Architecture Commons^™

Urban And Community Tree Cover In The Mountain West, Zachary Billot, Zachary Walusek, Annie Vong, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

This fact sheet examines data on tree cover and impervious cover in urban land for the United States and for the five states in the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The original report includes data for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia

Law School News: National Housing Advocate Named To Lead Rwu's New Real Estate Initiatives 02/08/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Landfill Suitability Analysis Using Gis (Geographic Information System) And Ahp (Analytic Hierarchy Process): A Case Study Of Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, Sunah Moon

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

The objective of this study was to identify and prioritize the potential sites that are the most suitable to host landfills using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska. First, the criteria that influence in a decision-making process of landfill placement in social, environmental, and physical perspectives were established, and the area was assessed based on the grading structure of each criterion on a scale of 0 to 10. The second step was the main process for the study using the AHP. Thirty-two experts who work as planners, engineers, landfill staff, and environmental …

Guidelines For Sustainable Practices In The Rural Built Environment, Nash Kelly, Ethan Weiche

UCARE Research Products

This poster provides information about sustainable changes people can make to better improve their health, community and built environment. From what is shown, this can be done through community gardens, pedestrian access and building certifications.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change will have direct and significant health impacts (1), which the Lancet Countdown identifies as disproportionately affecting at-risk populations.(2) The challenges of geographic isolation and lack of population density in rural and remote areas limits adequate access to basic healthcare services, such as primary care, emergency care, and mental health services. Additionally, the health deficit experienced by …

Imagine Community, Imagine Home (Chicopee, Ma), Christian Appia, Francesca Cigliano, Jenna Davis, Greg Labombard, Kristen Whitmore, Simeng Zhang

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

The goal of the Master of Regional Planning Studio is to develop a student’s techniques for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing spatial and non-spatial data and then presenting that collective data in a manner (i.e., report, video, presentation, and charettes) that is understandable to academics, professionals, and the public. Planning Studio allows students to integrate knowledge from coursework and research, and apply such knowledge to resolving representative planning problems. At UMASS Amherst, these problems are found in neighborhood, rural, urban, and/or regional settings.

For the fall 2018 Planning Studio, Chicopee tasked the Masters of Regional Planning Studio to prepare a Housing …

A Simulation-Assisted Workflow For Outdoor Thermal Comfort Design In Downtown Syracuse, Pouya Zhand

Architecture Senior Theses

Cities are not just about the buildings and skylines. Cities are also about the space be­tween buildings (the ground in figure-ground). More importantly and fundamentally cities are about people and the life that happens between buildings. Simulation tools can inform the design of attractive public spaces by pro­viding insight about the environmental conditions.

Restoring The Heart: A Community Vision For The Neighborhood Of Aldenville, Nicholas Campbell, Eric D. Gemperline, Todd R. Horner, Sean G. O'Donnell, Sierra T. Pelletier, Seth Taylor, Keitlin Young

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

The goal of the Master of Regional Planning Studio is to develop a student’s techniques for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing spatial and non-spatial data and then presenting that collective data in a manner (i.e., report, video, presentation, and charettes) that is understandable to academics, professionals, and the public. Planning Studio allows students to integrate knowledge from coursework and research, and apply such knowledge to resolving representative planning problems. At UMASS Amherst, these problems are found in neighborhood, rural, urban, and/or regional settings.

For the Fall 2017 Planning Studio, Chicopee tasked the Masters of Regional Planning Studio to prepare a vision …

It's Not Easy Being Whole | Reevaluating The Relationship Of Part Whole In Pursuit Of A New High-Rise Vernacular, Josh Bransky

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has the power to structure societal relationships. Specifically, architecture's form can bring the balanced relationship between community and individual identity, as exhibited in vernacular single-family homes, to the housing tower. This thesis plans to achieve such a social orchestration through a nuanced understanding of formal part-to-whole relationships, or "differentiated" parts within the whole, exhibited in a 300' housing tower in Seattle, WA.

By carefully balancing the relation, material, scale, and form of each part, this project will achieve this difficult whole (of differentiated parts). Mining this middle ground will produce a housing tower in Seattle, which actively balances the …

Absorbency In Tidal Resiliency | The Thickened Pier, Shauna Strubinger

Architecture Senior Theses

The inevitable truth of climate change has placed coastal cities at great risk. Past natural disasters in the United States such as Hurricane Sandy and Katrina, displaced many people because these communities’ only protection was their failed infrastructure.1 Although hard and soft infrastructure strategies have addressed the rising sea level, architecture at the building scale creates static surfaces and divisions that are slow to adapt to flooding and leave little to no room for the ambiguity of tidal flooding and storm surge. Though numerous areas are at risk of sea level rise across the globe, the Chesapeake Bay area is …

Detroit Works Long-Term Planning Project: Engagement Strategies For Blending Community And Technical Expertise, Toni L. Griffin, Dan Cramer, Megan Powers

Publications and Research

In January 2013, civic leaders, community stakeholders, and residents came together to release Detroit Future City: 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, a guiding blueprint for transforming Detroit from its current state of population loss and excessive vacancy into a model for the reinvention of post-industrial American cities. Three years prior, the U.S. Census had reported that the city had lost 24% of its population over the last decade and had experienced a 20% increase in vacant and abandoned property, bringing total vacancy to roughly the size of Manhattan. In addition to physical and economic challenges, Detroiters had also acknowledged significant …

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 …

Volunteered Geographical Information: An Alternative Solution For Overcoming The Chasm Between Stormwater Management And Community Participation, Yanfu Zhou

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

It is a dramatic challenge to promote public engagement in stormwater management and green infrastructure initiatives. When traditional outreach approaches made important influence on public engagement, their limitations are also obvious. With the development of Web 2.0 technology, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has been emerging as one of the most important user-generated geographic contents. The crowdsourcing data that generated by volunteers through geo-web, smartphones, and other geo-devices provides invaluable mass data for decision-making. VGI can provide a better understanding of planning issues and other challenges. The research aims to develop a mobile information platform to allow citizens to report the …

Connecting Cayucos: Visions And Actions For Public Space, Spring 2014, Crp 553 Project Planning Lab

City and Regional Planning Studios and Projects

This document expands upon the principles set forth in the County of San Luis Obispo’s Estero Plan (2009) in the context of public space and develops site-specific recommendations to support future implementation of public space plans for Cayucos, California. This plan includes an existing conditions analysis, general goals and principles, site-specific visions and actions, as well as supporting conceptual diagrams. The main purpose of this plan is to reflect the community’s desire to preserve, protect, and enhance the public spaces of Cayucos.

Community-Based Disaster Coalitions Training: Participants' Manual, Center For Leadership In Public Health Practice

Community-Based Disaster Coalitions

This training will help program participants to develop the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities to organize a Community Disaster Preparedness Coalition or strengthen an existing Coalition that integrates public health, human services, and emergency management systems into their county's disaster preparedness, response, and recovery structure.

The Leadership Of Sustainable Cities: A Multiple-Case Study Of Two Oregon Cities, Kenneth L. Weaver

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

In order for cities to become more sustainable it is necessary for the leaders of the efforts to change the organizations and governments so that they understand and embrace what it means to be more sustainable. This study examined the change processes of two Oregon Cities, Corvallis and Eugene, that had made the choice to become more sustainable as a community. The approaches that the participant leaders used demonstrated the use of different ways of thinking about the leadership of change. The ways of thinking of the community leaders were formed by their unique personal backgrounds, knowledge, skills, and abilities. …

Corporeal Meeting Place, Brandon Maldonado

Architecture Senior Theses

"The modernist movement was able, through the industrial revolution, to eliminate the role of facade as load bearing member, fetishizing transparency. However, this new preeminence of visuality was not applicable to the suburban home, with its predisposition toward the creation and control of privacy. What separate the suburban condition from the urban, in addition to the role of the single-family home as purchasable symbol representing an ideal, is the front yard. Instead of a simple A-B division across a singular surface, the yard creates a "deep" facade, a series of layered spaces serving as filtration' sidewalks, fences, plantings, yards, and …

Broadacre City (1935-1958) Is A Work Of Art. Cubist Utopia, Perhaps?, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City project is often treated as an unsuccessful urban plan. It is also interesting in itself as a work of art that Wright and some of his students in the Fellowship returned to periodically over more than two decades. There is also a latent third sector (or "commons") of suggested organizations and institutions hidden in the details of the plan.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 3, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

This report is the third in a series of efforts by students at the Muskie School of Public Service, Community Planning and Development Master’s program, in a core class called “Sustainable Communities.” In this course students seek to understand principles of sustainability and how efforts to implement Sustainability programs can become more successful. The report assembles term papers students completed on particular efforts by municipalities, universities, and other groups to achieve sustainability goals. Students worked on each project in a service learning format with real world clients. They were asked to fashion their papers around lessons learned by other organizations …

South Burlington, Vt: Mixed-Use Comes To O’Dell Parkway, Ryan Neale, Brett Richardson, Richard Barringer

Planning

The proposed redevelopment of an underutilized property along major travel routes in South Burlington presents possibilities for infill development. The City of South Burlington, the developer, neighbors, and a variety of public and nonprofit financial partners work together to create a mixed-use residential/commercial development to meet a variety of housing and community needs. The case study describes the obstacles overcome to make redevelopment possible through zoning and regulatory changes, negotiation with local residents over traffic and other concerns, support from state and local housing advocates, and political leadership; as well as the development’s application of smart growth principles.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 2, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

The Portland Municipal Climate Change Working Group prepared a report in March 2008 that outlined several recommendations as a commitment by the City to address greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced during daily municipal operations. The Municipal Climate Action Plan was written in partnership with Clean Air – Cool Planet and Portland officials, and acknowledges under Recommendation #2 that an employee energy efficiency program would provide significant positive impact on the City’s reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Best practices from three cities show that focus on the greening of City Hall is critical in developing a program that promotes partnerships, community …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 1, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

When the Sustainable Portland Task Force Report was released in November 2007, under the leadership of Mayor Jim Cohen, Portland Councilor Kevin Donoghue had the idea that students at the Muskie School of Public Service might be able to help implement recommendations from the report. It may have helped that Kevin was himself a graduate of the Community Planning and Development Master’s program at the Muskie School, but it was a good idea nevertheless. He approached Professor Sam Merrill in the CPD program, who spoke with the new Mayor Ed Suslovic about a possible partnership between the City and the …

Selected Lid Projects In New England, New England Environmental Finance Center

Planning

Examples of low impact development (LID) projects in each state in New England.

Mansfield Ct: Planning A New Village Center, Maggie Jones, Richard Barringer

Planning

The case follows the development of a plan for a new village center in Storrs, the central village of Mansfield, Connecticut. A process that was transparent and inclusive of the community members yielded a plan that gained the approval of the Town, the landowner (the University of Connecticut), and the citizenry. The process relied on the mending of fences, the leadership of key participants, and an innovative strategy that included development of a nonprofit corporation and creative use of grant money. While zoning changes are still in the works, the first stage of building goes forward.

Rebuild New Orleans, Sean Karns

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The development of a city depends on its ability to rebuild. In many cases planners have been unaware of future threats to their city that may occur. Often times in order to rebuild one must rethink and replan in order to fully utilize while learning and taking away valuable lessons from the past. In the case of a natural disaster, such lessons usually stem from precautions that could have been made to proactively resolve the situation."

Analysis Of Per Capita Expenditures Of Suburbanizing Communities In Maine, New England Environmental Finance Center

Economics and Finance

This study analyzes per capita expenditure trends among selected fast-growing Maine towns from 1970-2004. The ten communities studied are termed as “suburbanizing” towns. This term is used to describe towns that over the past 30-40 years have been in the process of transition from rural to suburban – in terms of their population and housing densities, their forms of government, and the services they provide, as well as other characteristics.1 Such towns are of particular interest because they have been absorbing a healthy percentage of the state’s population growth during this time period, often at the expense of Maine’s service …

Rebuilding Community: Boston's North End, Maria A. Fazio

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The city is enhanced by architecture form which participates in the urban fabric as a means of connection, therefore promoting the formation of community... The intent is to propose developemnt for portions of the Central Artery Master Plan in Boston, Massachusetts. The city is currently in the process of relocating a major infrastructural element from its present location above grade to a tunnel beneath the city. Demolition of the exiting central artery offers the city an opportunity to infill much of the land and restore surface level streets reconnecting the east sire of the interstate to the downtown area...

The …

Vorhizomeid: Nodes Of Community Services Connecting Albany, Ny, Andrew Watkins

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The contention is to reposition terrain vague into the urban fabric recreating a continuum of the urban system while attempting to detract neither from the scale of the infrastructural system, nor that of the human body. Terrain vague muse be approached in a different manner than that of the traditional urban city. Establishing community through terrain vague should be done by measure of the forces, flows, and rhythms of space."

Community Design Center 1998-2000, Syracuse University

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

This short publication documents a community development project within Syracuse that involved the School of Architecture students from 1998 - 2000

Roosevelt Island: Completing An Urban Community, Karin M. Kilgore

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The thesis became an architectural exploration of what makes neighborhoods and community at two scales: at the scale of the city (macrocosm), represented by the urban plan; and at the scale of the individual (microcosm), represented by the concept of house and housing. At these two contrasting scales, the main focus of the study was:

To explore how an urban design can shape community; To explore the role housing plays in the making of urban fabric/neighborhood."

A Waterfront Reclamation, Allen Rossignol

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Due to industry changes, once prosperous maritime towns have been abandoned. The cities have been left as they were and have not adopted new functions or uses for their valuable asset, the water's edge. Although the city's maritime history and culture attract people, the public has turned its back on the waterfront resulting in non-urban, non-public spaces such as parking, run don properties and abandoned storage sheds. This disjunction between the city and the waterfront needs to be addressed."

"A city's waterfront can be reclaimed through the Archtiecture of Recreation in which the facilities and space are designed to heal …