Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Frequency Of Social Interaction, Social Cohesion, Age, And The Built Environment On Walking, Gretchen Allison Luhr

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore, through a social ecological framework, the multifaceted effects of the neighborhood environment by investigating how dimensions of both the built environment and the neighborhood social context may interact to influence walking. Aesthetics, land use mix, crime, and pedestrian infrastructure were considered with respect to built environment walkability, and the neighborhood social context was conceptualized using measures of both social cohesion and social interaction with neighbors. This research used data from an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded study of 748 adults (18 years of age and older) residing in the Lents neighborhood in Portland, …

Webinar: State-Wide Pedestrian And Bicycle Miles Traveled: Can We Estimate It?, Krista Nordback

TREC Webinar Series

Heard of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT)? Wouldn’t it be great to know the corresponding value for walking and cycling?

This webinar discusses options for estimating the miles people walk and bicycle on the state-wide level, by investigating the practical considerations of trying to compute these values for one study state.

What strategies can be used, and what data sources do these require?

How do these strategies compare?

How do PMT/BMT estimates vary based on data?

Find out what researchers found and what obstacles they encountered when they tried to estimate bicycle and pedestrian miles traveled in the State of Washington.

Pricing And Reliability Enhancements In The San Diego Activity-Based Travel Model, Joel Freedman

PSU Transportation Seminars

The estimation of demand for priced highway lanes is becoming increasingly important to agencies seeking to improve mobility and find alternative revenue sources for the provision of transportation infrastructure.

However, many modeling tools fall short of what is required for robust estimates of demand with respect to toll and managed lanes in two key areas:

• The value-of-time is often aggregate and not consistently defined throughout the model system, and
• The reliability of transport infrastructure is rarely taken into account.

This presentation describes an effort which implemented recommendations of the Strategic Highway Research Program C04 and L03\L04 tracks on pricing and …

Citizen-Led Urban Agriculture And The Politics Of Spatial Reappropriation In Montreal, Quebec, Claire Emmanuelle Bach

Dissertations and Theses

Urban Agriculture (UA) has been practiced in Montreal, Quebec for well over a century. In the last five years or so, a renewed enthusiasm for UA has manifested itself in the form of citizen-led UA projects. The latter are often established in residual spaces, from vacant lots to sidewalks, and alleyways. These more spontaneous and informal UA practices point to a shift in how urban inhabitants perceive and use urban space. Through a case study of informal UA projects in Montreal, QC, this work brings attention to the dynamics surrounding the establishment of citizen-led UA projects, paying special attention to …

Winds Of Change? Exploring Climate Change-Driven Migration And Related Impacts In The Pacific Northwest, Lara Whitely Binder, Jason R. Jurjevich

Publications, Reports and Presentations

Climate change is expected to have significant impacts on the Pacific Northwest’s communities, economy, and natural systems. These impacts – which include reductions in summer water supply, the potential for more winter flooding and forest fires, threats to public health, and damage to coastal infrastructure due to sea level rise – will require changes in how communities evaluate, manage, and mitigate environmental risks.

Despite these challenges, some have suggested that the region may be relatively well off compared to other areas of the U.S. and the world. This has led to growing speculation by the media, bloggers, and the public …

The Media Industry In Oregon: Incentive And Impact Analysis, Mike Paruszkiewicz, Emma Willingham, Peter Hulseman

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

Oregon’s media industries have become increasingly well-known over the last several years, thanks in large part to successful feature length films and television series produced in the state. It is widely known that such productions offer visibility, tourism interest, and a boost to local merchants during their visits. More economically important, but less immediately obvious, are the impacts of a home grown industry of professionals and businesses that thrive in regions able to maintain a reliable stream of production activity. Numerous states now offer incentives to visiting media productions, some focused on big-ticket features and visiting series. In Oregon, the …

Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership: Economic Impact Analysis December 2016 Update, Hieu Nguyen, Emma Willingham, Peter Hulseman

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), founded in 1988, is a network of non-profit agencies staffed by industry professionals and consultants. Historically, MEP has sought to increase the competitiveness of small to mid-size enterprises (which as a group comprise 99% of all U.S. manufacturing firms) by providing expert guidance and access to resources. In recent years, the severe economic recession sparked increased interest in the strength of the manufacturing sector, due to its longtime status as one of the major drivers of the domestic economy. Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP), the Oregon branch of MEP, works to provide data-driven analysis …

Safety Effectiveness Of Pedestrian Crossing Enhancements, Christopher M. Monsere, Miguel Figliozzi, Sirisha Kothuri, Ali Razmpa, Daniel R. Hazel

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the last decade, the Oregon DOT and other agencies have systematically implemented many pedestrian crossing enhancements (PCEs) across the state. This study explored the safety performance of these enhanced crossing in Oregon. Detailed data were collected on 191 crossings. Supplemental data items included crossing location information, route characteristics, surrounding land use and crossing enhancement descriptions. Pedestrian volume at the crossing locations was a highly desirable but unavailable data element. To characterize pedestrian activity, a method was developed to estimate ranges for pedestrian crosswalk activity levels based on the land use classification at the census block level and the presence …

Realistic Or Utopian? Coordinating Transit And Land Use To Achieve Equitable Transit-Oriented Development, Ian Carlton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Equitable transit-oriented development (E-TOD)—the prioritization of social equity as an outcome of TOD implementation—has become a U.S. DOT policy stance, an objective of many other government bodies, and part of many NGOs' missions. But is it feasible to coordinate transit and land use in ways that allow us to achieve these goals, or is this a classic example of a wicked problem?

This talk will use Portland as a case study to explore some of the internal contradictions inherent in E-TOD goals, the systemic challenges that must be considered, and glimmers of hope for delivering E-TOD. Transportation and land use …

Webinar: The Association Between Light Rail Transit, Streetcars And Bus Rapid Transit On Jobs, People And Rents, Arthur C. Nelson

TREC Webinar Series

What are the job, residential development and market rent outcomes of Light Rail Transit (LRT), Streetcar Transit (SCT) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)?

LRT, SCR and BRT investments are spreading rapidly across the country but there is scant evidence of their effect on where people work and live, and effects on market rents as an indicator of value. This webinar will summarize several years of NITC-sponsored research into development outcomes associated with these transit investments. The webinar will be led by NITC researcher Arthur C. Nelson who was the principal investigator of two projects: Do TODs Make a Difference? and …

Lessons From The Development Of A Guidebook On Pedestrian And Bicycle Connections To Transit, Nathan Mcneil, Allison Boyce Duncan, Drew Devitis

PSU Transportation Seminars

To improve safety and increase transit use, transit agencies and the jurisdictions they serve have to approach transit service as door-to-door not just stop-to-stop.

Walking and bicycling are key modes for transit access.

Working with the Federal Transit Administration, a team from Portland State University developed a guidebook on improving pedestrian and bicycle access to transit (forthcoming). As part of the guidebook process, the PSU team conducted case studies on best practices of recent efforts in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

This presentation will cover key lessons from the case studies, along with an overview of the guidebook.

Portland Green Loop Economic Analysis, Jenny H. Liu

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

The Portland “Green Loop” is a proposed 6-mile linear open space running through the heart of the city, connecting existing and new open spaces, parks, gathering areas, and walking and biking pathways. As envisioned, the Green Loop concept requires significant infrastructure investments, and would result in both short-term and long-term impacts on transportation (for all travel modes), environment and economic development. The goal of this project is to characterize, quantify and analyze these costs, benefits and impacts, particularly focusing on case studies of similar infrastructure investments in active transportation and analyses of property value impacts, economic (input-output) impacts and preliminary …

Smart Cities: Improving The Roadside Environment With Distributed Sensor Systems, Christine M. Kendrick

PSU Transportation Seminars

The City of Portland is exploring how distributed "Internet of Things" (IoT) sensor systems can be used to improve the available data that is usable by city engineers, planners, and the public to help inform transportation operations, enable assessments of public health and equity, advance Portland’s Climate Action Plan goals, and create opportunities for economic development and civic engagement.

The City is currently looking at how low-cost air quality sensors can be used to improve and increase real-time understanding of transportation-related pollutants. However, the state of low-cost air quality sensor technology is not usable off the shelf due to sensitivity …

Webinar: Transit Signal Priority Evaluation And Performance Measures, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Webinar Series

Transit signal priority (TSP) can reduce transit delay at signalized intersections by making phasing adjustments. TSP is a relatively inexpensive tool to provide faster and more reliable transit service. This webinar addresses TSP real-word performance measures as well as data integration and evaluation challenges. Results of the TSP evaluation in an arterial corridor in Portland, Oregon indicate that a timely and effective TSP system requires a high degree of sophistication, monitoring, and maintenance. TSP timing is crucial to reduce transit delay.

Key takeaways include: performance measures, methodology, analysis of early green and red extension pros and cons, novel real-world results.

Planning Transportation For Recreational Areas, Anne Dunning

PSU Transportation Seminars

Population growth and increased accessibility of formerly remote destinations have created new needs for planning mobility to and within recreational areas.

Transportation planners studying recreational travel face unusual travel-demand peaks, travelers who are often unfamiliar with their surroundings, and a uniquely important need for traveler and community communication. Planners must consider what characteristics of an individual area make it attractive to visitors, as well as local goals for the special resources of the area.

This presentation will characterize unique facets of mobility in recreational areas, and pose approaches to planning transportation systems to serve them.

Can Location Value Capture Pay For Transit? Organizational Challenges Of Transforming Theory Into Practice, Deborah Salon

PSU Transportation Seminars

Successful public transit systems increase the value of locations they serve. Capturing this location value to help fund transit is often sensible, but challenging.

This presentation will define location value capture, and synthesize lessons learned from six European and North American transit agencies that have experience with location value capture funding.

The opportunities for and barriers to implementing location value capture fall into three categories: (1) agency institutional authority, (2) agency organizational mission, and (3) public support for transit.

When any of these factors is incompatible with a location value capture strategy, implementation becomes difficult. In four of the cases …

The Bridge And The City, Daniel Biau

PSU Transportation Seminars

Daniel Biau, international consultant, civil engineer and author of The Bridge and the City: A Universal Love Story, will share insights on urbanization and bridges.

Across countries and centuries, the session will explore a fundamental social and demographic change: the emergence of a planet of towns and cities. But it will look at this densification of human and economic relations through a specific lens, the increased connectivity triggered by strategic urban bridges.

As places of encounters and exchanges, bridges have played a major role in the urbanization of our planet. With reference to twenty-four world cities, the presentation will …

Coming Of Age At The End Of Nature: A Generation Faces Living On A Changed Planet, Amy K. Coplen

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter appears in "Coming of Age at the End of Nature: A Generation Faces Living on a Changed Planet," published by Trinity University Press.

Coming of Age at the End of Nature explores a new kind of environmental writing. This powerful anthology gathers the passionate voices of young writers who have grown up in an environmentally damaged and compromised world. Each contributor has come of age since Bill McKibben foretold the doom of humanity’s ancient relationship with a pristine earth in his prescient 1988 warning of climate change, The End of Nature.

What happens to individuals and societies …

Integrative Public Transport In A Segmented City: Reflections From Jerusalem, Galit Cohen-Blankshtain

PSU Transportation Seminars

Jerusalem is perhaps an extreme case of residential and travel market segmentation. It is comprised of four different 'cities', which partially overlap in space: The Jewish-Zionist city; the Palestinian city; the Jewish ultra-orthodox city and the global-tourist city. While the specific delineation of these cities is unique, Jerusalem can be seen as representative of other cities where ethnic and religious tensions create highly segmented urban spaces and travel markets.

In recent years particular emphasis has been placed on integrating transport systems, both across modes and with land use, in order to facilitate and encourage the use of public transport. Spatial …

Developing A Model For Transit Oriented Development In Latino Immigrant Communities: A National Study Of Equity And Tod, Gerardo Francisco Sandoval

TREC Final Reports

This research project is a continuation of a previous NITC-funded study. The first study compared the MacArthur Park TOD in Los Angeles to the Fruitvale Village TOD in Oakland. The findings from this new study further validate the key findings from the first study. This new comparative case study analyzed the extension of Los Angeles’ Gold Line into Boyle Heights and the revitalization linked to Boyle Heights due to two TODs built in that neighborhood. I conclude from all four cases that TODs can help serve as catalysts for neighborhood revitalization in low-income communities by paying attention and building upon …

Developing High-Resolution Descriptions Of Urban Heat Islands: A Public Health Imperative, Jackson Voelkel, Vivek Shandas, Brendon Haggerty

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extreme heat events affect the most vulnerable human populations and are a lethal health hazard to urban dwellers globally; in the United States, extreme heat causes more deaths annually than all other weather events and natural hazards combined (1). Previous studies described urban heat islands as isolated, static, monolithic areas of cities. We challenged this contention by hypothesizing that diurnal temperature cycles and diverse landscape features create variation in places that amplify heat (2). A temporal description of urban heat islands would identify populations that are susceptible to heat stress, particularly at night, when most people are asleep and unable …

Understanding Social Media Program Usage In Public Transit Agencies, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi, O. A. Elrahman, Xuegang Ban, Jack M. Reilly

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social media has been gaining prominence in public transit agencies in their communication strategies and daily management. This study aims to better understand recent trends in social media usage in public transit agencies, to examine which agencies use what kind of social media programs for what purposes, and how they measure their programs. A survey was conducted of the top transit agencies in the nation, and results are examined through descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis and regression modeling. We found that while most agencies still lack clearly-defined goals and performance metrics to guide their social media development, many are increasing …

Integrating High-Resolution Datasets To Target Mitigation Efforts For Improving Air Quality And Public Health In Urban Neighborhoods, Vivek Shandas, Jackson Voelkel, Meenakshi Rao, Linda A. George

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reducing exposure to degraded air quality is essential for building healthy cities. Although air quality and population vary at fine spatial scales, current regulatory and public health frameworks assess human exposures using county- or city-scales. We build on a spatial analysis technique, dasymetric mapping, for allocating urban populations that, together with emerging fine-scale measurements of air pollution, addresses three objectives: (1) evaluate the role of spatial scale in estimating exposure; (2) identify urban communities that are disproportionately burdened by poor air quality; and (3) estimate reduction in mobile sources of pollutants due to local tree-planting efforts using nitrogen dioxide. Our …

The Landscape: Tiny And Very Small Houses, Andrés Oswill

Metroscape

The article describes one of many approaches to creating more affordable housing choices -- tiny and very small houses. The author explains how the current trend returns to an affordable housing approach used much earlier in Portland's history.

Indicators Of The Metroscape: The Young, The Old, And The Single, Elizabeth Morehead

Metroscape

Elizabeth Morehead focuses on the changing demographic of households in the Portland metropolitan region

Periodic Atlas Of The Of The Metroscape: The Geography Of Publicly Subsidized Affordable Housing, Meg Merrick

Metroscape

Meg Merrick maps publicly subsidized affordable housing units across the region, discusses their geography, and describes their location in relation to two important amenities: schools and libraries.

Is Housing Making People Sick?: An Overview Of Seven Studies That Raise Questions To Consider As We Incorporate Health Into Planning And Build New Housing To Address Shortages And Energy Efficiency, Merilee D. Karr

Metroscape

The article discusses the unintended consequences of some of the strategies for housing energy efficiency: they can lead to indoor air pollution that is making people sick. As we pursue ways to reduce the cost of housing, we must pursue innovation in building materials and techniques that might reduce the negative health consequences of sealing our homes from the elements.

From The Frontlines Of The Housing Crisis: Two Vulnerable Tenants Discuss Their Experiences In Portland's Increasingly Brutal Housing Market, Thomas Kerr

Metroscape

Homelessness is the most visible face of Portland's affordable housing crisis, but the numbers of street sleepers and tent campers are nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of beleaguered tenants. They may be hidden away in their separate apartments, but they are suffering the effects of crisis all the same. Forty percent of the 900,000 households in the Portland Metro area are tenants, and half are paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. A quarter pay more than 50 percent, and the percentages go higher as the households get poorer. Besides forcing them to impoverish themselves …

Living On The Edge: The Forgotten Tribulations Of Affordable Housing In The Suburbs, Linn Davis

Metroscape

The article describes how the housing crisis is playing out in the region's suburbs.

Webinar: States On The Hot Seat: State Efforts To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Transportation, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Webinar Series

Transportation accounts for approximately 33 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. While the federal government issued notice of a proposed rule that would include a GHG reduction performance measure for the first time, over the past decade, several innovative states have offered leadership on policies aimed at reducing GHG through transportation.

A recent project examines innovative policies in four such states: California, Maryland, Oregon and Washington. This webinar will:

• Highlight policy approaches for reducing GHG from transportation,
• Offer an assessment of strengths and weaknesses of various policy approaches, and
• Provide recommendations for a broad range of …