Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fulfilling Urban Infrastructure Standards To Increase The Carrying Capacity Of Tourism Destination, Shana Fatina, Tri Edhi Budhi Soesilo, Rudy Parluhutan Tambunan

Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development

Labuan Bajo is an emerging coastal tourism destination in Indonesia, which is also part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Komodo Biosphere Reserve located in the East Nusa Tenggara region. Recent tourism developments have transformed Labuan Bajo from a rural area into an urban area, and significant land use changes have followed. This new urban area development will attract tourists as well as population migration. The ongoing issue is to develop the urban infrastructure and facilities of Labuan Bajo in an integrated and sustainable way, considering the carrying capacity following the high demand for tourism and …

Disrupting The Grid: Encountering Fire And Smoke Through Energy Infrastuctures, Deepti Chatti, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Experiences of fires are mediated by energy infrastructures and refracted through social inequality and difference. In California, a state marked by increasingly intense and frequent wildfires, the grid is a source of fire risk, with historically marginalized groups bearing the brunt of exposures to wildfire smoke. Drawing on research conducted by one of the co-authors in collaboration with California’s Karuk Tribe and Blue Lake Rancheria Tribes, this empirically grounded review article expands our understanding of grids. Extant scholarship presents the grid as a networked infrastructure mediating access to energy and one’s relationship to a collective and the state. We extend …

Book Review: Under The Weather: Reimagining Mobility In The Climate Crisis., Raymond Murphy

Critical Disaster Studies

Under the Weather: Reimagining Mobility in the Climate Crisis is an insightful, important book that reports on a fine-grained investigation Sodero made of the consequences and response to the disasters resulting from Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia in 2003 and Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland in 2010, with comparisons to Hurricane Sandy in New York, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the 1998 ice storm in northeastern North America and the Icelandic ash cloud. One original feature is the focus on mobility, how indispensable it is in modern societies, how it is disrupted by extreme weather, and …

The Art Of Not Being Freshened: The Everyday Politics Of Infrastructure In The Mekong Delta, Timothy Gorman

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

With the growing threat of climate change, states are increasingly turning to large-scale infrastructure projects in order to control environmental conditions, especially in coastal areas. These projects are often planned and implemented in a centralized, top-down manner and sometimes fail to achieve their stated objectives in the face of “everyday resistance” from local residents and farmers. This study draws on interviews and secondary research to examine the contentious everyday politics of infrastructure in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, focusing specifically on how small-scale, surreptitious acts of “counter-infrastructuring” on the part of farmers, such as the construction of illicit wells …

Hawker Culture And Its Infrastructure: Experiences And Contestations In Everyday Life, Lily Kong, Aidan Marc Wong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Hawker foods characterize urban Asia, with similarities and differences across cities that forge both cultural commonalities and distinctions. From the itinerant to the fixed location, from the temporary sites to the purposebuilt, hawker foods are served in informal settings, with varying degrees of tradition and innovation, hygiene and squalidness, local authenticity and globalized influence. In the side-streets of Beijing where local delicacies such as scorpion are served, to the abundant food cart vendors on Bangkok streets, to the warung (small, typically family-owned eateries) in Surabaya, and the carefully planned and designed hawker centres in Singapore, hawker culture is a distinctive

High-Metabolism Infrastructure And The Scrap Industry In Urban China, Adam Liebman

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty publications

Abstract

Rapid urbanization in 21st-century China has been fraught with contested demolition, overdevelopment and shoddy infrastructure with short lifespans. By viewing this infrastructure as having “high metabolism” and examining the urban scrap trade that is fuelled by its material outputs, this article challenges a common assumption that such a form of urbanization is merely wasteful and problematic. Crucially, such urbanization also puts rural migrants and scrap into motion in a way that helps to reproduce its form. This occurs by generating socio-material nodes of scrap trading wherein migrants make the most of temporarily stable situations with entrepreneurialism. The nodes are …

Rural America Is Still Technologically Behind: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever, Paul Force-Emery Mackie

Social Work Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …

Public Libraries In Rural Arkansas: An Oasis In An Information Desert, Britt Graves

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public libraries in Arkansas are welcome, but those found in rural Arkansas are almost a necessity. The public uses the library for more than just checking out books or their email: it’s become a community gathering place for all walks of life, regardless of age or economic status. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the state, libraries also became essential for education, medicine, news, and employment, nearly overloading their resources and shining a spotlight on technology, or the lack thereof, that so many public libraries are needing. With the Arkansas governor planning an upgrade on broadband technology and the federal government …

The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

This case study brings new attention to a critical but under-appreciated dimension of so-called “smart” cities: how smart city governance builds and relies on institutionalized sharing of data, information, and other forms of knowledge across all sectors of public administration. Those smart city practices are referred to here as knowledge commons and systematized using the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) research framework. That framework extends and modifies Ostrom’s research tradition as to community-based resource governance. As with other GKC-focused research, this work relies on a qualitative case study. It draws a detailed, context-specific portrait of a smart city as knowledge commons …

How American Transit Agencies Determine Fare Policy: It All Comes Down To Politics, Julian Thesseling

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will provide readers with an understanding of the variables that US transit agencies grapple with when developing fare policy, with a particular focus on the political process. The framework chapter will examine the objectives of public transportation and how agencies face difficulties in achieving these objectives. While this paper will focus on American transportation policy, the framework will draw from the experiences of cities across the world. Three case study chapters will then each discuss an American city or region’s approach to fare policy, and how variables have either complicated or enhanced agencies’ ability to develop effective fare …

Parag Khanna, Connectography: Mapping The Future Of Global Civilization (2016), Sudipto Sarkar

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Parag Khanna’s world tour through “Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization” provides the reader with vivid details of a connected world that we live in. The prime message of this book is connecting the global nodes through building infrastructure starting from oil pipelines to fibre optic cables. Exploring diverse arenas, this book gives an overview why “connectivity” is important for the entire world and not only for the selected few. Khanna’s pervading visionary approach covers bits and pieces of almost everything to make the world connected for future prosperity. However, a question still remains about how consistently his views …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Where: The Federal Government And Canada's Urbanization, 1867-2017, Charles D. Crenna

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation responds to a single overarching research question: what is the nature and extent of the federal government’s influence on urbanization in Canada, both on its systems of cities and on their internal structure? Lessons learned regarding the federal role in Canada’s urbanization remain relevant and applicable to emerging conditions. They offer a sound, streetwise foundation for future urban policy development, based on understanding the vital politics of where.

Large, complex systems of cities are both self-organizing and responsive to strategic guidance by the federal government. Politically-difficult choices among competing urban locations can be made both by hiding …

Networked Human, Network’S Human: Humans In Networks Inter-Asia, Eric Kerr, Connor Graham, Alfred Montoya

Alfred Montoya

This special issue explores the conceptions of the human that emerge out of the form and the design of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Geographically, our focus compares two countries with a relatively high level of ICT penetration—South Korea and Singapore—and two countries with a relatively low level—India and Vietnam. In each country we see how different forms of the human emerge, in part out of the ways in which technological infrastructure develop and intertwine with social order. In this introduction we reflect on the long genealogy of “human” and “humanity” and the more recent history of ICTs in Asia.

Networked Human, Network’S Human: Humans In Networks Inter-Asia, E. Kerr, Connor Graham, Alfred Montoya

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Research

This special issue explores the conceptions of the human that emerge out of the form and the design of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Geographically, our focus compares two countries with a relatively high level of ICT penetration—South Korea and Singapore—and two countries with a relatively low level—India and Vietnam. In each country we see how different forms of the human emerge, in part out of the ways in which technological infrastructure develop and intertwine with social order. In this introduction we reflect on the long genealogy of “human” and “humanity” and the more recent history of ICTs in Asia.

Stormwater Management In Philadelphia: The Importance Of Green Stormwater Infrastructure And Community Involvement In Greater Citywide Sustainability, Julie Groff

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found the City of Philadelphia to be in violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 due to insufficient stormwater infrastructure. In 2011, Philadelphia initiated a 25-year, citywide plan called Green City, Clean Waters to reduce stormwater runoff by implementing green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). The plan promised significant community involvement in the process. I conducted semi-structured interviews with City employees and individuals in the community that have partnered with the City to administer GSI and participant observation of community meetings and used them to explore different neighborhoods’ experiences with Green City, Clean …

Gender And Violence In Urban Pakistan, Nausheen H. Anwar, Daanish Mustafa, Amiera Sawas, Sharmeen Malik

Faculty Research - Books

The project has focused on the material and discursive drivers of gender roles and their relevance to configuring violent geographies specifically among 12 urban working class neighborhoods of Karachi and Rawalpindi-Islamabad. This project has investigated how frustrated gendered expectations may be complicit in driving different types of violence and how they may be tackled by addressing first, the material aspects of gender roles through improved access to public services and opportunities, and second, discursive aspects of gender roles in terms of public education and media. This report's findings are based upon approximately two thousand four hundred questionnaire surveys, close to …

Build It, But Will They Come? A Geoscience Cyberinfrastructure Baseline Analsys, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Karen S. Baker, Nicholas Berente, Dorothy R. Carter, Leslie A. Dechurch, Courtney G. Flint, Gabriel Gershenfeld, Michael Haberman, John Leslie King, Christine Kirkpatrick, Eric Knight, Barbara Lawrence, Spenser Lewis, W. Christopher Lenhardt, Pablo Lopez, Matthew S. Mayernik, Charles Mcelroy, Barbara Mittleman, Et Al.

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Understanding the earth as a system requires integrating many forms of data from multiple fields. Builders and funders of the cyberinfrastructure designed to enable open data sharing in the geosciences risk a key failure mode: What if geoscientists do not use the cyberinfrastructure to share, discover and reuse data? In this study, we report a baseline assessment of engagement with the NSF EarthCube initiative, an open cyberinfrastructure effort for the geosciences. We find scientists perceive the need for cross-disciplinary engagement and engage where there is organizational or institutional support. However, we also find a possibly imbalanced involvement between cyber and …

Unbuilt Anxieties: Infrastructure Projects, Transnational Conflict In The South China/East Sea, And Vietnamese Statehood, Ken Maclean

Sustainability and Social Justice

The conflicts shaping territorial claims and counter-claims to overlapping areas of the South China Sea threatens to significantly damage Sino-Vietnamese relations, destabilize regional security arrangements, and alter the geopolitical status quo. The governments of both countries routinely invoke historical documents, commission scientific studies, and cite legal principles to justify their competing claims in the maritime region and the resources contained therein. The role different types of energy infrastructure play in the state-level disputes have received little attention, however. This essay addresses this oversight. In it, I foreground the complex ways not yet built infrastructure affect Sino-Vietnamese relations as well as …

Farmer Perceptions Of Climate Change: Associations With Observed Temperature And Precipitation Trends, Irrigation, And Climate Beliefs, Meredith T. Niles, Nathaniel D. Mueller

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

How individuals perceive climate change is linked to whether individuals support climate policies and whether they alter their own climate-related behaviors, yet climate perceptions may be influenced by many factors beyond local shifts in weather. Infrastructure designed to control or regulate natural resources may serve as an important lens through which people experience climate, and thus may influence perceptions. Likewise, perceptions may be influenced by personal beliefs about climate change and whether it is human-induced. Here we examine farmer perceptions of historical climate change, how perceptions are related to observed trends in regional climate, how perceptions are related to the …

Increasing Access To Potable Water: A Question Of Economics And Governance In Bo District, Sierra Leone, Alissa M. Heiring

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This paper analyzes existing supply gaps that are impeding rural water access in Bo District, Sierra Leone. On a national and district level, Sierra Leone has failed to meet the target of 70% access to potable water inspired by the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. This paper focuses on Bo District due to its near total inclusion in the Sewa River basin and split urban and rural population. Given the existing political and economic constraints, this paper identifies the most feasible way to sustainably increase access to potable water in Bo. To develop the recommendations, current supply gaps in rural …

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Infrastructure Provision, Gender And Poverty In Indian Slums, Prithi Parikh, Kun Fu, Himanshu Parikh, Allan Mcrobie, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the relationship between infrastructure provision and poverty alleviation by analyzing 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non-serviced slums in India. Using a mixed-method approach of qualitative analysis and regression modeling, we find that infrastructure was associated with a 66% increase in education among females. Service provision increased literacy by 62%, enhanced income by 36%, and reduced health costs by 26%. Evidence suggests that a gender-sensitive consideration of infrastructure is necessary and that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will not suffice. We provide evidence that infrastructure investment is critical for well-being of slum dwellers and women in particular.

Family-Friendly Las Vegas: An Analysis Of Time And Space, Diana Tracy Cohen

Occasional Papers

This paper explores the rise and fall of the “family-friendly” Las Vegas marketing era. Through analysis of casino advertisements, internal and external building infrastructure, and qualitative in-depth interviews with industry insiders, this work investigates the city’s reinvention of the early 1990s. Key factors that set the stage for the emergence of targeted family marketing are identified, addressing why this advertising approach ultimately did not sustain. Unique marketing case studies are identified throughout.

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring …

Converging And Coexisting Systems Towards Smart Surveillance, Katina Michael, Mg Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Tracking and monitoring people as they operate within their personal networks benefits service providers and their constituents but involves hidden risks and costs.

Automatic identification technologies, CCTV cameras, pervasive and mobile networks, wearable computing, location-based services and social networks have traditionally served distinct purposes. However, we have observed patterns of integration, convergence and coexistence among all these innovations within the information and communication technology industry.1For example, ‘location-based social networking’ can draw on a smart phone's capacity to identify a user uniquely, locate him within 1–2m and share this information across his social network in real time. The resulting ability to …

Gill, Massachusetts: The Mariamante Parcel, Center For Economic Development

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

In December of 2004, the small Massachusetts town of Gill took a tremendous step to influence its own future. A fifteen acre parcel of land in the south of town, near the intersection of two important town roads, had been put up for sale by its previous owners. The land had been under an agricultural preservation restriction, a program enabled by Massachusetts General Law Chapter 61 A. As part of this restriction, if the land were ever sold, the town would have right of first refusal.

The town's recent Community Development Plan has identified the parcel as a prime site …

Haverhill Street Corridor Study: Methuen, Massachusetts, Center For Economic Development

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

The City of Methuen’s Department of Planning and Community Development hired a team of students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Master’s in Regional Planning studio class to examine the growth impacts of a potential highway interchange reconfiguration. Exit 46 of Interstate 93 in Methuen is a failed interchange, and will likely be reconfigured in the next ten years. Methuen, a middle class city of 44,000 midway between Boston, MA and Manchester, NH, is currently experiencing significant growth pressures. The reconfigured interchange will only add to these pressures.

In consultation with the client, the studio team focused its analysis on …

Variation In Environmental Risk Perceptions And Information Sources Among Three Communities In El Paso, Theresa L. Byrd, James Vanderslice, Susan K. Peterson

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The authors report the results of a pilot study of environmental risk and sources of environmental information in three socio-economically and culturally distinct communities in Texas.