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Urban Studies Commons™

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Articles 1 - 30 of 267

Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies

Accessory Dwelling Units In Portland, Oregon, Matthew Gebhardt, Beth Gilden, Yael Kidron Aug 2019

Accessory Dwelling Units In Portland, Oregon, Matthew Gebhardt, Beth Gilden, Yael Kidron

Matthew Gebhardt

The Institute for Sustainable Solutions is spearheading an initiative to make it easier and more affordable for Portland homeowners to construct a second house on their property—increasing housing options in a city with some of the fastest rising rents and lowest vacancy rates in the nation.

Called “accessory dwelling units” or ADUs, these small backyard homes can be used by family members or rented out to others in the community. They provide more affordable housing options while reducing pollutants that cause climate change.

In 2018, Matthew Gebhardt, assistant professor of Urban Studies and Planning, and Yael Kidron, Ph.D. candidate in …

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Changing Urban Form In A Shrinking City, Justin Hollander, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Rachel B. Drew Jun 2019

Changing Urban Form In A Shrinking City, Justin Hollander, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Rachel B. Drew

Michael P. Johnson

This paper uses building footprint data in a shrinking city, Baltimore, MD, in 1972 and 2010 to achieve two primary research objectives. The first is to understand the historical patterns of housing construction and demolition in selected row house neighborhoods in Baltimore between 1972 and 2010. The second is to understand changes in housing footprints, and associations between these changes and physical and socio-economic characteristics in selected neighborhoods. We find that housing losses and associated changes in building footprints have shown substantial variation across our study area and exhibit clustering within our study area. Moreover, while housing loss is strongly …

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Community-Focused Problem-Solving With Operations Research And Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Jan 2019

Community-Focused Problem-Solving With Operations Research And Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

In these days of ‘analytics’, ‘big data’ and ‘smart cities’, many of us are aware of the importance of data and quantitative analytic methods for program design, implementation and evaluation. Less commonly-understood are specific tools and methods for community-based interventions in which the problem to be solved is unclear, and the ways in which data of many different kinds can be used to develop interventions that represent best-possible uses of organization and community resources. Moreover, it is also less commonly-understood how to put communities, and community members, near the center of problem-solving and decision-making.

Examples of challenging problems include: How …

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Are Wide Streets Negligent?, Michael Lewyn Dec 2018

Are Wide Streets Negligent?, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

American commercial streets are typically designed to encourage rapid automobile traffic, thus making streets unsafe for pedestrians. In the 2016 case of Turturro v. City of New York, the New York Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict against a city for failing to slow down such traffic. This article describes Turturro, but shows how limited its holding was: the Turturro court emphasized a city's failure to study traffic calming, so if a city studies its options adequately it can avoid liability even if its policies are unsuccessful.

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Planetizen Blog Posts- First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn Dec 2018

Planetizen Blog Posts- First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Op-ed length articles on various land use-related issues.

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Community Operational Research: A Survey Of The Discipline, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, Jason D. Wright, George Chichirau Sep 2018

Community Operational Research: A Survey Of The Discipline, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, Jason D. Wright, George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Community operational research (COR) is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory research, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. It rests on a foundation of meaningful engagement with communities. This presentation summarizes a multi-year effort to assemble cutting-edge research in COR in a special issue of European Journal of Operational Research available August 2018. We review principles for community OR, describe the breadth and diversity of the field through the experience of …

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Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau Jul 2018

Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Community operational research (Community OR), and its disciplinary relation, community-based operations research, has an increasingly high profile within multiple domains that benefit from empirical and analytic approaches to problem solving. These domains are primarily concentrated within nonprofit services and local development. However, there are many other disciplinary and application areas for which novel applications and extensions of COR could generate valuable insights. This paper identifies a number of these, distinguishing between ‘emerging trends’ (mostly in well-studied areas of operations research, management science and analytics) and ‘new frontiers’, which can be found in traditions not commonly oriented towards empirical and analytic …

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Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn Apr 2018

Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

A speech comparing market urbanism and new urbanism.

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Community-Engaged Operations Research: Localized Interventions, Appropriate Methods, Social Impact, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Jan 2018

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Localized Interventions, Appropriate Methods, Social Impact, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Community-engaged operations research is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory research, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. It rests on a foundation of meaningful engagement with communities. Through a survey of current scholarship in two complementary areas of inquiry, ‘community operational research’ (referring to work by primarily European researchers) and ‘community-based operations research’ (referring to work by primarily American researchers), I develop principles for community-engaged OR, present critical questions that represent …

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Course Syllabus: Honors 490 Mayor's Symposium: Housing In A Changing City, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Dec 2017

Course Syllabus: Honors 490 Mayor's Symposium: Housing In A Changing City, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

This course provides students with an introduction to project-based and community-engaged learning through the subject of urban housing policy. The theme of this course is stabilizing and revitalizing Boston’s neighborhoods by increasing access to decent and affordable housing for all, with a focus on reducing incidence of eviction and displacement arising from gentrification and neighborhood change. Through readings, lectures, discussions, site visits and conversations with practitioners, scholars and advocates, students will acquire a comprehensive perspective on urban housing, and develop innovative projects to address important needs of Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor’s Housing Innovation Lab (https://tinyurl.com/ycnqgx8q). Small teams …

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Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Nov 2017

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Community-engaged operations research is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory scholarship, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. Through a survey of current scholarship in two complementary areas of inquiry, ‘community operational research’ (referring to work by primarily UK-based researchers) and ‘community-based operations research’ (referring to work by primarily US-based researchers), we develop principles for community-engaged OR, present critical questions that represent opportunities to expand the impact of this work, and discuss …

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Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright Oct 2017

Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright

Michael P. Johnson

Nonprofits face gaps in organizational capacity, including program design and evaluation, but previous research suggests that capacity-building exercises have a positive effect. We describe a data analytics training workshop with staff from Boston-area nonprofits reflecting a wide range of sectors. Through analysis of participant work on case studies provided by the instructor, we examine how participants made sense of training materials, the various strategies employed by participants to solve three case study problems, and participant feedback about the session. Our findings provide a basis for novel interventions in community based operations research. 

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Food Justice Youth Development: Using Photovoice To Study Urban School Food Systems, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman, Monica Maitin, Jonell Sostre Rosado, Jazmin Colon, Nick Alger Sep 2017

Food Justice Youth Development: Using Photovoice To Study Urban School Food Systems, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman, Monica Maitin, Jonell Sostre Rosado, Jazmin Colon, Nick Alger

Catherine Sands

How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the "youth as consumer" frame to a food justice youth development approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and …

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Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Aug 2017

Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Urban community development corporations and other local institutions routinely face challenging problems in housing and economic development that require substantial expertise in data analytics and decision modeling. Recent research, inspired by local responses to the housing foreclosure crisis, and developed in cooperation with Boston-area CDCs, has resulted in a collection of applications that can assist CDCs and similar organizations to design local interventions for acquisition and redevelopment of housing. This paper describes these applications. The first of these is values and objective design, i.e. the process of identifying decision opportunities. The second of these is data analytics, or …

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Environmental Advocacy: Insights From East Asia, Mary Alice Haddad Jul 2017

Environmental Advocacy: Insights From East Asia, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad


Environmental advocacy in East Asia takes place in a context where there are few well-funded professional advocacy organisations, no viable green parties, and governments that are highly pro-business. In this advocacy-hostile environment, what strategies are environmental organizations using to promote better environmental outcomes?  Using an original database of environmental organizations and interviews with activists and officials throughout the region, this paper investigates which strategies are most common and compares them to the advocacy strategies found in the United States.  It finds, perhaps surprisingly, that (a) environmental organizations across East Asia employ similar advocacy strategies even though they are operating in …

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I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan Apr 2017

I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Uniquely interconnecting lessons from law, psychology, and economics, this article aims to provide a more enriched understanding of what it means to “share” property in the sharing economy. It explains that there is an “ownership prerequisite” to the sharing of property, drawing in part from the findings of research in the psychology of child development to show when and why children start to share. They do so only after developing what psychologists call “ownership understanding.” What the psychological research reveals, then, is that the property system is well suited to create recognizable and enforceable ownership norms that include the rights …

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Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2017

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Scholars in multiple disciplines intersecting operations research have developed theory and applications to address the question, how can the decision sciences develop new ways to solve problems of special interest to organizations and individuals situated in geographically, economically and socially circumscribed communities? The motivation for this work is the belief that mission-driven and resource-constrained nonprofit organizations, and underrepresented, underserved, or vulnerable populations may have special needs for analytic and empirical problem-solving methods that have traditionally received less emphasis in traditional operations research and management science research and teaching. Scholarship in this area, alternatively labeled ‘community operational research’ (mostly in the …

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Robocar Risks, Michael Lewyn Dec 2016

Robocar Risks, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Suggests that policymakers should not widen roads or stringently enforce anti-jaywalking laws in order to accommodate autonomous vehicles.

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In Search Of Academic Legitimacy: The Current State Of Scholarship On Graffiti And Street Art, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D., Peter Bengtsen, John Lennon, Susan Phillips, Jacqueline Z. Wilson Dec 2016

In Search Of Academic Legitimacy: The Current State Of Scholarship On Graffiti And Street Art, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D., Peter Bengtsen, John Lennon, Susan Phillips, Jacqueline Z. Wilson

Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

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Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani Nov 2016

Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani

Michael P. Johnson

Main Street organizations develop local development initiatives that support economic and social goals. We describe an application of value-focused thinking and community-based operations research to identify economic development performance metrics and decision alternatives for local development interventions. Using interviews with stakeholders in three Boston communities, we show how values structures vary across communities and stakeholder groups and how attributes can be quantified using a variety of data sources. We conclude by presenting a composite values structure to support improved operations management and strategy design for all Boston Main Street districts.

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Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: #11;A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Nov 2016

Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: #11;A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Urban community development corporations and other local institutions routinely face challenging problems in housing and economic development that require substantial expertise in data analytics and decision modeling. While CDC employees have significant experience in diverse application areas, they often face limitations in acquiring, analyzing and sharing data, and using these data to solve decision problems whose solutions can generate novel strategies to address localized needs. Recent research, inspired by local responses to
the housing foreclosure crisis, and developed in cooperation with Boston‐area CDCs, has resulted in a collection of analytic methods and applications that can assist CDCs and similar organizations …

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Climate Change, Smart Growth, Racial Oppression, And White Privilege, Laura Stivers Oct 2016

Climate Change, Smart Growth, Racial Oppression, And White Privilege, Laura Stivers

Laura Stivers

In this paper I will examine how people of differing environmental perspectives—namely anti-growth preservationists and environmental justice advocates—frame their responses to smart growth, using Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area as a case study. Then I will offer a race analysis of these frameworks based on the thesis that to address climate change through smart growth we need to challenge the ways certain groups try to retain their white privilege. As foundation for this thesis I will develop the norms of reparations and restoration to argue for an equitable smart growth approach that entails structural transformation to address …

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Financiación Por Promotores De Vivendas Asequibles Para La Clase Trabajadora Mediante Impuestos Y Recuperación De Plusvalías: Una Comparación De Los Enfoques Estadounidense Y Español, Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer Oct 2016

Financiación Por Promotores De Vivendas Asequibles Para La Clase Trabajadora Mediante Impuestos Y Recuperación De Plusvalías: Una Comparación De Los Enfoques Estadounidense Y Español, Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer

Julian C. Juergensmeyer

Este artículo explora las diferencias, similitudes, ventajas y desventajas comparativas entre los deberes de financiación de los promotores urbanos de viviendas asequibles y para la clase trabajadora en los Estados Unidos y España. Se hace hincapié en las impact fees como fuente de ingresos en los Estados Unidos y los requisitos de recuperación de plusvalías en España y en Cataluña en particular. El autor concluye que las impact fees norteamericanas proporcionan una base más amplia para los deberes de los promotores de financiación, pero que los programas españoles de recuperación de plusvalías ofrecen una mayor flexibilidad a las autoridades encargadas …

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Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani Sep 2016

Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani

Michael P. Johnson

Main Street organizations are community-based nonprofits across the USA dedicated to local economic development through physical improvements, technical assistance to businesses, marketing and placebuilding. In this paper we identify metrics associated with success in local economic development and generate decision opportunities for improved program design and implementation. Our community partners, Main Street organizations in the city of Boston, want to ensure that data they collect about their service areas can help them measure progress towards achieving their individual goals as well as identify programs and initiatives that make best use of their resources and expertise. Using a mixed methods, inductive …

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Community-Based Operations Research: Data Analytics And Decision Modeling For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Mar 2016

Community-Based Operations Research: Data Analytics And Decision Modeling For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

‘Community-based operations research’ is an extension of multiple traditions in OR/MS to produce research for local change. CBOR attempts to incorporate critical thinking, evidence-based policy design and prescriptive decision modeling. This presentation introduces a theory of CBOR and reviews current applications to support a collection of new scholarship. These applications include foreclosure response, vacant land management and local economic development. We conclude with suggestions to expand the field of CBOR.

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How Can Value Elicitation In Adult Basic Education Support Learners’ Success In Goal-Setting Policy?, Alma H. Biba, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2016

How Can Value Elicitation In Adult Basic Education Support Learners’ Success In Goal-Setting Policy?, Alma H. Biba, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

For the last two decades, federal legislation and Massachusetts’ state ABE policies have linked adult learners’ educational outcomes to accountability requirements. Using a multi-method approach ABE learners’ goal setting was presented as a decision problem in order to reveal and disentangle the conflicting preferences fueled by outcome-based accountability requirements. Elicitation of values using value-focused thinking (VFT) methodology revealed that learner’s self-defined goals are consistently distinct from program-defined goals, that teachers recognize this disjunction, and that efforts to reconcile the two could yield significant improvements in ABE program outcomes.

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Analysis Of The Cdf Early Learning Community Trust Process Phase I, Sherrill W. Hayes Jan 2016

Analysis Of The Cdf Early Learning Community Trust Process Phase I, Sherrill W. Hayes

Sherrill W. Hayes

The purpose of this report was to provide an external review of the participatory decision making process used in Phase I of the “Clarkston Families Decide” CDF Early Learning Community Trust (ELCT) conducted between July 2014 and January 2015. The reviewer’s primary purpose was to provide information about the process used to develop
the project outcomes in Phase I that may be useful in the overall evaluation of the ELCT. The reviewer employed primarily a qualitative research methodology as the data sources were text and visual secondary data from pre-existing documents created during the process. The primary source materials used …

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Northeast Indiana Entrepreneurial Opportunity Survey Analysis, Ziona Austrian, Merissa Piazza, Eli Auerbach, Sunjoo Park, Joan Chase Dec 2015

Northeast Indiana Entrepreneurial Opportunity Survey Analysis, Ziona Austrian, Merissa Piazza, Eli Auerbach, Sunjoo Park, Joan Chase

Ziona Austrian

This survey report is associated with "Northeast Indiana Regional Analysis: Demographics, Economy, entrepreneurship and Innovation"

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Northeast Indiana Entrepreneurial Opportunity Survey Analysis, Ziona Austrian, Merissa Piazza, Eli Auerbach, Sunjoo Park, Joan Chase Dec 2015

Northeast Indiana Entrepreneurial Opportunity Survey Analysis, Ziona Austrian, Merissa Piazza, Eli Auerbach, Sunjoo Park, Joan Chase

Ziona Austrian

This survey report is associated with "Northeast Indiana Regional Analysis: Demographics, Economy, entrepreneurship and Innovation"

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Rating The Cities: Constructing A City Resilience Index For Assessing The Effect Of State And Local Laws On Long-Term Recovery From Crisis And Disaster, John Travis Marshall Nov 2015

Rating The Cities: Constructing A City Resilience Index For Assessing The Effect Of State And Local Laws On Long-Term Recovery From Crisis And Disaster, John Travis Marshall

John Travis Marshall

Superstorm Sandy, the 2008 Iowa floods, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita all supply recent reminders that U.S. cities can no longer adopt an ad hoc approach to threats presented by climate change and natural hazards. The stories detailing long-term recovery from these disasters underscore that federal, state, and local governments are struggling to appreciate the legal tools and institutions necessary to implement the large-scale infrastructure, housing, and community development programs that climate change and more frequent natural disasters demand. This Article calls for development of a tool allowing succinct evaluation of the range of community capacities that will figure critically …

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