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Celebrating The Polish Immigrant Community: Strengthening Cultural Bonds And Representation In Westfield, Ma, Alexandra Smialek Oct 2017

Celebrating The Polish Immigrant Community: Strengthening Cultural Bonds And Representation In Westfield, Ma, Alexandra Smialek

Masters Theses

Immigrant communities are a part of every city and town in the United States. Sentiments towards immigrants, however, continue to vary, but in recent years, anti-immigrant sentiments have become more widely encountered, especially because of the recent presidential election (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). A lack of knowledge and representation of diverse cultures, along with recurring negative rhetoric, may influence how immigrant populations are received. This report argues that acknowledging culture and heritage can strengthen cultural bonds, create and celebrate a unique city identity, and improve cultural representation. The City of Westfield, Massachusetts, located in Hampden County, will be studied …


An Incremental Intervention In Jakarta: An Empowering Infrastructural Approach For Upgrading Informal Settlements, Christopher H. Counihan Jul 2017

An Incremental Intervention In Jakarta: An Empowering Infrastructural Approach For Upgrading Informal Settlements, Christopher H. Counihan

Masters Theses

Incrementalism is a growing movement within multiple design disciplines that approaches design with sustainable, social, and resilient aims structured around participatory, infrastructural, and phased approaches to design. Carefully considered structural and independent infrastructural frameworks allow infill and accretion according to the demands and needs of individuals and communities. This paper outlines the theories, case studies, and conditions driving incrementalism. My research has informed my project proposal for an incremental upgrade of a slum located in Jakarta using a phased, soft infrastructural, resident facilitated upgrade and development strategy creating new housing units, productive landscapes, and urban form. Incremental development will foster …


Operational Jakarta: The Problem Of Representation, Kevin Patrick Jeffers May 2017

Operational Jakarta: The Problem Of Representation, Kevin Patrick Jeffers

Masters Theses

As the twenty-first century unfolds with newly formed degrees of hypercomplex interactions and reactions amongst space, time, economy, politics, social dynamics, and cultural paradigms, we are observing new typologies of urbanism that are different in kind, rather than degree, from the previous “urban” upon which the vast majority of present theoretical and practical discourse has been based. The techniques, strategies, and methodologies of the twentieth-century no longer serve to adequately represent or to explain the phenomena of today’s incipient mega-cities. A new vocabulary must be developed. A new way of seeing is required in order to understand and therefor to …


The Use Of Public Plazas In China And The United States: Measuring The Differences Using Direct Observation In Boston And Chongqing, Maozhu Mao Mar 2017

The Use Of Public Plazas In China And The United States: Measuring The Differences Using Direct Observation In Boston And Chongqing, Maozhu Mao

Masters Theses

China’s development during the last several decades has happened at an amazing speed, and public plazas in China have changed considerably. For example, public dancing has become a very popular activity in most public plazas, and many more people than before are using these new plazas. However, some plazas are less popular than others. Therefore it is important to know what are the elements that affect people’s use of China’s public plazas? In the United States, William H. Whyte’s research proposed seven elements in public space that affect people. This study tried to answer the following questions: 1) Do William …


Extending Time Series Forecasting Methods Using Functional Principal Components Analysis, Isaac Michael Wagner-Muns Jan 2017

Extending Time Series Forecasting Methods Using Functional Principal Components Analysis, Isaac Michael Wagner-Muns

Masters Theses

"Traffic volume forecasts are used by many transportation analysis and management systems to better characterize and react to fluctuating traffic patterns. Most current forecasting methods do not take advantage of the underlying functional characteristics of the time series to make predictions. This paper presents a methodology that uses Functional Principal Components Analysis (FPCA) to create smooth and differentiable daily traffic forecasts. The methodology is validated with a data set of 1,813 days of 15 minute aggregated traffic volume time series. Both the FPCA based forecasts and the associated prediction intervals outperform traditional Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) based methods"--Abstract, …