Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

Another Palace For The People, Kate Holbrook

Masters Theses

Coined the “Palace for the People,” the American public library was established as a free, democratic haven for the public’s literary and educational needs. Adapting to the changing needs of its patrons, the public library’s services have extended beyond book access to provided services ranging from tool rentals to warming centers, postal services, and more. As both an essential landmark of the physical city through its exterior and provider of social infrastructure on its interior, public libraries seek sustainable avenues to continue their tradition of gathering, idea exchange, and provision. Expanding upon the identity of the public library as a …

Ark-Ipelago: Or, The Voluntary Prisoners Of Archaeology, Michel Song

Masters Theses

By the end of 2200, Venice becomes a submerged archaeological specimen. Ark-ipelago rejects defensive preservation, weaponizing heritage into an offensive spatial regime. An elevated macro-grid re-contains urban life within climate-controlled tubes, transforming catastrophic climate exile into a total voluntary exodus of planetary survival.

Productive Armature, Gabriel Ofem Peter

Masters Theses

What if water was all you had, what if your only source of survival was a body of water? I shudder to think that some people get to be put in this situation in the world we live in. As I understand the importance of water to survival, it is obvious that water can be the only lifeline of survival for a community. This is the experience for residents of Makoko, Lagos. Their survival depends on the Lagos Lagoon, a large body of water flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. This research looks beyond the surface of what this community …

Weaving Grounds: Connecting Canyons And Empowering Borderland Communities, Maria D. Lopez Vazquez

Masters Theses

National policies materialize in the United States-Mexico political divide, also known as the borderlands. Willow Canyon is a dissected land form inextricably linked to the Tijuana River watershed, forming with the adjacent landforms on both sides of the border one landscape. The Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty¹, signed in 1848 by the US and Mexican governments, traced an arbitrary line across these landscapes, disregarding their relationship. The consequences of these actions are visible in the physical deterioration of the landscape and ecology, as the hydrological cycle has been modified. In the 1940’s, the picturesque flow of Willow Canyon was dissected by urbanization, …

Carve, Release, Expand: A Spatial Exploration Of The Clandestine Music Spaces Of Chicago, Katie Lesh

Masters Theses

The architectural disciplines, and particularly that of landscape architecture and urban design, have shifted into focusing on “revival” of public and urban spaces but what does this truly mean? On the surface it can look like taking warehouse districts in a city and creating a master plan to turn them into artist villages or taking space underneath a highway to turn into a linear park. But what is lost in the process of doing so? The question is much bigger than myself but in the case of Chicago, the city has been home to vibrant music and art communities that …

Watershed Amendments: Assembling New Pervious Ground From Landscape Waste, Sophie Kaplan-Bucciarelli

Masters Theses

In Providence, Rhode Island, much of the downtown area is built over a vast historic tidal estuary. Though we no longer see the salt marshes, wooded bluffs, or meadows that once characterized this landscape, we recognize their absence in contemporary crises of urban heat, flooding, polluted soils and stormwater runoff, and habitat loss. These conditions are particularly acute along the city’s industrialized river corridors, where vacant lots and parking areas sit idle, their history paved over and potential constrained by limited imagination and resources.

These lots - already experiments in fill and land building after centuries of disturbance - can …

The Wall As Commons, Raveena Deshpande

Masters Theses

Collective infrastructures for informal domesticity 

As urban populations grow, access to affordable housing declines, pushing certain sections of the population to build informal settlements outside legal and formal construction systems. These settlements often lack access to basic living infrastructures - water, sanitation, and electricity- even as they house a large share of the population in developing countries.

Current models of designing for informality exist as top down planning approaches, that ignore lived realities at the scale of the home. These design models are incongruent with informal lifestyles, and undermine the sense of belonging that comes with rituals of self-authorship in …

Framing The Slow Landscape, Beiqi Feng

Masters Theses

Chinese classical gardens embed a set of spatial framing principles that shape how landscapes are seen, moved through, and experienced over time. Through framing, concealment, and pathway-guided movement, these gardens create layered spatial experiences that gradually unfold rather than reveal themselves all at once. Drawing from The Craft of Gardens by Ji Cheng, Scholar Gardens of China by R. Stewart Johnston, and The Classical Gardens of China by Yang Hongxun, this thesis identifies and synthesizes key spatial framing strategies embedded within Chinese classical gardens.

The thesis then critiques contemporary American urban landscapes, focusing on Higginson Circle in Boston, where openness …

Embodied River: Deliberate Unbuilding In Post-Dam Landscapes, Travis Kelley

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities and challenges that legacy hydro-powered dams and mill complexes offer. Through historical and contemporary analysis of New England’s 14,000 dams and of a particular site in Maynard, Massachusetts, the research delves into the factors that make these interventions so challenging. It begins from an assumption rooted in the ethical and environmental imperative to remove or modify legacy dams, which are those built for a purpose that is no longer being utilized, and rejects the existing binary of “remove” vs “preserve,” which is the dominant narrative in the dam removal conversation as it exists in 2026. …

An Analytical Framework For Quantifying Urban And Community Resilience To Natural Hazards From Cell-Phone Gps-Location And Traffic-Flow Data, Georgios Chatzikyriakidis

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Urban areas are increasingly exposed to natural hazards while accommodating a growing share of the global population, yet a consistent science-based framework for quantifying urban and community resilience remains lacking. This dissertation develops a physics-based analytical framework grounded in statistical mechanics and the quantitative theory of Brownian motion. A city is conceptualized as a complex medium in which citizens move analogously to Brownian particles within a viscoelastic environment, influenced by socioeconomic interactions and infrastructure functionality.

A central premise is that urban resilience, interpreted as engineering resilience (an outcome), can be quantified through a single metric: the mean-square displacement MSD=⟨r²(t)⟩, of …

Remaking Buford Highway: Immigration And The Struggle For Walkable Suburbia, Amit Kamma

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

Constructed according to a car-centric vision typical of American suburbs, one segment of Buford Highway outside Atlanta has become a corridor defined by immigrants who often walk and use public transit. These behaviors conflict with the existing car-focused infrastructure, compelling government actors to make the Highway more multimodal. Progress towards that goal is ongoing and precarious, demonstrating wider systemic challenges in U.S. planning and local governance.

A Vision For S.P.A.M. — Smart Planning For Accessibility In Micro-Communities, Alexis Myra Castillo Tamayo

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

The selection of a capstone topic is therefore deliberate. It requires engaging with issues that are not only architecturally relevant, but personally meaningful and socially significant. In this project, that focus returns to my hometown of Lāhainā, Maui—a place deeply rooted in history, culture, and community. In recent years, and especially following the events of 2023, the need to reconsider how design can support resilience, safety, and connection has become increasingly urgent. These conditions reveal that rebuilding is not solely about replacing what was lost, but about rethinking systems that shape everyday life. This capstone is grounded in that premise. …

Tracing The Mirage: Designing For The Unseen Community, Yasmine Bannoura

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Tracing the Mirage: Designing for the Unseen Community explores how the temporary urbanism of Burning Man can inform more human-centered, experiential, and community-driven approaches to architecture and urban design in Las Vegas. Through research, interviews, surveys, and speculative gateway designs, the project reimagines arrival, identity, and connection within the desert landscape.

Sunrise To Sunset Walk, Mariana Clara Servin

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Sunrise Manor, known as the East Side, is often overlooked and avoided. It carries a negative reputation, with locals frequently advising tourists to stay away, a pattern common in neighborhoods where marginalized communities reside. Despite its vibrancy, the area lacks parks, public amenities, and entertainment, leaving residents underserved. Sunrise Manor is predominantly Hispanic, and its cultural presence is embedded in everyday street life, where vendors sell fruit, food, flowers, and goods on neighborhood corners. This identity has also shaped destinations like Broadacres Marketplace, the largest outdoor swap meet in Las Vegas. However, recent immigration policies and rising fears within the …

Artful Architecture: Making Moments Around The Las Vegas Valley, Rachel Chinen

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Artful Architecture: Making Moments Around the Las Vegas Valley investigates the spatial and cultural disconnect between the highly thematic, immersive environments of the Las Vegas Strip and the surrounding auto-oriented, utilitarian suburban sprawl. This research explores the integration of public art with everyday civic infrastructure to cultivate a stronger sense of place and local community identity.

Queerscape: Transcending Urban Division, Alex Blake

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

The project seeks to demonstrate how infrastructure can act as a symbolic anchor, offering a framework for queer urban design that simultaneously addresses safety and cultural visibility. While site-specific, the methodology is intended to inform future interventions in districts for queer and other marginalized communities.

After The Final Whistle: Designing The Future Of Stadiums, Alan Zabdyel Garcia

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

After the Final Whistle: Designing the Future of Stadiums explores how the lifespan of aging and abandoned stadiums can be extended through adaptive reuse and community-centered design. As billions of dollars continue to be invested into sports infrastructure, many stadiums face obsolescence after only a few decades, often leaving behind urban voids and environmental waste. This design capstone develops a framework for evaluating stadium transformation through multiple lenses including adaptability, economics, urban planning, history, environmental impact, politics, sporting needs, and community engagement. Using case studies such as Sam Boyd Stadium and Cashman Field in Las Vegas, the research explores how …

Anti-Gang Architecture: Youth, Labor, And Spatial Agency In Mexico, Arturo Resendiz

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Anti-Gang Architecture: Youth Labor, & Spatial Agency in Mexico

In many parts of the world, teenagers face environments shaped by violence, drug abuse, and limited opportunity. The absence of inclusive communities deepens youth disconnection, leaving them vulnerable to harmful influences. This research explores how architectural qualities can create spaces that protect, inspire, and connect with Mexican youth, specifically in cities like Matamoros, Tamaulipas, where public space has lost its capacity to support safe youth development.

The central question guiding this research is: How can architecture create environments that inspire youth identity, develop creativity, and offer alternatives to violence and drug …

Comparing Carbon Emissions Across Transportation Mode For A 5-Mile Urban Trip In Spokane, Washington, Christian Agyei

2026 Symposium

Transportation plays a significant role in shaping local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly in mid-sized cities where automobile use remains dominant. This project examines how carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions differ across transportation modes for a standardized five-mile urban trip in Spokane, Washington. Using emission factors from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the study estimates grams of CO₂ per passenger-mile and total CO₂ emissions per trip for four transportation modes, including single-occupancy vehicles, public transit, cycling, and walking. Commute pattern data from American Community Survey (ACS) provided local context on travel behavior in Spokane. This analysis …

Placemaking On Peachtree: Breathing Life In To Downtown Atlanta’S Outdoor Environment Through Wellbeing-Centric Design, Rachel Pickert

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Why do outdoor public spaces in Atlanta not prioritize pedestrian well-being by providing comfort, safety, and service to their daily life? The built environment is a key determinant of overall well-being through the opportunity for social interaction, stimulation, safety, comfort, and a sense of belonging. The vehicular-centric design of Downtown Atlanta has resulted in pedestrians seeking comfort away from the ground level using viaducts, subterrain transit, and sky bridges. This historic removal of pedestrians from the streets of Atlanta has resulted in un-activated outdoor public spaces which do not fulfill the basic needs for pedestrian wellbeing. This thesis uses existing …

Spaces Of Our Own: Reclaiming Community In Jaipur's Informal Settlements, Daisy Bhambhani

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

India’s rapid urbanization has resulted in fragmented urban fabrics, where women and children remain in vulnerable positions. They face systemic barriers in education, health, and social belonging due to under resourced environments. Despite the nation’s commitments to gender equality and the right to education, slum environments continue to lack adequate infrastructure that supports learning and collective well being. Architecture has the potential to combat these challenges by creating spaces that promote social inclusivity.

While architects and planners have recognized the increasing need for inclusive spaces, most projects do not explore how a built form itself can create empowerment within marginalized …

In-Tsira Healing: Integrating Trauma-Informed Design And Sustainable Design Into Wellness Centers For Survivors Of Gender Based Violence, Eniola Ololade Esther Akinyemi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Survivors of gender-based violence in Northern Nigeria face layered barriers to recovery, including trauma, stigma, displacement, and loss of livelihood. Yet the built environments intended to support them remain largely unresponsive. This thesis proposes a trauma-informed, climate-responsive wellness campus in Maiduguri, Borno State, grounded in cultural and environmental context.

The research asks how trauma-informed and sustainable design strategies can be implemented in healing centers to reduce re-traumatization, foster safety, and support reintegration through self-supportive, educational, and communal spaces?

How can trauma informed and sustainable design strategies be implemented in wellness centers to foster safety and healing while reducing re-traumatization, and …

Learned Resilience, Rebeca Ortiz

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Haiti faces a complex web of environmental and social pressures, from deforestation and soil erosion to climate instability and strained institutional support. While regenerative farming and community-led development are often discussed in the context of sustainability, architecture is frequently relegated to the background, treated as a secondary or isolated fix rather than a primary driver of change. My work challenges this by positioning architecture as the central, regenerative framework that weaves together food production, collective learning, and civic life. I see the built environment not just as shelter, but as an active agent for resilience and a sense of belonging. …

Assessing Transit-Oriented Development And Mixed-Use Urban Planning Strategies In Taipei, Taiwan, Eliza Mccoole

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Virtual Matter: Architecture As A Critical Turning Point, Aden Sterchi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The materialization of AI infrastructure has outpaced all regulatory frameworks, allowing data centers to proliferate with limited oversight despite their growing environmental and social impacts. Through a review of artificial intelligence’s technological development, the rise of big tech, and contemporary data center expansion, this thesis situates AI infrastructure within a broader pattern of deregulation, delayed accountability, and market-driven governance. Using a qualitative mixed-method approach combining historical analysis, policy critique, regional case studies, and research-through-design, the study examines how existing land use, utility, and environmental frameworks have failed to keep pace with the scale of data center sprawl; The study also …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

The Patina Of Care, Jose Alejandro Carpio

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to address the urgent need for adaptable, socially responsive housing in Sapporo, Hokkaido. The area currently faces a crisis in rapidly aging populations, youth out-migration, housing insecurity, and high rates of domestic violence. These problems are intensified by economic strain, harsh winter conditions, and periods when cultural stigma limits access to safety and community support. As it stands, current housing systems cannot evolve with the rapidly shifting demographics and social needs of the city.

Confront these challenges. The thesis proposes a megastructure-framework grounded in the metabolism movement and the works of Metabolist architects such as Fumihiko Maki, …

The Legacy Of Lead: Lead Exposure's Harmful Effects And Its Concentration In Poc Communities, Layla Sophronia Barber

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis examines the disproportionate burden of lead exposure carried by low income, POC communities. The systemic nature of this problem is a symptom of a longstanding legacy of environmental injustice in the United States. Decades of federal neglect are reflected in the higher statistics of lead exposure and poisoning in predominantly black communities. While it is understood that lead exposure poses a serious threat to physical health and early cognitive development, there is a discouraging lack of urgency to remove the toxin from non-wealthy communities. The material covered by this thesis aims to identify and correct the discriminatory social …

What’S In A Map?: Evaluating Mapping Techniques And Measures Of Culture To Inform Equitable Cultural Planning In Dallas, Texas, Kena Nicol

Planning Masters Professional Reports

The City of Dallas developed a neighborhood typology map to assess cultural resource distribution as part of its 2018 Cultural Plan, representing a relatively new approach that remains underexplored in academic literature. In the same plan, stakeholders identified equity as a central value, highlighting the need for tools that better support equitable cultural planning. This study evaluates the outcomes of two mapping techniques–cultural asset mapping and opportunity mapping – to examine how each represents cultural resource distribution across Dallas and supports equity-oriented analysis. Cultural asset mapping, the standard approach in cultural planning, identifies the spatial distribution of physical cultural infrastructure. …

“The St. Louis Flat:” A Typological Study Of The Characteristics And Distribution Of Four-Family Flats In Greater St. Louis, Camden Maggard

St. Louis Publications

The four-family flat is a multi-family housing type that consists of four residential units in a double-stacked arrangement. These buildings are one of the most common multi-family housing types in the United States. While the four-family building type is present in multiple cities, these buildings are uniquely characteristic of the St. Louis region. In a 1920 report on housing, the St. Louis City Plan Commission wrote that “slightly less than 50 per cent of the housing” in the city consisted of two- and four-family buildings by the late 1910s, building types that were “popularly known in other cities as ‘The …