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- All Subjects: Santa Cruz River Watershed (Ariz. and Mexico)
- All Subjects: Science and technology
- Creators: Richter, Jennifer
- Creators: Garcia, Lucero
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
Mexico City has an ongoing air pollution issue that negatively affects its citizens and surroundings with current structural disconnections preventing the city from improving its overall air quality. Thematic methodological analysis reveals current obstacles and barriers, as well as variables contributing to this persistent problem. A historical background reveals current programs and policies implemented to improve Mexico’s City air quality. Mexico City’s current systems, infrastructure, and policies are inadequate and ineffective. There is a lack of appropriate regulation on other modes of transportation, and the current government system fails to identify how the class disparity in the city and lack of adequate education are contributing to this ongoing problem. Education and adequate public awareness can potentially aid the fight against air pollution in the Metropolitan City.
ContributorsGarcia, Lucero (Author) / Duarte, Marisa E. (Thesis advisor) / Arzubiaga, Angela (Committee member) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The Santa Cruz River Basin shared by Northern Sonora and Southern Arizona is one example of transboundary water resources in the borderlands region that accurately portrays the complexities of binational management of common pool resources, such as water. Industrialization fueled by trade liberalization has resulted in migration to and urbanization along the border, which have created human rights issues with the lack of water and sanitation, groundwater overdraft of the shared aquifers, and contamination of these scarce resources. Effluent from wastewater treatment plants continues to play increasingly important roles in the region, the use of which has been a source of tension between the two countries. Contributing to these tensions are the strains on binational relations created by border militarization and SB 1070. A shift in water management strategies to increase pubic participation within decision-making, increase the flexibility of the water systems, and increase cross-border collaboration is needed to ensure human and ecological sustainability in the Santa Cruz River Basin. By incorporating direct communication and local capacity as per common pool resource theory, recognizing the connections and implications of management actions through socio-ecological systems understanding, and promoting the organic drivers of change through ecologies of agents, just and vigorous futures can be envisioned and advanced.
ContributorsEppehimer, Drew (Author) / Haglund, LaDawn (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Smith, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Some say that science fiction becomes science. If science fiction eventually becomes science and technology, then US-American science and technology surrounding robots are rooted in white supremacy. Scholarship has previously highlighted the way that films and stories about robots are exclusionary towards Black people and persons of color. These texts, while aptly making the connection between race, Blackness, and technology, do not sufficiently address the embedded design of anti-Blackness in cultural artifacts in the early twentieth century and the anti-Black logics that, to this day, continue to inform how stories about robots are told. Further, these analyses do not consider the connection between cultural artifacts and the material development of emerging technologies; how these embedded racist narratives drive and shape how the technologies are then constructed. In this dissertation, I aim to link how anti-Black scientific popular culture has informed academic scholarship and engineering related to robots in the United States. Stories are an inherently spatial project. Stories about robots are a spatial project intended to create “Cartographies of Subordination.” I contend from 1922 to 1942, US-American robots were mapped into and onto the world; in just twenty short years, I argue a Cartography of Subordination was established. I apply a spatial lens to critique the impact of embedding stories about robots with anti-Blackness. These stories would develop into narratives with material consequences and maintain lasting ties and allegiance to a world invested in white supremacy. I outline how popular culture and stories are transfigured into narratives that have a direct impact on how futures are built. I expose the loop between popular culture and scholarship to unmask how research and development in robotics are based on white-informed futures. My dissertation makes an original geographical contribution to the fields of Human and Cultural Geography by asserting that narrative and popular culture about robots serves to remake Cartographies of Subordination in both science fiction and science and technology broadly. If science fiction has the potential to become real scientific outcomes, I connect culture, geography, and legacies of power in an otherwise overlooked space.
ContributorsMayberry, Nicole K. (Author) / Maynard, Andrew (Thesis advisor) / Shabazz, Rashad (Thesis advisor) / Ore, Ersula (Committee member) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022