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.

Visitor Centers were first established at various national parks in North America. Most Visitor Centers were built in the ten-year period following 1952. The purpose of the Visitor Centers was to welcome visitors and enhance their experience of the national parks. Today there are Visitor Centers all around the world, connected to different places or attractions. Many of the Visitor Centers that exist today, especially those in the national parks in North America, were built during the information society.

This paper intends to show how micro- and small businesses in the tourism and experience industry makes use of social media as a marketing tool. The study also shows the possibilities for businesses to market themselves to customers through social media. Small businesses usually don?t have the same conditions or the same marketing resources that larger companies have. For small businesses that lack marketing resources, social media is a great addition to marketing since the technology around social media is relatively simple.

The society today, reflects a high welfare, where the human being has a better financial position than before. This has generate that more money is spend on pleasure and events. A result of that can be the development of a new line of business; The industry of experience.This kind of branch is fast growing in the Swedish labour market. The characteristics of this branch are, depending of trends, continuous variations and integrated education.A new phenomenon within this branch is ?Centre of experience?.

Kongressindustrin är en miljardindustri i världen och utvecklingen av kongressindustrin ser olika ut i Sveriges städer. Med en jämförelse mellan Göteborg, Malmö och Lund var syftet att med frågeställningarna; hur samarbetar privat och offentlig sektor vid utveckling av kongressindustrin i en region?, vilka intressenter kan utgöra kärnan i ett sådant samarbete? och vilka resurser kan ses som primära i ett sådant samarbete? undersöka hur privat och offentlig sektor samarbetar för att utveckla kongressindustrin i en region. Med hjälp av ett omfattande empiriskt material och ett fåtal väl valda teorier genomfördes en analys. Analysen resulterade i ett konstaterande om att det existerande samarbetet i Göteborg verkar vara i nätverksform.

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.

By immersion in the situation of the food production today and a historical study of how past development has led us to this point, one goal of this essay is to discuss whether the current way of farming can be applied in a sustainable future. Another objective of the essay is to study the vision Vertical farming as an alternative approach, and to focus on different aspects of this phenomenon in order to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible.The paper, thus, seeks to broaden the views for alternative approaches regarding a well-established method which we often take for granted. The aim is also to initiate a discussion around the need to also take radical ideas in regard if we want to face the future in a sustainable manner. The method is a qualitative literary study where scientific articles and papers have been used to discuss the issues: why has the idea of Vertical farming arisen, what is Vertical farming and how is the Vertical Farm meant to operate? Does Vertical farming have a place in the sustainable city of the future? For a long time us humans lived as one with nature, in a symbiotic relationship in which we gave and took as a functioning part of an ecosystem.

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.

Syftet med och användningen av Kinda kanal har förändrats sedan kanalens tillkomst. Den kanal som det en gång i tiden planerades för, att transportera varor på och verka för ökad kommunikation har idag fått en annan betydelse. Kinda kanal är fortfarande en kommunikationsled men inte av samma karaktär som vid dess invigning år 1871. Idag fungerar kanalen som en turistbåtled och magnet för näringar som valt att etablera sig i dess närområde för att på ett eller annat sätt direkt eller indirekt dra nytta av närheten till kanalen. Det vackra natur- och kulturlandskapet som omger kanalen lockar varje år många besökare som valt att turista där.

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.