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Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies and Planning

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 …


Strengthening The Profession Through Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Oct 2018

Strengthening The Profession Through Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Diversity, equity and inclusion are well-studied and widely-practiced areas in organization design, human resources and many areas of social sciences. However, the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are somewhat newer to the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion as a way to improve professions and contribute to substantive research within component disciplines. This is especially true for operations research and the decision sciences. In this talk, given to an interdisciplinary audience of engineering professors, administrators and students, I provide an introduction to operations research, to diversity, equity and inclusion within STEM and OR specifically, ways that DEI might …


Health And Safety Overregulation, Michael Lewyn Jan 2017

Health And Safety Overregulation, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Anti-jaywalking laws are designed to protect the safety of pedestrians. Similarly, police and child protection officials punish parents who allow their children to walk to school, in the name of child safety. This speech criticizes these policies and their justifications.


Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2015

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The story behind the move toward marijuana’s legality is a story of disruptive forces to the incumbent legal and physical landscape. It affects incumbent markets, incumbent places, the incumbent regulatory structure, and the legal system in general which must mediate the battles involving the push for relaxation of illegality and adaptation to accepting new marijuana-related land uses, against efforts toward entrenchment, resilience, and resistance to that disruption.

This Article is entirely agnostic on the issue of whether we should or should not decriminalize, legalize, or otherwise increase legal tolerance for marijuana or any other drugs. Nonetheless, we must grapple with …


Walking Is A Right (Civil And Human), Robert Bullard Nov 2015

Walking Is A Right (Civil And Human), Robert Bullard

Robert D Bullard

PowerPoint opening keynote presented at the National Walking Summit in Washington, DC last month. Here is link to the Summit. http://walkingsummit.org/keynote-speakers . Some of themes include - walking as a right, "outdoor apartheid," "walking while black," and connecting nature walks and health (walking is good for the mind, body, spirit and soul) run through the talk.


Researching What Matters With Community Members: Session Introduction, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Jun 2015

Researching What Matters With Community Members: Session Introduction, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Data and technology can and do change people’s lives, but most often they are conceived as market-driven entities, where changes in people’s lives arise from consumption of goods and services they pay for. Of course, government is a big user of technology and data, but impacts are usually aggregate in nature, not usually targeted at specific communities. Yet, with inequality and structural barriers to economic and social progress quite high in the U.S., can there be a way to think of data and technology as a means to support individual and group opportunity, engagement, action for social justice? The purpose …


The Smart Cities Movement And Advancing The International Battle To Eliminate Homelessness - Barcelona As Test Case, John Travis Marshall, Jessica Venegas Jun 2015

The Smart Cities Movement And Advancing The International Battle To Eliminate Homelessness - Barcelona As Test Case, John Travis Marshall, Jessica Venegas

John Travis Marshall

Barcelona is a leader in the smart cities movement, a movement that aims to help cities deliver services to citizens more efficiently and economically as a way of making the city a more inviting and inclusive place to live and work. As with any city committed to forward-looking economic, social, and urban development initiatives, it is important to consider whether ambitious goals to reinvent the city include an agenda to solve the persistent problems that have faced major cities for decades, including affordable housing and caring for roofless or homeless men and women. This article ties together the challenges Barcelona …


Affordable Housing For Sustainable Cities: A North American Perspective, Detroit Metropolitan Area And Montreal (Quebec), Courtney Lauren Anderson, Maryse Grandbois Jun 2015

Affordable Housing For Sustainable Cities: A North American Perspective, Detroit Metropolitan Area And Montreal (Quebec), Courtney Lauren Anderson, Maryse Grandbois

Courtney L Anderson

Housing is an integral part to elevating and maintaining a quality of life to ensure a healthy and productive citizenship. The overwhelming number of citizens in Montreal and the United States who are unable to find housing that is less than 33% of their income stifles that economic progression of individuals and the society in which these individuals live. The ability for cities to dictate their own plans for creating and maintaining affordable housing without mandates from the federal vacillates among the various levels of government with each level having certain positive and negative elements. Although city autonomy can provide …


Global Trade Impacts: Addressing The Health, Social And Environmental Consequences Of Moving International Freight Through Our Communities, Martha Matsuoka, Andrea Hricko, Robert Gottlieb, Juan Delara Apr 2015

Global Trade Impacts: Addressing The Health, Social And Environmental Consequences Of Moving International Freight Through Our Communities, Martha Matsuoka, Andrea Hricko, Robert Gottlieb, Juan Delara

Martha Matsuoka

As ports and goods movement activity expands throughout the United States, a major challenge is how to make the adverse impacts of freight transportation a more central part of economic development, policy and planning discussions and transportation decision making. In 2009, faculty and staff from the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute of Occidental College and from the environmental health sciences and regional equity programs of the University of Southern California (USC) began a study of this evolving global trade and freight transportation system, focusing on areas in the United States where the system is expanding and where community, labor and …


Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone Feb 2014

Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone

Michael E. Stone

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall …


New York City's Community-Based Housing Movement: Achievements And Prospects, Laura Wolf-Powers Dec 2013

New York City's Community-Based Housing Movement: Achievements And Prospects, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

A contribution to the book about the relationship of community-based activism to planning, this paper, highlights the experience of community-based not-for-profit housing organizations in New York City and their relationship (from the 1970s through to the present) with that city’s elected officials and executive agencies. I argue that in New York City, community-based organizations have unambiguously added strategic value in the social housing arena, becoming part of the production system and governance framework for the city's affordable housing. Moreover, their political participation and advocacy have helped to bring about many of the policies that currently structure this system. Their role …


Uplifting: Improvements In Boston Area Client Well-Being, Ryan Kling, Lisa Kalimon, Tanya Stepasiuk, Bukola Usidame, Ryan Mclane, Ryan Whalen, Ana Maria Sanchez, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Jun 2013

Uplifting: Improvements In Boston Area Client Well-Being, Ryan Kling, Lisa Kalimon, Tanya Stepasiuk, Bukola Usidame, Ryan Mclane, Ryan Whalen, Ana Maria Sanchez, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

LIFT-Boston, a local non-profit organization, entered into a collaborative partnership in September 2012 with McCormack Graduate School Public Policy Ph.D. students and faculty to develop and execute a research project. The goals of this endeavor were to assist LIFT-Boston in understanding the outcomes associated with its services and enable the organization to further pursue service goals. The primary research questions respond to the organization’s most fundamental questions. These include how the organization’s unique service model impacts clients across several objective and subjective dimensions of well-being. Secondary questions focus on how these impacts may translate into increases or decreases in student …


Predictors Of Employment Growth And Unemployment In U.S. Central Cities, 1990-2010, Laura Wolf-Powers Dec 2012

Predictors Of Employment Growth And Unemployment In U.S. Central Cities, 1990-2010, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

This paper, refereed and published by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Policy, considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public capital investment as influences on job growth and changes in unemployment rates in 83 central cities in the United States. Change in educational attainment over time is suggestive of causing higher job growth and lower unemployment. The implication is that initiatives to attract and retain …


An Estate Dilemma - Inaccessible Assets Hiding Behind Passwords And Encryption, Douglas J. Henderson Dec 2012

An Estate Dilemma - Inaccessible Assets Hiding Behind Passwords And Encryption, Douglas J. Henderson

DOUGLAS J HENDERSON

Every person living in the modern world holds valuable assets, data, or information in digital mediums. Digital mediums include not only digital hardware storage mediums in personal possession (like external hard drives and internal hard drives within laptop and desktop computers, personal digital assistants, cell phones, and the like), but also those only accessible through a network. Because so much is held in digital mediums, when an individual dies or becomes incapacitated, another person must know how to access the incapacitated person’s digital assets and other important information (this person is known herein as the ‘Responsible Party’). There are potential …


Altruism Trumping Privacy Hipaa, Privacy, Big Data Set Benefits, Douglas J. Henderson Oct 2012

Altruism Trumping Privacy Hipaa, Privacy, Big Data Set Benefits, Douglas J. Henderson

DOUGLAS J HENDERSON

The United States Government must administer a publicly held cloud networked Big Data Set of Private Health Information (PHI) in order to utilize Big Data Analytics and allow free data mining of such PHI so that the health care industry can operate most cost effectively while also meeting the health care needs of the aging United States populace with the highest quality of care.


Altruism Trumping Privacy Hipaa, Privacy, Big Data Set Benefits, Douglas J. Henderson Jul 2012

Altruism Trumping Privacy Hipaa, Privacy, Big Data Set Benefits, Douglas J. Henderson

DOUGLAS J HENDERSON

The United States Government must administer a publicly held cloud networked Big Data Set of Private Health Information (PHI) in order to utilize Big Data Analytics and allow free data mining of such PHI so that the health care industry can operate most cost effectively while also meeting the health care needs of the aging United States populace with the highest quality of care.


Community Voices: New State Voting Districts In Final Stages, Carroy U. Ferguson Dr. Oct 2011

Community Voices: New State Voting Districts In Final Stages, Carroy U. Ferguson Dr.

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

Last week the Massachusetts Legislature produced redistricting legislation that will forever change the direction of state politics for blacks, Latinos and Asians. By this time next year, the number of state house elected officials of color can increase by 100 percent, from 10 to 20 members. And communities of color will be well positioned to elect a person of color to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in the history of the state.


Ray Flynn's Legacy: American Cities And The Progressive Agenda, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

Ray Flynn's Legacy: American Cities And The Progressive Agenda, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Affordable Housing: Lessons From Canada, Peter Dreier, J. David Hulchanski Jun 2011

Affordable Housing: Lessons From Canada, Peter Dreier, J. David Hulchanski

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


A Chicago, La Lutte Syndicale A Payé, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

A Chicago, La Lutte Syndicale A Payé, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Social Justice Philanthropy: Can We Get More Bang For The Buck?, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

Social Justice Philanthropy: Can We Get More Bang For The Buck?, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


The Future Of Community Reinvestment, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

The Future Of Community Reinvestment, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


America's Urban Crisis A Decade After The Los Angeles Riots, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

America's Urban Crisis A Decade After The Los Angeles Riots, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Foreclosing On The Free Market, John Atlas, Peter Dreier, Gregory D. Squires Jun 2011

Foreclosing On The Free Market, John Atlas, Peter Dreier, Gregory D. Squires

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


California's Single-Payer Initiative: What Went Wrong?, Peter Dreier, Matthew Glasser Jun 2011

California's Single-Payer Initiative: What Went Wrong?, Peter Dreier, Matthew Glasser

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Economic Inequality And Public Policy: The Power Of Place, Peter Dreier, Todd Swanstrom, John Mollenkopf Jun 2011

Economic Inequality And Public Policy: The Power Of Place, Peter Dreier, Todd Swanstrom, John Mollenkopf

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Redlining Cities: How Banks Color Community Development, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

Redlining Cities: How Banks Color Community Development, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Downtown Development And Urban Reform: The Politics Of Boston's Linkage Policy, Peter Dreier, Bruce Erlich Jun 2011

Downtown Development And Urban Reform: The Politics Of Boston's Linkage Policy, Peter Dreier, Bruce Erlich

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Local Success Stories, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

Local Success Stories, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Scapegoating Rent Control: Masking The Causes Of Homelessness, Richard Appelbaum, Michael Dolny, Peter Dreier, John Gilderbloom Jun 2011

Scapegoating Rent Control: Masking The Causes Of Homelessness, Richard Appelbaum, Michael Dolny, Peter Dreier, John Gilderbloom

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.