Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Three Essays On Remote Work And Regional Development, Ryan Wallace

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three papers that collectively explore the relationship between remote work, or people that work from anywhere, and regional economic development. The first paper measures remote occupational employment in the United States with Census microdata and a shift-share model to decompose the share of occupational growth attributed to remote work. Findings indicate remote work has grown significantly since 2000, with the most pronounced growth in high skill jobs. The second paper uses a mixed-methods design to understand the role of remote work in migration decisions. It concludes that remote work arrangements enable access to employment opportunities …

Do We Have A Climate For Change? Insights About Adaptation Planning Actions In Coastal New England, Ana M. Emlinger

Doctoral Dissertations

“I just drink more coffee and stay late” – declared the town planner of a small coastal community in the South of Boston, Massachusetts (MA) referring to the need of extra work to address climate change adaptation in a short-staffed planning department. These words illustrate one of the many common issues faced by planners of small and medium coastal communities in the region. A systematic incorporation of climate change concerns into formal community planning, management, and infrastructure design is in nascent stage. The challenges of effective adaptation are complex and likely to be politically hard, especially at the local level …

Thinking In Circles: A Systems Theory Approach To Public Participation In Planning, Stephen Meno

Masters Theses

In the field of planning, there is widespread consensus that the mechanisms in which most planners use to engage with the public are ineffective and exclusive. Although there has been much work done on the techniques planners can adopt to reach out to underrepresented segments of the community, few municipalities have adopted them. This thesis seeks to advance the conversation on public participation beyond the mechanisms and into a discussion of why only certain communities are implementing these more progressive, efficient, effective, and equitable measures. By depicting how public participation functions as a system of interconnected paths and feedback loops, …

Planning [And] The Sanitary City: Understanding Implications Of Community-Based Ecological Sanitation Reforms In The U.S., Catherine K. Bryars

Masters Theses

Though most commonly regarded as a revolutionary public health invention, the introduction of conventional wastewater sanitation systems has a mixed legacy in the U.S. A growing body of research links sewage-based sanitation systems with nationwide ecosystem degradation and an unsustainable dependence on vast inputs of materials and resources. In addition to contributing to chronic problems across the country, today these wastewater infrastructures are in various states of disrepair. The EPA estimates that at least $270 billion must be invested in coming years to prevent massive sanitary failures, but municipalities are increasingly unable to fund these expensive (re)investments in buried water-carriage …

Urban Agriculture And Ecosystem Services: A Typology And Toolkit For Planners, Kathleen Doherty

Masters Theses

This thesis makes the connection between urban agriculture and a specific suite of ecosystem services and lays out a typology and toolkit for planners to take advantage of these ecosystem services. The services investigated here are: food production, water management, soil health, biodiversity, climate mitigation, and community development benefits. Research from a variety of fields was aggregated and synthesized to prove that urban agriculture can be beneficial for human as well as environmental health.

A set of urban agriculture typologies was generated to illustrate best practices to maximize a particular set of ecosystem services. The typologies are: production farm, stormwater …