Architecture Commons^™

An Evaluation Of Public Open Space In Downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, Karl Dietrich

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

Public open space provides many benefits to a downtown area. Among the benefits are economic growth, social connectivity, health, and helping to create an identity for a city. As many cities continue to sprawl outwards, it is important that their downtown areas create a sense of place so that businesses and people stay and visit. Public open spaces can help provide that much needed sense of place. This study examines whether the “public space index” designed by Vikas Mehta (2014) is effective at evaluating public open spaces. This was done by using four public open spaces (Foundation Garden, Tower Square, …

Social Media Communication By Local Governments And Its Implications For Urban Planning, Leiming Zhao

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

Social media has altered traditional communication and enriched traditional social networks. In addition to its use for personal communication and business marketing, social media has also been proved to be a valuable tool for urban planners and managers. However, there are relatively few studies about how social media communication may inform the design of urban master plans. The objectives of the thesis are to understand how the city governments have used social media to engage with the general public on urban planning issues, and assess if social media contents can be used to inform urban planning. The 10 top digital …

Safe, Efficient Self‐Driving Cars Could Block Walkable, Livable Communities, Daniel P. Piatkowski

Community and Regional Planning Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

As a driver and a cyclist, I initially welcomed the idea of self-driving cars that could detect nearby people and be programmed not to hit them, making the streets safer for everyone. Autonomous vehicles also seemed to provide attractive ways to use roads more efficiently and reduce the need for parking in our communities. People are certainly talking about how self-driving cars could help build more sustainable, livable, walkable and bikable communities. But as an urban planner and transportation scholar who, like most people in my field, has paid close attention to the discussion around driverless cars, I have come …

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sensemaking approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Measuring Landscape Performance: Case Study Investigation, Hannah Michelle Lopresto, Brandon Zambrano, Catherine De Almeida

UCARE Research Products

Participating in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2018 Case Study Investigation has been an incredibly informative experience for our research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We are eager to shine a spotlight on the landscape performance of two Great Plains projects: P Street Corridor, a revitalized downtown streetscape in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park, a waterfront redevelopment in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Working on the post-occupancy study of both projects has been extremely beneficial in understanding how reclaiming underutilized sites can create high-performing landscapes. Both are public projects in urban settings with primary goals of transforming formerly unpleasant, …

Analyzing The Impact Of Incentive Programs On Retention Of Family Practice Providers In Rural Nebraska, Andrew J. Pedley

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

Rural populations in Nebraska are generally older, less affluent and suffer from more chronic diseases than their urban counterparts. To address these disparities, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Office of Rural Health oversees incentive programs that compensate providers for costs associated with education in exchange for time worked in shortage areas. This report examines the impact that these incentive programs have on the retention of family medicine providers in Nebraska using survival analysis methodologies. The findings of this report indicate a positive correlation between participation in incentive programs and workforce retention of family medicine providers.

Advisor: Yunwoo …

Seventy-Five North Developments: A Holistic Approach To Improving Northeast Omaha, Fabiola Alikpokou

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

The concentration of public housing in high-poverty neighborhoods has many negative impacts; it limits educational opportunities for kids, leads to increased crime, causes poor health outcomes, hinders wealth building, and decreases investments (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2013). Northeast Omaha exhibits many of these issues. North Omaha is not only home to many of the city's minority persons, but also home to one of the most impoverished Black communities in the United States (Cordes, Gonzalez, & Grace, 2011). The Omaha-Council Bluffs area was ranked 14 for the highest African-American poverty rate out of 100 most populous metro areas …

A Spatiotemporal Analysis To Identify Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities In Nebraska, Sangho Lee

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

This study aims to identify the geographic locations of “naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs)” and whether there were spatiotemporal patterns of naturally occurring retirement communities in Nebraska for the time periods of 2000 to 2010, and to 2015. As the American population continues to age, older people generally prefer to live in their own homes for later years of life, instead of moving into assisted living. These demands have resulted in the increase of elderly populations who are “aging in place”. Nevertheless, there have been few spatiotemporal analyses about the distribution patterns of elderly households in terms of NORCs for …

Road Diet Feasibility Analysis For Nebraska, Brandon L. Purintun

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many rural towns and cities throughout Nebraska have experienced consistent population decline over the past 50 years, and the highway system once built to accommodate hoped-for growth is not serving the population as well as it could. These towns and cities would benefit from implementing a road diet conversion on their main highways. Within rural communities, road diets are an increasingly popular method of improving safety along major arterials through the reduction of excess capacity in favor of increasing refuge areas for turning vehicles. A typical application might be the restriping of a four-lane undivided highway into a three-lane highway …

Wetland Conservation Effects Result In Enhanced Playa Functionality In The Rainwater Basin, Nebraska, Hong Zhang

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

This study assessed the functionality level of wetland hydrology, hydrophyte and soil conditions, and then identified the restorable potential of conserved playas. The distribution of hydrology and hydrophyte were geospatially examined through annual tracking the quantity and quality of wetlands on historical hydric soil footprints under different conservation programs in the Rainwater Basin (RWB) in Nebraska, USA during 2004-2015. The results show that the historical hydric soil footprints with the conservation programs had significantly higher functionality of ponded water and hydrophyte than non-conserved wetlands. The yearly average of ponded water areas within footprints varies at 12.59% for the Waterfowl Production …

An Application Of Economics & Environmental Planning: The Impacts Of Variable Rate Irrigation Technology On Net Farm Income, Hannah Jones, Zhenghong Tang, Karina Schoengold, Yunwoo Nam, Dana Varner

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

Restoring playa wetlands back into predominantly agricultural landscapes has been a pressing issue for decades. The Nebraska Rainwater Basin Joint Venture (RWBJV) and its partners represent a wide variety of private and public groups who are offering solutions to this problem, while helping farmers maximize net farm income. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln partnered with the RWBJV on a project to determine how Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI) technology would impact the profitability of farm management operations, while allowing the preservation of adjacent wetland areas. This study conducted an economic analysis that compared net farm income for producers that had participated in …

The Historic Preservation Program In Lincoln, Nebraska And Nomination Of The South Bottoms Neighborhood As A Landmark District In Lincoln, Nebraska, Benjamin Callahan

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

Across the nation, thousands of historic properties are preserved, protected, and visited each year. These historic properties and historic preservation programs work to highlight historically significant places, by not only recognizing the past, but also by working to protect the significant sites into the future so they will continue to serve as reminders and examples of the historical events that have made it notable. Currently, the Historic Preservation Program in Lincoln, Nebraska recognizes over 1,400 properties as Local Landmark Sites or Districts within Lancaster County. Through this locally organized program, these properties receive a greater level of protection and financial …

Assessing Hazard Vulnerability, Habitat Conservation, And Restoration For The Enhancement Ofmainland China’S Coastal Resilience, Muhammad Sajjad, Yangfan Li, Zhenghong Tang, Ling Cao, Xiaoping Liu

Community and Regional Planning Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Worldwide, humans are facing high risks from natural hazards, especially in coastal regions with high population densities. Rising sea levels due to global warming are making coastal communities’ infrastructure vulnerable to natural disasters. The present study aims to provide a coupling approach of vulnerability and resilience through restoration and conservation of lost or degraded coastal natural habitats to reclamation under different climate change scenarios. The integrated valuation of ecosystems and tradeoffs model is used to assess the current and future vulnerability of coastal communities. The model employed is based on seven different biogeophysical variables to calculate a natural hazard index …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: Migration Rates, Aileen S. Garcia, Rodrigo Cantarero, Grant Daily, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Soo-Young Hong, Sarah Taylor

Mapping Quality of Life in Nebraska

KEY POINTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Nebraska is a state that is not often viewed as affected significantly by mobility and migration. As a state, the net migration rate of 1.1 from 2015 to 2016 is fairly low compared to others like Florida (16.0) or Nevada (14.4). However, data from this report suggests that there is, in fact, substantial movement of people moving in and moving out; as well as pockets within the state where there is higher than average influx of both domestic and international migrants.

In general, migration trends in the state mirror national trends of “rural flight” where people …

Mapping Quality Of Life In Nebraska: Population Distribution By Race, Ethnicity, And Age, Sarah Taylor, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Grant Daily, Rodrigo Cantarero, Soo-Young Hong, Aileen S. Garcia, Jeong-Kyun Choi, Yan Xia

Mapping Quality of Life in Nebraska

KEY POINTS

This section details key points from the data on racial, ethnic, and age groups across Nebraska.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES IN NEBRASKA

• The proportions of Nebraska’s racial and ethnic minority populations tend to be smaller by 4% (i.e., Asian) to 8% (i.e., Black or African American, Hispanic/Latino) than those of the US, except for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islander and American Indian and Alaska Native populations (i.e., smaller only by 0.1% to 0.2%).

• Nebraska’s urban areas, which comprise 73.1% of the Nebraska population, have higher numbers of racial and ethnic minorities than suburban or rural areas. …

An Examination Of Midwestern Us Cities’ Preparedness For Climate Change And Extreme Hazards, Qiao Hu, Zhenghong Tang, Martha Shulski, Natalie Umphlett, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Frank E. Uhlarik

Community and Regional Planning Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

The increasing occurrence of extreme weather and climate events raised concerns in regard to hazard mitigation and climate adaptation. Local municipal planning mechanisms play a fundamental role in increasing a community’s capacity toward long-term resiliency. This study employs the content analysis method to evaluate the 95 selected cities located in the US Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VII and examine how these local plans, including local comprehensive plans (CPs), hazard mitigation plans (HMPs), and local emergency operations plans (EOPs), prepare communities for climate change and possible extreme events. Results indicate that local plans delineated multiple resources and diverse strategies to …