The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

During the last decade of the twentieth century both ?manhood? and gender studies seems to have undergone changes. With the field of masculinity and the critical studies of men, added as ?subsections? of broader gender studies, new knowledge has been produced to better grasp the production of gender and power relations of patriarchy. During the same decade as the ?metrosexual? first appeared of the urban stage, acts of homophobia and attitudes towards ?manhood? seems to have changed.

This thesis is about informal seatings, those which are planned to merge into the city core environment and to supply a flexible public space. The thesis discusses how a diverse range of elements could result in different functions and social meanings. These are illustrated with visual examples and conceptual drawings. The position of the seating in a small public place is important, as well as its location in the city. Furthermore, the detail design of the seating, such as the form and dimensions have to be considered in order to create an informal seating appropriate for the user. This leads to the broad scope of this thesis which deals with the small scale - how the seatings can create a good environment in a small place; and the big scale - how a site can influence the city. This thesis suggests the physical design of some informal seatings and also investigates how these seatings can strengthen the place through their function and how they relate to their surroundings.

Sedan nästan tjugo år arbetar pedagoger och kökspersonal på Sollerö skola med projekt som syftar till att öka miljömedvetenhet hos eleverna och servera dem närproducerad och näringsrik skolmat. Detta arbete består bland annat av odlingar där skolpersonal, elever och föräldrar tillsammans odlar potatis, lök, morötter och rotsaker till skolmåltiderna. Många av de engagerade i verksamheten uttrycker dock att de upplever motstånd från skolledning och kommuntjänstemän, vilket leder till frustration och osäkerhet kring verksamhetens framtida överlevnad. I denna uppsats undersöker jag hur de engagerade i verksamheten påverkas av Mora kommuns policy för verksamheten, hur viktigt skolledningens stöd är för verksamhetens fortlevnad, samt vilka strategier de engagerade använder sig av för att påverka sina förutsättningar. För att försöka förstå detta har jag vid två tillfällen besökt Sollerön och de platser som är aktuella för verksamheten, intervjuat sju personer som är eller har varit aktiva i Sollerö skolodlingar samt deltagit i ett verksam-hetsmöte.

The Swedish traffic system is congested, especially in the urban areas; travellers face daily growing traffic jams and delays in public transport. In a congested traffic system, travellers need support to make smart and sustainable decisions and one such tool is traffic information.One issue today is that too few travellers use traffic information in support of their travel. Research shows that travellers would see great value in receiving the information; however current systems do not meet their requirements. This is a problem since the society would benefit greatly from a well functioning traffic information system.In this report, a number of channels that can be applicable for providing traffic information will be explored, with particular emphasis on interference information.The information channels are analyzed based upon the needs and requirements of the society and the traveller. The thesis of the report is: the more of these needs and requirements are met in a channel; the better is the channel to use for traffic information.

Due to excess precipitation that cause runoff, all soils in Sweden naturally leaches nitrogen.High leaching from arable land is an environmental problem when the runoff reacheswaters. In the international agreement, Baltic Sea Action Plan, the aim is to reduce therunoff of nutrients. Sweden has agreed to reduce its load of e.g. nitrogen to the Baltic Sea.One of the proposed measures is an increased use of site-specific N-fertilization, which hasbeen shown to increase nitrogen use efficiency and therefore also reduce the nitrogen runoff.Either yields are increased with the same total amount of nitrogen, or the total quantityof nitrogen is reduced with preserved yield levels, which is profitable for the farmers.The dynamics of nitrogen leaching differs between top dressing applications above orbelow the economical optimum. There is a consensus about a difference in the dynamics,but not about its magnitude.

Syftet med detta arbete är att studera ur olika synvinklar vad som gör en plats attraktiv och tillgänglig. Arbetet utgår från en fallstudie av det planerade kajstråket Borgmästarebryggan i Karlskrona. Genom analyser av resultaten från inventeringar, observationsstudier, intervjuer, dokumentsanalyser och beprövad praktik undersöks de bakomliggande faktorerna till Borgmästarebryggan, planens överensstämmelse med kommunens mål för att skapa en attraktiv och tillgänglig plats. Därefter kommer en kritisk läsning av planförslaget att utföras med grund i forskning och teorier om attraktivitet och tillgänglighet. Borgmästarebryggans tänkta utformning skapar många goda förutsättningar för att bli en attraktiv och tillgänglig plats för allmänheten.

This report studies how the divergence between men and women is manifested in the physical space and how the representation of room recreates this divergence. Spaces are coded and women have traditionally been associated with private space and men with public space, leading to that the home is encoded as female space and public squares as male space. Thereby women lack a natural place in public space. The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket) wants to change this situation by enforcing safety-creating measures based on gender equality theories.I have studied what potential risks the project initiated by Boverket as well as discuss the potential problems with representation. Can representation be used without freezing the space? I also search for methods for working with a gender perspective without reproducing gender stereotypes and roles and avoiding encoding the private as female and public as male? Also I use a public seminar with urban planners, artists and architects to retrieve how we work with these issues today.I conclude that city planning needs to incorporate new strategies of thought that does not divide space, e.g.

Den här uppsatsen tar en närmare blick på karismatiskt ledarskap vilket ofta sägs vara en personlig egenskap som vissa föds med. Det sägs att personer som Gandhi, Barack Obama och Olof Palme har haft denna egenskap. En egenskap som får folk att följa ledaren oavsett uppoffringen för följaren, och som gör vad än ledaren vill att de skall göra. Arbetet vill problematisera synen på karisma som en personlig egenskap. Med hjälp av karismaforskningens fader, Max Weber, tillsammans med annan forskning om ledarskap och karisma formar denna uppsats en modell för att förstå karismatiskt ledarskap.

Syftet med uppsatsen var att skapa en bild av den bebyggelseförändring som skett i Utviksområdet under de senaste 150-200 åren. Jag har arbetat med flera frågeställningar kring området. Hur långt tillbaka har det varit aktivitet på Mjusen? Hur har området utvecklats från fäboddrift till sågverksindustri till sommarstugeområden och vad finns kvar idag av byggnader och mark? Vilken funktion fyller området idag?För att hitta svar på mina frågor har jag studerat gamla kartor och bilder, läst lokalhistorisk litteratur om ämnet och gjort intervjuer med personer som minns fäboddriftenstid. Jag har även via webben studerat Urban Sikeborgs sida Familjer i Norrala, på Genealogi.se där jag funnit tingsärenden, så långt tillbaka som till 1640-talet, på personer som brukar skogen och marken på fäbodområdet.Genom mitt arbete har jag fått en tydlig bild av hur området förändrats under tid.

The purpose of this study is to examine the accessibility with public transportation in the case of the Umeå Region in northern Sweden. This is done by GIS network analysis where both access to transit stops, as well as access by public transport from stops to destinations is examined. An accessibility index is created from transit frequency and travel times to destinations. The results is compared with population register data to calculate what shares of the population has which levels of accessibility with public transportation. In the Umeå Region there are different levels of accessibility by public transport for different parts of the region, where transit stops in the most densely populated areas has the highest levels of accessibility, as well as stations along the railroads.

Män utsatta för våld i nära relationer är en målgrupp som får begränsad uppmärksamhet i vårt samhälle. Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur män utsatta för våld i nära relationer bemöts av sociala aktörer, som myndigheter, ideella organisationer och kommunala projekt som arbetar med mansfrågor. För att få en djupare förståelse av bemötandet använde vi en kvalitativ metod och genomförde semistrukturerade intervjuer. Respondenterna som intervjuades var aktiva inom ovannämnda verksamheter, och hade varit i kontakt med män utsatta för våld i nära relationer.Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i studien har främst varit Connells teori kring maskuliniteter. Resultaten visar att verksamheterna i denna studie bland annat arbetar individuellt och psykosocialt med målgruppen.

With numerous applications in both military and civilian life, the demand for accurate 3D models of real world environments increases rapidly. Using an airborne laser scanner for the raw data acquisition and robust methods for data processing, the researchers at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in Linköping hope to fully automate the modeling process.The work of this thesis has mainly been focused on three areas: ground estimation, image segmentation and classification. Procedures have in each of these areas been developed, leading to a new algorithm for ground estimation, a number of segmentation methods as well as a full comparison of various decision values for an object based classification. The ground estimation algorithm developed has yielded good results compared to the method based on active contours previously elaborated at FOI. The computational effort needed by the new method has been greatly reduced compared to the former, as performance, particularly in urban areas, has been improved.

Reflections är en stämningslampa som med hjälp av invävd fiberoptik lockar fram nya visuella och taktila uttrycksvärdeni en textil. Under arbetets gång har jag utforskat mängden ljus som fiberoptisk textil sprider längsmed fiberlängden samt undersökt naturfiberns egenskaper när den vävs samman med fiberoptik.En stor utmaning var att hitta balans mellan tekniska begränsningar och det uttryck jag sökte. Lampans formspråkär min reflektion över dagens stadslandskap där arkitekturens geometriska former möterfordons strömlinjeform. Med stämningslampan hoppas jag att hitta och inspirera till nya användningsområdenför fiberoptisk textil.Reflections is a mood light using interwoven fiber optics witch brings out new visual and tactile expressionvalues in a textile. During the work, I have explored the amount of light fiber optic textile spreads along thefiber length and examined properties of nature fiber when it is interwoven with fiber optics.A major challenge was finding a balance between technical constraints and expressions I was looking for.

This paper is part of the research programme ViSuCity, a programme with the goal of creating more sustainable urban planning through the development of better visual tools, which ultimately means better communication between various parties of public planning. The paper concerns the implementation of MCE into a 3D program for visualization. Multi criteria evaluation (MCE) is a technique that has been developed during the last 20 years. It merges GIS with AHP, forming a decision making tool for localization of, for example, new buildings.The result is an automated tool that enables advanced analysis of geographic areas.The tool has a very high potential due to the completely automated MCE and it is adapted for people without a technical background, let alone formal training in MCE. It provides great opportunities to test different scenarios, something that should be an important advantage.