Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Conceptualizing Youth Participation In Children’S Health Research: Insights From A Youth-Driven Process For Developing A Youth Advisory Council, Mohammad El-Bagdady, Krishna Arunkumar, Drew Bowman, Stephanie Coen, Christina Ergler, Jason Gilliland, Ahad Mahmood, Suraj Paul

Geography & Environment Publications

Given the power asymmetries between adults and young people, youth involvement in research is often at risk of tokenism. While many disciplines have seen a shift from conducting research on youth to conducting research with and for youth, engaging children and teens in research remains fraught with conceptual, methodological, and practical challenges. Arnstein’s foundational Ladder of Participation has been adapted in novel ways in youth research, but in this paper, we present a new rendering: a ‘rope ladder.’ This concept came out of our youth-driven planning process to develop a Youth Advisory Council for the Human Environments Analysis Laboratory, an …

Detroit Food Metrics Report 2018, Alex B. Hill, Amy Kuras

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

This report provides a snapshot of data and information on Detroit’s food system as well as trends over time. The report includes a broad range of programs and initiatives that local organizations, the Detroit Food Policy Council, and the City of Detroit are undertaking to address food insecurity, increase healthy food access and awareness, and support a more sustainable and just food system.

The Unequal City: The Mass Criminalization Of The Urban Poor., Elizabeth Michele Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exploring and understanding the widespread use of arrests and incarceration in urban neighborhoods of concentrated poverty is the subject of this dissertation. The research addresses gaps in theoretical debates about the causes of mass criminalization that position the phenomenon as the result of either neoliberalism or racism. In addition, the dissertation explores the impact of mass criminalization on urban citizenship. Urban citizenship is a theoretical frame that considers the substance of the economic, social, political, and mobility dimensions of city life. The research methodology is a case study of two impoverished neighborhoods in the city of Louisville, Kentucky that incorporates …

No.03: Devising Urban Food Security Policy For African Cities, James Sgro

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Informal food services are one of the few options for financially disadvantaged families. Food access policy needs to be created in partnership with informal economy actors to ensure that those who rely on informal systems are not ignored.

■ As household size increases, the likelihood of food insecurity grows exponentially. Adequate social protection programs are required to support household dependants including children and the aged and improve food security.

■ Secondary school completion is a specific milestone that significantly increases one’s food security outlook. Free primary and secondary school policies could return dividends in terms of nation-wide food security, …

Centroid-Amenities: An Interactive Visual Analytical Tool For Exploring And Analyzing Amenities In Singapore, Xue Qian Jazreel Siew, Sean Jia Ming Koh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Planning for civic amenities in a fast-changing urban setting such as Singapore is never an easy task. And as urban planners look toward more data-driven approaches toward urban planning, so grows the demand for more flexible geospatial analytics tools to facilitate a more iterative and granular approach toward urban planning. Such specific tools however, are not always readily available as plugins for traditional desktop GIS software, as numerous customizations must be made to model specific temporal planning scenarios for quick analysis, which could prove both costly and time-consuming. Hence, to address this need, open-source tools such as R Shiny could …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: Population Distribution By Race, Ethnicity, And Age, Sarah Taylor, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Grant Daily, Rodrigo Cantarero, Soo-Young Hong, Aileen S. Garcia, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Yan Xia

Aileen Garcia

KEY POINTS

This section details key points from the data on racial, ethnic, and age groups across Nebraska.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES IN NEBRASKA

• The proportions of Nebraska’s racial and ethnic minority populations tend to be smaller by 4% (i.e., Asian) to 8% (i.e., Black or African American, Hispanic/Latino) than those of the US, except for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islander and American Indian and Alaska Native populations (i.e., smaller only by 0.1% to 0.2%).

• Nebraska’s urban areas, which comprise 73.1% of the Nebraska population, have higher numbers of racial and ethnic minorities than suburban or rural areas. …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: Migration Rates, Aileen S. Garcia, Rodrigo Cantarero, Grant Daily, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Soo-Young Hong, Sarah Taylor

Aileen Garcia

KEY POINTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Nebraska is a state that is not often viewed as affected significantly by mobility and migration. As a state, the net migration rate of 1.1 from 2015 to 2016 is fairly low compared to others like Florida (16.0) or Nevada (14.4). However, data from this report suggests that there is, in fact, substantial movement of people moving in and moving out; as well as pockets within the state where there is higher than average influx of both domestic and international migrants.

In general, migration trends in the state mirror national trends of “rural flight” where people …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: The Geographic Distribution Of Poverty, Grant Daily, Rodrigo Cantarero, Maria Rosario De Guzman, Soo-Young Hong, Sarah Taylor, Aileen Garcia, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Yan Ruth Xia

Aileen Garcia

Headings:

What is poverty?

Federal definitions of poverty: the poverty line

General poverty and poverty brackets

Poverty and vulnerable populations

Child poverty (under 18 years)

Young child poverty (0 - 5 years)

School age poverty (6 - 17 years)

Elderly poverty (65+)

Comparing child, adult, and elderly poverty

Minority poverty

Key points

Nebraska vs. United States

Geographic distribution

Poverty in children and the elderly

Poverty rates for racial/ethnic minorities

References

Pedestrian Pedagogy Of Place: Nurturing An Ecological Consciousness Through Slow Explorations Of The Public Realm, Kevin M. Pozzi

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

As increasing institutional paralysis and polarization demonstrate, citizens are not engaged or motivated by ecological challenges because they struggle to identify with our catastrophic relationship to nature in this urban, anthropocentric, and climactically-fraught modern era. Rather than focus solely on natural areas as a pathway to ecological consciousness and action, educators can inspire citizens through a “Pedestrian Pedagogy of Place” that brings wonder and enchantment into our urban public realm. Using the principles of sustainability education and place-based education as a framework, this pedagogy recognizes the sidewalk and pedestrian experience as a shared classroom through sensory, awareness-based learning modalities.

No.01: The Sdgs, Food Security And Urbanization In The Global South, David Celis Parra, Krista Dinsmore, Nicole Fassina, Charlene Keizer

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Urban food insecurity is distinct from that experienced in rural areas and must be addressed through a different set of policies.

■ While supermarkets are increasingly prevalent in urban centres of the Global South, the informal economy and state food distribution programs continue to play an important role in meeting food security needs of the urban poor.

■ The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, as part of a new in-ternational directive, recommends that governments aim to improve food security and nutrition over the next 15 years in response to the global challenge of fostering sustainability.

■ SDG …

No.02: An Urban Perspective On Food Security In The Global South, Michael Chong, Lucy Hinton, Jeremy Wagner, Amy Zavits

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Food insecurity challenges in the Global South are changing as a result of rapid urbanization and the globalization of food supply chains.

■ Urban food insecurity is not distinct from rural food security challenges and policy seeking to address either should adopt a systems approach that strengthens their interdependence. There is an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of rural food security programming while concurrently addressing the growing food security needs of vulnerable urban populations.

■ This brief recommends that food security policy should prioritize intra-urban stages of informal food value chains and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their …

The Slave Trade Route: A Regional And Local Development Catalyst, Chukwunyere Ugochukwu

Geography and Planning Faculty Publications

The conservation of and focus on slave export points turned tourist monuments in Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana, are incomplete without linkages to other complicit places in the interior that together completes the chain of darkness, the trade in humans along the Atlantic coast of Ghana, as well as in the interior. Completed, it will highlight the infrastructure of the slave business, the domestic, as well as the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. When the chain (route) of the different complicit communities in the interior to these export monuments along the Atlantic coast is conserved, it shall herald a completeness to the …

Corporate Urbanization: Between The Future And Survival In Lebanon, Deen S. Sharp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you look today at the skyline of downtowns throughout the Middle East and beyond, the joint-stock corporation has transformed the urban landscape. The corporation makes itself present through the proliferation of its urban mega-projects, including skyscrapers, downtown developments and gated communities; retail malls and artificial islands; airports and ports; and highways. Built into these corporate urban structures are edifices of politics, ideology and certain forms of socio-spatial and temporal organization. The corporation, however, has largely escaped critical scholarly analysis in Geography and/or Urban and Middle East Studies. In this thesis, I argue that the corporation is far more than …

Active And Safe Routes To School: Evaluating School Travel Planning To Support Children's Active Travel, Adrian Nicholas Buttazzoni

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most Canadian children are not achieving their daily recommended physical activity (PA) levels despite the many emotional, psychological, and physical benefits of PA. Walking or wheeling to/from school, or active school travel (AST), is a viable method for improving children’s daily participation in PA. In Canada, the Active and Safe Routes to School initiative promotes AST through its comprehensive School Travel Planning (STP) program. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, broadly, this thesis investigates the i) implementation and ii) effectiveness of a regional, two-year STP program supporting AST. This thesis includes a systematic review of AST intervention models implemented in North America, …

Saying "No" To (The) Oxygen Capital? Amenity Migration, Counter-Territorialization, And Uneven Rural Landscape Change In The Kaz Dağları (Ida Mountains) Of Western Turkey, Patrick T. Hurley, Yılmaz Arı

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Diverse forms of conservation and development are transforming the material landscapes and related livelihoods of communities in rural places around the world. While many studies focus on changing protected area governance and ecotourism efforts associated with nature protection, other studies focus on residential development in areas experiencing amenity migration. We use a comparative political ecology approach that draws on key insights from the political ecology literature, first, on neoliberal protected area expansion, and, second, on exurbia that highlight the dynamics of competing rural capitalisms and reterritorialization in areas experiencing amenity migration to explore these coupled conservation and development dynamics. Drawing …

Ya No Tengo Vecinos: Local Understandings Of Neighborhood Change In Cusco, Peru, Kalyn Finnell

Architecture and Planning ETDs

This thesis involves the San Blas neighborhood in the Historic Center of Cusco, Peru. It aims to better understand local effects of the changes that San Blas has undergone since the 1990s and to explore possibilities related to improving the qualities of life of long-term residents (vecinos) who have lived in San Blas for at least two generations. It has two principal objectives: 1) Make recommendations to present to various public and private entities who have a presence and influence over the San Blas neighborhood to improve the likelihood that vecino demands are heard, 2) Illuminate the ways that vecinos …

The Persistence Of Segregation In The 21st Century, Paul A. Jargowsky

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Locating Art Worlds, James W. Harrington Jr.

Conflux

This paper uses a varied literature to define “art” as literary, musical, or visual creations, and theatrical, dance, or musical performances that: are not motivated by utility; play some role in interpreting a culture or place; and are recognized as art by some number of audiences, vendors, producers, and critics. Thus, art benefits cultures and places through its interpretive value.

The production and dissemination of artistic creations requires a constellation of materials, standards, techniques, producers, and vendors that is called an “art world” relevant to that type of art. Though the impulse to create art is universal, art worlds are …

Methodological Challenges In Urban Food Systems Research: Case Study Of Local Food Institutions In South Africa, Daniel N. Warshawsky

Geography Faculty Publications

This paper examines how institutional power dynamics in South Africa’s urban food system have restricted the quantity, quality, and type of data collected on food institutions and limited the range of research and policy as a result. In particular, while non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local institutions speak openly with researchers or share data, key governing institutions such as the state and agri-businesses often refuse to work with scholars. This has not only limited access to data on food system flows and operations, but it has also resulted in a significant research gap about the principal institutions in food systems, as …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

The Impacts Of Green Spaces On Crime In New York City, Matthew Edward Iannone Jr.

Student Theses 2015-Present

From the early 1960s through the mid-1990s, crime in New York City ran rampant. With a gradually dwindling police during this time, a high unemployment rate, and an rapidly increasing metropolitan population, crime peaked in the early 1990s, with the murder rate hitting a record-high of 2,245 in 1990. When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994 and appoint Bill Bratton as the NYPD police commissioner, these rates immediately plunged. Numerous factors may have contributed to this sudden decline in crime: the police force grew significantly through the 1990s, more criminals were placed and held in prison, and the economic …

Youth And The City: Reflective Photography As A Tool Of Urban Voice, Roman Gerodimos

Journal of Media Literacy Education

YYoung people’s engagement with urban public space has been facing a number of obstacles that reflect a lack of understanding of their needs, values and priorities. The emergence of digital devices and social media as integral elements of youth culture adds further urgency to the need to understand how young people themselves visually articulate their perceptions of life in the city. Bringing together elements from urban studies, youth studies and digital media literacy, this paper puts forward a pedagogic and research approach that aims to facilitate youth engagement with urban landscapes and the community. Participatory photography was used a tool …

Equitable Sustainable Development In Small American Cities: The Northend Greenway And The Path Forward, Amelia Morrison

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As global climate change prompts a demand for “green” urban development, the representation of sustainability as a panacea to all environmental, economic, and social issues has been increasingly challenged by social justice advocates. In particular, critics of the social component of this supposedly balanced sustainability model have characterized holistic sustainability rhetoric as an appropriation of equity discourse to serve the interests of a narrow set of affluent consumers. The ongoing question of who benefits from sustainable development has revealed highly problematic patterns of displacement and gentrification that fall disproportionately on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. This tension is examined …

Creating Web Maps Of Forest Restoration Plots At Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research Center, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Daniel Lassila

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

The purpose of this report is to provide a detailed account, discussion, and analysis of my internship at Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research Center in Minas Gerais, Brazil during the summer of 2017, where I worked under the direction of GIS Supervisor Mr. Cliff Jones. The central focus of my work dealt with consolidating existing GIS data on the organization’s rainforest restoration effort into a single normalized database - based on the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, creating a structure for future forest restoration volunteers including enabling offline field collection using Collector for ArcGIS, then creating an ArcGIS Online web map based …

Degrowth Lessons From Cuba, Claire S. Bayler

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

Cuba is the global leader in practicing agroecology, but agroecology is just one component of a larger climate-ready socio-economic system. Degrowth economics address the need to constrain our total global metabolism to within biophysical limits, while allowing opportunity and resources for "underdeveloped" countries to rebuild themselves under new terms. Degrowth recognizes the role of overdeveloped countries in surpassing the ecological limits of our planet at the cost of wellbeing for billions of dispossessed people within and between countries. Cuba's circumstances during and following the Special Period exemplify both sides of the degrowth scenario, as well as demonstrating policy and grassroots …

Mapping Energy Access In Rural Tanzania: 2017 Summer Internship With The World Resources Institute, Naramena Mccray

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

This report details my 2017 summer internship experience; both the report and the internship being requirements of the GIS for Development and Environment Graduate Degree at Clark University. My internship was hosted by the World Resources Institute, an international non-profit organization in Washington D.C. As implied by my position title, “Energy Access-GIS Intern”, I spent the duration of my internship (14 weeks) applying my geospatial expertise to address the topic of energy access which is an issue effecting rural areas of many developing countries. I was given the responsibility of creating an interactive map application of Tanzania accessible by energy …

The Effects Of Crystal Bridges In Downtown Revitalization Of Bentonville, Arkansas In The Last Decade, Korab Vranovci

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bentonville started the process of downtown revitalization in 2007 after they passed a bond measure. However, research on the impacts of the revitalization and the factors associated with it is limited or focused for the private sector. This study identified Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as a catalyst for the process of downtown revitalization and aimed to fill the gap in urban development and economic opportunities that arose due to the museum.

Using the “Monitoring annual urban changes in a rapidly growing portion of Northwest Arkansas with a 20-year Landsat records” (Reynolds, Liang, Li, & Dennis, 2017) it is …

Hear We Are: Investigating Sonic Inequality Within Bowling Green, Ohio, Declan Wicks

Honors Projects

Using the framework of Steven Feld’s “acoustemology,” Hear We Are examines the sonic structures of Bowling Green and their effects on, and representation of, diverse communities within Bowling Green. Through modeling the sonic landscape of Bowling Green, Ohio in relation to aggregated census data, Hear We Are explores how the city of Bowling Green has been spatially and sonically organized – whether along lines of class, race, or education. Ultimately, Hear We Are offers a narrative of sound within Bowling Green while reflecting on the consequences of living within different soundscapes, i.e., sonic inequality

Using the theoretical framework of placemaking …

"From The Neighborhood Up!": Neighborhood Sustainability Certification Frameworks And The New Urban Politics Of Scale, Alex J. Ramiller

Geography Honors Projects

Urban sustainability goals are closely tied to the current political context, in which the imperative to attract highly mobile global capital frequently steers the objectives of local government. In this paper, I argue for the incorporation of the neighborhood scale into contemporary understandings of “local” or “urban” sustainability policy, emphasizing the potential for multi-scalar certification frameworks to subvert the predominant global-local relationship. By shifting the conceptualization and implementation of sustainability from globally dependent urban regimes to a diverse array of discrete urban communities, neighborhood-scale initiatives are able to draw greater attention to issues of social equity, environmental justice, and spatially …

Urban Development In Hartford: Neoliberalism, Inequality, And Trinity College As An Anchor Institution, Eavan Flanagan

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis explores the ways in which neoliberal governance takes place in Hartford, CT, particularly as the city struggles to make ends meet. It looks at the Hartford's dependence on corporations, and its growing political and economic alignment with universities. This research examines the effects of urban renewal on the city, and how post-war policies and development shape the inequalities that exist in Hartford today. Lastly, this thesis examines the inequalities and spatial dynamics in Hartford's Southside neighborhood, Frog Hollow, and between Trinity College and Frog Hollow in particular.