http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75629 2026-06-15T08:21:40Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75752 Title: Urban Renewal through Social Capital Building: The “New” Urban Renewal Strategy? Authors: Lyons, Lucy Abstract: Many neoliberal urban planners claim that spurring gentrification in a city is the only way to enact urban renewal. This is problematic, however, because gentrification poses an active threat to democracy in cities. This paper investigates the possibility of renewing cities in an alternative, less damaging way: through building social capital. It uses two examples from Berlin, Germany, of interventions that have spurred social capital—and, in turn, revived urban neighborhoods—to reveal realistic models for opposing state-sanctioned neoliberal gentrification. The concluding argument is that there are other, more democratic ways to make our cities better places, which urban planners must investigate with urgency. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75750 Title: Vivir Bien: Tracing the Ethos of Plural Progress in Bolivia Authors: Klein, Kirra Abstract: In thirteen years, Bolivia went from the poorest country in South America to providing a model for inclusive sustainable development and post-colonial nation-building. Today, the world is suffering increasing political polarity, climate change, and an enduring global socioeconomic divide, stemming from imperialism. I looked to Bolivia to find an alternate mode of development that challenged the anthropocentric approach to power and took a non-prescriptive, cooperative approach to building a path forward. I explored three revolutions, examining their motivating ideologies and their relative successes. I studied primary historical and philosophical texts, and I undertook fieldwork in Bolivia, conducting surveys and interviews with individuals across identities and ideologies. The Andean collectivist tradition guided Bolivia through three iterative revolutions. For each, it cultivated a shared (1) motivation for rebellion, (2) rhetoric, (3) body of cultural commonality, and (4) notion of effective development. The most successful of these revolutions was the 2000-2005 political movement which combined Andean collectivism with the country's national popular tradition. The post-revolutionary government found success in extending the Andean ethos, developing a sustainable national project by unifying diverse peoples on a common path: an incremental, adaptive, and collaborative revolution guided by vivir bien. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75753 Title: From Huang to Huynh and Back Again: Traversing the Hyphen Between Chinese-Vietnamese Identity Authors: Mac, Lani Abstract: Among the 1.6 million individuals who left Vietnam in the Indochina Refugee Crisis, hoa people, ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, were resettled throughout North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Arriving in these new locations, the ethnic Chinese developed “twice-migration backgrounds.” Focusing on either the Vietnamese diaspora or Chinese migration, the present literature does not adequately address the hybridity of Chinese-Vietnamese identity. Exercising an interdisciplinary approach, I combine narrative with theoretical discourse and draw from my family’s migration story, existing research on ethnic identity among Chinese-Vietnamese in southern California, and literature on Chinese in present-day Vietnam. By framing identity as a continuous practice that is carried out in contexts of language, political history, and social environment, I address how first- and second-generation ChineseVietnamese Americans experience ethnic identity and suggest an expanded understanding of Chinese-Vietnamese identity that is fluid rather than static. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75751 Title: The Philosophies of the Aesthetic Sublime Authors: Lester, Max Abstract: This article explores the Classical and Romantic philosophical theories of the sublime in the works of Longinus, Hegel, Burke, and Kant using architectural and art historical elements as a means of analysis. In studying these philosophers’ definitions of the sublime, from mathematical perfection to the ineffable chaos of nature, the sublime is seen to stem from various visual catalysts. While the sublime may not be caused by the same visual stimulus, the emotion of the sublime appears universal. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z