Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Fifty Years Of Weathering The Storm: Are The Louisiana Gulf Coastal Parishes Prepared For Another Major Hurricane?, Danielle L. Boudreau

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This study examines ten major storms that have affected Louisiana in the last fifty years, beginning with Hurricane Betsy in 1965. The goal is to determine if the nine coastal parishes are prepared adequately for another major hurricane impact. It examines storms that have affected the state physically, in terms of property and ecological damages. It also considers storms that provided non-physical influences, by way of mitigation policy changes and social, economical, ecological, and political policy alterations. The main focus is on the transformations, if any, of social vulnerability in light of emergency preparedness in the areas impacted, particularly along …

The Fatherhood Factor: The Impact Of The Father-Child Relationship On The Social, Interpersonal, And Recidivism Risk Factors Of Previously Incarcerated Men, Larissa A. Maley

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Of the men who return home from prison, nearly 7 out of 10 will be re-arrested and sent back within 3 years of their release (Travis, Solomon, & Waul, 2001). This trend has large- scale implications, not just for individuals, but for their families and communities as well. Clearly, understanding the factors that contribute to a man’s success or failure in staying out of prison is extremely important in constructing policy and programs to assist these at-risk individuals and communities. Of the few studies that have explored the lives of previously incarcerated men, some have found fatherhood to be a …

A Survey Of Urban Agriculture Organizations And Businesses In The Us And Canada: Preliminary Results, Nathan Mcclintock, Mike Simpson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report summarizes the results of an online survey, conducted during February and March 2013, of 251 groups involved with urban agriculture (UA) projects in approximately 84 cities in the US and Canada. This is only a preliminary report. As such, we present descriptive statistics rather than a interpretive analysis of the survey responses. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that these results are not necessarily representative of all urban agriculture businesses and organizations across North America. Nevertheless, these results point to certain trends and patterns that offer rich opportunities for further inquiry.

Our preliminary results reveal that the UA …

Home Foreclosures And Neighborhood Crime Dynamics, Sonya Williams, George Galster, Nandita Verma

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

We advance scholarship related to home foreclosures and neighborhood crime by employing Granger causality tests and multilevel growth modeling with annual data from Chicago neighborhoods over the 1998-2009 period. We find that completed foreclosures temporally lead property crime and not vice versa. More completed foreclosures during a year both increase the level of property crime and slow its decline subsequently. This relationship is strongest in higher-income, predominantly renter-occupied neighborhoods, contrary to the conventional wisdom. We did not find unambiguous, uni-directional causation in the case of violent crime and when filed foreclosures were analyzed.

Distributional Consequences Of Public Policies: An Example From The Management Of Urban Vehicular Travel, Winston Harrington, Elena Safirova, Conrad Coleman, Sébastien Houde, Adam M. Finkel

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses a spatially disaggregated computable general equilibrium model of a large US metropolitan area to compare two kinds of policies, “Live Near Your Work” and taxation of vehicular travel, that have been proposed to help further the aims of “smart growth.” Ordinarily, policy comparisons of this sort focus on the net benefits of the two policies; that is, the total monetized net welfare gains or losses to all citizens. While the aggregate net benefits are certainly important, in this analysis we also disaggregate these benefits along two important dimensions: income and location within the metropolitan area. The resulting …

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 …

Radical, Reformist, And Garden-Variety Neoliberal: Coming To Terms With Urban Agriculture’S Contradictions, Nathan Mcclintock

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

For many activists and scholars, urban agriculture in the Global North has become synonymous with sustainable food systems, standing in opposition to the dominant industrial agri-food system. At the same time, critical social scientists increasingly argue that urban agriculture programmes, by filling the void left by the "rolling back" of the social safety net, underwrite neoliberalisation. I argue that such contradictions are central to urban agriculture. Drawing on existing literature and fieldwork in Oakland, CA, I explain how urban agriculture arises from a protective counter-movement, while at the same time entrenching the neoliberal organisation of contemporary urban political economies through …

Sustainability Policy’S Inherent Dilemmas – Exemplified Via Critical Examination Of The Las Vegas Metropolitan Sustainability Campaign, Kathryn A. Zimmerman

All Master's Theses

In response to a dual problem of critical water scarcity and rapid population growth, leaders of metropolitan Las Vegas implemented a region-wide, internationally marketed sustainability campaign. Preliminary studies found that, while sustainability policy attains its rhetorical goals, solutions initiated not only perpetuate but also purposefully expand the original dual problem to justify continuous water resource acquisitions. To examine this sustainability conundrum constructed by leadership—problem-perpetuation rather than problem-resolution—a critical examination in resource management asked two basic questions: what is being sustained and by what means? Via this inquiry, specific processes by which leaders perpetuate problems can be identified; and, so-informed, new …

Theorizing More Inclusive Cities: A Relational Model Of Boundary Transformation And Urban Research Agenda, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

To generate more inclusive environments for marginalized urban communities of color demands a strategy that privileges symbolic boundary change and uses it as the inroad towards spatial changes. This paper theorizes a three step relational process of a) communicative democratic activism, b) "multicultural" capital brokers providing access to the policy making process, and c) practices of community building that reflect the role of cities as key sites for sociospatial boundary transformation. An emphasis on discursive and ideational change, relying on communicative democratic processes steeped in historical, comparative analysis opens up our minds towards different classification schemes for stigmatized groups. Participating …

Suburban Sustainability: Favorable, Forgotten, Or Fantasy?, Tessia Melvin, Tessia G. Melvin

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a prosperous nation and world superpower. Reinventing itself through the development of suburbs, many communities were created by suburbs. Years later, criticized for suburban sprawl and aging communities, suburban communities today are faced with the dilemma of what changes to make in order to create sustainable suburban communities.

Most of the literature on sustainability and its success comes from the private sector. Much available literature provides sustainable indicators and concepts on corporate sustainability. As a result, many public administrators are faced with a reality that changes need to occur …

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 …