Architecture Commons^™

A Social-Ecological Systems Inquiry For Understanding Environmental Change In Los Angeles Outer-Ring Suburbs, Farnaz Kamyab

All Dissertations

Within the framework of the city's green infrastructure, urban and suburban green coverage play a pivotal role in delivering substantial benefits to health, economy, and the environment. However, the permanence of these green coverage is threatened by dynamic changes in neighborhood socio-economic, spatial, and ecological elements and their loss or degradation presents a problematic issue. Social-Ecological System Theory (SES) offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the potential correlations between socio-economic trends and the degradation of green coverage. This research is based on a case study of the highly diverse megacity, Los Angeles (LA), which encompasses a wide array of built-environments, …

A Mixed-Method Study On The Walkability Of Streets In Hospital-Anchored Neighborhoods, Xiaowei Li

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The field of healthcare design is adopting planning and design principles from the Healthy Communities movement to connect hospitals to their adjacent communities. This research explores the impact of neighborhood and street design on the walkability of Hospital-Anchored Neighborhoods (HANs), a concept integrating hospitals and satellite services with their surrounding communities to enhance public health. Walkability, a crucial marker of healthy and vibrant communities, was investigated through a mixed-method study across three HANs. A comprehensive Walkability Framework with 17 built environment dimensions was developed from the literature to inform data collection utilizing GIS archival data, ethnographic observations, street audits, and …

Exploring The Necessity Of Technology In Architectural Design: Moving Beyond Showcasing, Ertunc Hunkar

All Theses

Advancements in technology, particularly computational design tools, have transformed the field of architectural design. However, it is crucial to evaluate the impact of technology on the core principles of problem-solving and the design process within architecture. This study aims to examine the consequences and opportunities associated with the integration of technology in architectural design, focusing on the necessity of maintaining a strong problem-solving foundation. Architectural problem-solving involves spatial organization, functional requirements, contextual integration, and user experience. These principles guide architects in addressing design challenges and achieving successful outcomes. The design process comprises stages such as research, analysis, concept development, and …

Examining Pedestrian Accessibility To Opportunities In Four New Deal Villages, Maral Shemirani

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This study focuses on accessibility as an essential performance factor in city planning and urban development. The automobile-oriented designs that characterize and organize most modern United States cities, since the 1950s, have degraded pedestrian mobility and accessibility, causing people to be largely dependent on cars rather than walk, bike, and/or use public transit to reach essential and complementary daily destinations. This pervasive condition not only hinders community and sense of place, but also negatively affects people’s health and environment. We as planners should not forget that cities should be designed to serve people rather than cars. The more our …

Politics, Players, And Legislation In The California Housing Crisis, Andy Daly

All Theses

California has faced a statewide housing shortage for three decades, particularly in exclusive job-rich cities that are becoming increasingly unaffordable. In response, the state has passed pro-housing legislation that bypasses local zoning regulations, focusing on increasing the construction of affordable housing units. I conducted a convergent content analysis of over 80 articles and eight expert interviews. I found that state-led housing legislation is most effective when politicians align their messaging with other pressing issues, such as climate change, transit, and homelessness. Even if bills are rejected, progress is made by opening conversations about the importance of density and housing affordability. …

We Are Gullah: A Community Approach To Preserving Gullah Geechee Historical Sites Of Significance, Peter Gaytan

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The National Register of Historic Places is an inventory established by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 that identifies architectural and archaeological sites significant to American history. The National Register was created to encourage the documentation, evaluation, and protection of America’s historic resources. Over 96,000 historic properties, sites, and structures are currently listed on the National Register. Despite the number of historic places listed on the National Register there is still an overwhelmingly low number of sites listed on the National Register relating to underrepresented communities. This thesis assessed the definition of significance laid out in the National Register …

Investigating Consistency Of Landscape-Scale Green Infrastructure In Local Government Policy, Anna Wilson

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Planning for Climate Change is multifaceted and requires effort across all scales. Green Infrastructure networks of green spaces, natural lands, reserves, working lands, core habitat, riparian corridors, parks, open spaces, private conservations lands, and other complementary land uses work together to support life on earth and human existence through the ecosystem services provided. Clean air, clean water, carbon sequestration, food production, recreation, pollination, and spiritual and cultural benefits are only a few of the services that natural lands provide society. With climate change occurring due to human actions such as land use, development, and energy use, to name a few, …

Economic Impact Assessment Of Nature-Based Coastal Resilience Solutions In Charleston. Estimating Local Economic Effects With Algorithm-Based Supporting Tool., Oksana Veselkova

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Coastal cities are at the forefront of the risks induced by climate change. Local communities are adversely affected, but the essential cultural assets and economies are also at risk of damage or destruction. In the efforts to limit hazard risk exposure, local governments are increasingly planning for long-term flood protection. One prospective flood risk mitigation measure is living shorelines or nature-based adaptation. The coastal ecosystems, such as beaches, wetlands, barrier islands, oyster reefs, and salt marshes, deliver multiple benefits to communities, including recreation, natural resources, freshwater, and carbon sequestration. Moreover, when combined with structural solutions, they can effectively reduce water …

Annexation For Good: An Equity Approach For Social And Environmental Justice With Municipal Annexation, Russell H. Stall

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Municipal annexation is a powerful tool for improving communities. United States cities historically use municipal annexation to increase tax revenues, grow populations, and increase land areas. However, attitudes about annexation are changing, and there is emerging interest in broadening annexation practices to advance a broader range of social and environmental benefits. For example, annexation can be used to improve blighted areas, control overdevelopment, protect environmentally sensitive areas and open spaces, and improve the lives of residents. It is not clear if cities support using annexation in this way, and if so, when those uses are possible.

Despite restrictive laws and …

The Old Harbor: A Diachronic Study Of Charleston's Cooper River Waterfront, 1884-1990, Branden Gunn

All Theses

For the better part of three centuries, Charleston’s Cooper River waterfront functioned as an important commercial seaport complete with wharves, warehouses, offices, workshops, and other related buildings. These resources defined the area for nearly three centuries, yet today, most connections to the maritime past have been severed. Revitalization efforts and modern developments have redefined the area and filled voids created by the waterfront’s steady decline throughout the 20th century. With an aim to better understand the Cooper River waterfront’s developmental history, this thesis utilized historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to track the harbor’s physical and spatial changes from 1884 to …

Planning For Local Resilience, Natasia Peacock

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Planning for resilience to climate change within the comprehensive plan is a keyway to help protect local communities. State legislations provides the guidelines to local governments to if a comprehensive plan is needed for the community and what is required to be within the comprehensive plan. This research assesses state legislation for resiliency policies for comprehensive plans and assesses comprehensive plans to see if local governments are adequately applying the legislation.

Nine states across five geographic regions, were used in evaluation of state legislation. A variety of comprehensive plans were also evaluated at both city and county levels within these …

The Impact Of Daylight And Window Views On Health And Recovery: A Quash-Experimental Study Of Patients With Heart Disease In A Cardiac Icu, Roxana Jafarifiroozabadi

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Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Being diagnosed with heart disease can lead to depression, anxiety, sleep disruption, and delirium symptoms, which can cause prolonged hospital stays among patients. Evidence suggests that the presence of daylight and window views can influence these symptoms positively. However, no studies to date have differentiated the impact of daylight from window views on heart disease patients or addressed how window use can impact patient recovery in cardiac intensive care units (CICUs).

This IRB-approved study employed a retrospective and prospective quasiexperimental approach to investigate CICU rooms of the same …

Community Bike Shops As Youth Development Programs: Influences On Mobility & Accessibility Of Youth Participants, Adrienne Warren

All Theses

Lack of mobility in low-moderate income neighborhoods can lead to mobility-based social exclusion and can contribute to a path of generational poverty, diminished quality of life, among other health and socio-economic disadvantages for residents. Community bike shops provide opportunities for youth residents in low-moderate income neighborhoods to learn new mechanical and riding skills through earn-a-bike programs in addition to providing access to a bicycle and facilitate group riding experiences. These new experiences can improve student’s mobility and accessibility and thus help alleviate mobility-based exclusion. A mixed methods case study of two community bike shops, Village Wrench in Greenville, South Carolina …

Factors Affecting Marta Ridership: Tod, Non-Pedestrian Access, Or Something Else?, John Luke Derochers

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Public transit has emerged as a socially acceptable sustainable transportation solution to the urban ills of 21st century cities. Understanding the factors that affect public transit ridership is of great need to transit agencies, planners, and policy makers. The literature suggests two main avenues for improving transit ridership in the US context. One option is to create Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) that mimic historically strong transit land-uses and built environments, including high densities of populations, jobs, and pedestrian friendliness. The other suggests that in the modern American sunbelt cities, populations, jobs, and activity centers are scattered throughout the metro area …

Computational Investigation Of The Morphological Design Dimensions Of Historic Hexagonal-Based Islamic Geometric Patterns, Mostafa Waleed Hashem Alani

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This dissertation examines the morphology of Islamic Geometric Patterns (IGP). Using mixed methods, including the simulation of historical designs and content analysis, this dissertation explores the question of how it is possible to mathematically describe the IGP. The study argues that the compositional analysis of geometry is not solely sufficient to investigate the design characteristics of the IGP, and the underlying mathematics and computational nature of the IGP should be considered when investigating historical IGP.

The study presents a parametric description method that captures the reality of the IGP in numeric form and utilizes the form to derive representational codes …

"Safety In Numbers" And Bicycle Safety: A Detailed Analysis Of The Denver Metropolitan Area, Rachael Thompson Panik

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Recently across the US, there has been a push to accommodate and encourage the viability of alternative modes of transportation—especially bicycling. Leaders across all levels of government, trade groups, advocacy and policy groups, and others are promoting different methods to make urban areas more bikeable. Now, as planning practice is moving towards implementing a transportation system that serves different types of travelers, the US faces challenges involved with retrofitting existing automobile-oriented streets.

While implementing bicycle safety initiatives is becoming a popular movement among municipalities, there have been differing opinions on the best way to make cities more bikable in academic …

Impacts Of Rail Transit Investments On Demographics And Land Use: 1990-2010, Aubrey Trinidad

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This paper studies the changes in land use and population characteristics around station areas following the building of rail transit stations in 14 major cities in the United States from 1990 to 2010. It answers the question: how have investments in US rail transit made since the 1990s affected land use and demographics? It also looks at the specific effects of investments on population density, race, and ethnicity, means of transportation, median housing value, median household income, vehicle access share, occupations, and land use represented by the share of multifamily versus single-family housing. Using block group level US census data …

Landscape Manipulatives: A Study Of Math Gardens And Learning Outcomes In Middle School Mathematics Education Research, Yang Song

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Human beings, especially children, need natural environments and outdoor play for their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being (Louv, 2008). Even though parents and teachers recognize the value of outdoor play, schoolchildren spend a diminishing amount of time engaging in outdoor activities (Clements, 2004). Furthermore, addressing strict state learning standards is the first priority for schools. Outdoor activities are often seen as extracurricular to those subjects typically emphasized and tested. As a result, outdoor landscapes such as science gardens, playgrounds, and experiential classrooms are often underutilized, discouraged since they can take away from more important, standard forms of pedagogy. Thus, traditional …

Integrating Tiny Houses Into The American Urban Fabric: A Comparative Case Study Of Land Use Policy Change In The Carolinas, Krista Evans

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The concept of the American dream, manifested in the ownership of a detached single family home, remains a driving force in the housing market. Historically, small homes have held a prominent niche in this dream in both urban and rural areas. However, the expansion of restrictive urban land use policies to protect property values, paired with the rapid diminishment of the American middle class, has made homeownership increasingly difficult to achieve. The tiny house movement has emerged as a means to promote small, affordable, and sustainable home ownership. However, the construction of tiny homes, or even the traditional cottage, is …

Income Inequality, Rapidly Rising Housing Prices And Overdevelopment Of Houses In China, Tao Guan

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Four phenomena can be observed in China’s housing market in the past 16 years. First, the vacancy rate of new condominium properties has increased significantly. Second, housing prices have been increasing very rapidly. In fact, the prices have rarely decreased even when strict housing policies have been mandated. Third, housing transactions are active, as indicated by the new condominiums that have been recently developed and have been sold very quickly. Finally, new construction/development had also been very active. Phenomena 2, 3, and 4 are inherently consistent, but the coexistence of phenomena 2, 3, and 4 with phenomenon 1 is very …

Brownfield To Brightfield: Influences On Attitude, Brittni Leigh Olesen

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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 …

Risk Analysis And Disaster Recovery: A Florida Lihtc Case Study, Valerie Hammett

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In spite of numerous programs and policies that encourage private investment in affordable housing, particularly after hurricane disaster, insufficient numbers of affordable units exist to meet demand. Some low-income households are displaced in the course of disaster recovery, and others face severe housing cost burdens as demand for affordable housing outstrips supply. Some suggest competitive uses for limited funds impede production. Others suggest that disaster and recovery policies tend to favor homeowners and economic recovery. Little attention has been given to the development decisions of affordable housing developers during disaster recovery. This study examines LIHTC development risk after the 2004 …

A Feasability Study For Local Food System Application Of A Peer Group Lending Microfinance Model, Anna V. Whitener

All Theses

Economic development has evolved since the Great Depression era in the United States from a stance of pure “smokestack chasing” to a more diverse set of strategies aimed at business retention and expansion. One method that has been successfully used domestically and internationally is the use of microloans to finance small businesses. One major component of microfinance strategies used abroad that allows for lower transaction costs is the use of Peer Group Lending Programs (PGLPs). This paper first reviews the cited social, political, and financial reasons for the lack of such programs in U.S. microfinance initiatives. It simultaneously addresses why …

Windfall Payment Decision-Making: A Case Study Of Pennsylvania Counties Receiving Funds From The Natural Gas Impact Fee (Act 13), Corey Scott Young

All Theses

Given the economic ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ cycle associated with natural resource extraction, the decision to spend or save the revenue generated by such activity (which is considered a financial windfall), has important policy implications. Two streams of literature exist which help to explain and predict the behaviors of those facing such payments. One of these streams contends that the size of a windfall payment is inversely related to consumption. More specifically, this stream posits that as the size of a windfall in proportion to an individual or household’s budget increases, consumption of the windfall decreases. This study attempted to test …

Farm To School Programs As A Tool For Food System Sustainability, Samantha Jackson

All Theses

Are Farm to School Programs being utilized by communities as a component of agricultural sustainability? This initial question led to a larger inquiry as to what agricultural sustainability tools communities are incorporating, with Farm to School Programs as a component, and what roles, or potential roles, planners are playing in program creation and implementation. A literature review of the current food system, sustainability threats imbedded within the system, and the potential for local food system planning, specifically Farm to School Programs, to overcome these threats provided a framework for research on the agricultural sustainability tools being planned for within communities …

Collaboration And Road Safety On Indian Reservations, Leah Sirmin

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Native Americans, as a group, face many challenges including the highest motor-vehicle fatality rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. While national motor-vehicle fatality rates have declined, the fatality rates for Indian reservations have continued to rise. Because addressing road safety requires significant interdisciplinary work, collaboration is an important tool; however, collaborations between tribal entities and non-tribal partners face a number of unique challenges including tense historical relationships, tribal sovereignty, and cultural differences. A variety of strategies can be utilized to address these challenges including methods such as regular face-to-face meetings to build trust, establishing formal …

Green Can Bring Green: An Evaluation And Comparison Of The Economic Effects Of Sustainable And Economic Redevelopment, Kathryn Young

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The process of redevelopment is a relied upon method of breathing new life into downtowns and urban areas. Though several common redevelopment approaches contribute to a sustainable atmosphere, more significant environmentally- and ecologically- sustainable approaches can be implemented in redevelopments to repair and support the environment and ecology of an area. But do economic and sustainable redevelopment models have similar impacts on the surrounding economies? This report conducted an evaluation and comparison of the economic effects of sustainable redevelopments and economic redevelopments. Though research is considered exploratory, the results demonstrate that sustainable and economic redevelopments are both viable options for …

The Reintroduction Of Heritage Streetcars And The Related Effects Of Community Identity And Social Interaction With The Residents In Streetcar-Oriented Developments, Robert Benedict

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Ripe For Change: Roles Of Planners And Landscape Architects At The Interface Of The Land And The Network In An Alternative Agriculture Model For Upstate South Carolina, Jennifer Johnson

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Both historically and in select areas today, local food systems are the main food supply for communities. Despite the fact that they are not a main source of food for most Americans, since the 1970s there has been a resurgence of U.S. local food systems (Qazi & Selfa, p.161). The movements exist in places where high-profile and vocal personalities (restaurateur, Alice Waters; author, Michael Pollan; or activist Carlo Petrini) also reside. This thesis examines whether the viability of the resurgence in local food systems depends on the commitment of a single person, and if not, whether those who affect the …

Attachment To The Physical Age Of Urban Residential Neighborhoods: A Comparative Case Study Of Historic Charleston And I'On, Jeremy Wells

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Purpose:
To counter the over-reliance of historic preservation research and practice on objective, expert values by understanding how people subjectively value and are attached to the age and design of traditionally-designed urban residential neighborhoods.
Research question:
How does the age of traditionally designed, urban residential environments affect the degree and character of place attachment for residents?
Cases:
1) historic Charleston, south of Broad Street, 2) I'On new urbanist development in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
Unit of analysis:
Residents of 1) historic Charleston and 2) I'On.
Methodology (methods):
Sequential mixed-method: phenomenology (interviews) followed by a survey methodology (on-line survey instrument); both …