Architecture Commons^™

The Importance Of Street Lighting: A Study In San Luis Obispo, Kaitlyn P. Lam

City and Regional Planning

The purpose of this report is to shed light on the importance of resident and student safety in the City of San Luis Obispo. The report goes over exact locations of frequently used areas in the City of SLO that lack street lighting. By spreading awareness, studying different lighting types, and getting citizen input, it helps to plan out a method of bettering San Luis Obispo’s streets. The report presents information on efficient and cost-effective lighting in order to integrate them into a location specific proposal that the city could utilize. By the end of the report, readers will be …

Rekindling The Human Spirit Through Urban Design: Creating Spaces For Joy, Sharon Charlotte Ng

City and Regional Planning

What makes people joyful? How can we foster happy, healing spaces through urban design that allow for all community members to channel emotional wellbeing? In a fast paced, consumer-oriented economy, the importance of maintaining mental health and well-being is often ignored. This paper seeks to answer these questions through the synthesis of existing literature on urban design, society, and case study analyses of existing public spaces. Although the research focuses on social transformation through the implementation of urban design principles, the disciplines of city planning, public health, sociology, and psychology are discussed as well. The research explores techniques that would …

Feasibility Report On Water Recycling And The Housing Crisis, Tally A. Perry

City and Regional Planning

The western United States is experiencing increasing population, a housing shortage, and a drought. These challenges demand creative and unprecedented changes to development. Water recycling is slowly emerging as a viable solution for developers, home owners, and cities as a way to continue much-needed housing development while mitigating unnecessary water depletion. With all change, policy, feasibility, and awareness can be the largest influencers. Drought-ridden western-American states require additional and revised regulatory requirements to promote recycled water in new development. Currently, water reuse is largely used for agricultural and industrial purposes. To motivate and encourage housing development, water recycling needs to …

The Mustang Bridge, Dominic Loreto, Jacob Bulotti

City and Regional Planning

The purpose of this project is to develop a pedestrian overpass in San Luis Obispo, California at the entry of the city that will successfully provide crossing and safety on Boysen Ave. and Santa Rosa Street connecting Mustang village to university square. The current circulation routes have a significant impact on a community’s pedestrians, cyclists, and automobile drivers. Safety becomes a growing concern when the streets are illegally crossed in unsafe sections, putting everybody at risk. The planned environment will be revised and accurately assessed to provide safety, flexibility, and proper use of the circulation route in place. The community’s …

Cityengine As A Tool For Visualizing Neighborhood Change: An Initial Study, Zach Noyes

City and Regional Planning

Urban planning is reliant upon genuine public engagement to ensure that planning and policy decisions reflect the ideas shared by the public. Because planning is a profession largely focused on the physical and built implications of more abstract planning concepts, effective graphic communication is critical to securing public support and understanding of policy decisions. ESRI's CityEngine uses procedural modeling technology to render personally-tailored scenes to non-planner members of the public, and shows potential to positively change the way that planners generate graphic representations of physical impacts of policy changes. This initial study establishes a methodology for determining the efficacy of …

Crissy Field Improvement Project, Giselle Huan Beld

City and Regional Planning

This senior project report is an exploratory analysis of the National Park Service’s passively-managed lands at Crissy Field.

There are always multiple alternatives to a new development project and the priorities established at the beginning of a process can have a major impact on the final outcomes. This senior project report investigates implications of reconnecting the city with the northern waterfront and investigates key recommendations related to transportation, environmental, and historic planning.

A City Planning Card Game, Francisco Alfarozierten

City and Regional Planning

This senior project aimed to create a card game based on the concept and professional practice of city & regional planning. It consists of 103 unique cards, being separated in the following manner:

• 1 City Center card
• 6 Unique Zoning cards
• 74 unique Development cards
• 22 unique Action cards

An Analysis And Application Of Pedestrian Streets, Ellie Krantz, Austin Lucero

City and Regional Planning

The goal of this project is to closely examine the conversion of traditional roads into pedestrian streets. By studying two examples, we will create an understanding of why cities do this, how they implement pedestrian streets, what results pedestrian streets bring, and what makes a successful conversion project.

The second part of this project is to implement the key takeaways of the research phase into a conceptual design of a similar project for San Luis Obispo. This design based phase will consider the entire scope of the project, detailing project location selection, implementation, and recommendations.

Shellter Beer Garden: The Redevelopment Of An Abandoned Parcel Into A Community Gathering Space, Madison Leonard, Lainie Kastner

City and Regional Planning

The Shell Beach neighborhood of Pismo Beach serves a quiet, active community in need of an enjoyable, outdoor community gathering space. While the current main street, Shell Beach Road, has undergone major streetscape improvements, there are still vacant parcels in need of refurbishments. A vacant lot on the corner of Shell Beach Road and Cuyama Avenue that previously served the community as a drive-thru restaurant, now provides a desirable site for business. At the location of 1901 Shell Beach Road, a community beer garden built out of shipping containers will provide an ideal space for the Shell Beach community to …

Cal Poly Campus Safety: Policy Proposal, Alan Cazares, Phung (Karen) Bich La, Junhyun Kim

City and Regional Planning

As described in this project, the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is in need of improving the campus’s sense of safety and safety features. With an increasing student population and increasing dangers, the importance of safety for all is becoming evident. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that it is essential to have proper safety features and preventative measures in place to keep the student and faculty population safe. The project’s goal is to produce safety recommendations that could be used to amend the existing 2035 Campus Master Plan. Currently, safety is not a topic extensively covered in …

Spheres Development Package, Nate R. Antepenko, Dan Benaroch, Dominic Ferrari

City and Regional Planning

The Spheres, live work play development concept is located adjacent to Higuera St, along an arterial road that primarily contains industrial and commercial land uses. The proposed development site is intended to enhance the city of San Luis Obispo by addressing the necessities of the surrounding community.

The development proposal adopts the Urban Design principle, Smart Growth Planning, designed to direct development into areas that have adequate utility capacity and transportation networks and to encourage walkable communities. The Spheres development site fosters fluid spaces, where residents live in a walkable radius to work, eliminating long commutes, in order to eliminate …

The Tragedy Of The Commons: A Podcast Exploring Solutions To The Housing Crisis In California, Delaney Li-Ming Faherty

City and Regional Planning

Affordable housing has become increasingly inaccessible across the United States, particularly in California. Because of its long history and far-reaching span, California’s housing crisis is a complexity that affects individuals at most income levels. Accordingly, opinions on solving the crisis vary among each public.

A popular solution is increasing the amount and scale of housing, however, barriers, such as single-family zoning, exist at the state and local level. While statewide legislation is working to counteract municipal zoning codes, local opposition is rampant. Because of this pushback, and the slow pace at which housing reliant on individual action is built, today’s …

A Redevelopment Plan For Santa Rosa Plaza, Abraham Miranda Roldan, Benjamin K. Ip

City and Regional Planning

The purpose of this document is to hypothesize a successful and innovative plan for the redevelopment of the Santa Rosa Plaza Mall (Downtown Mall) in Santa Rosa, California. This project proposal seeks to address the Plaza Mall’s challenges and provide an alternative solution to develop a unique character that promotes a sense of place, foster vibrant civic spaces, and meets the City’s housing and job needs.

Shopping malls in the United States are dying and are becoming less popular among the new generation, which means malls must adapt to fulfill the role of “third place” that many people need. This …

Better Leveraging Of Processies And Internal Procedures For Public Forms Used By Planning Departments, William J. Munson

City and Regional Planning

A survey was sent to 517 planning and community development departments across California inquiring about how they use interactive PDF files for forms and applications. 139 cities and counties responded, providing invaluable feedback, with 98% stating that their online forms and applications are in PDF format, 62% confirmed that some or all their PDF's are interactive, and over 72% retype the information in the completed PDF forms they receive in a database or spreadsheet program. Why retype data that has already been typed into an interactive PDF in order to enter it into their tracking systems?

Based on the survey …

Reaching A Young Audience In City And Regional Planning, Kristie P. Woo, Vinnie P. Chen

City and Regional Planning

Currently, urban planning is a rare discussion topic in schools. The youth are often excluded in the planning process as most adults question their intellectual capacity and they hold little to no political power. However, this does not have to be the case - planning has the potential to change young minds when expressed in a medium children can understand.

Hollywood And Gower: A Design Proposal, Oscar Hagen Gake

City and Regional Planning

This is a design proposal for a mixed-use, transit-oriented community on an approximately 40 acre site in Central Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.