To understand the patterns and possible consequences of Latino suburbanization, it is necessary to comprehend the historical demographic processes which have resulted in this centralization (urbanization) and decentralization (intra-metropolitan dispersion). This paper will describe these processes, discuss their distinctiveness, and finally, consider the implications which point to a concurrent process for Latinos in Los Angeles of "traditional" suburbanization and new barrio formation.

Starting from the Mexican state´s and capitalism´s overall performance in democracy and development, this study addresses two types of social relationships that have shaped the country´s evolution over the twentieth century: those unleashed from the Constitution of 1917 to now, which are called the historical or postrevolutionary relationships, and those just rising at the turn to the twentieth- first century, named as the emerging or post-postrevolutionary relationships. Both relationships take place through a series of state and capitalist processes overlapping in the spheres of politics, production and policymaking.

The historical relationships are identified as two national productive restructurings, eight processes and two phenomena. The two productive restructurings are those undertaken by Presidents Cárdenas and De La Madrid in 1935 and 1983 respectfully. The eight processes are those of (i) presidentialism, (ii) corporatism, (iii) statism, (iv) democratism as well as (v) free-marketism, (vi) urban-regional-rural unbalances, (vii) technological lag, and (viii) human development. As for the two phenomena, they are arbitralism and developmentalism and work superimposed on the two restructurings and the eight processes, thereby controlling the configuration and action of the postrevolutionary stage. The emerging relationships are taking shape in the last years as a path-dependent succession of historical and current trends, oligarchic disputes, state/market incapacities and "failures", socioproductive struggles and sociopolitical movements, all of them profiling the evolution of domestic capitalism and regularizing the making of democracy and development in Mexico.

Based on both historical and emerging relationships, an exercise of interpretation, conceptualization and prospection of the national unfolding is made, in order to comprehend the dynamics of continuity and change underlying Mexico´s course. Then it is stated that the phenomena of arbitralism and developmentalism engendered a (postrevolutionary) Regime of Political Capitalism and Subcapitalism, which exhaustion is generating a (post-postrevolutionary) new Regime of Balancing Capitalism and Balanced Development. The transition between both regimes is profiling a pathway for a (national) political order of Demdevelopment as a superior dimension of achieving growth, wellbeing, governance and progress in Mexico. Tellingly, this pathway is endowed with a policymaking choice to undertake a demdevelopmental Third Restructuring of national capitalism and state, as a first re-organizational step towards demdevelopment.

Whether on foot, bike, bus, or train, women are often targets of street harassment such as catcalls, unwanted touching, or leering. When women are forced to navigate harassment in the city, it limits their ability to access public spaces with the same freedom and ease as their male counterparts. As a planning issue, examining street harassment reveals serious concerns about gender justice, and can deepen our understanding of gender-based safety issues in public. Drawing on feminist theory, this dissertation is motivated by the idea that public space is profoundly gendered with social, cultural, political, and economic consequences for women.

In this study I looks at the role of social media in meditating the relationship between virtual and physical public spaces. Building on ideas about gender, the right to the city, and public space, the purposes of this research are to 1) provide empirical evidence that street harassment is widespread and presents a safety and access issue of concern to urban planners, 2) to show how harassment affects daily lives, 3) to demonstrate the ways in which social media platform Twitter is used as a virtual public space for processing and sharing experiences in physical public space, and 4) to examine how women are using Twitter to resist harassment both as individuals and with anti-harassment organizations.

Using a case study approach, nearly 10,000 tweets about street harassment were collected based on keyword and hashtag, and analyzed as micro-narratives. Tweets were considered in relation to harassment-related events and media stories during the study period, and in context of anti-street harassment activism by individuals and organizations. The tweets were evaluated as part of a growing movement against street harassment using Bill Moyer’s framework on the stages of social movements.

The results of this research confirm that street harassment is part of women’s daily lives on city streets, and revealed that women also face harassment in the virtual world. However, women are resisting, and the findings show that social media data can offer an unparalleled window into understanding experiences with harassment, fears in public space, and strategies for resistance.

Baltimore is in the process of reducing its public housing stock by 43% over the next two years through the RAD program. In order to determine if there is a difference in neighborhood characteristics, data including census data, crime data, and health data for the public housing sites selected for RAD were compared to public housing sites with no treatment. Using spatial and statistical analysis, I found little statistically significant differences between RAD sites and the comparison sites. This could be due to the geographic unit used—perhaps a smaller unit would have been more appropriate—or it could be because public housing developments are overwhelmingly concentrated in only a few areas of the city or in areas with similar characteristics. One difference that was statistically significant was there were more children under the age of six with high blood lead levels for the comparison sites compared to RAD sites.

This dissertation examines the role that cities can play in human security with particular

emphasis on urban water systems. Global environmental change and shifting

geopolitical alliances are increasing the vulnerability of individuals and communities. In

the absence of enforced human rights protections at international and national levels,

cities have agency to ensure that urban spaces are contributing to human security,

ensuring that basic needs of individuals are prioritized including water, food, and

shelter, as well as medical and legal attention. However, urban water systems, as the

literal lifeblood of cities, are the focus of this research.

Urban water systems across the globe are transitioning, undergoing fundamental

change. This study first examines transition in two particular cities, in order to

understand the conditions, barriers and opportunities of change. A human security

analysis follows, drawing on these findings as well as that of a third city. Made up of

three discrete papers, the first two articles are case studies in which the evolution of the urban water system as well as its current and future transitions are constructed through

participant observation and interviews with primary actors within each city, including

Athens, Greece and Los Angeles, U.S. In the third paper, these findings as well as

research in Istanbul, Turkey are garnered to inform a human security analysis of urban

water systems, especially those in the semi-arid Mediterranean climate region.

While each city has a unique profile with distinct social, economic, political and

environmental characteristics, some drivers of change are unsurprisingly shared

including global environmental change and aging infrastructure. Findings however

reveal another shared vulnerability with deep human security implications: rising

numbers of urban inhabitants that are without permanent housing. And while the drivers

of homelessness vary across and within the cities studied, there are shared connections

to global trends of income inequality, climate change and political instability. Analysis

reveals a lack of public water in the cities of interest, a particular concern in dry

Mediterranean and arid climates. Recommendations are made for re-introducing public

water into the modern city as an assertion of human security.

Mexico’s Green Mortgage Program (GMP) is the largest and fastest growing effort to increase residential energy-efficiency in low-income households in the world. Since its implementation in 2011, it has delivered more than three million dwellings with energy-efficient appliances to the low-income sector in Mexico. In this dissertation, the GMP serves as a case study to analyze energy efficiency as an instrument to improve quality of life of low-income neighborhoods. Using a multiple benefits framework, I explore the outcomes of the GMP beyond the reduction of electricity consumption. This is the first study that evaluates the effects of energy policy as an instrument to promote energy efficiency and an improvement of living conditions of the largest and fastest growing sector of the population of developing countries.

This dissertation is divided into two major sections: The first part tests the hypothesis that dwellings built through the GMP use less electricity than traditional households. I use bi-monthly utility bills to compare energy consumption between two GMP and two traditional neighborhoods. I find no statistically significant difference between neighborhoods, suggesting that the GMP is not delivering the expected results.

The second part explores how the GMP has improved the living conditions of people participating in the program. I compare different participation levels among members of the GMP and the traditional households in three main activities: recreation, skill-building, and additional educational activities. The hypothesis is that a reduction in electricity usage will reduce utility payment, allowing households to access new capacity-building opportunities. The analysis of survey responses shows no statistically significant difference between the living conditions of both groups, demonstrating that the GMP has had no effect on the living conditions of its inhabitants.

I conclude that the GMP requires a considerable review and transformation so it can deliver the expected results, or participation in the program must become optional. Additionally, governments of developing countries must reconsider the overall effects of climate change related policies, particularly those oriented at the lower-income sector of society.

For the last thirty years, the City of Los Angeles has aggressively employed the use of civil gang injunctions (CGIs) in efforts to create safe and low-crime neighborhoods. Gang injunctions are spatial crime control mechanisms that prohibit alleged gang members and their associates from engaging in mundane activities, including driving, standing, sitting, walking, gathering, or appearing with suspected gang members in specific and defined geographic areas (“safety zone”). Gang injunctions name and remove alleged gang members from neighborhoods under the premise that this removal will reduce gang violence and overall crime. The literature on civil gang injunctions generally focuses on their impact on crime reduction. However, research regarding the indirect impact of civil gang injunction on youth living in neighborhoods with injunctions is limited. The present study examines the influence gang injunctions have on the well-being of youth, specifically Youth of Color . This study investigates how neighborhoods that employ spatial policies, like gang injunctions, influence the sense of belonging, safety, and educational aspirations for Youth of Color. By applying a spatial and racial conceptual framework, the theory of racial space, this study explores the interplay of space and race through gang injunctions employed in Los Angeles and their influence on the success and well-being of Youth of Color. The main data source for this study is the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhoods Survey-1 (LA FANS) a longitudinal study of neighborhoods and households by the RAND Corporation and UCLA (Rand/L.A. FANS, 2011). L.A. FANS-1 includes data on children, families, and neighborhoods from 2000-2002. For this study, L.A. FANS-1 is utilized to measure a youth’s sense of belonging, safety, and educational attainment. In addition, census and geographic data are used to measure neighborhood with civil gang injunctions. Quantitative analyses reveal that neighborhoods that enforce the practice of gang injunctions influence a youth’s sense of safety predominantly in neighborhoods with a large presence of Youth of Color. The findings of my dissertation reveal that youth who live in areas with CGIs, are more likely to report feeling unsafe in their neighborhood compared to youth who live in neighborhoods with no CGIs. Additionally, Latino and Black youth are more likely to feel unsafe in their neighborhoods compared to their White counterparts. These results suggest that while the spatial and racial space theoretical framework can explain part of the relationship between youth and gang injunctions, it cannot clearly demonstrate other associations. This study confirms that additional quantitative research, with additional measurements describing youth’s perceptions and qualitative research interviewing youth is critical to further understand the influence and impact of gang injunctions on a youth’s overall wellbeing.

This dissertation brings together three independent essays that employ Mexican and U.S. Census data to explain the migration of Mexicans, while moving toward a conceptual integration of alternative theoretical traditions. To address internal migration within Mexico, essay 1 utilizes a locational choice model to test the self-selection hypothesis of the human capital model of migration, finding that as expected, Mexican internal migrants are sensitive to regional variations in returns to skill. The macro-level results of essay 1 also suggest that there is an over-supply of more

iii

highly educated people in Mexico’s richer regions, as well as an over-supply of less educated people in poorer regions. This imbalance caused richer regions to export many highly skilled individuals to poorer regions and vice versa. To address the international migration of Mexicans, essays 2 and 3 test Light’s network saturation and deflection theories, using empirical data to ascertain whether/how well their predictions can explain the dispersion of Mexican immigrants away from traditional settlement states and toward new settlement states. Performing wage- and human-capital analyses as well and a settlement choice analysis, the findings of essays 2 and 3 suggest that the economic and political factors predicted by these theories did contribute to this dispersion. Essay 2 finds that Mexicans earned less, paid higher rents, and had lower returns to skill where Mexicans were more densely settled; and essay 3 finds that Mexicans were less likely to settle in states that did implement above-federal minimum wages, thereby presumably reducing the employment opportunities of Mexican immigrants there. Additionally, the results of essays 2 and 3 suggest that the dispersion of Mexican immigrants to non-prime U.S. states is consistent with the expectation of the self-selection hypothesis that Mexican international migrants are likewise sensitive to regional variations in returns to skill. The results of all three essays, thus, support the related and compatible theories tested, and looking at these theories together, when thinking about the behavior, over time, of large, network-driven migration flows in response to changing economic and political circumstances may be able to contribute to a future theoretical reconciliation at a higher unity.