Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Migration, Residential Preference, And Economic Development: A Knowledge-Based Approach Regarding Locational Preferences Of Two Disparate Subgroups Of The Creative Class, Charlynn Alita Burd

Doctoral Dissertations

The creative class literature centers on regional economic development, urban policy, and amenities. The creative class literature is considered at the metropolitan scale and is argued to be highly mobile. According to Asheim and Hansen (2009) , there are three knowledge bases of the creative class, analytic, synthetic, and symbolic. The three knowledge bases vary across two dimensions of ‘climate’. People climate refers to factors that positively effect the location of people, while business climate refers to factors that positively effect the location of businesses. The analytic knowledge base is comprised of economic activities that are based …

Agricultural Land-Use Change And Local Context: The Shenandoah-Cumberland Valley Apple-Growing District In The Eastern United States, Joseph Paul Guttmann

Doctoral Dissertations

Across the United States, the rural-urban fringe continues to be a place of dynamic land-use change. One area that has experienced a change in its agricultural base is the Shenandoah-Cumberland Valley Fruit District of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. Since 1982, apple acreage in the Fruit District has declined by nearly 50 percent. Using a mail survey and personal interviews, this dissertation investigates the factors behind the Fruit District’s 25-year decline in apple acreage, the reasons why this decline has not been spatially uniform across the Fruit District, and the ways that growers have adapted to ensure the future …

Justice, Truth, And Community Organizing In Boston, Ma, Melanie Ann Barron

Masters Theses

In 2010, community organizers in Boston, MA began to lay the groundwork for a truth and reconciliation process about the long-term impacts of the violence and racism surrounding the desegregation/busing crisis in the 1970s. Organizers believe that the busing crisis still presents impediments to the ability of communities of color in Boston to live well and participate in public life. I contextualize their efforts first as a response to the failures of the liberal democratic reforms that marked the civil rights movement. Rather than truly reforming the structures that permit the existence of racialized inequalities, I argue that the liberal …

Associations Between Climate, Latitude, Fertility And The Decline Of The Us Sex Ratio At Birth, Michael C. Meyers

Doctoral Dissertations

The US sex ratio at birth (SRB) has declined since 1970, while ambient temperatures have been increasing. This study examines the temporal and spatial variation of the US SRB from 1979–2002 in association with fertility rates and climate variables. Approximately 62.8 million birth records from the National Center for Health Statistics were linked to monthly climate division data and county level socioeconomic variables to evaluate the association of SRB and environmental conditions at or near the time of conception.

Seasonal variation in US SRB is detectable in time series analysis, and is somewhat in phase with variation in fertility. Logistic …

The Impact Of Cultural Distances On The Country Selection Process, Alan Blizzard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Redefining Memorial Landscapes: The Stolpersteine Project In Berlin, Matthew Russell Cook

Masters Theses

Geographers have long been interested in the ways that states and individuals use cultural landscapes to shape the meaning and understanding of the past. In this thesis, I argue that individuals and the state embed different interpretations of the Holocaust past in the German landscape. In particular, I focus on the German artist Gunter Demnig and his Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) Project as a case study of memorial projects created by an individual. The Stolpersteine are small memorial stones for a single Holocaust victim. The stones are installed in front of homes and businesses that were the last known location of …