Architecture Commons^™

Riverview Community Park Commoning Plan, Haley B. Keene

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Riverview Community Park began as an illegal DIY skatepark in the Maymont neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Now, although it is a city park, it is still entirely managed by volunteer community groups (skateboarders, the neighborhood Civic League, and a community garden) who view the park as a creative, experimental community-led spatial project. Due to a dearth of communication between the three groups, the park has suffered political strife between the groups and a chaotic physical atmosphere. This plan utilizes a commons governance framework and participatory, asset-based community design to usher in a new era of enhanced collaboration, common narratives, and …

Pocatello Downtown Development Plan: A Vision For The Twenty-First Century, James L. Anglesey

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Downtown Pocatello is the beating heart of the city and serves as the community's epicenter of civic and cultural life. It encompasses Pocatello's unique heritage and will play a vital role in Pocatello's success in the future. Downtown's physical location between world-class recreational opportunities and a research-based university provides key metrics for creating a successful downtown. This thesis establishes the foundational premise for downtown success and sets forth a vision for Pocatello to reinforce, connect, and intensify its greatest community assets through a series of urban design and redevelopment solutions and recommendations. A literature review focused on the theoretical underpinnings …

Restorative Streetscapes: Promoting Positive Mental Health Outcomes Through Urban Landscape Design In Winooski, Vermont, Sean R. Fitzsimmons

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

The global health burden of mental health disorders is immense. The World Health Organization ranks depression as the single largest contributor to global disability; anxiety disorders alone rank sixth. One in four people will have a diagnosable mental illness in their lifetime and mental health conditions are increasing worldwide, rising 13% in the last decade. The economic implications are also immense, costing the global economy US $1 trillion each year. Mental health is more than the absence of disorders or disabilities, however. It is defined by the WHO as “a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or …

Memorial Parking Trees: Resilient Modular Design With Nature-Based Solutions In Vulnerable Urban Areas, Haroon Stephen, Fortino Acosta

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Nature-based solutions (NbS) include all the landscape’s ecological components that have a function in the natural or urban ecosystem. Memorial Parking Trees (MPTs) are a new variant of a nature-based solution composed of a bioswale and a street tree allocated in the road, occupying a space that is sub-utilised by parked cars. This infill green practice can maximise the use of street trees in secondary streets and have multiple benefits in our communities. Using GIS mapping and methodology can support implementation in vulnerable neighbourhoods. In this research, we based vulnerability assessments for London, Rio de Janeiro, and Los Angeles on …

Wayfinding In Warrenton, Logan Ashby

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This research helps to inform and establish a wayfinding signage system throughout the Town of Warrenton. A wayfinding system can help connect people to places using the built environment and serves as an easily understandable visual guide. Establishing a wayfinding system will help the Town create a cohesive branding, achieve cohesive gateways, while also helping to establish the five character districts that were introduced in the most recent comprehensive plan. This study included a wayfinding audit, which helped to establish the existing conditions and recommend the following the goals: Establish an advisory board to advise the Town on wayfinding decisions …

Oceanside Transit Center Transit-Oriented Development (Otc Tod): Revisioning North San Diego's County Transit Hub, Chad Johnston

City and Regional Planning

Many California coastal communities lack a supply of housing, produce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions by daily auto commuters but have existing local and commuter rail stations with large fields of parking surrounding it. Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) integrates the building of housing, retail, office, and public space together focused around transit stations. This infill of development locates people within comfortable walking distance, usually within a quarter-mile, of a public trail transit station reducing automobile dependence for local trips or commuting for work.

The Oceanside Transit Center (OTC) is a major railway interchange, serving as a gateway to the San …

Rethinking Participatory Design: Tools For Modelling Community Potentials, Adam Liu, Stephen Marinelli

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to provide an alternative method of community engagement through the process of participatory model-making. Rather than only seeking out community voices for surveys and data collection, this project’s goal is to empower a community’s sense of ownership through collective design.

The methods of this project will be tested and examined in collaboration with students from Dr. King Elementary School in Syracuse, New York. By designing a participatory method for model-making, the project will involve students in the early stages of urban design and make it more educationally and socially accessible.

The Role Of Urban Design In Strengthening Social Links Between Residents Of Residential District, Hussam Alsahli, Tarek Habib

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

When thinking about planning residential neighborhoods, they usually plan for a service purpose and to cover the housing need without taking into account social life, as Kreidis[1] mentioned that the traditional planning (network) pattern highlighted many social problems and the scarcity of spaces led to a decline in public life and affected the population negatively. With a general overview within the residential neighborhoods, the researcher found that the city of Riyadh suffers from the absence of urban design elements within residential neighborhoods, where it was noticed the absence of pedestrian paths and the lack of continuity of sidewalks, as …

The State Of Affordable Housing In Pierce County, Ali Modarres, Hannah Miner, Anthony Hoffmann

Professional Reports

Affordable housing is a complex issue, requiring significant regional and metropolitan level attention. There are very few cities that can claim to have succeeded in solving this problem. However, the policy toolkit to engage with this particular challenge has grown over the last few decades. Given the diminishing role of the federal government in building and financing affordable/social housing, it has fallen to tribes, states, counties, and cities to tackle this challenge on their own or through collaboration. The State of Washington and Pierce County governments are no exception. Meanwhile, as the number of cost-burdened households has increased over time, …

Chrysalis Creek 2019 Bank Of America Merrill Lynch Low Income Housing, Ivy Zhao

City and Regional Planning

Chrysalis Creek provides 40 affordable housing units for very low- and low-income families in Templeton, California. A chrysalis refers to the third stage of growth, where a caterpillar metamorphose into a butterfly. The project name represents the transformative stage in life for families grow in strength, independence, and stability. Chrysalis Creek is the place where families will thrive and be well supported with resources for success.

Chrysalis Creek is a collaborative effort between architecture, planning and business administration students from Cal Poly. The Cal Poly team is working with Peoples’ Self-Help Housing as the development partner. Peoples’ Self-Help Housing is …

Reframing Urban Redevelopment Via Women Empowerment: Sustaining Existing Community In The West End Neighborhood, Dyesha Holmes

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Recent studies in England found out that people who know their family history are more resistant to stress and anxiety. (Bradley, 2016) This connection between family history and place history is important in understanding the connection individuals have to the places they grew up and know. However, gentrification poses a threat to inner-city neighborhoods and disrupts the cyclical relationships between history and culture that forms the character of their social community. Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in 1964 to describe the influx of middle-class people displacing lower-class worker residents in urban neighborhoods. Gentrification is a matter of oppression; displacement …

Reimagining Future Sustainable, Climate-Resilient Urban Design For Apia, Samoa: Developing Plans For A Developing Nation, Alyssa Kaewwilai

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Small island developing states are arguably the most vulnerable, exposed nations on a global scale to the harmful effects of climate change. Particularly in Samoa, an abundance of environmental, economic, and social impacts have severe impacts on both the country as a whole as well as on an individual level. This study analyzes future mitigation strategies of land use and urban design to recreate Samoa’s capital of Apia as a more climate-resilient city to encourage economic growth and to ensure the well-being of all inhabitants. This planning is based upon current challenges of Samoa driven by climate change such as …

Paolo Soleri And Arcology: An Analytical Comparison To Frank Lloyd Wright And Louis Kahn, Henry Millard

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The city proposals of Paolo Soleri, he called them arcologies, are monumental and complex geometric megastructures intended to project great heights above desert horizons. These proposals purposefully abandon conventional notions of the city.

Soleri was physically isolated in his remote Arizona urban laboratory, Arcosanti, and philosophically detached from the professional urban design community. His proposals were often too easily understood as foreign and radical dystopian architectural metaphors meant to provoke thought more than to project an actual future. There is limited discourse on Soleri and this tends to isolate him in a vacuum, ignoring possible connections or parallels in his …

Urban Design Vision: The Fremont Hub, Megan Kristine Miller

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

San Luis Ranch - Design Vision, Maddie Pritchard, Mackenzie Wrage

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

A Model For Sustainable Living In Guanajuato, Mexico, Melina Smith

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

Re-Live Downtown Pine Bluff, Community Design Center

Project Reports

Once a prosperous cultural urban center in the Mississippi River delta, but now the nation’s second fastest shrinking city, Pine Bluff (population: 42,700) is Arkansas’ Detroit. Indeed, a study of black wealth conducted by famed sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in 1899 found that Pine Bluff had the fourth highest rate of black wealth in the nation behind Charleston, Richmond, and New York City. The school’s community design center prepared a downtown revitalization plan, Re-Live Downtown Pine Bluff, a housing-first initiative focused on building neighborhoods around downtown “centers of strength”. While the revitalization approach is triaged around a …

Rebuilding Silicon Valley - An Assessment Of The Silicon Valley Corporate Campus And The Potential For Suburban Sustainability, Eden Lindeman

Master's Projects and Capstones

Silicon Valley is the San Francisco Bay Area’s economic powerhouse and is herald for its innovation and success. However, Silicon Valley’s urban design is unsustainable and characterized by remote and large corporate campuses that contribute to job sprawl and heavy traffic congestion. Many of the buildings are also not performing at an efficient level and are due for deep overhauls to cut back energy consumption and costs. The inevitable effects of climate change continue to loom large over the world, heightening the importance for the built environment to be reformed into an environment that can mitigate and adapt to climate …

Exporting Strategies For Urban Livability: Examining Copenhagen, Denmark As A Model City For Quality Of Life Generated Through Urban Design, Austen L. Peterson

Senior Theses and Projects

Over the next fifteen years, the world’s population is expected to reach new heights at 8.5 billion people. Currently, half of the global population is living in cities, which in turn, will inevitably increase with the growth of humanity. As the Mayor of Copenhagen, Frank Jensen, so poignantly explains, “A sustainable world starts with sustainable cities. In Copenhagen, we keep this in mind as we strive to combine sustainable solutions with a focus on growth and quality of life to make Copenhagen an even more livable city.”[1] Urbanization is an unavoidable phenomenon and challenges the threshold of a successful …

Spacial Injustice In Education, Nima Kabirinassab

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

Urban Design Guidelines For Places With Restorative Values, Nigel Cartlidge, Lynne Armitage, Daniel O'Hare

Daniel O'Hare

This paper evolved from a case study of three Gold Coast beach precincts that examined the complex relationships between the urban design attributes and spatial arrangement of beach precincts and their effect on public access to activity, amenity and facility. Australian and overseas urban design guidelines were examined along with the requirements of restorative places. The focus of the scrutiny of the guidelines was to identify the nature of urban design principles that enhance egalitarian, walkable access to the restorative values found in beach precincts. The intended goal was to produce urban design guidelines for walkable places with restorative values, …

Growing Portland: Not Whether, But How, Richard Barringer Phd, Joseph Mcdonnell Phd

Faculty Publications

In the 400 years since European settlement, Portland has survived the ravages of war, invasion, pestilence, conflagration, and economic depression and recession. Once a renowned manufacturing, trade, and shipping center, it now enjoys what might be called a post-industrial renaissance as a vibrant center for the arts, education, entertainment, and banking, legal, and medical services; and is frequently cited as one of America’s best small cities. As a result, Portland is growing today and is positioned for more growth.

The question, then, is not whether Portland will grow, but how well it will grow; or, how best to manage the …

The Multiple Limas: Urban Design At The Periphery, Marwan Ghandour

Marwan Ghandour

No abstract provided.

Creating A Successful Wayfinding System: Lessons Learned From Springfield, Massachusetts, Yanhua Lu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The masters project presents findings from recent work the author completed related to wayfinding, and wayfinding systems. This work began as part of a graduate urban design studio, followed by work as a research assistant at the UMass Design Center in Springfield, on a new “demonstration” wayfinding system installed in Springfield, Massachusetts. The wayfinding project was done in association with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the Springfield Office of Planning and Community Development, was implemented with the main goals of improving public health by encouraging more people to walk.

Wayfinding systems are increasingly seen as an important part of …

Rethinking The Design Models Of Refugee Camps, Ruba Bdair Mrs.

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

This research aims to find architectural and urban design related solutions to enhance the living conditions of refugees and to lessen the pressure on the hosting communities' resources.

Rethinking The Design Models Of Refugee Camps, Ruba Bdair Mrs.

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

This research aims to find architectural and urban design related solutions to enhance the living conditions of refugees, and to lessen the burden on the refugee hosting communities.

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 …

Identity And Urban Design: The Path To Meaningfulness In The City Of Concepción., Laura Yazmin Rodriguez

Focus

In her research leading to this article, Laura Rodriguez studied the urban design and place making qualities of the University of Concepción campus in Chile. Based on interviews with a select group of experts and field observations, the results indicate that the campus' strong meaning within the city image is partly due to its original conception as an overall consistent project and as part of the city grid and life.

The Cerdà Plan For The Expansion Of Barcelona: A Model For Modern City Planning, Judith Urbano

Focus

Modern city planning started with the Industrial Revolution and the scientific advances of the ��19th Century. At the time, Catalan engineer Idelfons Cerdà coined the word "urbanism” as a new and necessary science to deal with cities, having three major preoccupations:� hygiene, traffic, and equality. In this article, Judith Urbano discusses Cerda's plan for the expansion of Barcelona and why it is considered an icon of modern planning�

Urbanity, The Flâneur, And The Visual Qualities Of Urban Design: A Walk In Lisbon, Portugal, Vicente Del Rio

Focus

The concept of urbanity and the literary figure of the flâneur are a platform for del Rio’s exploration of the visual qualities of urban design in Lisbon’s historic core. Drawings are are used throughout this study since they are analyses in themselves and capture the essence of places more than a photo can do. All drawings in this article are by the author.