Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Traditional Neighborhoods'

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2009.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-206).
This thesis through study and analyses endeavored to demonstrate how various interactions in the urban fabric of old neighborhoods of Kolkata made them more humane, inclusive and ecologically less harmful. It highlighted how these interactions of urban elements and activities of old neighborhoods have the potential to benefit new urban developments. And it calls for modem designers to study and realize the great potential of this new design paradigm which is based on increasing interactions in the urban fabric. Three different neighborhoods from Kolkata were selected, which provided a comprehensive sample of traditional urban fabric of the city. It was found that in many cases the observed conditions were in contradiction to the principles of the modem urban design. And in some cases certain aspects were observed that are completely ignored or overlooked by modem designers. After subsequent analyses it was inferred that there is one fundamental difference between old and new cites. The modem approach is to segregate different elements and activities, while in old cities these interacted with each other and created the livable conditions. The study focused on various interactions of the urban elements in the neighborhoods and grouped them into four categories: 1. Nature and urban elements 2. Built and unbuilt spaces 3. Transportation modes 4. Residential and commercial activities It was observed that these interactions encouraged and facilitated the following positive qualities in the neighborhoods.
(cont.) 1. promote accessibility for all 2. encourage pedestrian movement 3. reduce private motor vehicles 4. reduce fuel consumption 5. reduce pollution 6. increase social interaction 7. create more pleasing environment 8. create employments 9. sustain local economy 10. maintain ecological balance 11. create equity and inclusiveness The thesis concludes by demonstrating the potentials of the interactive urban fabric of the old neighborhoods. And calls for a process of applying creative design solutions that embody these positive aspects in developing new cities.
by Debmalya Guha.
M.C.P.

There is a low supply of the missing middle housing types (MMH) in walkable urban core neighborhoods. That is, a variety of compact low- to mid-rise housing in walkable areas that are accessible to entertainment, recreational and other amenities. The largest demographic, the millennials, followed by the baby boomers, prefer the MMH types. The MMH types is a new name for a variety of compact housing types that existed in traditional neighborhoods in urban areas pre-World War II. However, due to changes in housing preferences after World War II, the requisite land use and zoning changes facilitated larger single-family homes phasing out the MMH types. Efforts to reintroduce the MMH types is these areas are met with opposition. This research investigates increasing the supply of the MMH types in walkable urban core neighborhoods. The literature review reveals, prior to this one, no academic study at this level was done to understand how to increase the supply of MMH types in these areas. This research explores the views of stakeholders in urban planning and various professions related to housing and the MMH types in the Tampa Bay Area, to better understand the issues involved in the low supply of the MMH types in urban core areas. The data for this qualitative research was guided by a grounded theory methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 2014) and was derived from thirty-nine semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to find out what factors inhibit and ways to improve the supply of the MMH types in the Tampa Bay area.

This thesis presents the phenomenon of communal habitation--from a traditional scene to a contemporary vista--in terms of a historical progression. It exhibits a hypothesis that attempts to justify the reason behind the deterioration of identity, livability and of neighborliness in contemporary neighborhoods. Although this thesis, in accordance with some contemporary community planning theories, pronounces the relevancy and importance of physical as well as social planning, it articulates, in line with annals of contemporary urban history, their incompetency to constitute the virtues of a good living place. In other words, urbanization, according to this thesis, is neither a mere physical pattern exhibited by fellow architects and planners, nor a sole social model manifested by some social reformers. Rather, it is a communal art the beauty of which is adorned by dwellers' goodwill and their spirit--a spirit that consequentially achieves a pleasing physical milieu, and attains a pleasant social environment.

The proponents of New Urbanism claim the neighborhoods they design, called Traditional Neighborhood Developments (TNDs), promote community, sense of place, physical health, and environmental sustainability. Critics assert that community is stressed at the expense of individuality, that design unity has become rigid uniformity, and that the neighborhoods are orchestrated and do not reflect real life. This thesis, a post occupancy evaluation (POE), examines how one TND works for its residents and whether it accomplishes the goals of the architect/planner. An additional, essential purpose of this POE is to serve the "feed-forward" role of informing future neighborhood planning projects. The Village of River Ranch in Lafayette, Louisiana is the site of my research. Utilization of multiple research methods (survey, interviews, naturalistic observations) offered opportunities for triangulation and the ability to produce a more comprehensive analysis.

Este artículo estudia el efecto del envejecimiento de los vecinos sobre las organizaciones locales en San Felipe, un barrio de clase media en Lima, Perú. Ilustro el efecto de este fenómeno usando el caso del control del espacio público en el barrio. Para esta investigación realicé observación participante durante un año. Durante ese año observé la dinámica de las asambleas locales, entrevisté a 46 vecinos de distintas características y observé una gran cantidad de situaciones y controversias entre vecinos en los espacios públicos de San Felipe. Encuentro que los adultos-mayores son los que imponen su punto de vista respecto al destino del barrio. Dicho resultado es sorprendente pues los adultos-mayores no son ni el grupo demográficamente más importante, ni el de mayores recursos. Sostengo que ello ocurre porque los adultos-mayores transforman el tiempo (un recurso escaso para los adultos-jóvenes, pero ampliamente disponible para los adultos-mayores) en poder organizacional. Con dicho poder organizacional, los adultos-mayores logran influir en los funcionarios municipales quienes no sólo defienden el punto de vista de los adultos-mayores respecto al espacio público, sino que además lo transforman de acuerdo al mismo.
In this article, I study the effect of aging of neighbors on local organizations in San Felipe, a middle-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru. I elaborate on this effect by using the case of the control of public space in the neighborhood. I conducted participant observation during a year. During that year, I observed the dynamics of local organizations’ meetings; I interviewed 46 residents of different characteristics; and I observed a large amount of situations andcontroversies among actors in San Felipe’s public space. I find that senior residents are the ones who impose their point of view about the neighborhood’s fortune. This result is surprising considering that senior residents are neither the most numerous group in the neighborhood, neither the one with higher resources. I claim that that happens because senior residents transform time (a scarce resource for young-adult neighbors, though abundant for the seniorneighbors) into organizational power. With that organizational power, senior residents are able to influence on the municipality’s functionaries who not only defend the discourse of senior residents regarding the use of public space, but also transform it according to this discourse.

Zoning is premised upon the segregation of land uses. Rudimentary zoning ordinances originated in New York around 1916 as a means of separating the lower class fabric markets from the upscale retailers of 5th Avenue nearby, and to reduce density. The Standard Enabling Acts of the 1920s granted governments the broad authority to enact zoning ordinances to reduce population densities in cities for the purposes of health, safety, and well being. The United States Supreme Court upheld this authority as constitutional in the landmark case of Euclid v. Ambler Realty (1926). In the roughly eighty years since the Euclid decision, zoning has become the planning profession's primary tool to regulate land use. While an effective policy response to issues at that time of a rapidly industrializing America, Euclidean zoning has unintentionally shaped the US landscape into a sprawling, auto-dependent society characterized by segregated communities of isolated populations. Euclidean zoning makes it extremely difficult to mix uses. As a result, 'traditional' development patterns with high-density housing, nearby commercial, and pedestrian-friendly walkways are virtually impossible to create. Many critics suggest that zoning promulgates sprawl. In short, Euclidean zoning prevents 'good' urban design. In recent years, new trends have emerged to address these problems to varying degrees of success. Form-Based Codes are one of the most recent planning innovations. With origins in the New Urbanist school of development, Form-Based Codes elevates physical design in city planning, as opposed to the 'use-based' restrictions of Euclidean zoning. This paper examines whether or not Form-Based Codes could be a viable solution to the ills associated with Euclidean zoning. Benefits and drawbacks of both Euclidean zoning and Form-Based Codes are debated, including a case study analysis, as well as a discussion of legal ramifications and future scenarios in land use planning.
Master of Urban and Regional Planning

This thesis takes as its starting point the proposition that the restricted development of law centres in the United Kingdom has been a result of the exercise of power by the legal profession. This was based on the evidence of the legal profession's influence on the initial development of public legal services policy and the profession's active opposition to the emergence of the first law centres in the United Kingdom. However, law centres remained on the margins of public legal services policy, despite the retreat of the profession from its original position. Thus, it was suggested that the key issue was not simply the power of the profession, but also the power of the dominant paradigms of legal practice, legal needs and legal services. This is reflected in the private practice and casework orientation of the legal aid system. Law centres challenge the dominant paradigms in many ways. They offer a multi-faceted approach to the resolution of the legal and socio-economic problems of the poor and do so in a not-for-profit, community-controlled and often collectivist context. Through quantitative and qualitative techniques employed in a multiple case study setting, this study sought to test the 'power hypothesis' empirically. Focusing on all of the law centres operating at any time between 1974 and 1997 in Strathclyde and the West Midlands, detailed accounts of significant events and periods in each centre's birth, life and, where appropriate, death were constructed. The thesis provides for the first time a social historical narrative of the development of law centres in these two locations. These accounts reveal that the profession and the dominant paradigms have had an impact on law centres in many significant ways. However, several of the greatest difficulties faced by law centres cannot be explained by reference to this conceptual framework. Accordingly, the thesis concludes that a wider theoretical framework is required to explain the development of law centres. This wider framework must draw on several existing traditions. It should recognise the importance of community, local and ethnic politics; social exclusion and ethnicity; and organisational and change management. However, it must also recognise the power of the legal profession and the dominant paradigms, as the additional challenges this brings distinguish the experience of law centres from that of other radical, community organisations.

Este trabalho analisa a problemática da reprodução do modo de vida tradicional da comunidade quilombola do Mandira em seu bairro rural, partindo da recuperação do histórico de formação da comunidade e transformações no seu modo de vida após a sobreposição do bairro rural pelo Parque Estadual Jacupiranga (decreto-lei nº 145, de 08 de agosto de 1969), culminando na definição do bairro como reserva extrativista e território quilombola, sendo estas as alternativas encontradas pela comunidade para a conquista da propriedade coletiva de suas terras e da autonomia de reprodução econômico-social. As restrições ambientais à reprodução do modo de vida foram implantadas no contexto da adoção do modelo preservacionista de proteção dos remanescentes florestais pelo governo militar brasileiro que, a partir da década de 1960, criou unidades de conservação de proteção integral sobre terras devolutas reconhecidas como desabitadas, expropriando as populações tradicionais dos bairros rurais historicamente ocupados, impelindo-as a organizarem-se politicamente em torno do setor ambientalista conservacionista, que defende o conhecimento tradicional como fundamento da conservação, influenciando a política ambiental brasileira no desenvolvimento de instrumentos políticos próprios que compatibilizam conservação e reprodução do modo de vida tradicional, como a criação de reservas extrativistas e unidades de conservação de uso sustentável. O método utilizado fundou-se na abordagem materialista e dialética da história, a teoria da criação e recriação do campesinato e do latifúndio e a etnoconservação, a partir da revisão bibliográfica e trabalho de campo, baseado em história oral, que subsidiou a reconstrução das histórias de vida das famílias, a partir de roteiro semiestruturado e composição de séries fotográficas. Assim, as unidades de conservação de uso sustentável compatibilizam a conservação dos remanescentes florestais à reprodução do modo de vida tradicional que, diante de sua marginal inserção na sociedade urbano-industrial, cria e recria estratégias para sua reprodução e elementos de sua cultura local, como o trabalho familiar e as relações de sociabilidade praticadas entre as famílias da comunidade.
This paper analyzes the problem of the reproduction of the traditional way of life of Mandira`s maroon community in its rural neighborhood, starting from the recovery of the community\'s history and changes in its lifestyle after the overlapping of the rural neighborhood by the Jacupiranga State Park (decree law No. 145 from August 8, 1969), culminating in the establishment of the neighborhood as an extractive reserve and maroon territory, which were the alternatives found by the community for the achievement of collective ownership of their land and autonomy in their socioeconomic reproduction. Environmental constraints on the reproduction of its lifestyle were implemented with the adoption of the preservation model for the protection of the remaining forest by the Brazilian military government, which, starting in the 1960s, created conservation units for the integral protection on public lands recognized as uninhabited, expropriating the traditional populations of historically- occupied rural neighborhoods, pushing them to organize politically around the environmental conservation sector, which defends traditional knowledge as the basis of conservation, thus influencing Brazilian environmental policy in the development of their own political tools, such as the creation of extractive reserves and sustainable use conservation units, which reconcile conservation and the reproduction of traditional ways of life. The method used was based on the materialist and dialectical approach to history, the theory of creation and recreation of the peasantry and landed estates, and ethnoconservation, starting from the literature review and field work, based on oral history, which grounded the reconstruction of the family life stories through semi- structured script and composition of photographic series. Thus, sustainable use conservation units reconcile the conservation of the remaining forest to the reproduction of the traditional way of life, which, in face of its marginal inclusion in urban-industrial society, creates and recreates strategies for its reproduction, as well as elements from its local culture, such as family work and sociability relations practiced among the families from the community.

abstract: The jobless recovery of the Great Recession has led policymakers and citizens alike to ask what can be done to better protect regions from the cascading effects of an economic downturn. Economic growth strategies that aim to redevelop a waterfront for tourism or attract high growth companies to the area, for example, have left regions vulnerable by consolidating resources in just a few industry sectors or parts of town. A promising answer that coincided with growing interest in regional innovation policy has been to promote entrepreneurship for bottom-up, individual-led regional development. However, these policies have also failed to maximize the potential for bottom-up development by focusing on high skill entrepreneurs and high tech industry sectors, such as green energy and nanotechnology. This dissertation uses the extended case method to determine whether industry cluster theory can be usefully extended from networks of high skill innovators to entrepreneurs in traditional trades. It uses U.S. Census data and in-person interviews in cluster and non-cluster neighborhoods in Dayton, Ohio to assess whether traditional entrepreneurs cluster and whether social networks explain high rates of neighborhood self-employment. Entrepreneur interviews are also conducted in Raleigh, North Carolina to explore regional resilience by comparing the behavior of traditional entrepreneurs in the ascendant tech-hub region of Raleigh and stagnant Rustbelt region of Dayton. The quantitative analysis documents, for the first time, a minor degree of neighborhood-level entrepreneur clustering. In interviews, entrepreneurs offered clear examples of social networks that resemble those shown to make regional clusters successful, and they helped clarify that a slightly larger geography may reveal more clustering. Comparing Raleigh and Dayton entrepreneurs, the study found few differences in their behavior to explain the regions' differing long-term economic trends. However, charitable profit-seeking and trial and error learning are consistent behaviors that may distinguish traditional, small scale entrepreneurs from larger export-oriented business owners and contribute to a region's ability to withstand recessions and other shocks. The research informs growing policy interest in bottom-up urban development by offering qualitative evidence for how local mechanics, seamstresses, lawn care businesses and many others can be regional assets. Future research should use larger entrepreneur samples to systematically test the relationship between entrepreneur resilience behaviors to regional economic outcomes.
Dissertation/Thesis
Ph.D. Public Administration 2013

The third place of the corner café has historically served as a community living room, providing an essential setting for social interaction and flânerie within the built environment. With modern technology and communication methods, however, interaction that once required physical proximity can now occur virtually. So where does this leave the corner café in today’s society? Have our third places moved online into fourth places such as Facebook and Twitter? A gallery exhibition entitled #Community is discussed as a visual representation of this written thesis. Methods and frequency of interaction – with others in the physical space as well with those not present – are discussed, providing information which may inform design and provide insight into the relevancy of the built environment in the face of evolving technology.

Este trabalho pretende analisar as caraterísticas arquitetónicas do Bairro do Bom João em Faro, nomeadamente no que se refere às suas influências e contextualização no âmbito do Programa das Casas Económicas do Estado Novo. Ao longo do estudo efetuado foram-se destacando os elementos arquitetónicos que lhe conferem uma identidade própria e as alterações que foram acontecendo no decurso dos anos e que colocam em perigo o seu caráter identitário. No fnal são dadas algumas sugestões sobre os elementos a preservar em renovações que venham a ser efetuadas, por forma a manter a sua estrutura como Bairro.
The present work aims to analyse the architectural features of the Bom João Neighborhood in Faro, specially with regard to their influences and context within the program of the New State Economic Houses. Throughout this study, the author highlights architectural elements that give a particular identity and, also, the changes that have happened over the years and which endanger their identity core. At the end some suggestions are given concerning the elements to preserve in renovations that may be made, in order to maintain its structure as a Neighborhood.