Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Social Learning Through Stakeholder Engagement: New Pathways From Parcipitation To Health Equity In U.S. West Coast Hia, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, Moriah Mcsharry Mcgrath

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

While some contend that extensive public engagement activities are necessary to meet Health Impact Assessment (HIA) practice standards, other work suggests that an HIA of any type hasthe potential to inform decision-making in ways that embody HIA’s value of democracy (Cole & Fielding, 2007; Harris-Roxas et al., 2012; Negev, 2012). These divergent perspectives on how to realize democracy through public participation represents an area of evolving debate in the ongoing development of HIA practice in the US. Looking to the relatively diverse HIA practice on the west coast of the US, we explore the interplay between engagement strategies and HIA …

Developing High-Resolution Descriptions Of Urban Heat Islands: A Public Health Imperative, Jackson Voelkel, Vivek Shandas, Brendon Haggerty

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extreme heat events affect the most vulnerable human populations and are a lethal health hazard to urban dwellers globally; in the United States, extreme heat causes more deaths annually than all other weather events and natural hazards combined (1). Previous studies described urban heat islands as isolated, static, monolithic areas of cities. We challenged this contention by hypothesizing that diurnal temperature cycles and diverse landscape features create variation in places that amplify heat (2). A temporal description of urban heat islands would identify populations that are susceptible to heat stress, particularly at night, when most people are asleep and unable …

Integrating High-Resolution Datasets To Target Mitigation Efforts For Improving Air Quality And Public Health In Urban Neighborhoods, Vivek Shandas, Jackson Voelkel, Meenakshi Rao, Linda A. George

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reducing exposure to degraded air quality is essential for building healthy cities. Although air quality and population vary at fine spatial scales, current regulatory and public health frameworks assess human exposures using county- or city-scales. We build on a spatial analysis technique, dasymetric mapping, for allocating urban populations that, together with emerging fine-scale measurements of air pollution, addresses three objectives: (1) evaluate the role of spatial scale in estimating exposure; (2) identify urban communities that are disproportionately burdened by poor air quality; and (3) estimate reduction in mobile sources of pollutants due to local tree-planting efforts using nitrogen dioxide. Our …

Daytime Variation Of Urban Heat Islands: The Case Study Of Doha, Qatar, Yasuyo Makido, Vivek Shandas, Salim Ferwati, David J. Sailor

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent evidence suggests that urban forms and materials can help to mediate temporal variation of microclimates and that landscape modifications can potentially reduce temperatures and increase accessibility to outdoor environments. To understand the relationship between urban form and temperature moderation, we examined the spatial and temporal variation of air temperature throughout one desert city—Doha, Qatar—by conducting vehicle traverses using highly resolved temperature and GPS data logs to determine spatial differences in summertime air temperatures. To help explain near-surface air temperatures using land cover variables, we employed three statistical approaches: Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Regression Tree Analysis (RTA), and Random Forest …

Beyond The Fringe, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book: Lincoln Bramwell. Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature’s Edge. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014. Andrew Needham. Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Forging Links Between Food Chain Labor Activists And Academics, Charles Z. Levoke, Nathan Mcclintock, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, Amy K. Coplen, Jennifer Gaddis, Joann Lo, Felipe Tendick-Matesanz, Anelyse M. Weiler

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Interest in food movements has been growing dramatically, but until recently there has been limited engagement with the challenges facing workers across the food system. Of the studies that do exist, there is little focus on the processes and relationships that lead to solutions. This article explores ways that community-engaged teaching and research partnerships can help to build meaningful justice with food workers. The text builds on a special roundtable session held at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Chicago in April 2015, which involved a range of academic scholars and community-based activists. We present these …

Beyond The Screen: Uneven Geographies, Digital Labour, And The City Of Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism, Dillon Mahmoudi, Anthony M. Levenda

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we demonstrate that an examination of the socio-environmental impacts of digital ICTs remains a fruitless enterprise without “materializing” digital labour. We suggest one approach to materializing digital labour: this first includes connecting political economic analyses of digital ICTs to the co-evolution and geography of planetary urbanization and technological change, and second, examining the relationships between immaterial, digital, labour with the material industrial production system. In the context of broad changes in technology, social life, and urbanization, many scholars have theorized a shift towards a third phase of capitalism, beyond mercantilism and industrialism, based in immaterial, digital, and …

Transportation Cost Index As A Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use Systems: New Approaches And Applications, Liming Wang, Huajie Yang, Jenny H. Liu

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research aims to fill gaps in existing multi-modal performance measures for transportation and land use systems:

1. As a supplement/replacement of traffic-centric measures such as LOS, travel delay;
2. Recent federal and state legislations put more emphases on using of performance measures in transportation planning & operation: MAP-21, Oregon Job and Transportation Act (OJTA);
3. Existing performance measures for transportation and land use systems, although now numerous, have their own limitation (Table 1), and leave important aspects and policy areas uncovered, for example, the balance of transportation investment between different modes and across geographical areas as mandated by OJTA

Who Votes For Mayor?, Jason R. Jurjevich, Phil Keisling, Kevin Rancik, Carson Gorecki, Stephanie Hawke

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Voter turnout is shockingly low in elections for mayor and other local officials across the United States. For the most recent round of mayoral elections in America’s 30 largest cities, turnout of eligible citizens in 15 of them was less than 20%.