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Theses/Dissertations

Doctoral Dissertations

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies and Planning

Making The Old City: Life Projects And State Heritage In Rhodes And Acre, Evan Taylor Jun 2022

Making The Old City: Life Projects And State Heritage In Rhodes And Acre, Evan Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

The “old city,” a widely recognizable category of urban space, has long been a locus of development projects, state monitoring, and mass tourism, while also being home to resident communities. This dissertation explores the intersections of community life and state-driven heritage projects in the Old Town of Rhodes, in the Greek Dodecanese, and the Old City of Acre (‘Akka), a Palestinian community in northern Israel/Palestine. Both old cities are UNESCO World Heritage sites and subjects of intense state-supported tourism development. However, their resident populations and their built environments, which coalesced mainly under Crusader and Ottoman rule, challenge the authorized heritage …


Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui Dec 2020

Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks beyond narratives of the chaotic urban south to examine the politics of city planning and everyday service access in Pakistan. I draw on a case study of Karachi, what is perceived to be one of the world’s most unruly cities, to demonstrate how planning enables the representation of political order. Drawing on field research, I also explore the materialities, subjectivities, and histories of service access that shape urban politics in Karachi. I begin by tracing how planners in postcolonial Karachi have, for decades, described the rapidly expanding city as an object of correction. While early master plans …


Place Vibrancy And Its Measurement: Construct Development, Scale Development, And Field Study Of Its Relationship To Planning Interventions For Three Villages In The Town Of Montague, Massachusetts, John D. Delconte Dec 2020

Place Vibrancy And Its Measurement: Construct Development, Scale Development, And Field Study Of Its Relationship To Planning Interventions For Three Villages In The Town Of Montague, Massachusetts, John D. Delconte

Doctoral Dissertations

The process of using arts and culture to change the physical and social character of places has been defined as ‘creative placemaking’. Creative placemaking granting agencies originally considered constructing ‘livability’ and ‘vibrancy’ indicators to characterize the outcomes of their programs. However, the research community critiqued these indicators, which were considered too nebulous, and efforts to develop them were halted. Other researchers have sought to measure place vibrancy in other contexts. This study revives the initial line of inquiry for using ‘vibrancy’ as a measure of creative placemaking effectiveness and of revitalization efforts more generally. Here, place vibrancy is proposed as …


Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra Jul 2020

Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra

Doctoral Dissertations

The intensification of neoliberal economic reforms and new patterns of middle-class consumption in India have coincided with rising levels of urban inequality and poverty. Yet India’s capital, Delhi, positions itself as a “world-class city,” invoking neoliberal state aspirations to justify widespread violence against communities living and working in state-contested spaces. While much has been written about the reproduction of urban inequality and poverty in India, this body of scholarship under-emphasizes mechanisms of social control and violence, specifically, criminalization by the state.
To understand these dynamics, children’s experiences are particularly important given their age-based potential and vulnerabilities. To give visibility to …


“I Missed A Lot Of Childhood Memories”: Trauma And Its Impact On Learning For Formerly Incarcerated Adolescents In The Age Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Alberto Guerrero Jul 2020

“I Missed A Lot Of Childhood Memories”: Trauma And Its Impact On Learning For Formerly Incarcerated Adolescents In The Age Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Alberto Guerrero

Doctoral Dissertations

The literature makes abundantly clear that trauma has a detrimental impact on students’ academic and behavioral efforts. It also challenges the notion of zero tolerance disciplinary practices being effective in redirecting student behaviors, making schools safer, and creating an environment that is conducive to learning. Yet, our current school climate consists of educators who have not been exposed to trauma-informed learning, while also incorporating disciplinary practices that are both draconian in nature and push students out of their learning spaces. This unfortunate reality is felt even more harshly by students who return to schools following an incarceration. This phenomenological study …


The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein Jul 2020

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …


Three Essays On Remote Work And Regional Development, Ryan Wallace Oct 2019

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 …


The Influence Of Wind Power On Rural Areas Economic, Demographic, And Community Services Impacts, Eman Shoeib Oct 2019

The Influence Of Wind Power On Rural Areas Economic, Demographic, And Community Services Impacts, Eman Shoeib

Doctoral Dissertations

Wind power development has rapidly expanded in the United States. Much of this growth occurred in rural areas because of the availability of land and wind resources required to power turbines. The economic promise of wind power projects is particularly appealing for rural areas whose traditional economic base (typically agricultural) no longer supports as many households as it once did. Numerous studies have found that wind power projects have positive economic impacts on rural areas. What is less well understood is the effect of these wind power farms on other indicators of development, such as municipal services, demographic change, and …


Embodied, Rationed, Precarious: Conceptualizations Of Sovereignty In Urban Food Regimes, Candan Turkkan Mar 2019

Embodied, Rationed, Precarious: Conceptualizations Of Sovereignty In Urban Food Regimes, Candan Turkkan

Doctoral Dissertations

Through a case study of how provisioning of Istanbul has changed since the 19th century (late Ottoman Period), this dissertation unravels the ways in which food, bodies and biological processes have become objects of intervention for the modern nation-state and more contemporarily, for neoliberal governmentality. Chapters 1, 3 and 5 focus on urban provisioning models (urban provisioning, codependent provisioning, urban food supply chain respectively). Chapters 2, 4 and 6 analyze various economic dynamics, practices, tools, strategies, and mentalité deployed by different provisioning actors, and expose different conceptualizations of sovereignty embedded in each provisioning model (embodied, rationed, precarious respectively). Conclusion …


Evaluation Of The Erodibility Of Soft Clays And The Influence Of Biopolymers, Pamela Judge Oct 2018

Evaluation Of The Erodibility Of Soft Clays And The Influence Of Biopolymers, Pamela Judge

Doctoral Dissertations

Erosion of silts and clays is less well understood than erosion of sands. Further, current and anticipated climate change impacts along coastlines compel consideration of new approaches to coastal protection measures; seawalls and breakwaters designs now include natural and nature-based measures. The first research topic consists of the Adaptive Gradients Framework which was a theoretically-informed facilitation tool. The framework was intended to aid a collaborative and interdisciplinary decision-making process to encourage inclusion of natural and nature-based measures in coastal protection planning and design. This research is the culmination of a series of workshops and fieldtrips executed by the Sustainable Adaptive …


Attitudes Toward Green Infrastructure Strategies For More Livable And Sustainable Communities, Jane Ann Buxton Jul 2018

Attitudes Toward Green Infrastructure Strategies For More Livable And Sustainable Communities, Jane Ann Buxton

Doctoral Dissertations

Green infrastructure refers to multi-functional elements that integrate ecological and anthropogenic factors and processes to support healthy ecosystems and communities (Austin, 2014; Benedict & McMahon, 2002). While green infrastructure has been embraced by planners, there is not a great deal of research among planners regarding the public's attitudes towards green land uses at the individual level. The dissertation studies explored three urban green infrastructure strategies: residential tree canopy, neighborhood green space, and community gardens; at the scale of user preferences and experiences. The first study (Chapter 3) used photo preference methodology to explore the tension between residential density and urban …


The Government Role In Creating Innovation Technological Clusters In Developing Countries (The Case Of Saudi Arabia), Khalid Mahmoud Dashash Nov 2017

The Government Role In Creating Innovation Technological Clusters In Developing Countries (The Case Of Saudi Arabia), Khalid Mahmoud Dashash

Doctoral Dissertations

Many governments around the world are committed to the idea of creating high-tech industries in their territories. Often they do so by imitating other well-recognized models such as the Silicon Valley. This dissertation investigated three countries economic development plans to understand how government policies could support or hinder the establishment of an Innovation Systems in developing countries. This dissertation claims that to create a successful high technological innovation cluster in any area, a successful innovation needs to be existed to support these clusters. This study used a comparative qualitative pragmatic method that implemented both case study and process tracing to …


Multi-Criteria Decision Making When Planning Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Routes In A Linear Corridor, Marie Louis Jul 2017

Multi-Criteria Decision Making When Planning Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Routes In A Linear Corridor, Marie Louis

Doctoral Dissertations

In urban and suburban locations, public transit can be seen as an effective mode of daily transportation. The majority of the time, travelers would seek the cheapest, shortest, and possibly most eco-friendly means of transit. When designing public transit network systems, transportation planners and decision-makers, with input from stakeholders, should strive to optimize transportation services to meet the needs of the population most efficiently and at the lowest cost, that is, providing a transportation system that s the three E's of the sustainability concept: environment, social equity, and economic. Previous studies have focused on sustainability as the primary concern in …


Do We Have A Climate For Change? Insights About Adaptation Planning Actions In Coastal New England, Ana M. Emlinger Nov 2016

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 …


Urban Metabolism And Land Use Modeling For Urban Designers And Planners: A Land Use Model For The Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam Nov 2016

Urban Metabolism And Land Use Modeling For Urban Designers And Planners: A Land Use Model For The Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam

Doctoral Dissertations

Predicting the resource consumption in the built environment and its associated environmental consequences (urban metabolism analysis) is one of the core challenges facing policy-makers and planners seeking to increase the sustainability of urban areas. There is a critical need for a single integrated framework to analyze the consequences of urban growth and eventually predict the impacts of sustainable policies on the urbanscape. This dissertation presents the development of an Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool (IUMAT) – an analytical framework that simulates urban metabolism by integrating urban subsystems in a single comprehensive computational environment. It reviews the existing literature on urban …


Assembling Creative Cities In Seoul And Yokohama: Rebranding East Asian Urbanism, Changwook Kim Jul 2016

Assembling Creative Cities In Seoul And Yokohama: Rebranding East Asian Urbanism, Changwook Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

By investigating institutional and cultural practices as well as the consequences of the creative industry-led development policy in Yokohama, Japan and Seoul, South Korea, this dissertation critically reexamines the key rationales of creative economy-driven urban development and considers social costs and tensions between the state, capital and citizens that are embedded within creative city policy discourses and practices. This dissertation intervenes in the conventional understandings, which consider the influx of neoliberalism as the key to explain the rapid global circulation of creative city policy, typically based on cities in the West. By considering the policy transfer as endless processes of …


Characterizing The Urban Human Environment System In Boston, Massachusetts, Rachel S. Danford Jul 2016

Characterizing The Urban Human Environment System In Boston, Massachusetts, Rachel S. Danford

Doctoral Dissertations

Access to natural resources and restorative green space, especially in urban areas, has become critically important as an increasing number of people throughout the world move into cities. Stewardship of natural spaces and a sense of engagement with these environmental benefits are crucial, especially in urban areas where access to nature is more difficult and less equitable. This research proposes a model where individual and policy level values and decisions shape how urban nature is used, which affects the adoption of environmentally responsible behavior and natural resource conservation and in turn feeds back into environmental values and decisions. The research …


The Formation Of Youth-Led Participatory Networks In Urban Bangladesh: A Case Study Of The Bgreen Project, Fadia Hasan Nov 2015

The Formation Of Youth-Led Participatory Networks In Urban Bangladesh: A Case Study Of The Bgreen Project, Fadia Hasan

Doctoral Dissertations

Through the lens of a participatory action research platform that I founded called The BGreen Project (BGreen), my research explores networked political economic connections that were developed as a result of this academic-community initiative. BGreen was a participatory action research platform that connected urban high school, college, university youth in an assortment of participatory/deliberative activities in the fields of education and environment. With their ongoing engagement in the participatory network called BGreen, Bangladeshi youth are negotiating their affiliation to diverse political economic structures (for example, their educational institutions) in creative ways and forging innovative methods of transformative participation as …


Project Space(S) In The Design Professions: An Intersectional Feminist Study Of The Women's School Of Planning And Architecture (1974-1981), Elizabeth Cahn Nov 2014

Project Space(S) In The Design Professions: An Intersectional Feminist Study Of The Women's School Of Planning And Architecture (1974-1981), Elizabeth Cahn

Doctoral Dissertations

The Women’s School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was an ambitious, explicitly feminist educational program created by seven women planners and architects who used the school to introduce ideas and practices of the 1970s women’s movement into design and planning education in the United States. Between 1974 and 1981, WSPA organized five intensive, short-term residential educational sessions and a conference, each in a different geographical location in the United States, after which the organization ceased formal programming and the organizers moved on to other activities. The founders and participants involved in WSPA collectively imagined and created a feminist space for …