The controversial phenomenon of ?seeker-oriented? megachurches are currently transforming the American religious landscape. These churches, some housing up to 30,000 worshippers every week, are targeting religious seekers as their primary objective. Their success in attracting and converting those who usually wouldn?t even think of attending church can in large parts be explained by changes in liturgy, the removal of visible theological discussion and use of shopping mall styled buildings, designed to make the religious seeker feel like home.

Today, there are few industries left in our cities. Industrial areas thatare located in urban settings close to water or city centers are oftenreplaced by housing. In my thesis I want to explore how such industrialsite located in an urban setting can be transformed into anindustrial park where the industrial structures are saved. By approachingthis type of environment in a positive manner, I wish tohighlight the potential aesthetic and functional value in the existingindustrial structure. Through the transformation and design of anexisting industrial site I will convey the previous use and history ofthe place.The wastewater treatment plant, Kungsängsverket, is located in thedistrict of Kungsängen in the southern part of Uppsala.

Sweden?s animal legislation was adopted in 1988 and is one of the most rigorous legislations in the world. Despite this, Sweden import beef from countries where animal legislation is not in accordance to the Swedish legislation. The meat consumption in Sweden has, just like the importation of beef, increased while Sweden?s own beef production has decreased.

This quantitative study aims to investigate whether there is a difference in the effect of the policy rate on the price per square meter for condominiums between small and large cities in Sweden. The study encompasses a total of seven Swedish municipalities, of which three located in large cities and four in small cities. Data regarding housing sales and additional variables have been collected for all municipalities, and the price per square meter is the dependent variable in the regressions performed on the dataset, which constitutes the empirical basis of the study. The aim is further to contribute to an increased understanding of how the effect of the policy rate might differ between Swedish cities and why. The results of the study show significant differences in how the policy rate affects the price per square meter in a small city compared to a large city, with the effect being greater in the latter.

This report is an inventory of the street lighting in half of the residential estates owned by Karlstad Bostads AB, a public housing company. The inventory was made to reduce the environmental impact of the street lighting. From the inventory an estimation of the total installed power and the energy consumption was made. The total estimated power of the street lighting was 125 kW and the energy consumption was 500 000 kWh/year with an estimated running time of 4 000 h/year. The dominating source of light was 125 W discharge mercury lamps.

How the renovation of the vast Swedish existing building stock with renovation needs will be performed is considered as decisive in order to achieve the target set by the Swedish government of reducing the energy use by 20 percent by 2020. Consequently, the challenge of the building sector consists in reducing the energy use in the existing building stock but at the same time ensuring that the indoor environmental quality is improved and the cultural values are maintained.So far, there have been a few renovation projects which strongly have reduced the energy use and at the same time have taken into account the environmental aspects and the cultural values. The main reasons are that there have been few incentives and a lack of routines in order to steer efficiently a ?sustainable renovation?.The participants in a Nordic project on sustainable renovation thought that it would be a strong advantage to link the concept of sustainable renovation to the Miljöbyggnad certification system. Indeed it is trusted by the Swedish building and construction sectors and can provide sustainability targets in order to steer renovation processes.The objective of the master thesis is to show how the Miljöbyggnad certification system could be integrated in practice in the renovation process of Riksbyggen, an organization which administers housing associations (Bostadsrättsföreningar) and build houses.

Syfte: Åsikterna om Fullriggaren går isär. Gavlegårdarna har, som allmännyttigt bostadsföretag, kritiserats av allmänheten för att bostäderna anses vara för exklusiva. Syftet med studien är att närmare undersöka den omvärldsanalys som legat till grund för det strategiska beslutet att bygga Fullriggaren. Vi vill även skapa oss en uppfattning om hur allmännyttan håller på att förändras och vilken roll den spelat historiskt.Metod: Studien bygger på en kvalitativ metod, med två djupintervjuer som varit av semi-strukturerad karaktär. Vi har även gjort en litteraturstudie av allmännyttans historia.

Outdoor housing of horses? best fulfils the horses? need for physical activity and it is an alternative to the more cost and energy demanding indoor housing in stables. Furthermore, if outdoor housed horses have access to shelter they can generally cope well with adverse weather conditions such as high or low ambient temperature, heavy rain or strong winds. In this study, the daytime shelter-seeking behaviour of three groups of horses housed outdoors was studied during the summer. The aim was to evaluate whether shelter use is related to weather variables (e.g., ambient temperature and wind speed) and insect harassment. The shelter-seeking behaviour was studied for three different groups of horses: Group 1) eight individually housed horses in paddocks that had access to three different shelter types (C: closed on three sides with roof, R: open on three sides with roof, W: closed on three sides without roof), Group 2) 25 group housed mares with foals on pasture with access to shelters C, and Group 3) ten mares without foals on pasture without access to shelter. Each group was studied for eight days.

The title of this thesis is ?The preconditions of the acquisition guarantee- hard to design working political reforms?. The acquisition guarantee (förvärvsgaranti) is a form of credit guarantee issued by the Swedish government to credit institutes that give out housing loans to debtors with poor credit history. The reform hasn´t been used in any substantial extent.The purpose of the study is to investigate whether you could identify any problems with the preconditions that the governmental agency BKN was given to implement the acquisition guarantee, and if so describe which these problems are.Two questions are answered:1.      What preconditions for a working implementation of the guarantee, in the form of rules, objectives and directives was offered by the government in their steering of BKN?2.      How did the structural preconditions for a working implementation of the guarantee look like?By doing a text analysis of central documents I find that the lack of outcome could to some extent be related to weaknesses in how the reform was formulated.

The study explores different aspects of how a social organization is created and maintained in the space between the institution and the individual. Based on fieldwork, participant observation and individual interviews in the housing estate of Hageby, Norrköping, this ethnographic study examines how and why the organization ?Ditt Nya Hageby? was created, as well as the unanimity between the purpose of the organization and the engagement of the members. Two projects within the organization are especially examined, along with the roles of the two members behind them. The study presents three perspectives from which ?Ditt Nya Hageby? can be viewed.

Klimatförändringar befaras ge en mängd olika konsekvenser för samhället. Ökade översvämningsrisker är bara en av dessa. De ökade översvämningsriskerna kommer att påverka den möjliga markanvändningen och många områden som idag anses säkra att bebygga och odla kommer att bli riskzoner för översvämning i ett framtida klimat. I samhällets anpassningsprocess ligger nödvändigheten att skydda befintlig bebyggelse men också att kunna lokalisera ny bebyggelse, odling och infrastruktur till säkra zoner. Den kommunala fysiska planeringen har styrmedel som kan påverka bebyggelsens placering och utformning.

Africa is one of the regions most affected by climate change. However its forests are important carbon sinks for the whole world, and if recognised as a global public good, could be conserved and contribute to green house gas emission reductions. A global mechanism, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation(REDD+) aims to help developing countries in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancement of carbon stocks. REDD+ strategies may, however exclude local forest dependent communities from forests in order to conserve and maximise carbon stocks, thus having a severe impact on local livelihoods. Therefore, how local communities can participate and share benefits from REDD+ is a key concern.This study investigates how three forest dependent communities in the Nazinon forest, in Southwest Burkina Faso could financially benefit from a REDD+ project.

The number of people that are categorized as being homeless in the Swedish society are increasing. This might be an indication that the methods being used today shows not to be working efficient enough. A group of researchers connected to the University of Lund are now in a process to spread new workingmethods against the problems with homelessness in Sweden. Their goal is to completely erase homelessness as a social problem. This new method of working is distinctively different from the one currently beeing used.

The purpose of this essay was to examine whether there were any differences in social workers way of investigating boys and girls, age 13-15. The main questions we wanted to answer were; which were the factors that the social workers focused on? Did the investigations lead to a measure and if so, which one? How were risk and protection factors described and ana-lysed?To answer our questions we read and analyzed 22 reports, written by social workers 2004 at the department for teenagers and families at a social welfare service in Sweden. We came to the conclusion that there were some differences, but these were few and not extensive. Recreational activities was mentioned in a higher degree in the boys reports while health, housing conditions and network were mentioned more often in the girl´s reports.

ABSTRACTIn this study, five people were interviewed who are involved in a drug-assisted program for opiate addiction, also called substitution program. The meaning of substitution is that these clients' drug addiction is replaced with substitute preparations, either methadone or Subutex in an orderly manner. The clients of the researcher decided to study the substitution program have all been a heavy opiate addiction for years. Their participation in the replacement program is more than two years, and those who have been around the longest have been in the program for six years, so long as the substitution program has existed in Visby.This is a qualitative study in which interviews are conducted face to face with each individual client, and the interview was unstructured in the sense that no specific issues made in advance. The interviews have been themed, and the researcher has gone through various areas of life around the respondent.