This dissertation traces an 'alternative topography' of San Francisco, in which the roles of past and current judicial status, locations of key resources, economic strategies, the locations of usable public spaces, and recent and current relationships with others have become the crucial contours shaping the movements and practices of daily life for young, predominantly homeless people who inject drugs in San Francisco in the period 2003-2008.

The project utilized qualitative and quantitative interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes, historical and contemporary documents, and secondary data sources such as land use maps and census data. These data were analyzed using a grounded theory/situational analysis approach.

Substantiative findings include: how young homeless people sought to make money heavily shaped the ways they related to different parts of the city and how they moved between them, with substantial implications for public health interventions attempting to target this population; and that how people 'know' and 'create' places, and the processes by which those understandings are contested likewise heavily impact they ways people move through built environments, likewise with substantial implications for public health.

Full text at http://mouldypumpkin.com/dissertation/2009_Davidson.pdf