« This dissertation examines whether participatory projects, notably those involving children, in urban areas in Lebanon can help improve refugee children’s wellbeing, including by enhancing social cohesion between diverse residents. Drawing from urban studies, child psychology, and other literature, it outlines Syrian refugee children’s circumstances in Lebanese urban areas, and the risks and protective factors they face as a result of their experiences. Centred around urban space, its theoretical framework links concepts of spatial justice, environmental child psychology/socio-ecological models, and social cohesion. Fundamental to its overarching exploration, it adopts a relational and psychosocial definition of wellbeing, which also recognises children’s unique characteristics and experiences. It considers practical evidence for its exploration in two projects in Lebanon, after briefly looking at children’s reimagining of urban areas outside of formal processes. It concludes that there is strong evidence that, when processes are meaningful and address participants’ priorities, as well as successfully engage local authorities, they have significant potential to contribute to children’s wellbeing and improve prospects for social cohesion. The challenge is in creating genuinely inclusive processes that have multiplying, lasting effects – i.e. that they can serve as the ‘glue’ that binds residents in pursuit of the urban commons – and that trigger ongoing, collective actions by a cross-section of residents, which can convince strategic, powerful stakeholders of their importance. Given the acute crisis Lebanon faces, such processes remain more important than ever, while remaining sensitive to the socio-political and economic realities affecting millions across the country.

Step 1.1 Welcome to the course / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 1.11 Social diversity / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 1.13 Spatial justice in Portee-Rokupa / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 1.9 Urban growth in Africa and Freetown / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.11 Freetown's formal and informal economic activities / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.13 Informality, recognition and tax / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.14 Perspectives from informal settlement residents / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.15 How insecurity and eviction threats affect people's capacities / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.2 Urban land in African cities / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.4 The challenges of urban land in Freetown / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 2.5 Producing land in Freetown's coastal settlements / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 3.5 Urban governance in Freetown / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 3.6 Participatory planning in African cities / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 3.7 Participatory planning in Freetown's informal settlements / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 3.8 Participatory planning: women's saving group / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 3.9 Participatory planning: self-organising through the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 4.14 Conclusions / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 4.2 Urban risk in African cities / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 4.4 Urban risk in Freetown / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

Step 4.9 Infrastructure in Freetown / Development and Planning in African Cities free online course (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/)

A description of the work (Abstract): «Exploring a potential vision of the common good for London’s economic centres, this dissertation asks why and how economic democracy should be enacted at the scale of the high street. While COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities along many lines, evolving values around community, wellbeing and public space also pose an opportunity for re-imagining fairer economic trajectories through a focus on place. Often magnifying wider economic issues, the long-run decline of British high streets has been well documented. While commonly focusing on curation and design as a way to ‘activate’ these once public spaces, their complexity has given way to an equally diverse discourse lacking a consistent framework for guiding planning, interventions and policy. While current high street rhetoric offers a growing focus on social value and ‘community-led development’, economic power and equity implications are frequently overlooked. This thesis suggests, given the accessible and inclusive nature of high streets, the potential for situating a framework of economic development that considers a more radical restructuring of social and economic power. Placing the principles of economic democracy within an everyday site helps to foreground people and place. Through repurposing urban space for inclusive, collective and participatory workspaces, services or social centres, high streets can play a role in reformulating value concepts. Developing an analytical framework that considers rights, ownership and deliberation, through iterative empirical analysis, this thesis will address practices that could re-frame high streets to better serve their communities. SHORT: study asking why and how should a framework of economic democracy be used to re-shape london’s high streets, for the redistribution of economic power and the promotion of the common good.

Course materials from the Development and Planning in African Cities free online course delivered on the FutureLearn platform: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/african-cities/.

Steps from the first week of Development and Planning in African Cities, a FutureLearn course jointly delivered by UCL and Njala University.

Steps from the second week of Development and Planning in African Cities, a FutureLearn course jointly delivered by UCL and Njala University.

Steps from the third week of Development and Planning in African Cities, a FutureLearn course jointly delivered by UCL and Njala University.

Steps from the fourth week of Development and Planning in African Cities, a FutureLearn course jointly delivered by UCL and Njala University.

This dissertation investigates social implications of built environment interventions (BEI) related to bicycle urbanism from a Spatial Justice (Soja, 2010) perspective. By combining urban spatial theory and mobilities research, the novel theoretical framework Mobility Space helps to analyse spatial, experiential and discursive aspects of urban mobility priorities concomitantly and is thus an adequate analytical tool to uncover how recently proliferating cycling strategies impact society through an alteration of urban space. A qualitative and multi-method research design combines descriptive mapping, virtual site observation and semi-structured interviews to apply Mobility Space to the controversial Mini-Holland programme in Waltham Forest, London. Examining in detail the Walthamstow Village scheme, the research finds three patterns by which BEI related to bicycle urbanism re-organize movement, re-allocate space and re-design public realm to prioritize active travel and dwelling while discouraging car use. Those spatial alterations shift the political organization of space which in turn affects the Right to the City (Lefebvre et al., 1996) – an expression of Spatial Justice – as it enables a greater diversity of people to use urban space (right to appropriation) and makes them conscious how the space they inhabit is discursively produced and the outcome of contentious decision-making processes (right to participation). This research is relevant for urban professionals as environmental as well as pandemic-related urban mobility challenges necessitate a transformation of urban space to accommodate cycling, but negative outcomes for social equity, as resulting from car-urbanism, need to be avoided.