Architecture Commons^™

Developing Housing Finance Framework As An Approach To Provide Affordable Finance Mechanisms For Middle Income Citizens And Housing Developers In Saudi Arabia, Musaed Khalid A K. Alqannas

Planning Dissertations

With high economic growth rate, population rate, increased employment, and income opportunities, the demand for housing has increased, along with the lack of affordable finance mechanisms. A main concern of the housing problem in Saudi Arabia is the high demand compared to housing needs. Saudi Arabia lacks a housing finance framework or strategy to create flexible and affordable lending mechanisms to tackle the affordable finance problems. This research targets: 1) the middle income citizens to increase the homeownership rate and 2) the housing developer to increase affordable housing units and the investment in the housing market. This research compares the …

Brownfield To Brightfield: Influences On Attitude, Brittni Leigh Olesen

All Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze what factors influence a person’s attitude towards a brownfield site converted into a future solar energy farm through the RE-Power America’s Land Initiative to help increase the success of implementing solar energy farms in cities. Five different factors, including: spatial, public participation, local context, personal values, and socio-demographic factors are analyzed and tested using descriptive statistics and measures of association. Among other tests, measures of association were used to determine that egalitarian viewpoint, education and income had statistically significant relationships with acceptance towards the potential solar energy development. However, all of these …

Berlin: Border Control, David Berry

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Excess Capacity: Shared Space Possibilities In An E-Commercial Suburbia, Christina Lulich

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Successful Ncaa Division I Athletics Programs On The Social Capital Of Urban Communities, Paul Woody

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined how urban communities might grow social capital from the passion and support offered by a college athletics program. Given the increasing emphasis on fiscal responsibility from local governments and public universities, recognizing how college athletics programs influence local community social capital, such as anchor attachments formed by alumni and fans, is an important perspective. Historically, the exhausted conversation has focused on economics, such as the economic impact of athletic venues and franchises. (Coates, 2007; Crompton, 2004). Through decades of research, social capital has been measured at various depths and viewed through social, economic, psychological, and even historical …

Amending The Building Code Of The City Of New York: Exploring Forces That Influenced Change, Dolores Spivack

Dissertations

This study seeks to understand the forces that influenced changes (i.e., amendments) to the Building Code of New York City over an approximately one hundred and ten year period spanning from 1898, the year of the city’s consolidation, through 2008, the year of the major code amendment following September 11, 2001. Although the emphasis is on this period, building codes specific to New York City since 1625 are researched to cultivate a broader understanding of the changes to building codes throughout the city’s history. In particular, the focus is on the building issues that the amendments sought to change and …

Technical Communication In Place-Making Professions: Exploring The Network Pictures Of Urban Designers, Fernando Sanchez

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation addresses how professional writing as a field can pay attention to broader definitions of design in order to help further conversations of spatial justice (the act of helping to promote equity in matters of development in urban spaces). I begin by noting the conversations that have circulated regarding the relationship between urban design and rhetoric, noting that professional writing can help add a unique lens to the conversation. The second chapter provides an overview of how design is discussed in technical communication scholarship. Here, I showcase how most of these discussions regarding research in design have centered on …

Dynamic Green Split Optimization In Intersection Signal Design For Urban Street Network, Peng Jiao

Open Access Theses

In the past few decades, auto travel demand in the United States has significantly increased, but roadway capacity unfortunately has not expanded as quickly, which has led to severe levels of highway traffic congestion in many areas. In theory, the problem of congestion addressed through demand management and roadway expansion. However, system expansion in urban areas is difficult due to the extremely high cost of land; therefore, maximizing the existing capacity therefore often is considered the most realistic option. In urban areas, most of the traffic congestion and delays typically occur at signalized intersections. This thesis aims to prove the …

Examining The Feasibility Of Implementing A Deconstruction Nonprofit In East St. Louis, Il, David M. Hoag Jr.

All Capstone Projects

Background: According to an environmental justice case study by Kozol (2005), East St. Louis is considered the country's most distressed city. It has suffered from environmental and economic misfortunes for several decades. Many residents of the city have left due to the economic conditions of the city, which resulted in a loss of tax base. According to Hou (2010), the loss of tax base has had a severe impact on the community; the city that once had flourishing parks, streets, and businesses has now become blighted with condemned, abandoned, and foreclosed structures. Poor maintenance and neglect has led to decay …

Developing An Ecological Sanitation Transect, Ian Kolesinskas

Masters Theses

A sanitation problem exists for people across the globe: basic human waste collection and treatment is inaccessible to much of the world’s population; and the status-quo gray infrastructure system of sanitation is unsustainable and unsuitable for widespread application. A paradigm shift is needed: this thesis makes the case for developing an Ecological Sanitation Transect to bring back the closed loop that connects consumption, waste excretion, sanitation, and food production. The Ecological Sanitation Transect is a synthesis of ecological sanitation, where human excreta is reused, and the urban transect, where development density is conceptualized along a continuum from rural to urban. …

Safe Street Design Recommendations For Downtown Los Angeles, Jayeonog Kim

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

Exploring Transit Ridership Using Census, Routing & Scheduling, And Stop Characteristic Data, Douglas Harvey Moody

Master's Theses

This study develops, analyzes, and a­­­­­pplies transit-system-specific regression tree models that identify and prioritize transit system improvements through analysis and application of ridership, Census, routing and scheduling, and transit stop characteristic data. Regression trees identify and rank independent variables that split dependent variable datasets into meaningful subsets according to significant relationships with independent variable datasets, and regression tree models can be used to identify and prioritize transit system improvements. In this study, ridership datatypes are the dependent variables (i.e., boardings and alightings) and Census, routing and scheduling, and transit stop characteristic datatypes are the independent variables. Data associated with the …

Water Reduction In Single-Family California Homes, Jaclyn B. Hawkins

Construction Management

Many Californian families do not realize how much water they use per day. Since California frequently experiences periods of drought, it is important for the public to understand how they can reduce their water use. This research paper explains ways that Californian families can easily reduce water consumption within their homes. The paper explains how much water is used per fixture, and how much water can be saved making modifications of updates to existing fixtures.

Automated Vehicles: A Guide For Planners And Policymakers, Charlie Coles

Master's Theses

Automated vehicles are those which are capable of sensing their environments in order to perform at least some aspects of the safety-critical control (like steering, throttling, or braking) without direct human input. As a guide for planners and policymakers, the objective of this thesis is to develop a strong foundation for anticipating the potential impacts resulting from advancements in vehicle automation. To establish the foundation, this thesis uses a robust qualitative methodology, coupling a review of literature on the potential advantages and disadvantages of vehicle automation and lessons from past innovations in transportation, with recent trends of the Millennial Generation, …

The Effect Of Community Connectivity On Water And Sanitation Systems In Rural Panama, M.C. Moritz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The world has yet to realize universal access to water and sanitation. Various academic and professional fields provide frameworks for understanding water and sanitation access, but none directly consider the impact of community connectivity. Community connectivity refers to the infrastructures linking rural communities with urban centers. These infrastructures fall under the broad categories of transportation, energy, and telecommunication. This paper examines 23 rural Panamanian communities and compares connectivity measures with the functionality of the communities’ rural water and sanitation systems (RWSS). Community connectivity was evaluated with the Community Connectivity Analysis Tool (CCAT), while the water and sanitation systems were evaluated …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Assessing Downstream Stormwater Impacts For Urban Watershed Planning, Johanna Meyer Pavlowsky

Masters Theses

"The urbanization of watersheds has caused debilitating effects to downstream aquatic ecosystems in catchments and streams. The implementation of green infrastructure (GI), such as permeable pavements and bioretention facilities, has been shown to alleviate these effects by both reducing runoff and mitigating pollutants; however, the implements are often not designed with a specific goal of water improvement. This study targets understanding a small, impaired urban watershed, and the benefits green infrastructure may have to provide environmental, social, and economic improvement to the watershed.

Portions of Rolla including much of the S&T campus drain into the impaired urban waterbody Frisco Lake, …

Alcohol Nuisance Abatement Ordinance, Emilie J. Morse

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

Policy Mobilities And West Dallas Dream: Considering Transactive And Communicative Policy Ideas Tested In Vancouver And Assembled In Dallas, Wayne Mitchell Beggs

Planning Dissertations

This dissertation considers contemporary urban development and urban change as framed by emerging forces of neoliberalism and globalization and applies critical theory lenses to discuss how policy approaches developed in Vancouver, BC are mobilized in Dallas, Texas.

No Crime By Design? Crime Deterrence And Urban Design Reform In The Usa After World War Ii, Cason Leafe Hall

Senior Projects Spring 2016

This project connects three important periods in the development of design against crime in public housing, all building on one another and connected in their own ways. Tracing the discourse from the earliest approaches of policy-making following the Great Depression in the 1940s, development of the architecturally based Defensible Space theory in the 1970s, and finally the change in policing protocols called for Broken Windows theory in the 1990s, this project demonstrates that crime and public housing are inexorably linked, though are often times not viewed in conjunction with one another.

The Storytelling Of Public Spaces: Rhetoric, Community, And Social Change, Lindsay Kathryn Hamilton

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation examines how public art, broadly defined, contributes to the dialogue of public places. It assumes that public places are filled with rhetoric--from commercial, governmental, private, and other sources. This rhetoric is mainly concerned with the public as audience, receivers of information who are then expected to act in certain ways - following the directions of street signs or entering shops when a window display attracts their attention, for example. Public art, particularly community-based art, can be used to make public places more democratic, providing platforms for people and communities to talk back and reassert their identities. The case …

Park Politics: Political Influences On Frederick Law Olmsted & The Creation Of Central Park, Kathryn Chow

Honors Theses

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. (1822-1903), renowned landscape architect and journalist, was also a political activist who saw urban parks as a way to facilitate social reform. This study focuses on Olmsted’s role as Superintendent of Central Park (1858-1861), evaluating the impacts of politics throughout his campaign for Superintendent and during the construction of Central Park. Politics, in this study, refers to both the interactions between Republican and Democratic parties, and the interactions between Olmsted and his constituents, in both the government and the intellectual sphere. This study will provide readers with a fuller understanding of how local political disputes, ideas …