Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Aerosol And Urban Heat Island Effects On Warm Cloud-Top Shortwave Infrared Reflectance And Visible Albedo, Heather Glickman-Eliezer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses ten years of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data (1999-2009) to assess urban effects of anthropogenic aerosols and Urban Heat Island (UHI) on cloud-top radiative properties of optically thick clouds. GOES images at noon local time of channels 1, 2, and 4 are used to calculate visible albedo, and shortwave infrared reflectance at 3.9-µm. Cloud-top particle radius is inversely related with SWIRR. Albedo and cloud fraction are measured for cold and warm clouds, and SWIRR is used as a particle-radius proxy for warm clouds only. AERONET fine-mode particle retrievals (fAOD) from the CCNY station are used for …

American Dreamer: First-Time Homeownership And The Affective Geographies Of Dwelling, Stephen Boatright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research examines the experiences novice homebuyers in New York City and Oakland, CA have during the home search and decision-making processes. Using a mixed-method approach that combines ethnography with critical discourse analysis and non-representational theory, this work examines the ideology of homeownership as well as the tensions that stem from its emotional affordances. It addresses a lacuna in the housing literature regarding the turbulent everyday emotional tensions that buyers confront as they navigate the highly professionalized real estate industry. Homeownership is lauded for being a relatively low-risk tool for highly leveraged investment; however, using data drawn from a series …

Carbon Emission Policy In The United States: State Patchwork Vs. National Policy, Samuel T. Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The lack of a national law in the United States to mitigate climate change has prompted many states and cities to take the lead in implementing policies to reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the threats posed by a warming planet. This project adopts two established systems that classify states by their relative involvement in climate policy (Wheeler 2010; Lutsey et al. 2008) and combines them into a single, six-point ranking scale. States are then cross-tabulated against EPA data showing the amount and trajectory of each state's carbon emissions from the electrical power sector over the period 2005-2010. States …

Super Fun Superfund: Polluted Protection Along The Gowanus Canal, Jessica Ty Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research reflects on the patterns of uneven development occurring in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, social and physical changes taking place there, and how these elements of the canal relate to the changing purpose of urban waterways. Gowanus has mimicked the development of New York City since the 1600's through several phases: city settlement and development, abandonment, and redevelopment. The redevelopment phase in Gowanus couples environmental clean up with gentrification and displacement. Using an urban political ecology framework, this research attempts to answer the following questions: Why, after many years of pollution, is the area being cleaned up? Will …

Health Exposure, Socio-Economic Vulnerability, And Infrastructure At Risk To Current And Projected Coastal Flooding In New York City, Lesley Patrick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work uses a GIS-based methodology to develop and map a composite physical exposure, social vulnerability, and critical facilities index for New York City populations exposed to the current and predicted 100- and 500- year coastal floods. The objective is to illustrate how sea-level rise may affect future 100- and 500-year coastal floods in New York City, how these changes in future flood scenarios will affect the number and distribution of people at risk and their associated physical and socioeconomic impacts, and how these impacts will vary among neighborhoods.

Sea-level rise throughout the 21st century will result in increased flood …

Resettling The City? Settler Colonialism, Neoliberalism, And Urban Land In Winnipeg, Canada, Owen Toews

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the making of a single twenty-first century city - Winnipeg, Canada - and how the current dominant development vision conserves longstanding power relations that have shaped Canada's Prairie West for over one hundred and fifty years. It situates a neoliberal city-center redevelopment authority within a much longer regional history of encounter between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, to produce an extended historical materialist geography of settler colonialism in the Prairie West. In doing so, it goes against dominant accounts that break apart imperial conquest from urban history or contemporary urban processes. It demonstrates how neoliberal restructuring of Native …