At the Limits of Community: Anti-Black Security Practices in a Montreal Public Housing Complex

This thesis argues that contemporary security practices, mainly community policing and defensible space, are conceived epistemologically and operationalized empirically through anti-blackness. To make this point, I provide an in-depth analysis of a major community policing project in operation in Plan Robert, a North-Montreal public housing complex, since 1996. I pay particular attention to the important role of discourses of community in licensing two decades of community and defensible space interventions in the complex. I show how, while seemingly benign, these discourses allowed for the state’s interference in the Black community of Plan Robert to control and disrupt residents’ relationship to the public space. Combined, the high-level theory and the site-specific empirical evidence, which this thesis introduces, aim to contextualize this contemporary historic instance in North America’s longer history of anti-blackness, and the state’s ongoing obsessions with Black communities since the formal abolition of slavery, up until today. It also demonstrates that, forged through anti-blackness, the category of community, as a category of the modern Human, is site of re-elaboration of subjugation of blackness rather than a figure that rescues the Black person

Placemaking from Interstitial Spaces: Participatory planning and collaborative community design as strategies to revitalize a service alleyway in Montreal (Bishop/Mackay)

This project explores participatory planning and community design methodologies (i.e. pattern language design, placemaking, community planning charrettes, planning-in-situ, open planning and peer to peer urbanism) to revitalize a service alleyway in downtown Montreal. The objective of this project is to democratize planning and urban design practices and to engage ordinary citizens in the planning of their own spaces. After a series of visioning workshops, brainstorming sessions and a community planning charrette, this project incorporates inputs from stakeholders, students and ordinary citizens into a collaborative urban design project. The project proposes interventions such as a woonerf, a planning committee, a cubic/fractal scaffolding structure, art murals and wall projections (among others). With the objective of encouraging future adaptations and transformations, this project is published under a Creative Commons license. Adopt and adapt these ideas (but cite and acknowledge accordingly)

Palestine, and the Future of Home

This dissertation considers the unique place of Palestine as the locus where the universal antagonism over home is materialized in its multifold dimensions. Through the interrogation of the concepts of home, homelessness, and alienation, I attempt to reimagine the symbolic representation of Palestinian suffering over the material loss of home outside of the contemporary critical discourses concerned with the Palestine/Israel relationality. These discourses, I argue, constrict the representations of Palestinian experience to a universal political praxis that thinks settler colonial logics solely within the horizon of the nation and the entitlements of the land, foreclosing the possibility of fully investing in redefining the ontoepistemological parameters of Palestinian subjectivity. Through the interrogation I offer in this dissertation, focused in particular on the philosophical and psychoanalytic dimensions of the above concepts, the aim is to create a new literal space where it is possible to discuss the ways Israel’s material violence operates at the conjuncture between two forms of necessary destructions: one implemented on the land and entails the physical evacuation of native habitation and life, and a second implemented on the native body and entails the internalized destruction of an individual inner economy that forges upon the lost place of the mother/land.

Calendario de riego para aumentar la productividad del agua en rotación trigo-maíz en condiciones de cambio climático.

Irrigation scheduling was used to increase water productivity of wheat (Triticum aestivum L)-maize (Zea mays L.) rotation under two climate change scenarios. Three wheat varieties and two maize hybrids were planted at in a 2-yr field experiment. CropSyst model was calibrated and validated for the collected field data, then was used to assess the impact of two climate change scenarios (A2 and B2) and three adaptation strategies (early sowing changing, irrigation schedule and the interaction between them) in the year of 2038s. The results revealed that A2 reduced yield more than B2 scenario for both crops. High yield reduction in wheat-maize rotation could be expected under climate change conditions, where wheat and maize yield will be reduced by an average of 41 and 56%, respectively.. The most effective adaptation strategy for wheat was sowing 3 wk earlier and irrigation every 21 d, with irrigation water saving and no yield improvement under A2 scenario in both growing seasons. Whereas under B2 scenario yield improvement by 2% occurred with 3% saving in the applied irrigation water in the 1 st growing season and in the 2 nd growing season yield could improved by 8% with less than 1% increase in the applied irrigation water and higher water productivity. Changing irrigation schedule was an effective adaptation option for maize, where yield improvement could occur under both climate change scenarios in both growing seasons by up to 9% with less than 3% increase in the applied irrigation water and higher water productivity.Se usó un calendario de riego para aumentar la productividad del agua en rotación trigo (Triticum aestivum L.)-maíz (Zea mays L.) en condiciones de dos escenarios de cambio climático. Tres variedades de trigo y dos híbridos de maíz se plantaron en un experimento de campo de 2 años. Se calibró el modelo CropSyst y se validó para los datos de campo colectados, luego se usó para evaluar el impacto de dos escenarios de cambio climático (A2 y B2) y tres estrategias de adaptación (siembra temprana, calendario de riego e interacción entre ambos) en el año 2038. Los resultados revelaron que el escenario A2 redujo más el rendimiento de ambos cultivos que B2. Pudo esperarse una alta reducción de rendimiento en rotación trigo-maíz bajo condiciones de cambio climático, en que el rendimiento de trigo y maíz será reducido en promedio 41 y 56%, respectivamente. La estrategia de adaptación más efectiva para trigo fue sembrar 3 semanas antes y riego cada 21 d, con ahorro de agua de riego y sin aumento de producción bajo el escenario A2 en ambas temporadas de crecimiento. Mientras bajo el escenario B2 el 2% de aumento en rendimiento ocurrió con 3% de ahorro de agua de riego aplicado en la primera temporada de crecimiento, en la segunda temporada el rendimiento pudo mejorarse en 8% con menos de 1% de aumento en el agua de riego aplicado y mayor productividad del agua