Several theoretic and environmental psychological models establish a connection between the environment and the reactions of humans and the research support that there is a mutual influence between individual, environmental and behavioral factors. You often assume that a person both can influence and be influenced by the surrounding environment. This is evident, but it is less obvious how a given physical design influence people?s immediate behavior in the city. The aim of this study was to investigate if the physical design of a place influences people in an urban environment and to investigate how the behavior is influenced.

The thesis is a case study that deals with public space based on how people use them. Public spaces are an important part of our city life and everyday life. Quality public spaces and places are due to its design and use, which are the primary aspects of this study. Hässleholm has been the location for the case study inventory items. Five different methods have been the basis for the study, and through them it has been possible to study what makes a room usable and unusable and what criteria is necessary for people to want to stay in the public rooms.

Participation, public art and participatory public art as phenomenons and subjects have been studied and discussed. With interviews and observations as a base, we have studied projects and discussed participation, effect and quality in relation to these. Furthermore we have looked at how the participatory art processes work in Sweden and England. This essay seeks to discuss the process of participatory public art and to emphasize the elements contributing to the quality of this process. It is up to us as planners to recognize the possibilities for a qualitative place. To mediate between different interests, for example between politicians and stakeholders, between economics and quality, between the place and its users, between individuals and the community, and in our case between artists, users and the municipality. Public art has gone from being about the product, an art piece, to becoming more of a process, from non interactive to interactive. Participation ranges from receiving information to play an active part in the process. Four cases have been studied, taken both from Sweden and England, showing the diversity of processes connected to Participatory Public Art. From interviews conducted in Sweden and England information and thoughts have been received and they show a higher degree of use of participatory public art in England, and also a higher consciousness.

The aim of this Master thesis is to study the public libraries' function as a place for people to meet. Four major questions are taken up: + Do the public libraries have the function of a meeting place? + How important do the librarians and the visitors find the libraries possible function as a meeting place? Do they think that this function is important? + What differs the public libraries from other places in society when it comes to the function of a meeting place? + What differences are there between a larger and a smaller library when it comes to the function of a meeting place ? The basis of this study are interviews with employees at a province library in Jönköping and at a smaller library in Sjöbo in Borås municipality. Our study deals with the history of public libraries, its functions as a meeting place, its architecture, culture, and statistics concerning numbers of visitors and loans of books. The conclusions that are drawn are that the public libraries have qualifications to function as a meeting place even if that isn't always the case.

This bachelor thesis in Landscape Architecture is about the planning and design of public spaces in small towns in Sweden. My opinion is that the small towns often are overlooked and my determination is to see if that is right. The purpose with this thesis in Landscape Architecture, with focus on a durable society is to find the central Public places in small towns and evaluate their function. This thesis has a focus on good design of central public spaces, designed for the inhabitants of the small towns. A small town, which is the focus of this thesis, is defined to have 200-2000 inhabitants. The small towns, which often are built around industries or the railway, have since the nineteen seventies a problem with people leaving them for the cities in the urbanization. Currently there is also the opposite trend with people moving out from the cities, but to live on the country side, not in the small towns.

A trend in modern landscape architecture is to design pedestrian streets so that vehicles and people move in the same area. By doing this, traffic tends to slow down. On the market though, there is a lack of furniture that corresponds to the requirements of these kinds of Public places. Therefore, I have designed this furniture, called VOX, which is planned to be used on streets, schoolyards and squares. One objective has been to promote the product to the industry.To achieve this, I have been in contact with people from different professions, which have all influenced my designprocess.

Hedemora is the oldest town in Dalarna; traditionally acting as an important junction for trade. Nowadays, the town is suffering from a declining population and a poor economy. Therefore, it is important to explore how to best spend the money needed for Hedemora to become an attractive city once again. "Sociotops" are public spaces that have been evaluated by their users and by city planners, both working together. The result in the sociotop investigation will be used as a basis for city planning and as a foundation for discussing how to make the town a nicer environment. The sociotop investigation attempts to answer the questions: What places are popular and why? And What places are disliked? I approached the questions by using questionnaires, by arranging public walks in the city and by holding group interviews with children, along with my own observations. The information I have gathered is most detailed for children and youth between the ages of seven and twenty years old.

In this bachelor essay an attempt is done, to recreate a probable Bronze Age landscape on Gotland, with GIS as a tool. The landscape on Gotland is situated with many different monuments dated Bronze Age, such as cairns and stone ships. In creating of the maps, two possible shorelines contemporary with the Bronze Age have been calculated and marked on the maps. Furthermore, peat lands have been drawn upon the maps, by using the information from geological maps.A landscape variable have been compared between Bronze Age places and Early Iron Age houses; the soil type. On Bronze Age places gravel is the most common, while moraine marl is the most common on places with Early Iron Age houses.From a selection that were made, all Bronze Age places where within 3 km from the water, either the recreated shoreline or peat land.

In this bachelor essay an attempt is done, to recreate a probable Bronze Age landscape on Gotland, with GIS as a tool. The landscape on Gotland is situated with many different monuments dated Bronze Age, such as cairns and stone ships. In creating of the maps, two possible shorelines contemporary with the Bronze Age have been calculated and marked on the maps. Furthermore, peat lands have been drawn upon the maps, by using the information from geological maps.A landscape variable have been compared between Bronze Age places and Early Iron Age houses; the soil type. On Bronze Age places gravel is the most common, while moraine marl is the most common on places with Early Iron Age houses.From a selection that were made, all Bronze Age places where within 3 km from the water, either the recreated shoreline or peat land.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to describe how Swedish public libraries use Web 2.0-tools and their experiences of using the tools. Focus of the study lies in the contact between public libraries and their patrons on the Web 2.0-tools. For the purposes of the study, the use of weblogs and MySpace were chosen for examination. The methodology used for this study was qualitative interviews.

This is a work about the relationship between cult houses and halls. In my essay I will go through four different places were cult houses and halls both exist. I will look at the findings and the landscapes were the settlements are located in. The places I have chosen are Lunda in Södermanland, Slöinge in Halland, Uppåkra in western Skåne and Järrestad in southeast Skåne. Because of that the cult houses and halls are occurring during the late Iron Age, it is during this time period that I will work in.

This Master?s thesis is about the public library development in a rural district, in this case Bergunda, a large rural district in Kronoberg?s County in Småland in Sweden, existing 1952 ? 1970. The main question is; how the public library develops in Bergunda large rural district 1951-1970. The main question is divided up in sub-questions: the district uniting in 1952 and 1971; personnel; lending; library housing and the public library structure. In 1952, there is one public library, Bergunda public library, and four study circle libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the ways in which rumors affect the everyday lives of a few young women. The questions are: What kinds of rumors do the young women find are the most common? How do they respond to these rumors? Do the rumors affect their everyday lives and if so, how do they react to them? Do they resist them? Do they feel limited by them?The empirical data was collected through unstructured interviews (focus groups) with three groups. The groups discussed different themes without prompting questions by the interviewer and it was clear that rumors played an important role, in multiple ways, in the lives of the young women. The most common rumors were sexualized and were mostly concerned with the view that the young women should not engage in ?too many? heterosexual relations ? preferably none.

The city contains a great multitude of people of different ages and different lifestyles and the urban environment should be planned and designed for everyone to take part in the social life of the city. The main reason among people for heading towards the city centre is to make purchases or to run errands, but also the social aspects are very important. A socially active city is worth striving for as an empty city can lead to unsecurity, fear and hostility between people. This paper discusses mainly the possibilities to encourage people to do physical activities on Public places in the city. In Sweden the lifestyle of people in general has changed to the worse in aspects of health over the last decades which has led to the fact that many people in Sweden today suffer from obesity.

This graduate thesis is engaged with perceived safety and "safe making" design in Public places. Despite the fact that we have never been as safe, questions of safety get more attention than ever in today?s society. Public demands for safer and more secure environments and low levels of experienced feelings of safety indicate problems in society that can shrink people's usage of Public places as well as their quality of life. Through methodical exaggeration of danger and legislation of laws, the state creates a situation that in different respect work to overprotect the citizens, who are not unlikely to experience feelings of being unsafe at the same time that the actual safety is to big. An expansion of protection against fear can unlike what was first intended decrease the experience of safety.