Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Economic Revitalization In The Lower Anthracite Coal Region, Shaunna Barnhart

Sponsored Events -- Materials

Conference materials distributed at the Economic Revitalization in the Lower Anthracite Coal Region convening event organized in collaboration with Bucknell University, Bloomsburg University, Susquehanna University, Greater Susquehanna Valley Chamber of Commerce, Anthracite Region for Progress, Mother Maria Kaupas Center, Shamokin Area Businesses for Economic Revitalization, and the City of Shamokin. The convening focused on collaborative opportunities across the communities of Shamokin, Coal Township, Mount Carmel, and Kulpmon. Event materials include an eight page booklet with speaker biographies, descriptions of event partners, and descriptions of sponsors. Supplementary materials include a welcome letter and the electronic version of a printable flier.

Convening …

Making A House A Home: A Community Plan For Regional Engagement On Housing, Anna N. Clemens

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This plan was developed for Virginia Organizing, a statewide non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to challenging injustice by empowering local communities. The plan was designed to produce a replicable model for organizers embarking on housing campaigns. Research on the Virginia Organizing chapters in Fredericksburg and Charlottesville was completed as well as on the broader affordable housing ecosystems in these regions. This research was gathered through interviews with regional and local planners, organizers, non-profit representatives, and individuals working in the intersection of planning and organizing. Chapter member research, which guided this plan, was conducted through surveying, focus groups, and qualitative mapping. Findings …

Conflicts Abound: How Future Development Along The Wasatch Front Will Replace Critical Migratory Bird Habitat Around Farmington Bay, Aubin A. Douglas

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Student Research

Every year, the Great Salt Lake (GSL) and its associated wetlands provide critical habitat to over 250 migratory bird species from both the Pacific and Central Flyways. The GSL borders the Wasatch Front, which is the fastest growing and most populous region in Utah. To support the ever-increasing working population, the government of Utah aspires to increase economic growth in the region through more economic incentives and infrastructure development. As this area continues to develop, greater pressure will be placed on the surrounding natural resources, including the GSL, its wetlands, and the open space and agricultural lands that act as …

Identifying And Assessing Conflicts Between Future Development And Current Migratory Bird Habitat Around Farmington Bay, Utah, Aubin A. Douglas

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

Every year, the Great Salt Lake (GSL) and its associated wetlands provide critical habitat for over 250 migratory bird species from both the Pacific and Central Flyways. The GSL borders the Wasatch Front, which is the fastest growing and most populous region in Utah. To support the ever-increasing working population, the government of Utah aspires to increase the robust economic growth of the region through economic incentives and development of infrastructure. As this area continues to develop, greater pressure will be placed on the surrounding natural resources, including the GSL, its wetlands, and the open space and agricultural land that …

How Racially Equitable Are The Outcomes Of Sustainability Planning?, Anastasia K. Cale

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

Sustainability planning embodies ideals of how cities should be planning for a tomorrow that the entire world will share, and it places a third of its theorized emphasis on the importance of equity. This essay explores the tenets of sustainability planning, urban form values, and how to achieve a sustainable city. A framework of sustainability planning and urban form over time was applied to the City of Tacoma through an investigation of the One Tacoma Plan and historical documents with special emphasis on equity. This research shows that Tacoma has followed the urban form values through time and that although …

Science, Advocacy, Policy, Planning: Tools For Advancing Transportation Equity, Garrett S. Mcallister

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The theme of this portfolio is how different tools and approaches can be used for advancing transportation equity. Broadly defined, transportation equity is about fairness in transportation. There are a number of ways this fairness can be assessed. The most common way to assess transportation equity is by looking at the fairness of outcomes, distributed geographically, socially, or even by mode of transportation. Equity can also be defined by the fairness of processes. The first half of the portfolio illustrates some of the problems with the current transportation system and how it is unhealthy (Piece 1) and unjust (Piece 2). …

Mobile-Based Sidewalk Inventory App For Smart Communities, Health, And Safety, Madhav Erraguntla, Dursun Delen, Rupesh K. Agrawal, Karthic Madanagopal, Richard Mayer

Suburban Sustainability

As the United States and other nations strive to cope with the obesity epidemic (NCHS, 2015), progressive communities are developing sidewalk infrastructure to promote physical activity and health. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that community-based interventions like neighborhood walk, bike programs etc. have shown to be effective in promoting physical activity and health. Smart cities are embracing the development of community trails and promoting their use to increase physical activity among youth and adults. System implementation, data collection, and analysis were performed from January 2015 through July 2015. To promote these objectives, communities and cities need accurate information …

The Tea Party Versus Planning: A Study Of Tea Party Activism And Its Impact On Local Government Planning, Spencer A. Norman

Theses and Dissertations

The Tea Party movement’s effect on local and regional planning in Virginia has received little study. This work identifies how conservative political activism has impacted planning in the Commonwealth and how planners have responded. The study relies on a qualitative approach involving 22 semi-structured interviews with activists, planners, and citizens, as well as textual analyses of planning documents, local and regional news reports, and Tea Party social media. The resultant findings show that Tea Party activism is rooted in deep seated ideals about private property rights and individualism. It also reveals that planning processes that increased the amount of public …

Toward Regional Resilience In Toronto: From Diagnosis To Action, Zack Taylor, Leah Birnbaum

Western Urban and Local Governance Working Papers

Greater Toronto is recognized as a high-performing urban region. Over the past decade, however, negative social, economic, and environmental trends have emerged that threaten the region’s future. On the basis of documentary research and four focus group workshops with a diverse array of professional practitioners, this paper assesses the Toronto region’s current assets and vulnerabilities in relation to future risks.The discussion is framed by the concept of resilience—an increasingly popular, yet abstract, concept in urban planning and public administration. This paper proposes, first, that planning and policymaking be directed toward increasing the region’s resilience, understood as the diversity and redundancy …

Underground Infrastructure: Planning, Development And Revitalization, Guoliang Meng

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

The challenges facing Liuzhou’s underground infrastructure system today are unlike any it has ever faced before. Frequent underground gas pipeline leaks and explosions are impacting the safety and quality of citizens’ lives. To develop a safe, efficient and economical underground infrastructure system, Liuzhou City will have to do three things: (1) create a unified administrative department for underground pipeline administration, (2) conduct a citywide underground pipeline survey by stages and create an information platform to share the underground pipeline data, and (3) develop a public-private partnership to construct a utility tunnel. The poster outlines these critical steps in Liuzhou’s underground …

Why Has Plan Implementation Been Ineffective In Ghana? A Case Study Of Planning In Kwabre East District Assembly And Offinso Municipal Assembly, Gabriel Appiah

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Plan implementation is crucial to the success of any society. For a community to feel the impact of planning, planners should implement plans efficiently. In the light of the importance of plan implementation to our community, the study evaluated the various factors (institutional capacity, and citizen participation) that affected the implementation of the DMTDP (2006-2013) in Offinso Municipal Assembly (OMA) and Kwabre East District Assembly (KEDA) in Ghana. The Study used desk study and institutional survey to evaluate plan implementation in both districts. The study found that the challenges causing the poor performance in plan implementation in both District Assemblies …

Panel Presentation: Norfolk: Thriving With Water, Norfolk Working Group

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Alternative Institutional Arrangement For Urban Transit And Intercity Railway Operations: Lessons For The U.S., Seitu Akira Coleman

City and Regional Planning

Public transportation is an important part of the U.S. transportation system. After losing popularity in the U.S. during the mid-20th century, public transportation has been making a strong comeback in major metropolitan areas since the 1990s. In an effort to reduce inner-city traffic congestion, promote environmentally sustainable development patterns, rejuvenate decaying central business districts, and take advantage of all the other externalities of public transportation (i.e., reduced air pollution, a smaller urban footprint reducing sprawl, etc.), urban areas have been actively expanding their existing systems or building completely new systems. Despite the strong interest in reinvesting in public transportation and …

Ecodistricts In San Francisco: The Implementation Of Neighborhood Regional Planning And Its Potential Effects On Environmental Resilience, Elizabeth M. Juvera

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ecodistricts, or neighborhood-scale, community-driven areas of sustainable development, have emerged internationally and within the U.S. to create models of adaptive environmental design and advanced urban infrastructure. Central SoMa is the first ecodistrict to be planned and implemented in San Francisco, with the intention of revitalizing and greening this urbanized region of the city. At this time, the Central SoMa area has very low biodiversity levels, inefficient infrastructure, and poor water management capabilities. Through the implementation of ecodistricts in San Francisco, the city can integrate physical and behavioral sustainability measures from existing ecodistricts such as permeable surfaces, green roofs, stormwater management, …

Public Participation In Planning In Nsw: Resilient Evolution Or Relapse?, Lynne Armitage, John Sheehan

Lynne Armitage

The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and the Land and Environment Court Act 1979, comprise a legislative duo providing statutory control over the use of public and private property in the most populous state of Australia, New South Wales (NSW). Statutory planning in NSW arguably commenced in 1951 with the Cumberland Planning Scheme Ordinance which was in turn based upon pre-war English town and country planning, and is generally regarded as the foundation for much Australian planning. Since 1979 the NSW planning regime has matured into a complex exclusory zoning system, which has been further developed through case law …

“Two-Ways” To Fix Our Neighborhoods, John Gilderbloom, William W. Riggs

William W. Riggs

Expanding on earlier research about the impacts of one-way streets on outcomes such as public health and property values, a new study examines a citywide case study in Louisville.

Development Of A Fundamental Rating System For Identifying Sprawl: A Case Study Utilizing Small Cities In Michigan, Jonathan T. Riehl

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Urban sprawl research generally fits into one or more of four realms including definitions, causes, components, and consequences. Although research on consequences continues to thrive, research on components is in its adolescence, primarily due a lack of consensus on definition. Recent studies such as Ewing et al. 2014 have narrowed the list of sprawl metrics to about 20 within four factors including development density, land use mix, activity centering, and street accessibility.

This main product of this research is a Sprawl Scorecard for small Michigan cities varying in size from Traverse City, nearly 50,000 people in the urban cluster, down …

The (Somewhat) False Hope Of Comprehensive Planning, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Some commentators equate municipal comprehensive plans with "smart" growth (that is, development that considers the needs of nondrivers as well as the needs of automobiles). However, comprehensive planning. although desirable, is neither necessary nor sufficient for smart growth. Plans are not necessary because zoning reforms can achieve the same smart growth objectives as plans, and are not sufficient because many comprehensive plans support sprawl rather than smart growth.

Changing Cities, Changing Roles: Municipal Developments And The Urban Social Contract In Nineteenth Century Vienna, J. Alexander Killion

J. Alexander Killion

Humans have congregated in urban areas for millennia, but the way in which people have viewed the cities they live in has varied greatly over time. The nineteenth century brought extremely rapid changes in the interactions between people and space, especially in urban areas such as the Austrian capital of Vienna. The experience of Viennese inhabitants during this period is typical of what historian Reinhart Koselleck described as a “denaturalization of historical temporalities,” in which “the relations of time and space have been transformed, at first quite slowly, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, quite decisively.” This rapid transformation …

Local Planning And High-Speed Rail: Responses And Perceptions In A Developing Amtrak Corridor, John-Luke D'Ambrosio

Masters Theses

Incremental speed increases have been a main focus of Amtrak in recent years. Now operating at 110 mph within three different service lines in the United States, Amtrak is making progress toward achieving maximum speeds within rail corridors. This study focuses on Amtrak’s Wolverine service line which operates daily passenger rail service between Chicago, Illinois and Detroit/Pontiac, Michigan. Specifically, this study will look at six cities connected by this service that are east of Chicago. The six cities examined in this research are Hammond, Indiana, Michigan City, Indiana, New Buffalo, Michigan, Niles, Michigan, Dowagiac, Michigan, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. This segment …

Project Space(S) In The Design Professions: An Intersectional Feminist Study Of The Women's School Of Planning And Architecture (1974-1981), Elizabeth Cahn

Doctoral Dissertations

The Women’s School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was an ambitious, explicitly feminist educational program created by seven women planners and architects who used the school to introduce ideas and practices of the 1970s women’s movement into design and planning education in the United States. Between 1974 and 1981, WSPA organized five intensive, short-term residential educational sessions and a conference, each in a different geographical location in the United States, after which the organization ceased formal programming and the organizers moved on to other activities. The founders and participants involved in WSPA collectively imagined and created a feminist space for …

Enhancing Big Ideas Through Regional Planning: Cross-Jurisdictional 'Value Added' In Washington State, Yonn Dierwechter, Brittany Hale, Robert Woodmark, Cody Wyatt, Wendy Moss, Matthew Hall, Whitney Hays, Shanna Schubert, Cheng Wang, Seth Lundgaard, Caleb Rawson

Conflux

This paper argues that enhancing multi-jurisdictional planning - i.e. regionalism in various forms -- should be at the center of how we ameliorate most of our major developmental challenges. Put another way, efforts to improve the planning profession’s contribution to concerns like “climate action,” “economic development,” “social equity,” “local government capacity,” and so on, all require more attention to stronger regional planning processes. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section, we develop the over-arching theme that experiments in regionalism longer refer to significant institutional-structural reforms - in particular, to consolidation or centralization of planning authority -- …

An Interpretive Plan Guide For Wilderness Park In Lincoln, Nebraska, Rachel J. Ward

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

Wilderness Park, located in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a public park of unique ecological and historical value to the city of Lincoln and to the surrounding region. The natural and historical features of the park present an opportunity to communicate environmental and historical topics that are relevant on local, national, and global levels, as well as inspire a lively sense of pride in the community. The problem is that many topics relevant to Wilderness Park are not currently being interpreted at the park, and that there are relatively few interpretive resources available to park visitors.

The purpose of this project …

Development Of A Public Education Website: Building Bridges Over Water, Angelina Mckee

Agricultural Education and Communication

Website created by Angelina McKee to educate the public about water resource issues. Water is the basic unit of life, water resources are the basis for what societies and ecosystems are founded upon. Water shortages and droughts are more prevalent in our ever-changing world. It is no shock that there are discrepancies between various stockholders on either sides of the dry riverbed. This senior project resulted in the development of a website that addresses global water resources, water use in California, water conservation, and water allocation. The website informs the public on water resources and related issues and will hopefully …

The Social Implications Of Bicycle Infrastructure: What It Means To Bike In America's Best Cycling Cities, Erin Daly

Geography Honors Projects

The abundance of bicycle infrastructure appearing alongside controversial urban revitalization efforts in recent years has left many with distinct perceptions about people who ride bicycles and their role in society. The lifestyle associated with the most visible cyclist cohorts has furthered divisive perceptions and often times created resentment, as what was once a humble tool for mobility has become a symbol of an inaccessible cyclist “culture” often associated with gentrification. This paper aims to acknowledge existing research on how the bicycle has attained so many divisive connotations, while looking at methods to improve this reputation and increase accessibility to utilitarian …

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Jonathan G. Cooper

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Based on review of climate projections for the …

Evaluating Social Sustainability In Plans For Inter-Cultural Cities, Diane Faye Gapas

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, there is an increasing interest and awareness on sustainability and sustainable development. Sustainability is comprised of the three E’s: environment, economy and equity. Of these three, the equity or the social sustainability component is often overlooked. As cities become more global and demographically diverse due to immigration, diversity’s impact to the city should be addressed through policies and plans. The content analysis and evaluation of city plans, policies and urban design examines their response to accommodating and including inter-cultural diversity using identified indicators of social sustainability and equity. This study finds that the length of time a city has …

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Sally Miller

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Based on review of climate projections for the …

Plans Are Not Enough, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Some commentators see comprehensive municipal plans as a remedy for suburban sprawl. But in fact, a plan can be used to promote sprawl as well as to prevent sprawl.

Introduction To Public Participation Geographic: Special Issue, Michelle Thompson, Kelly Owens

Michelle M. Thompson

With the progression of PPGIS, variations in the technology’s adaptability and application have brought forth critiques related to access, technology, and time. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) permeates a global market and technology appears to drive social, economic and civic progress with varying outcomes. Residents, advocates, and community organizations are utilizing democratized data in ways that early PPGIS investors could not have imagined. However, while many applaud the ability to create a trinity with data serving as a neutral partner, some wonder if any advancement has been made. A major critique of PPGIS is the inability to have a sustained, longitudinal …