Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Evacuation And Return: Increasing Safety And Reducing Risk, The University Of New Orleans Center For Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology

CHART Publications

The City of New Orleans enlisted UNO-CHART to improve the evacuation of the vulnerable populations in the city, defined broadly to include those who are not able to access or use the standard resources offered in disaster preparedness and planning, response, and recovery. To do this, UNO-CHART analyzed the Regional Transit Authority (RTA), the City Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP) and Special Needs Registry databases, conducted a literature review of risk communication best practices, reviewed ready.nola.gov for content and readability, conducted a social vulnerability analysis of the Evacuspots, conducted interviews and focus groups with vulnerable populations in the City of New …

"Naturally Occurring" Or "Until Market Speculation Starts": Investigating The Precarity Of Affordable Rental Housing And The Potential For Displacement Along Planned Transit Lines, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

New transit infrastructure is a double-edged sword for low-income renters: one the one hand, increased mobility supports access to jobs and critical services; but if transit-oriented development fails to include and preserve affordable housing, they may be pushed out by rising rents. The question of whether public investments spur gentrification and displacement have created intense controversy around planned transit extensions in our region. My research on precarious rental housing illuminates the specific mechanisms of housing displacement and challenges for housing affordability in the single-family/duplex and the large multifamily rental market. The loss of low-cost housing is occurring even without new …

Preserving Housing Choice And Opportunity: A Study Of Apartment Building Sales And Rents, Seyoung Sung, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

NOAH sales show precariousness of this rental housing at a regional scale.

• Active transactions of multifamily rental properties have been disproportionately NOAH. There have been over two thousand transactions of NOAH buildings in the Portland metro area from 2006 to 2017 — over 68,000 units of housing. These sales are accelerating, with over 20 percent occurring in just the last 18 months.
• Sales prices for multifamily rental properties have increased substantially, making preservation of affordable rents more challenging. Regionally, the average sale price increased by 78 percent between 2010 and 2017; during this period there was a 43 percent …

Uneven Urban Metabolisms: Toward An Integrative (Ex)Urban Political Ecology Of Sustainability In And Around The City, Innisfree Mckinnon, Patrick T. Hurley, Colleen C. Myles, Megan Maccaroni, Trina Filan

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21^st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, …

How Useful Is Gsv As An Environmental Observation Tool? An Analysis Of The Evidence So Far., Katherine Nesse, Leah Airt

SPU Works

Researchers in many disciplines have turned to Google Street View to replace pedestrian- or carbased in-person observation of streetscapes. It is most prevalent within the research literature on the relationship between neighborhood environments and public health but has been used as diverse as disaster recovery, ecology and wildlife habitat, and urban design. Evaluations of the tool have found that the results of GSV-based observation are similar to the results from in-person observation although the similarity depends on the type of characteristic being observed. Larger, permanent and discrete features showed more consistency between the two methods and smaller, transient and judgmental …

Food Justice In The Trump Age: Priorities For Urban Food Advocates, Nevin Cohen, Janet Poppendieck, Nicholas Freudenberg

Publications and Research

Every constituency – regardless of political ideology – must analyze the effects of the election of Republican majorities in Congress and Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This is particularly true for advocates involved in eliminating food insecurity and hunger, fighting malnutrition and health inequality, and ensuring sustainable and fair urban food systems with high quality jobs. Anticipating the new administration’s efforts that may undermine food justice enables advocates, researchers, and policy makers to choose priorities and forge strategic partnerships.

Active And Public Transportation Connectivity Between North Temple Tod And Jordan Park River Trail, Ivis Garcia Zambrana, Christie Oostema

TREC Final Reports

The project seeks to capitalize on existing community assets—several TOD stations and a regional bike and pedestrian trail system—by studying how these can be linked. The overarching goal of this project is to increase scholarship on networking safe routes that can encourage public and active transportation choices and thus, encourage a healthier lifestyle and advance sustainability. By expanding pedestrian, bicycle and transit connections to green space and offering the most potential for TOD, this proposal clearly demonstrates the greatest priorities of NITC. Moreover, nationwide, communities like Salt Lake’s West Side are in greater need of sustainable transportation choices that foster …

Portland Msa Economic & Population Outlook October 2017, Thomas Potiowsky, Portland State University. Northwest Economic Research Center

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

NERC's binannual forecast of employment, income, housing permits, and house prices for the Portland MSA. The October release does not reiterate the population forecast from the April edition, but does include a long-run income forecast.

2017 Point-In-Time: Count Of Homelessness In Portland/Gresham/Multnomah County, Oregon, Uma Krishnan, Deborah Elliott

Publications, Reports and Presentations

The 2017 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count of Homelessness provides a snapshot of people who were experiencing homelessness on the night of Wednesday, February 22, 2017, in Portland, Gresham, and Multnomah County, Oregon. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to count people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing or places not meant for human habitation (these people are collectively known as “HUD homeless”) on a single night (a “point in time”) at least once every two years. This enumeration is one way of understanding the levels and trends in unmet need for shelter and permanent housing within …

The Opioid Epidemic: A Practice And Policy Perspective, Gail D'Onofrio

Center for Policy Research

I will be talking about the escalating opioid epidemic and some innovative solutions my colleagues and I at Yale University and throughout the state of Connecticut, are working on to mitigate the consequences of this public health crisis.

Following The Money From Investments To Outcomes, Robert Zako, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Project Briefs

While it’s accepted that mixed-use development promotes active travel, researchers don’t have a consensus on exactly how land use determines people’s travel patterns.

The research examined:

• The relationship between pedestrian travel and land use mix;
• The impact of land use mix on pedestrian travel;
• How operationalizing land use mix influences individual travel behavior

This work contributes theoretical and empirical tools for research and practice in transportation and land use planning.

Prosperity And Industrial Development: Review Of Concepts And Measurements, Emma Willingham, Peter Hulseman

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

This report, researched and written for the Port of Portland by the Northwest Economic Research Center, summarizes local efforts to measure and improve regional prosperity, both within and outside of Portland, Oregon, and offers a framework for assessing varying industrial land uses with respect to prosperity. As part of this review, definitions of prosperity from a variety of sources are presented. The purpose of the report is dual: First, a context for community and regional economic prosperity is established via the review of existing definitions and initiatives, and secondly, NERC offers a framework for assessing specific uses in terms of …

Indigenous Community Preferences For Electricity Services: Evidence From A Choice Experiment In Sarawak, Malaysia, Terry Van Gevelt, C. Canales Holzeis, F. George, T. Zaman

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Providing indigenous communities with electricity services requires an understanding of preferences to ensure that electrification schemes are congruent with the communities’ specific development pathways. We contribute to the literature by using a choice experiment to rank and quantify household preferences for electricity services in two indigenous villages in Sarawak, Malaysia. Specifically, we disaggregated electricity services into five attributes: private use for household appliances and lighting, public use for community facilities, productive use for income generation, the operator model and the monthly tariff. We found that the most value was placed on the operator-model underpinning the provision of electricity services and …

Talking The Walk: An Autoethnography Of Pedestrianism In Chicagoland, Andrew Kuka

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

This autoethnographic account of pedestrianism in Chicagoland aims to remind us of the sensory, social, and emotional experiences walking can provide, and how an environment centered around automobiles affects those experiences. It utilizes participant observations and refers to literature from a wide range of disciplines to construct a story of walks in downtown Aurora and Chicago, Illinois that illuminates factors at play in the shaping of the pedestrian experience in urban areas.

World Changers: Inspiring Cultural And Linguistic Excellence In Children, Parents And Teachers, Ana I. Berdecia Med, Caitlin Kosec Mpp, The John S. Watson Institute For Public Policy For Thomas Edison State College

Center for the Positive Development of Urban Children

The New Jersey Cultural Competency and English Language Learners Summer Institute and Mentoring Program hosted its 10th Anniversary, Three-Day Learning Institute, Aug. 23-25, 2016, with the theme, World Changers: Inspiring Cultural and Linguistic Excellence for Children, Parents and Teachers. After the Three- Day Learning Institute, classroom teachers were assigned a mentor who provided monthly supports to the classroom teachers in the adoption English language learners and cultural competency strategies with the goal of creating culturally and linguistic responsive classrooms. Twenty-three teachers from Trenton Public Schools were recruited and received 21 hours of training in best practices for engaging diverse …

How Does Transportation Affordability Vary Among Tods, Tads, And Other Areas?, Brenda Scheer, Reid Ewing, Keunhyun Park, Shabnam Sifat Ara Khan

TREC Final Reports

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained popularity worldwide as a sustainable form of urbanism; it concentrates development near a transit station so as to reduce auto-dependency and increase ridership. Existing travel behavior studies in the context of TOD, however, are limited in terms of small sample size, inconsistent TOD classification methods, and failure to control for residential self-selection. Thus, this study has three research questions. First, how can we distinguish between Transit-oriented development (TOD) and Transit-adjacent development (TAD)? Second, how do travel behaviors vary between TODs and TADs? Third, how does transportation affordability vary between TODs and TADs? This study utilizes …

Source Of Down Payment, Institute Of Portland Metropolitan Studies

Metroscape

A statistical snapshot of the percentage of owner-occupied housing stock, by major source of down payment, in 2015.

Spanning The Region: A Survey Of Bridges In The Metroscape, Andrés Oswill

Metroscape

Bridges get us where we need to go. They also have character that contributes to a sense of place. Here we profile a selection of bridges in the Portland Metro area to understand the history and logistics of each bridge. When was the bridge built, how was it funded, who maintains it? The bridges we selected reflect the area’s wide variations in bridge style and management. Some of the bridges are county owned; others are run by a state or city transportation department. The bridges range in age, but all are inspected every twenty-four months. A bridge’s story offers important …

Cultivating The Technology Ecosystem: An Interview With Skip Newbury, Sheila Martin

Metroscape

An interview with Skip Newbury, President and CEO of the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO). He is a frequent speaker on technology trends and topics, economic development, public-private partnerships and civic innovation. Before joining the TAO, Skip served as an economic development policy advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, where he helped create Portland’s first comprehensive economic development strategy in 16 years, recognizing software as a key industry cluster.

New Transit Developments: A Double-Edged Sword, Lisa K. Bates, Aaron Golub, Devin Macarthur, Seyoung Sung

TREC Project Briefs

Researchers analyze the projected impacts of a proposed transit investment on affordability and mobility in a Southeast Portland corridor.

What Do We Know About Location Affordability In U.S. Shrinking Cities?, Joanna Ganning, Jenna Rosie Tighe

TREC Final Reports

In late 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Location Affordability Index (LAI) portal. Their dataset uses models to estimate typical amount households spend on housing and transportation at the block group level, and calculates “H + T Affordability,” the percent of household income spent on these items. In our previous research, we analyzed 81 shrinking cities to determine how location affordability differs across various neighborhoods. Our results suggest that households in declining neighborhoods, as compared to stable or redeveloping neighborhoods, face the greatest H + T affordability challenges in shrinking cities. Furthermore, in declining neighborhoods, …

Impacts Of Bus Rapid Transit (Brt) On Surrounding Residential Property Values, Victoria Perk, Martin Catalá, Maximillian Mantius, Katrina Corcoran

TREC Final Reports

As bus rapid transit (BRT) grows in popularity in the United States, a better understanding of the mode’s impacts on land uses and property values is needed. Economic theory suggests, and literature has shown, that people are willing to pay higher housing costs to lower their costs of transportation to areas of economic activity. Does high-quality BRT service reliably provide such access and, thereby, increase residential property values? The hypothesis is that property values are higher closer to BRT stations, reflecting a premium for the access provided by the BRT service to various goods, services, employment, education, and recreation. There …

Homes Close To Fast Transit: The Value Is Still Rising, Victoria Perk, Martin Catalá, Maximillian Mantius, Katrina Corcoran

TREC Project Briefs

This research contributes to the relatively small body of literature on property value impacts of BRT in the U.S. by conducting a case study on Lane Transit District’s EmX BRT service in Eugene, Oregon, using econometric modeling techniques to estimate changes in property values associated with the BRT. The analysis is based on hedonic price regression analysis, where sale prices are modeled using several property characteristics that contribute to the market or sale price. The findings of this research indicate that the EmX BRT system does positively impact surrounding single-family home sale prices.

When Cities Shrink, Affordability Does Too, Joanna Ganning, Jenna Rosie Tighe

TREC Project Briefs

To better understand the real costs of housing and transportation in a declining urban context, NITC researchers implemented a household survey to determine whether the assumptions made in existing research literature and in the LAI regarding household expenditures and transportation accessibility hold true when analyzing shrinking cities—generally, cities characterized by a long-term loss in occupied housing units. The project was led by Joanna Ganning of Cleveland State University, who has conducted previous research into shrinking cities with the support of the NITC program.

Scappoose, Liza Morehead

Metroscape

A brief snapshot of Scappoose, Oregon, discussing its history, growth and development, and a look to its future.

A New Vision For Timber City Usa, Kerry Politzer

Metroscape

A look at the city of Willamina, Oregon, as it attempts to transition from a timber-reliant town to a sustainable future. Provides a brief history of the community and its economic struggles, and its attempts to foster economic development though tourism, arts and winemaking.

Planning Ahead For Livable Communities Along The Powell-Division Brt: Neighborhood Conditions And Change, Lisa K. Bates, Aaron Golub, Devin Macarthur, Seyoung Sung

TREC Final Reports

New transit investments can be a double-edged sword for disadvantaged communities (e.g., those included in environmental justice and Title VI protected classes). Transit investments improve communities’ mobility and access, and may improve health with reduced driving. However, there is also the potential for transit-oriented development (TOD) to spur gentrification and displacement if affordable housing is lost. Understanding transit corridor conditions and change with new infrastructure is important for learning how to mitigate negative effects and support inclusive communities with access to transit for lower-income households. The planning of a new bus rapid transit line along the Powell-Division corridor in Portland-Gresham …

A Simulator-Based Analysis Of Engineering Treatments For Right-Hook Bicycle Crashes At Signalized Intersections, Jennifer Warner, David S. Hurwitz, Christopher M. Monsere, Kayla Fleskes

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A right-hook crash is a crash between a right-turning motor vehicle and an adjacent through-moving bicycle. At signalized intersections, these crashes can occur during any portion of the green interval when conflicting bicycles and vehicles are moving concurrently. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of four types of engineering countermeasures – regulatory signage, intersection pavement marking, smaller curb radius, and protected intersection design – at modifying driver behaviors that are known contributing factors in these crashes. This research focused on right-hook crashes that occur during the latter stage of the circular green indication at signalized intersections …

Beyond Urban Versus Rural:, Dante J. Scala, Kenneth M. Johnson

The Carsey School of Public Policy at the Scholars' Repository

In this brief, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson examine voting patterns over the last five presidential elections. They report that although rural voters and urban voters are often portrayed as polar opposites, their differences are best understood as a continuum, not a dichotomy. From the largest urban cores to the most remote rural counties, they found significant variations in voting. Hillary Clinton nearly matched Barack Obama’s 2012 performance in most urban areas. Clinton’s defeat was due, in part, to her failure to match the performance of recent Democratic Presidential nominees in less populated areas. Though many commentators argued that …

Measuring The Impacts Of Social Media On Advancing Public Transit, Jenny H. Liu, Xuegang Ban, O. A. Elrahman

TREC Final Reports

This project is a collaboration between Portland State University (PSU) and the Center for Infrastructure Transportation & Environment (CITE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seeking to develop performance measures for assessing the impacts of social media on promoting public transit. Revolutionary changes have occurred in the communication landscape, and there has been a rapid diffusion of social media use as a means of communicating transit information to the public. Significant resources are being directed to the use of social media in communication, yet little effort exists that measures the impacts of these popular vehicles of communication. Rarely studied is the role …