In the studies of public space redevelopment, property ownership has been a central field that attracts scholars’ attention. However, the term “privatization” is usually used as a stand-in for a more general process of exclusion without an examination of the nature of property itself. While taking the universality of law for granted, few studies show how that universality is built out of particular spaces and particular times, and thus hardly explain the existence of counterexamples.

This dissertation argues that the counterexamples and theoretical inconsistencies are a theoretical gap in current public space privatization studies; this gap is created by the metaphorical understanding of public space ownership. This dissertation comprehensively answers how property transfer shapes the production of public space. It emphasizes the significance of social and historical contexts in understanding the meaning of property ownership. It follows the theoretical framework of Lefebvre and Pierson as well as Lefebvre’s methodology of spatial dialectic.

The case in this dissertation is the history of Patriots Park, Phoenix, Arizona from 1976 to 2007. Public records, archives and governmental plans, historical newspapers and online essays, second-hand interviews, speech transcripts and transcripts of interviews are four main sources of this dissertation. This dissertation develops a new framework to understand the meaning of public space ownership through both the initial construction of planning ideology and the spatial evolution through practice and perception, which can more comprehensively and consistently interpret the different outcomes of different public space property transfer.

This dissertation is an exploratory study that examined the differences in perceptions about supply chain management strategy, topics, tools, and techniques between procurement professionals in public and private sector organizations. This was accomplished through a survey of procurement professionals in a Fortune 500 company and a municipality in Arizona. The data were analyzed to understand how perceptions of supply chain management differed within this sample and whether the differences in perceptions were associated with formal education levels. Key findings indicate that for this or similar samples, public procurement respondents viewed their organizations' approach to supply chain management as a narrow function within purchasing while private sector respondents viewed their organization's approach to supply chain management as a strategic purchasing perspective that requires the coordination of cross functional areas. Second, public procurement respondents reported consistent and statistically significant lower levels of formal education than private sector respondents. Third, the supply chain management topics, tools, and techniques seem to be more important to private sector respondents than the public sector respondents. Finally, Respondents in both sectors recognize the importance of ethics and ethical behavior as an essential part of supply chain management.