ACCOMMODATING CONSERVATION: REGULATING ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE IN A HIMALAYAN TOURIST TOWN

This dissertation discusses the construction of socio-spatial landscapes in Leh, Ladakh and elucidates the relationships between stakeholders in the tourism arena, conservation profession, regional and state government, and local civil society. It explains processes of urban regulation, juxtaposing the (re)production and representation of Ladakhi architectural heritage both during the conservation of historical buildings and during the construction of new tourist accommodations. Qualitative ethnographic research and spatial studies were conducted to investigate how competing discourses on Ladakhi heritage generated by state-based tourism industries and by non-governmental organizations are shaping building traditions, residence patterns, and livelihoods for resident Ladakhis. Leh\u27s built environment is a product of numerous contestations and negotiations between residents, NGOs and the state in places I call heritage construction sites: architectural conservation projects and new guest-house construction projects, respectively. In this study, I pinpoint how Ladakhis identify with or contest the transformation of their urban landscape, answering the question whose heritage is it

The formation of urban design theory in relation to practice

This dissertation investigates the complex and dynamic interaction between theory and practice in urban design. In doing so it hypothesises that there is a gap between the two. First, a literature review pins down what the writers define as urban design theory and how it relates to urban design practice. An innovative methodology is then employed in order to address the complex, dynamic, messy and ever-changing nature of this relationship, as well as the ways in which theory and practice are generated. At the core of the methodology is a reading of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy. The empirical analysis that follows is in two parts. First, the manner in which the literature is adopted in universities, urban design readers and journals is examined before, second, twenty-two indepth interviews with influential practitioners and theorists of urban design are interrogated. The research reveals the influential interactions between theory and practice as a network of connections, and following the philosophical approach of Deleuze, characterises this as a rhizome. This implies that the network is an open system which enables continual innovative change and presents a better understanding of influential factors in the relationship between the theory and practice of urban design. The dissertation contributes both to the theory of urban design and to its philosophical underpinnings (its epistemology, ontology and normative). It also contributes a better understanding of how urban designers conceptualise the connections between theory and practice

Reading Landscape: Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea

This dissertation traces the recovery of the landscape idea during the middle decades of the 20th century by a group of public intellectuals, scholars and designers responding to the everyday realities of the modern American built environment. That recovery served as a corrective to modernism\u27s construction of landscape as either abstract utopian space or retrogressive historical tableau. The primary catalyst for this renewed interest in landscape as a representation of human cultures and their complex relationship with the natural world was the essayist and critic John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) and his magazine Landscape. During the years of Jackson\u27s editorship (1951-1968), the magazine became a locus for intellectual exchange, a gathering place for a community of scholars from different disciplines who were drawn to Jackson\u27s unique voice. Jackson\u27s essays in the magazine used the term landscape in a way that was not common outside of the field of human geography. Here landscape did not describe a picturesque or painterly scene, nor did it describe a process of beautification. Jackson wrote of landscapes that seemed somewhat prosaic: the everyday, ordinary environments of city streets, rural farms, individual dwellings, highways and the commercial strip. He insisted that understanding how to read these places for their social, cultural and ecological content was a necessary--though too rarely employed--prelude to imagining new prototypes for the design and management of human environments. The mid-century intellectual milieu fostered by J.B. Jackson ultimately nurtured a contemporary (and still evolving) understanding of landscape as a conceptual medium composed of a diversity of cultures, layers of visible history and hidden narratives and an interdependent human ecology that continues to shape landscape theory and practice today

HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE VOLUME 05:

The 17th conference (2016, Delft) of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and its proceedings place presentations from different continents and on varied topics side by side, providing insight into state-of-the art research in the field of planning history and offering a glimpse of new approaches, themes, papers and books to come. VOLUME 05: Historical Perspective

WATERFRONTS FOR WORK AND PLAY: MYTHSCAPES OF HERITAGE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY RHODE ISLAND

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: WATERFRONTS FOR WORK AND PLAY: MYTHSCAPES OF HERITAGE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY RHODE ISLAND Kristen A. Williams, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Nancy L. Struna Department of American Studies My dissertation examines the relationship between heritage sites, urban culture, and civic life in present-day Rhode Island, evaluating how residents' identities and patterns of civic engagement are informed by site-specific tourist narratives of eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth-century labor histories. Considering the adaptive reuse of former places of maritime trade and industry as contemporary sites of leisure, I analyze the role that historic tourism plays in local and regional economic urban redevelopment. I argue that the mythscapes of exceptionalism mobilized at Rhode Island's heritage sites create usable pasts in the present for current residents and visitors alike, alternatively foregrounding and obscuring intersectional categories of difference according to contemporaneous political climates at the local, national and transnational levels. This study is divided into two parts, organized chronologically and geographically. While Part I examines the dominant tourist narratives associated with Newport County, located in the southeast of the state and including Aquidneck Island (also known as Rhode Island), Part II takes the historic tourism associated with mainland Providence Plantations as its case study and focuses exclusively on Providence County, covering the middle and northern ends of the state. In each of these sections, I explore, challenge, and re-contextualize the politics of narratives which reference the earliest Anglophone settlers of Rhode Island as religious refugees and members of what scholar Robin Cohen refers to as a "victim diaspora" against the rich co-constitutive histories of im/migrant groups that, either by force or choice, relocated to Rhode Island for work and thus constitute a "labour diaspora." The existence of these two or more populations living in close proximity to each other in areas of Newport and Providence, I argue, produced what Denis Byrne calls a "nervous landscape" fraught with cultural, economic and political tensions which exists even as narratives of the pasts associated with each group are mobilized in the contemporary urban environs of each city and its tourist attractions

People, Land, and Profit in the South of Market: A Critical Analysis of the Central SoMa Plan

The South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco has undergone several transformations, especially since WWII, that have largely characterized the broader relationships among local city government, private interests, and the public in San Francisco. These transformations have included deindustrialization and the restructuring of the local economy after WWII, Urban Renewal, the intensification of office uses, and the first and second technology booms. City planning and the implementation of area plans (a type of city planning development tool) have also played a significant role in facilitating these changes. By historically situating the current moment in San Francisco, this research paper seeks to better understand the role of planning in facilitating these changes during this current moment of tremendous wealth in San Francisco, ushered in by a second technology boom. Specifically, this research paper seeks to critically analyze the neighborhood area plan, the Central SoMa Plan, and speculate on the possible impacts of the plan. Based on the history of development and change in the South of Market, and a review of existing area plans, the argument is made that the changes proposed in the Central SoMa Plan work to actively restructure the neighborhood in order to allow for high- end development at the expense of existing working class residents, low-income communities, and blue-collar jobs

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHANGES IN BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND TOURISM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1899-1999

The dissertation investigates how a medium-sized U.S. city (Charleston, SC) transformed itself from an old depressed port, with a predominance of manufacturing industries, to one that is a popular international tourist destination. The research seeks to answer the following questions: * What urban processes have been most influential in shaping the tourism product? * Can Butler\u27s Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model be used as a basis for measuring tourism growth in the Tourism Business District of a U.S. city? * Is the change in a city\u27s business structure related to the growth of the tourism industry? * What measures have to be taken by the public and private sectors to develop and maintain the tourist product in the Tourism Business District? * What other factors are important to the growth and success of a destination? The TALC model is examined by looking at the changes in business structure over a hundred year period from 1899-1999. \u27Snapshots\u27 are taken every twenty years using business data taken from city street directories. For tourism businesses (accommodations, restaurants, antique stores and gift shops), the snapshots are taken every five years to obtain a more accurate picture of growth and change. The analysis also includes graphs of tourist visitation rates and expenditures and maps of the central area of Charleston. An historical analysis helps to explain why some of the changes in Charleston\u27s business took place and how tourism became the leading industry in the area. Topics such as events, advertising, beautification, facility development and tourism management give a picture of the tourism development process in the community. The study concludes that while the city may go through cycles of business growth, change and decline, tourism is not always affected by those cycles. Exogenous factors like recessions, gas shortages and price rises, have far more impact on tourism. Butler\u27s model is suitable for a description of tourism development but there needs to be more focus on the process and evolution of tourism management and planning as tools for maintaining the urban tourism product and in a multifunctional city some better measures of estimating tourist numbers

The planning and urban design of liveable public open spaces in Oman : case study of Muscat

Public open space has performed a considerable role in society since the first human settlements. Since the 1960s the understanding of liveable public open space has grown dramatically as exhibiting good quality and being well-used by the public. There is evidence of the social, economic and environmental benefits of public open spaces in any city. Planning and urban design practice are the mechanisms behind providing liveable public open space which entices and encourages the public to choose to spend more of their spare time in them. This thesis is concerned with liveability in contemporary public open spaces in Middle Eastern cities, where historically public open spaces were developed based on Islamic religion and Sharī‘ah, which provided norms for the production of the built environment and social engagement with this. As a focus for the exploration of contemporary public open space in Middle Eastern cities, this study examines the design of squares and plazas in particular. Squares and plazas were introduced by colonisation and reinforced by modernity, being later emphasised by globalisation. Nevertheless, squares and plazas in the Middle East have not been as successful as the traditional local open spaces, nor as the Western versions. This research has attempted to evaluate the liveability in public open spaces in Muscat through detailed case studies of two squares and two plazas in three ways, including evaluating: the physical quality, users’ perception and professional perception. In order to achieve this, a mixed methods strategy was designed based on the theoretical perspective of social constructionism. These methods included: desk-top study of documents; three built environment assessment tools, applied by professionals; behavioural mapping and observation; a survey of open space users; and semi-structured interviews with professional involved in the provision of public open space and community representatives in Oman. The empirical work showed that though public open spaces are viewed as beautification elements of the city structure, there are major weaknesses in meeting users’ requirements, engaging users and in considering local climate in those spaces. Although the planning and urban design system in Oman has been adopted from the West, it is not established adequately in different plan sequences and strategies to govern the provision process and control the quality of the spaces; in addition, there is lack of clarity and coordination in institutional responsibilities over the provision and management of public open space. It is concluded that providing more liveable public open space in Oman would require improvements to the planning and urban design systems, as well as learning from traditional practice in the production and management of open space in the Middle East