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- All Subjects: Social Conflict
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- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Protest has been both a practice of citizenship rights as well as a means of social pressure for change in the context of Mexico City's water system. This paper explores the role that citizen protest plays in the city's response to its water challenges. We use media reports of water protests to examine where protests happen and the causes associated with them. We analyze this information to illuminate socio-political issues associated with the city's water problems, such as political corruption, gentrification, as well as general power dynamics and lack of transparency between citizens, governments, and the private businesses which interact with them. We use text analysis of newspaper reports to analyze protest events in terms of the primary stimuli of water conflict, the areas within the city more prone to conflict, and the ways in which conflict and protest are used to initiate improved water management and to influence decision making to address water inequities. We found that water scarcity is the primary source of conflict, and that water scarcity is tied to new housing and commercial construction. These new constructions often disrupt water supplies and displace of minority or marginalized groups, which we denote as gentrification. The project demonstrates the intimate ties between inequities in housing and water in urban development. Key words: Conflict, protest, Mexico City, scarcity, new construction
ContributorsFlores, Shalae Alena (Author) / Eakin, Hallie C. (Thesis director) / Baeza-Castro, Andres (Committee member) / Lara-Valencia, Francisco (Committee member) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The Centralia Council, representative of a small Pennsylvania borough, arranged for an illegal controlled burn of the Centralia landfill in late May 1962. It happened the same way every year. As Memorial Day drew closer, the Council contracted volunteer firefighters to burn the top layer of refuse in the landfill in preparation for the day’s festivities, but intentionally burning landfills violated state law. A tangle of events over the years saw the “controlled” burn develop into an underground mine fire and then into a coal seam fire. Excavation costs lie far beyond the state’s budget, and Pennsylvania plans to let the fire burn until its natural end--anticipated at another 240 years. The tangled mess of poor decisions over 21 years begs one question: did the people or the fire kill Centralia?
This paper’s field of study falls into the cross section of geology and fire science, history, social conflict, public service ethics, and collaborative failures. I explore how a series of small choices snowballed into a full, government funded relocation effort after attempts at controlling the anthracite coal seam fire failed. Geology and fire science worked in tandem during the mine fire, influencing each other and complicating the firefighting efforts. The fire itself was a unique challenge. The history of Centralia played a large role in the government and community response efforts. I use the borough and regional history to contextualize the social conflict that divided Centralia. Social conflict impaired the community’s ability to unify and form a therapeutic community, and in turn, it damaged community-government relationships. The government agencies involved in the mine fire response did their own damage to community relationships by pursuing their own interests. Agencies worried about their brand image, and politicians worried about re-election. I study how these ethical failures impacted the situation. Finally, I look at a few examples of collaborative failures on behalf of the government and the community. Over the course of my research, it became apparent the people killed Centralia, not the fire.
This paper’s field of study falls into the cross section of geology and fire science, history, social conflict, public service ethics, and collaborative failures. I explore how a series of small choices snowballed into a full, government funded relocation effort after attempts at controlling the anthracite coal seam fire failed. Geology and fire science worked in tandem during the mine fire, influencing each other and complicating the firefighting efforts. The fire itself was a unique challenge. The history of Centralia played a large role in the government and community response efforts. I use the borough and regional history to contextualize the social conflict that divided Centralia. Social conflict impaired the community’s ability to unify and form a therapeutic community, and in turn, it damaged community-government relationships. The government agencies involved in the mine fire response did their own damage to community relationships by pursuing their own interests. Agencies worried about their brand image, and politicians worried about re-election. I study how these ethical failures impacted the situation. Finally, I look at a few examples of collaborative failures on behalf of the government and the community. Over the course of my research, it became apparent the people killed Centralia, not the fire.
ContributorsLandes, Jazmyne (Author) / Bentley, Margaretha (Thesis director) / Gutierrez, Veronica (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
TradeUp is a Windows Forms Application written in C# that connects users that want to trade textbooks. The application allows users to list textbooks that they would like to trade for other textbooks. Users can then send and receive negotiation requests. If accepted a new negotiation is opened. This means that the two parties will have access to each other’s contact information so that they can complete the trade in person.
TradeUp is primarily developed to cater to K-12 institutions. This means that a school would purchase a future commercial version of TradeUp. Once this is done a local database would be created in the school’s network and hosted on a server. This would allow for students to access the application by downloading it from the school’s website and would create a local network for the program to exclusively function in. This would allow for students in a school to trade textbooks amongst each other.
TradeUp is currently not available for purchase or for official use. The application is fully functional, and a version of the program can be downloaded in its totality from GitHub through the following link:
https://github.com/mgutie36/TradeUp
It is important to note that for the application to function on your laptop you must be utilizing a Windows machine. Furthermore, you must also utilize the create SQL statements found in “Create.txt” file located in the Bin/Debug folder of the solution in order to create a local database on your machine using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. Once that is completed you must replace the connection string in the solution with the connection string that was just created on your machine.
TradeUp is primarily developed to cater to K-12 institutions. This means that a school would purchase a future commercial version of TradeUp. Once this is done a local database would be created in the school’s network and hosted on a server. This would allow for students to access the application by downloading it from the school’s website and would create a local network for the program to exclusively function in. This would allow for students in a school to trade textbooks amongst each other.
TradeUp is currently not available for purchase or for official use. The application is fully functional, and a version of the program can be downloaded in its totality from GitHub through the following link:
https://github.com/mgutie36/TradeUp
It is important to note that for the application to function on your laptop you must be utilizing a Windows machine. Furthermore, you must also utilize the create SQL statements found in “Create.txt” file located in the Bin/Debug folder of the solution in order to create a local database on your machine using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. Once that is completed you must replace the connection string in the solution with the connection string that was just created on your machine.
ContributorsGutierrez Barnett, Marco Antonio (Author) / Christopher, Olsen (Thesis director) / Kathleen, Moser (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05