Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Neoliberalism, Civic Identity, And Resistance: An Ethnographic Case Study Of A Community Development Organization, Erin Layne Elliott

Dissertations and Theses

Research on the marketization of the nonprofit sector and how it has come to operate in more business-like ways has been well documented in recent years. This research has largely focused on how marketization has pervaded the nonprofit sector, yet little research has been done on how business-like values and modes of acting are manifesting in nonprofits. Even less understood are the impacts marketization may have on foundational civic values in the nonprofit sector. As marketized discourses proliferate, concerns have been raised about threats to nonprofit autonomy and the sector's important civic role. This dissertation aims to fill this gap …

Responsible Pet Ownership: Dog Parks And Demographic Change In Portland, Oregon, Matthew Harris

Dissertations and Theses

Dog parks are the fastest growing type of park in U.S. cities; however, their increasing popularity has been met with increasing criticism of pets in public space. Dogs have shown to be a deep source of neighborhood conflict, and the provision of dog parks, or off-leash areas, is a seemingly intractable controversy for city officials. In 2003, Portland, Oregon established a network of 33 off-leash areas which remains the second largest both in count and per capita in the country. The purpose of my research is to understand the public debate over off leash dogs during the establishment of Portland's …

Benchmarking Community Investments In Green Building And Green Buying Programs In Five U.S. Cities, Shanna Nicole Eller

Dissertations and Theses

This is a study of what can be learned from leading U.S. cities about their work on environmental sustainability program efforts and what that information suggests for other cities considering a move into the environmental sustainability arena. The study focuses on green building and buying programs.

This is an exploratory study aimed at determining if detailed information, recommended for pursuit by Portney (2003), is available regarding: (a) how individual city sustainability programs got started; (b) how they maintain or fail to maintain themselves; (c) what they have been able to achieve programmatically; and (d) how effectively they have accomplished environmental …