Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

An Interpretive Plan Guide For Wilderness Park In Lincoln, Nebraska, Rachel J. Ward

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

Wilderness Park, located in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a public park of unique ecological and historical value to the city of Lincoln and to the surrounding region. The natural and historical features of the park present an opportunity to communicate environmental and historical topics that are relevant on local, national, and global levels, as well as inspire a lively sense of pride in the community. The problem is that many topics relevant to Wilderness Park are not currently being interpreted at the park, and that there are relatively few interpretive resources available to park visitors.

The purpose of this project …

Creative Placemaking: A Case Study Exploration Of How Creative Economy Strategies Can Provide Potential Opportunities For Revitalization In Downtown Chicopee, Ma, Laura Selmani

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Chicopee, a former industrial center in western Massachusetts, is experiencing a stagnant economy, high vacancy and a steady loss of population. City of Chicopee wants to increase downtown visibility and bolster its economy by attracting in the area people constituent of creative class. This research represents an attempt to identify creative strategies to develop the neglected downtown of Chicopee. After more than a century of economic blight, vacancy and declining population, the city wants to research and exploit the potential of arts and culture as means to a physical, social and economic revivification of its downtown.

A key aim of …

Recapturing Urban Space: An Inhabited Bridge In Nashville, Tennessee, Benjamin Smith Culbertson

Masters Theses

Density. A word used in the description of many large cities. It is how so many people can fit into a relatively compact area and still operate efficiently. Density, used as a tool to craft cities can generate spectacular moments. Several centuries ago, one of these moments was the inhabited bridge. It provided the continuity of the urban fabric by linking areas that were separated by rivers and other natural boundaries. They were nodes in the city that housed commerce, social activity, and residences. However, as cities grew to be more globally connected hubs, the needs of the pedestrian fell …

Carbon-Neutral Design Guidelines For Medium Density Urban Areas In Warm-Humid And Cool-Dry Climates, Jennifer Delane Stewart

Masters Theses

This thesis combines Architecture 2030’s carbon-neutral performance targets with the SmartCode transect-based development principles, to generate guidelines for design of medium-density carbon-neutral districts. The topic examines these guidelines in medium density planned and built sites (transect types T4, General Urban Zone, and T5, Urban Center Zone) in representative cities within a cool-dry climate (IECC climate zone 5B, Denver) and a warm-humid climate (IECC climate zone 3A, Atlanta). The thesis assumes that a carbon-neutral district is more effective and potentially easier to achieve than designing independent carbon-neutral urban buildings. Within an urban context, it is now possible to connect buildings to …

Breaking The Eviction Cycle: Rethinking Design In An Urban Homeless Campsite, Lauren R. Dunn

Masters Theses

In Knoxville, TN, in an area of decaying rail-based industry close to a cluster of homeless services, people experiencing homelessness, who cannot or will not use the shelter system, generate outdoor campsites. Every 6 or 8 months, local authorities evict the campers due to complaints of trash accumulation or disturbances. The homeless campers then move to new locations, and the cycle begins anew. Homeless service providers and policy makers discuss what to do about the perceived problem, but they do not condone the urban campsites or ask the campers what they need to improve their situations.

This is a “wicked …

Deep Surface: Engaging The Terra Viscus, Amanda Nicole Gann

Masters Theses

Two hundred and forty-six acres along the eastern edge of downtown Memphis are labeled as “Shaded Zone X” on FEMA flood insurance maps. This is an area “protected by the levees” but subject to flood during large storm events. Unprepared for the potential flood, the people within this area feel safe behind the static levee wall. If storms worsen as predicted and settlement continues to sprawl increasing impervious surfaces of the Mississippi River Basin, the area within Shaded Zone X and the people who occupy it will be in danger.

Historically, storm water In Zone X drained into the Gayoso …

Urban Economics Of The Ideal City, William Taylor Brantley

Masters Theses

Infrastructure influences both depictions of the ideal city and economic models predicting urban growth. As the common variable, infrastructure investments could promote ideal city values within free market economies.

To preserve the countryside and natural lands infrastructure investments must encourage concentrated growth in cities. The city and countryside are codependent. An abstraction between the two zones will lead to the demise of both the city and the countryside. New urban infrastructure should relate to public spaces creating economic, cultural, and social value in dense development. This value is achieved by generating a multiplicity of connections, program, and places within the …

Measuring The Adoption Of Development Management Policies As An Instrument Of Disaster Mitigation Toward Resilient Coastal Communities In Florida, Asmaul Husna

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

Coastal hazards have been known as the scariest group of hazards, monsters that threaten 39% of the nation population and in less than 10 years. With the current population growth, the monsters will harm almost half of the nation’s population (45% to be exact) and uncountable properties placed at only 17% of land area of the country. The threat of coastal hazards has never been low, but it keeps rising because no human being in this world can prevent, stop, contain or avoid the hazards from happening. But, there always are ways to lower the risk and the loss with …

Emergent Opportunities: Urban Design In Small Town Appalachia, Phillip Geiman

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at urban design within small town Appalachia and its role in low density and low resource communities.

Small towns are facing a critical juncture in this point in their history. As most areas transition from a heavy depend acne on industrial based economy to an uncertain post-industrial, they face challenges unique to rural areas. Specifically, this thesis looks at “urban design” in distinctly non-urban areas and seeks to answer the question of what is the function and what is the role of design at such a large (urban) scale.

The idea is that what distinguishes small towns …

Urban[E] Agriculture Developing An Architecture That Supports Hyper-Localized Agriculture In The Urban Context, Jason Michael Cole

Masters Theses

This thesis contains both the outline of the modern day problem of food deserts and nutritional injustice in urban areas, as well as my proposed solution for combatting both of those issues. Through research, investigation, experimentation and synthesis of design, I have put forth my thoughts and ideas on how we as a community can work together to shape our own nutritional destiny in the urban environment.

Make A Delirious Noise: Improvising Urbanism In New Orleans, Louisiana, Jason Michael Stark

Masters Theses

Decades of poor urban design choices and a lack of attention to the characteristics of communities have played prominent roles in the fracturing of urban communities and the relegation of those without means to the edges of the urban fabric: poverty and powerlessness abetted by geographic location. Rather than “restitching” the urban whole back together, I argue that progress can be made through the generation of local nodes of identity: a polynucleated urban condition. The development of spaces to magnify community identity with respect to localized characteristics produces a community focus to replace the unattainable (for those without means) city …

Refocusing Roles ...A Look At Refocusing Programmatic Emphasis From Living Units To Amenity Spaces In Apartment Living, Laura Mae Kneebone

Masters Theses

As growth within cities increase, so does the demand for living options within the city context. A cultural shift is drawing more individuals and families back into the heart of cities instead of fleeing to the outskirts of surrounding highway towns.

This increase in desire for city living has raised issues surrounding the lack of living options within the city that may accommodate those needing and/or seeking affordable living options. Micro-unit apartment housing has become the trending answer to this need, providing compact affordable living spaces within the core of a city. Micro-unit apartments can be currently found in most …

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …

Place And Crowdfunding: An Examination Of Two Distressed Cities, Brenna Elrod

Masters Theses

Crowdfunding is a relatively new form of funding made possible by Web 2.0. This study examines community-based projects made possible through the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. Projects were compiled that were successfully funded between the dates of April 28, 2009 and July 26, 2012. These projects were collected for all cities listed on the site in the United States. Subsequently they were compared across three measures: raw numbers of projects, normalized city population, and against the creative class index of Richard Florida. Using these measures, Detroit and New Orleans emerged as cities for further in depth analysis. Interviews with initiators in …

Working At The Water's Edge: Reconnecting The People Of Charleston With The Water, Maria Ann Fox

Masters Theses

Water is a chemical compound fundamental to life. When many people first think of water, it is the water used for everyday activities and drinking that may come to mind. What is frequently overlooked is the fact that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water and 96.5% of Earth’s water is found in oceans and seas (U.S. Geological Survey). What may not be as clear is the importance of these bodies of water to the surrounding towns and cities.

Since it’s founding in 1670, Charleston, South Carolina has always had a strong relationship with the water. One could …

Help-Yourself City: Market-Driven Planning And D.I.Y. Responses In Making The “Neoliberal” Streetscape, Gordon Douglas

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

Since the 1970s, the consequences of global economic restructuring and the rise of free-market “neoliberal” ideologies in governance have been visible in most every arena of social life, but are perhaps nowhere more visible than in urban space. The humble bus stop, a basic element of local transit service, is today often turned over in large part to private advertising interests and in the process has become both an indicator of neglect and a symbol of the commodification of public space. This paper examines such physical manifestations of neoliberal planning policy in the urban streetscape – spatial neglect and inequality …

2014-07-09; Letter; Bereavement Minnie Bester, Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church

Letters

No abstract provided.

Bear River Pipeline Concept Report Volume 2, Bowen, Collins & Associates, Hdr Engineering

Water

No abstract provided.

Bear River Pipeline Concept Report Volume 1, Bowen, Collins & Associates, Hdr Engineering

Water

No abstract provided.

Historic Faubourg Tremé Association Mapping & Analysis, Derreck Blake Deason

Derreck Blake Deason

The "Historic Faubourg Tremé Association Mapping & Analysis" is a continuation of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) work started with WhoData.org in spring 2014. The mapping of on-the-ground property conditions with City designated blight provides the HFTA Land Use Committee with additional resources to develop and deploy plans to revitalize the whole of Tremé. The maps and analysis were completed by the University of New Orleans Department of Planning & Urban Studies students in MURP 4081/5081 Information Technology for the Planning Profession.