Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

Planning The Opportunity Metropolis: An Agenda For An Era Of Intensifying Technology, Climate And Health Challenges, George Galster

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Urban planners focus on the spatial arrangements of residences, businesses, institutions, infrastructure and human-built amenities, and the market- and government-driven processes that shape these arrangements. They start with the basic supposition that these arrangements strongly affect individuals’ health, prosperity, and happiness as well as the overall level of opportunity, solidarity, and satisfaction in society. Their recommendations about changing the built environment should be guided by the norms of efficiency and equity, with the latter being framed as creating disproportionate benefits to those who are least advantaged.

This essay begins with an overview of the metropolitan opportunity structure theory to frame …

Planning For An Aging Population: The Sustainability Conundrum, Sandi Rosenbloom

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

By 2030 more than one in four Americans will be 65 years of age or older. What role do city planning academics and practitioners play in planning for the inevitable and increasing aging of society? I examined original research and reviewed articles published in three major planning journals, reviewed the websites of ten Planning Accreditation Board (PAB) accredited planning programs, and evaluated the websites of the American Planning Association’s divisions and special interest groups to determine how each demonstrated or portrayed the value and importance of aging issues in planning scholarship, pedagogy, and practice. I found that these key pillars …

Do Planners Always Have To Make The Neighborhood "Better"? Rethinking The Disturbing Tensions Between Redevelopment And Equity, Don Elliott

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

America’s public sector planners are constantly trying to “make things better.” That has been true ever since planning became a profession. Planners are paid to think broadly about how emerging demographic, economic, environmental, and mobility trends will impact life in our communities, and then make recommendations and write regulations to respond to those trends in ways that make the city a better place. In fact, if planners were not doing that, it is not clear why cities should pay them. For the most part, the predominant focus by planners is making communities physically better through comprehensive, neighborhood, sector, and corridor …

The Influence Of Civil Rights And Anti-Discrimination Laws On Shaping Our Transportation System, Marc Brenman, Thomas W. Sanchez

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Regarding the title of this paper, “The Influence of Civil Rights and Anti-Discrimination Laws on Shaping Our Transportation System”, the reverse is also true—the transportation system has helped shape the civil rights laws in the U.S. The way bus lines in the South used to be segregated is one example, and fighting this helped shape the modern Civil Rights Movement. This influence goes back to include famous cases involving segregated train cars in the 1880s. In this article, we address the numerous ways in which civil rights and anti-discrimination laws shape our transportation system. We offer a suite of approaches …

A Policy Agenda For Addressing The Homeless Problem, David A. Johnson

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

While the past 40 years has ushered in a period of improved urban real estate development and values, it has also been a time of decreased housing affordability and increased homelessness. The Agenda for Building a Changing World Responsibly needs to include improved housing assistance and affordability policies. This article outlines an agenda for housing assistance and affordability policies at both the federal and local urban jurisdiction levels. Their implementation will collectively help build a changing world responsibly.

Planning As If People Mattered, Arthur C. Nelson

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Rebuilding Common Purpose For The 21st Century With New Civic Infrastructure, Dowell Myers, Karen Trapenberg Frick

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Increasing polarization and division are the greatest challenges to the U.S. today, because they prevent cooperation in decision making about growing problems of major consequence. The related long swing in rising individualism is assessed for how it undermines common purpose. We survey the ideological divide and how it intersects with preferred urban development patterns, negotiation styles (compromise or hard line), and diverse views on mitigations for stemming the COVID-19 pandemic. An especially potent factor was rapidly changing racial projections, the reckless framing of which led to exaggerated perceptions of “demographic threat” and a widened partisan divide. Renewed civic infrastructure is …

Planning To A Larger Scale: Lessons From Trying To Save The World, John Randolph

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Most urban planning efforts are focused on city, district, and neighborhood scales, but many of our problems require a larger perspective and grander solutions. The Covid-19 pandemic and climate change head the list of global problems in need of action, but many others loom at different scales. In recent decades, the principles of planning have been applied to broader issues. This essay reflects on one of those problems—climate change and the associated energy transition, and the lessons that efforts aimed at its resolution may provide for planning at such scale.

Envisioning Health, Safety, And Welfare For All: Retrospect And Prospect, Frederick Steiner

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

This essay is a reflection on my academic career in community and regional planning as well as landscape architecture. That look back over five decades provides the basis about speculation for the future of planning and design. It addresses the major challenges of our time, including social justice and climate change, through the lens of design, ecology, and landscape.

Is The Pandemic Causing A Return To Urban Sprawl?, Richard B. Peiser, Matt Hugel

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Urban sprawl is a catch-all term and a scapegoat for everything that is bad about urban growth today, such as congestion, blight, monotony, and ecological destruction. In recent decades, sprawl might have attenuated as America experienced a period of urban revival even as technology made working from home (WFH) and shopping from home possible nearly anywhere. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of infrastructures and forced firms to rethink the necessity of workplaces. Retailers have accelerated the pace of online sales and home deliveries by years if not decades. These and other advances have decoupled people …

The Boldness Of Healthy Cities: A Tricky Challenge, Ann Forsyth

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

How can planning use health more fully to build more visibility, better alliances, and more substantial public support while focusing on important and meaningful change? Unfortunately, healthy cities and communities’ approaches are often on the margins of the planning field, not the center. While most people support making places that can promote health, this can be complicated at times of crisis or constraint when, for example, some may perceive economic health to be in tension with human health. At its best, however, the idea of making healthier places can meld together individual and collective goals. To make health more central, …

Land-Use Planning And Urban Governance: Lessons From The Pandemic, Malcolm Grant

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

It is a privilege to have been invited to contribute to this festschrift for a scholar whose work I have known and admired for decades. We have explored and debated together many aspects of land-use planning in our respective jurisdictions over that time, including a protracted effort in the 1990s to develop a model for impact fees for the UK planning system. Several other contributors to this festschrift were also part of that team, from which all of us learned a great deal. One is that complex systems of government develop deep resistance to change, and that it often takes …

Planning After The Pandemic, Arthur C. Nelson

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Earl Blumenauer

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Karen Johnston

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Karen Johnston

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Exploration Of Southeast Asian American Residential Patterns In The San Francisco Bay Area (2000–2019), Minh Q. Nguyen

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This paper explores three methods of reporting residential patterns: (1) concentration profiles, (2) density maps, and (3) proximity profiles. I analyze U.S. Census data to map and evaluate the residential patterns for Southeast Asian Americans in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing from the field of urban planning, I report two measures of segregation and concentration (a) dissimilarity indices and (b) spatial proximity indices, and I discuss their limitations. Since mapping and spatial statistics are essential to understanding the histories, development, and advancement of Southeast Asian American communities, it is important to promote their broad usage. …

Land Rich, Cash Poor: Hispanic Subsistence Agri-Culture On Acequia Farms Of Northern New Mexico, 1880-1950s, José A. Rivera Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Acequia-based agriculture in Hispanic northern New Mexico originated with the arrival of settlers from the central valley of Mexico in the late sixteenth century and later following the Camino Real into the upper Río Grande and its tributaries. The high desert environment required irrigation for food production and survival. Land parcels in the rural villages of northern New Mexico were small, and crop yields were limited to home consumption on a subsistence basis, an economy that lasted well into the territorial period and statehood of New Mexico. Despite a wage economy introduced with the arrival of the railroad around 1880 …

Design Is A Social Process: A Survey On Inclusive Practice, Gabriel De Souza Silva

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This inquiry pivots the discussion on design practice toward process, and seeks to elucidate how inclusivity is achieved in it, and by what means it is maintained. The design process is interrogated through a series of case studies on contemporary practitioners that either describe themselves or are recognized by the wider design community as inclusive of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, and are sensitive to history of place. The case studies are selected to demonstrate a diversity of project types, management structures, and design tools, and they comprise the practices of LA Más, Assemble, and Bryony Roberts. The product …

The Future Of Urban Technology: Exploring Smart Cities And Transportation Through Game Theory And Scenario Planning, Matthew Wilson

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Technological innovation is occurring at a rapid pace in the world of personal devices. This trend of change has not been able to occur as fast in the city infrastructure. Consumers are curious about the next generation of technology and the integration of artificially intelligent technology in transportation and the urban fabric. In this project, I study the motivations and values of a set of characters involved in the integration and innovation of Smart City Technology. These characters create potential future scenarios of the city from their actions and reactions to specific decisions.

This body of work can provide a …

Young Adults In A Costly World: Can Accessory Dwelling Units Serve As An Alternative Form Of Accommodation For Recent College Graduates Amidst The Rising Cost Of Housing And A College Education?, Aaron Schlosser

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past few years, young adults have been put in a rather tough situation concerning personal finances. As college tuition has risen, so has student debt accrual, leaving many recent college graduates near-crippled financially. Along with this issue, which is large in and of itself, is the fact that housing prices have risen in many of the metropolitan areas in the United States. Both of these problems, when coupled, lead to a decrease in quality of life for most young adults, and people in general. Because of this, the approach of this thesis is to find an affordable form …

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Built Environment, Land Use, And Crime: A Las Vegas Study, Stacey Lynn Clouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined land use and crime against persons and crime against property in Las Vegas, Nevada at varying spatial levels of analysis. Using crime data provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Clark County Assessor’s office, results at the macro-level of analysis reveal that property crime rates concentrated on commercial, transportation, communication and utilities, and industrial land use, whereas violent crime concentrated at commercial, multi-residential, and civic, institutional, and recreational land use. Upon examining the subtypes of land use that generate or radiate more crime, property crime concentrated on transportation land use, class 1 resorts, and …

Case Studies On Architecture And Economics Of Public Housing, John Kent

Honors Projects

Public is an historical and contemporary issue faced by many cities. Many new developments often include plans for some form of public or affordable housing. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few case studies in public housing through the lens of community development, architectural and urban design, and economic investment. The selected projects included: Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri (1954), Cabrini Green in Chicago, Illinois (1962), Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, Austria (1930), Caoyang New Village in Shanghai, China (1951), and various Soviet housing projects in the former Soviet Union (1922-1991). Historical and contemporary research was used …

Albuquerque Public School’S Vision Zero For Youth Initiative: Engaging Student Youth In Designing A School District Transportation Safety Program, Cordell S. Bock

Architecture and Planning ETDs

The APS (Albuquerque Public Schools) Vision Zero for Youth Initiative adopts the global Vision Zero traffic safety movement’s goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries to pedestrians and cyclists from vehicular crashes. The APS Vision Zero for Youth Initiative is comprised of a traffic-safety curriculum for K-8 students, an action plan that sets traffic-safety goals and progress evaluation frameworks for the school district, and a campaign to build a new culture of traffic safety for students, families, and local communities.

This project employs participatory methods that build the capacity of students enrolled in local public schools to produce and share …

Mapping The Impact Of A Trailway System On The Amount Of Trash Present Within Two Watersheds Of Lynchburg City, Virginia, Lillian Smith

Student Scholar Showcase

Transportation of trash debris within water systems is a prominent occurrence which has been linked to natural and artificial processes such as wind, rain, and littering. Recreational areas, such as activities along greenway trails, have been determined to be a source of debris found in waterways. This study examines whether the presence of an established recreational trail system limits trash accumulation in the entirety of a watershed. Trash data collected at Blackwater Creek, which contains an established trail system, was compared to trash data collected at Fishing Creek, containing a non-established trail system, to answer this hypothesis. A distance of …

Reinvigorating The Hill In Turners Falls, Ma, Patrick Burns

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This masters project will focus on the site of the Hillcrest and Sheffield Elementary School campus in the "The Hill" neighborhood of Turners Falls, MA. This project aims to create a vision of possibility for an underutilized neighborhood amenity. This project reviews social, demographic, physical data of the neighborhood in Turners Falls as well as research on play, nature play, outdoor experiential learning, and the local ecology of Montague Wildlife Management area. To execute this goal, the study aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Revitalize an underutilized space into a neighborhood asset;
• Improve elementary school campus reinforcing a positive learning …

Bournewood Hospital: Designing A Healing Landscape, Winfield Henry

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Currently in the United States there are 51.5 million Americans suffering from mental illness (Mental Illness, 2021). With trends having been on the rise over the past decade, particularly for depression and anxiety, and showing a significant jump during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial that behavioral health hospitals utilize all available treatment methods (Daly et. al., 2021, & Goodwin et. al., 2020). While the outdoor environment has played a role in mental and physical healthcare since the 11th Century, it has been largely lost until the late 1900s. Through research and evidence-based design, a holistic approach to healthcare is …

Murals & Mother Nature: Urban Environmental Art In Lisbon Reveals Great Concern And Appreciation For The Environment, Ana Gunther

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Urban art is a novel dimension of the environmental movement. Utilizing highly trafficked areas, urban art has the potential to spread environmental messages both because of the size of the audience and because of the contrast between nature-centered art and the urban context. The paper discusses 15 environmental urban artworks in Lisbon and conducts a visual and thematic analysis. The analysis revealed five themes present in Lisbon: the power and beauty of nature, connection with nature, environmental loss and degradation, waste management, and climate change. The most prevalent theme in Lisbon was the connection with nature, followed by a tie …

Restoring Dignity In The Gardens Of Ekhenana, Jordan Buser

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study investigates the lived experiences of eKhenana, a shack settlement under the leadership of Abahlali baseMjondolo, as they attempt to navigate the increasingly unequal urban landscape. The research presented is focused on theories of urban marginality, food sovereignty, and dignity. I advocate that, in the margins, dignity can be restored through the implementation of a communal garden. Presented as a case study, this research centers the voices and experiences of the commune. The paper first depicts a brief timeline of eKhenana, and explains how they have created not just a place to live, but a community and a …