again insist on the necessity of a standard form of French for global communication, while affirming that they also assert their cultural distinctiveness in their art with regional expressions. These findings are in line with elements of Heller and Labrie’s (2004) post-nationalist discours mondialisant.

This activist ethnographic study analyzes the language and literacy practices within an after-school program designed to promote meaningful interactions between immigrant middle school students and their urban, low-income peers. These collaborations occurred when students engaged in pedagogical activities intended to heighten their awareness of themselves, their language and learning potential, and their capacity to resist situations and labels that limit their opportunities for social and academic success. Using a theoretical framework that supplements Cultural Historical Activity Theory with theories of social space and social practice, the study focuses on the agency displayed by and the interpersonal connections that developed between the young people as they worked to co-construct social maps of their school and to author and act in a multilingual video against gossip.

The purpose of this study is to explore meaningful places and clarify their importance in urban life in the 21st century. This research argues that the quality of urban life is based on the experience of urban open spaces. Such experience is what creates meanings and has not been given the necessary level of attention by many professionals in urban design. The outcome, therefore, may not always provide the user needs, which is the key factor for successful public places in the last couple of decades. This paper argues that the ambitions of designers should meet with the expectations of users to create meaningful public spaces. My interest in this study requires a phenomenological inquiry of necessary clarifications of terms. The research question, ‘Meaning for whom?’, needs to be answered by using empirical research method to identify what is conceived by outsiders as well as what is perceived by insiders. When we talk about 21st century complex and vibrant metropolitan cities, one of the most famous and attractive cities in U.S. is Chicago where took the attentions to its lakefront and skyline with the city’s one of the latest works; Millennium Park. The plan and process had already given an idea about how conspicuous the park would be. Since my concentration is on contemporary public places, Millennium Park is a place to study at the intersection of urban design and culture.

Women’s only gyms have grown exponentially in popularity in the United States and worldwide. For example, Curves International has 9,000 locations across the globe and 4 million members (Curves International, 2006), while Contours Express has 327 locations in the United States and over 450 locations worldwide (Contours Express, 2006). Despite the popularity of women’s-only gyms, the meaning of these spaces remains unclear. The present study examined the experiences and perceptions of being a member of a women’s-only gym and the role of space in creating these experiences. Grounded in feminist geography and feminist cultural studies, I conducted an ethnography of a women’s-only gym, The Gym, located in Northwestern Ohio. Participants included those women who attended the facility on a regular basis. I engaged in participant observation at The Gym during which I conducted informal interviews with the women. Unstructured interviews were also conducted with eight women, five of whom were working at the facility, and three of whom were attending the facility. Using qualitative data analysis techniques, three higher order themes emerged. These included: “gym culture,” “macro culture,” and “combined influence.” The higher order theme “gym culture” refers to the culture within The Gym while the higher order theme “Macro Culture” refers to the broader culture of our society. Both of these cultures influenced the women’s experiences at The Gym and often collided to create a “combined influence” on the women’s experiences. Results illustrated that the social space of the gym (Lefebvre, 1974/1991) was made up of contradictions between the macro culture and gym culture. While the gym culture was empowering to the women, the influence of hegemonic masculinity and hegemonically-defined femininity were present. Nonetheless, the gym culture did buffer the potentially harmful effects of the macro culture of our society.

A city comprises of its varied spaces and its people that inhabit these spaces and ascribe meaning to them. While there are those urban spaces that are formally defined and used in a specified order, there are also those urban spaces that are formed as a result of spatial practices, through self-organization of individuals and groups of people and their practices of daily life. There are innumerable such places that people transform to fit their own social, cultural, recreational, economic or political needs. I call these spaces, that spontaneously ‘occur’ as a result of people’s mediation, as “informal spaces” since they do not follow the norms of formally defined spaces. As people reshape and reinterpret urban space, they ascribe it a different meaning, consequently “reinventing” urban space. The study aims to first acknowledge the phenomenon of informal spaces in cities and to identify them, to understand how urban space is used by people in different ways, for what purposes and for what reasons, by way of occupancy and appropriation. The thesis constructs a theoretical base for study of informal spaces to later derive a connection between this theoretical understanding and the practical process of planning. The explorations in informal spaces are carried out through different examples in the city of Istanbul, but for the purpose of this study six examples are chosen as case studies – highway parks, Galata Bridge, space under vehicular flyover bridges, underpasses, Taksim Square and Istiklal Street. The case study mainly comprises of qualitative data collected through, personal observations along with photographic and video documentation of events, literature study and interviews with professional planners, faculty of School of Architecture and Planning at Istanbul Technical University and students. Analysis of the six case studies brings forth the socio-cultural and socio-economic implications of informal spaces in Istanbul and establishes the value of these spaces in the life of people. Finally, I develop taxonomy of informal spaces that can be conceptually applied to other cities showing similar urban conditions.

This dissertation focuses on the experiences of Arab immigrants in Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan. It integrates both quantitative data (from the Detroit Arab American Study) and qualitative data (in-depth interviews with 46 Arab immigrant owners of small businesses), and explores questions related to the meanings of social space, Whiteness and health. Acknowledging the importance of works which describe and critique the processes through which Arab and Muslim Americans are increasingly being racialized in the United States, I argue in this dissertation that Arab immigrants themselves actively participate in the construction of the meanings of Whiteness. They do so through the synthesis of disparate ideological frameworks about race and through interacting with racialized social spaces which immigrants come to occupy and later participate in forming. Finally, I argue that an exploration of the health of Arab immigrants necessitates a flexible approach to the nuanced ways in which alterity and othering may manifest through constructs such as culture, and language, in addition to race as it is constructed and understood in the United States.

In the 1980s, approximately eighteen thousand Salvadorans took refuge in Costa Rica; when the war ended, about six thousand remained there rather than repatriate. This dissertation, based on eighteen months of participant observation research with Salvadorans in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, examines the role of national identity in their experiences of displacement and reemplacement. Salvadorans sometimes described themselves as having two patrias (nations) although this contradicted dominant understandings of national belonging and was impossible in a legal sense. This is explained through the way in which Salvadorans settled and the forms of national identity they referenced. Costa Rican nationalist ideology was used to encourage the integration of refugees into the society. Salvadorans settled freely, dispersed among Costa Ricans, while the war made communication with El Salvador difficult. Therefore they developed social networks which were stronger in Costa Rica than El Salvador. In different ways both countries were home. This alone does not explain how it was possible for them to feel they had two patrias . There are several possible bases to national identity: common origin, culture, and citizenship. All three were present in Salvadoran understandings of national identity, however, culture was most important. The fact that people could change and even mix cultures permitted Salvadorans to feel they were part Salvadoran and part Costa Rican and had two patrias. Despite feelings of belonging, Salvadorans were ambivalent about their place in Costa Rica. The same ideology which encouraged assimilation also led Costa Ricans to blame Central Americans for problems in the country. Salvadorans consequently remained uncertain about the degree to which they were accepted by Costa Rica and felt only partially integrated into the society. This dissertation demonstrates the need to consider ideological aspects of the nation as these affect the reception and settlement of refugees. It also shows the complex role that nationalism plays as different people interpret it towards varied political ends and the varied philosophical bases of national identity create diverse possibilities for belonging.

"The following study is an attempt to compare the relative amount of personal space to demographic variables of sex and socio-economic status."--9.