Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Growing Zenger Farm, Turhan Sonmez, Elizabeth Milner, Stacey Glenewinkel, Kate Carone

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Zenger Farm is a working urban farm in outer southeast Portland, Oregon, that promotes sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship and local economic development. Currently operating on 6 acres of farmland and 10 acres of wetland, the farm has an opportunity to expand onto 4 additional acres of adjacent land, and has asked Ecotone to help maximize the potential of that expansion. Growing Zenger Farm is a unique opportunity to learn how urban agriculture can best address the needs of communities. Food security, community development, education, economic development and environmental stewardship are components of Zenger's stated mission and goals and are …

Harvesting Opportunity: A Strategic Vision For Farmworker Housing And Microenterprise In Washington County, Nadine Appenbrink, Raihana Ansary, Elizabeth Decker, Kate Mcquillan, Karla Nelson, Emily Picha

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Farmworkers in Washington County face stagnant incomes, limited opportunities and a shortage of affordable, quality housing. In this six month workshop project, Tierra Planning explored the connection between quality affordable housing and economic development opportunities for farmworkers in Washington County. We worked with stakeholders, regulators, landowners and farmworkers to identify barriers, opportunities and alternatives. Our final product was a "strategic vision" that included both general recommendations and recommendations specific to Washington County based on extensive research, outreach, and alternatives analysis. Our hope is that our work will spark discourse among local farmers, housing developers, and policy makers in the Portland …

Gateway Ecodistrict Pilot Study, Michael Budds, Erin Reome, Dan Schauer, Aaron Wilson

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Gateway EcoDistrict Pilot Study used site conditions, community priorities, and plans for future growth and development to recommend catalyst projects. The study’s objectives included raising awareness about the EcoDistrict concept, mapping physical and social assets conducive to an EcoDistrict, and identifying organizations interested in management of the pilot EcoDistrict. An assessment of opportunities and constraints to establishing an EcoDistrict in Gateway served as a corollary part of the study. This project was conducted under the supervision of Sumner Sharpe and Ellen Bassett.

Reshaping The Planning Agenda, Heidi Guenin, Bob Kellett, Vivian Siu, Lindsay Walker, Jenny Weinstein

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Housing Land Advocates and AARP Oregon have identified that the participation of older adults in the planning process in Clackamas County is not leading to outcomes that address their needs. One potential barrier to advocacy is older adults' lack of understanding of the planning process. A better informed population of older adults will lead to more effective participation in planning processes and an increased ability to advocate for their needs. Another potential barrier may be the way in which planners engage older adults in planning. Through better engagement strategies there will be better outcomes. This project was conducted under the …

Communities Of Color In Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile, Ann Curry-Stevens, Amanda Cross-Hemmer, Coalition Of Communities Of Color

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Existing data that informs decision making in Multnomah County inadequately captures the lived experiences of communities of color. Rarely do existing reports include dimensions of race and ethnicity. Much research has been undertaken without the involvement of those most affected by the decisions guided by the research. The impact is that communities of color are rarely visible at the level of policy. Data has been used to obscure and oppress rather than to empower communities and eliminate disparities. This is not acceptable, and leads to inequitable policy and devastating outcomes for people of color.

"Communities of Color in Multnomah County: …

The Military Genogram: A Solution-Focused Approach For Resiliency Building In Service Members And Their Families, Eugenia Weiss, Jose Coll, Jennifer Gerbauer, Kate Smiley, Ed Carillo

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent decades, it has become evident among mental health practitioners that the military is a unique culture that is comprised of distinct ethics, core values, codes of conduct, and strict hierarchical roles. In light of the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, veterans and their families are seeking mental health services due to a variety of psychosocial issues; however, mental health practitioners are lacking military-specific knowledge in understanding individuals within the military subculture. In addition, they are ill-equipped with interventions aimed at supporting the military family. Historically, the genogram has been an effective tool in delineating intergenerational …

Photovoice As Authentic Civic Engagement: Lessons Learned In One Immigrant Community, Meg Merrick, Angie Mejia

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

It is widely acknowledged that equitable and sustainable public policy can only be achieved when it is informed by the concerns, hopes, and experiences of those who are affected. Public agencies wishing to engage recent immigrants can find this to be challenging, however. Effective public participation and civic engagement can be difficult when community members cannot speak English and/or come from very different cultural and political environments. The Chronic Disease Prevention Program (CDPP) of the Multnomah County Health Department and Metro, two public agencies serving the Portland, Oregon region, have actively sought to learn from the experiences of immigrant community …

Understanding School Travel: How Residential Location Choice And The Built Environment Affect Trips To School, Yizhao Yang, Marc Schlossberg, Robert Parker, Bethany Johnson

TREC Final Reports

This project investigates issues related to parents’ decisions about children’s school transportation. This has become an important area of research due to the growing concerns that increased reliance on private automobile in school travel has led to adverse health impacts on children and negative impacts on environment. This study examines school transportation in the context of where families live and how families make decisions about school travel in the process of choosing their residence.

Using a middle-sized school district in Oregon State, we conducted a 5500-household survey and a number of interviews and focus groups. The study shows that parents …

Rural Transit In Oregon: Current And Future Needs, Jennifer Dill, Margaret B. Neal

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of the research reported was to identify the current status and needs for general public transportation in Oregon’s rural areas, as well as opportunities and barriers (e.g., funding, governance issues, and leadership) to expanding services over a 20 year period. Oregon is a largely rural state. This lack of density poses problems for the provision of public transit, whether through fixed route or demand response service. People living in the rural areas and who lack cars and access to public transportation are at a strong disadvantage. With no access to these transit resources, they may be limited to …

Co-Evolution Of Transportation And Land Use: Modeling Historical Dependencies In Land Use And Decision-Making, Lei Zhang, Wei Zu, Mingxin Li

TREC Final Reports

The interaction between land use and transportation has long been the central issue in urban and regional planning. Models of such interactions provide vital information to support many public policy decisions, such as land supply, infrastructure provision, and growth management. Both the transportation and land use systems exhibit historical dependencies in policy decisions. For instance, the expansion of a roadway today will change travel demand patterns, and make certain other roads more or less likely to be expanded in the future. A specific land supply decision made at one point in time, by changing the relative attractiveness of other areas …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Safety Investment Program (Sip) Policies For Oregon, Christopher M. Monsere, Lisa Diercksen, Karen Dixon, Michael Liebler

TREC Final Reports

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Safety Investment Program (SIP) seeks to allocate safety funds in a manner that maximizes safety benefits on preservation projects and at specific high-crash locations. The SIP philosophy targets highway sections for investment with the premise that the most effective use of safety dollars to save lives is to invest in areas where the most people are being killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes. The SIP categorizes five-mile roadway sections on a 1-5 rating based on the number of crashes in a three year period; with five (5) being the most crash prone section. …

Understanding Delivery Routes In Urban Areas, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

Supply chains and urban areas cannot thrive without the efficient movement of goods. A recent study indicates that commercial vehicles carrying goods or providing services account for, on average, almost 10 percent of the total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in medium to large urban areas. A predominant share of these trips takes place within a multi-stop tour. In order to develop a well-organized system for moving freight through urban areas, it is crucial to understand and quantify how routes and distribution decisions affect commercial vehicle flows and VMTs.

In the past, transportation planning models have focused on passenger movements but …

Practical Approximations To Quantify The Impact Of Time Windows And Delivery Sizes On Freight Vmt In Urban Areas, Miguel A. Figliozzi

TREC Final Reports

This paper studies approximations to the average length of Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP). The approximations are valuable for strategic and planning analysis of transportation and logistics problems. The research focus is on VRP with varying number of customers, demands, and locations. This modeling environment can be used in transport and logistics models that deal with a distribution center serving an area with daily variations in the demand. The routes are calculated daily based on what freight is available. New approximations and experimental settings are introduced. Average distance travelled is estimated as a function of the number of customers served and …

Equity Analysis Of Portland’S Draft Bicycle Master Plan – Findings, Jennifer Dill, Brendon Haggerty

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland's current bicycle network has brought the city into the national spotlight as a leader in the provision of cycling infrastructure. As the city looks forward to 2030 with ambitions of becoming a truly world-class bicycling city, it is clear that if the Draft Plan is fully implemented, nearly all of the city will be covered by a dense network of bikeways. The question of equity in the future is therefore not so much one of network coverage or lack of coverage, but of project priority and timing of implementation. The current network, while outstanding relative to other cities, nevertheless …

The Built Environment, Neighborhood Safety, And Physical Activity Among Low Income Children, Jessica Greene, Debbie Daniel

TREC Final Reports

There is a growing body of evidence that environmental factors are related to physical activity and active modes of transportation. There is a separate body of research that links neighborhood safety to physical activity. This study used a cross sectional telephone survey of 801 parents/guardians of low income children in Florida to bridge these literatures and examine the independent relationship of the built environment and neighborhood safety on childrens' physical activity.

In multivariate regression models we find that neighborhood safety is a more consistent predictor of low income childrens' physical activity. In neighborhoods where parents reported that there was a …

Evaluation Of Short Duration Unscheduled Absences Among Transit Operators: Trimet Case Study, James G. Strathman, Joseph Broach, Steve Callas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report analyzes factors contributing to short duration (one to three days) unscheduled absences among operators at TriMet, the transit provider for the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region. The analysis draws on a wide array of operator-specific information recovered by transit ITS technologies in combination with information from the agency’s human resources, scheduling, incident, and customer relations databases. The likelihood of an absence is estimated in relation to personal characteristics, employment status, aspects of assigned work, service delivery and performance indicators, temporal factors, and customer feedback. The findings can be used directly to support extraboard planning practices. More generally, the findings …

Expanding Service Learning Models In Transportation, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

This OTREC education project links experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon, the Lane Transit District, and the cities of Eugene and Springfield. The Community Planning Workshop (CPW) is an experiential/service learning program affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. Through this service learning program, graduate students learn professional planning skills while assisting communities in actual planning and policy projects.

The project results include: (1) the completion of the following six deliverables: EmX Evaluation Framework Document, EmX Stakeholder Perceptions Document, Bus Rapid Transit Case …

Transporting The Economy, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

The efficient, timely and reliable movement of freight is a critical responsibility of the transportation system and strategically important to the U.S. economy. Today, Americans purchase billions of dollars worth of goods over the Internet for home delivery, routinely sent using nextday- express packages. They also expect globally produced fresh fruits, flowers and vegetables to be available year-round. These shipments move over an extensive freight transportation system comprising millions of vehicles and thousands of miles of road, track and pipeline infrastructure, all supported by sophisticated information technology and operated, managed and maintained by a large, specialized labor force.

These are …

Developing Corridor-Level Truck Travel Time Estimates And Other Freight Performance Measures From Archived Its Data, Christopher M. Monsere, Michael Wolfe, Heba Alawakiel, Max Taylor Stephens

TREC Final Reports

The objectives of this research were to retrospectively study the feasibility for using truck transponder data to produce freight corridor performance measures (travel times) and real-time traveler information. To support this analysis, weigh-in-motion data from each of the twenty-two stations in Oregon were assembled, processed, and uploaded in the WIM data archive is housed under the Portland Transportation Archive Listing (PORTAL) umbrella at Portland State University’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab. Nearly 42,000,000 truck records were successful uploaded to the archive dating back to July 2005. Two separate algorithms necessary for this research were scripted, tested, and validated. The closest stations …

Transferring Community-Based, Active Transportation Gis Assessment Tools Nationwide, Marc Schlossberg, Nico Larco

TREC Final Reports

“Livability” has recently been declared one of four top priorities by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), and the USDOT, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have entered into an historic partnership to address the issue. Ultimately, this term refers to the quality of life within one’s community and the ease, comfort, and joy with which one can access places he or she want to go. For most Americans, their neighborhoods have been designed to predominantly accommodate the automobile, and more active forms of transportation such as walking and …

Distribution Logistics Course, Miguel A. Figliozzi

TREC Final Reports

Commercial vehicle movements associated with the delivery of goods and services are currently experiencing a number of challenging problems. Carriers and fleet operations face congestion, a growing number of tolls, increasing service level demands, and in some cases opposition due to the externalities caused by freight traffic in urban areas. This course provided a greater understanding of the complex issues surrounding urban freight and logistics and it was relevant to graduate students in civil engineering, urban planning, and business programs.

State Experiences With Affordable Housing Plus Services: Report To Seniors And Persons With Disabilities, On The Move, Paula C. Carder, Erika Zoller

Institute on Aging Publications

Housing developers, providers, policy makers, and advocates, increasingly recognize that for some groups of individuals, access to affordable housing alone is "not enough." That is, some individuals require more than shelter. Examples include individuals who have chronic health conditions (e.g., HIV/AIDS), those with physical or cognitive limitations (e.g., persons with developmental disabilities, adults with physical disabilities), and those who have a combination of health conditions or who cannot thrive in traditional housing (e.g., persons who have been homeless, individuals with chronic mental illness). Increasingly, housing providers, social service agencies, advocates, states, and federal agencies have recognized the need to combine …

City Management Theory And Practice: A Foundation For Educating The Next Generation Of Local Government Administrators, Scott Douglas Lazenby

Dissertations and Theses

Due to the retirement of the baby boom generation, many individuals, in a relatively short period of time, will need to be trained and educated to step into local government senior leadership positions. Ideally, the education and training of this new leadership cadre should be guided by a well known and proven body of theory that helps us understand the competencies the next generation of public service need to possess in order to be effective in their work. The purpose of this research is to assess whether such a body of work exists and, if so, whether it is successfully …

Focal Point, Volume 23 Number 02, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

This issue of Focal Point highlights a number of successful and innovative efforts to promote youth voice and youth empowerment. Many of the articles are authored by or include contributions from youth who are directly involved in the featured programs.

The Genesis Of Portland's Forest Park: Evolution Of An Urban Wilderness, Elizabeth M. Provost

Dissertations and Theses

Portland, Oregon, is steward to a 5,126 acre wilderness park called Forest Park. The park's size and proximity to downtown make it a dominate feature of Portland's skyline. Despite its urban location the park provides respite from city life with its seventy miles of trails, which wind through stands of Douglas fir, western red cedar, and western hemlock. Portland citizens enjoy this easy access to nature as well as the park's health and environmental benefits.

However, few people know of the park's history and how its journey toward parkhood reflects the changing values of Portland's citizens over time. Starting with …

The Incorporation Of Direct Democracy : Populism And Initiative Practices As Contested Terrain, Larry Galizio

Dissertations and Theses

What are the democratic implications of the increasing professionalization of direct democracy?

The dissertation takes a critical approach to the "initiative-industrial complex" and offers a counter-thesis to prevailing scholarly research on the substantial growth in the use of political consultants in initiative campaigns. The political economic analysis approaches direct legislation campaigns and elections as constituent parts of a system of legitimation for the existing set of social relations.

An historical analysis reveals that the contemporary era of initiative activity rivals that of its frequent use during the populist and progressive eras; and that in the early 21st century direct legislation …

The Impacts Of Gentrification On The African American Business Community Of Portland, Oregon, Alexandra Hosford

Anthós

I focus this inquiry on the impact that gentrification has had on black business and entrepreneurship in the Albina District of Portland, Oregon. The Albina district of provides a unique opportunity to measure the effects of gentrification on black business and business development because the area has historically been a residentially segregated black community and has seen dramatic changes due to gentrification in the past decade, including an influx of middle class, white residents. I conduct this examination by subdividing my inquiry into three main sections. First, I provide an outline of the background and evolution of the discourse around …

20 Minutes In West Portland Park: Opportunities For Access, Ali Demersseman, Dana Dickman, Nuin-Tara Key, Laura Spidell, Sara Wright

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Exploring the planning concept of the "20-minute neighborhood" and analyzing the feasibility of applying the concept to the West Portland Park neighborhood. We also seek to engage the community in a meaningful discussion about the future of West Portland Park in order to help the community begin to build the connections and tools necessary to play an active role in future planning efforts." This project was conducted under the supervision of Sy Adler and Ethan Seltzer.

Land Use And Crime Patterns In Coquitlam Detachment, Kathryn Wuschke, Patricia Brantingham, Jordan Ginther

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Poster presented to the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies in 2009. Examines land use and crime patterns in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam. Data shows that commercial and civic, institutional, and recreational land uses display the highest rates of all crime types under investigation in both Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam.

Population Forecast For Lane County, Its Cities And Unincorporated Area 2008-2035, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Risa S. Proehl, George C. Hough Jr., Danan Ru, Kenneth Radin, Mark Gilbert

Oregon Population Estimates and Reports

This report presents the results of a study conducted by the Population Research Center (PRC) to address the long-range planning needs of Lane County and produce population forecasts at the county and sub-county level. This report considers recent and historical demographic changes experienced within the County and provides forecasts from 2008 to 2035 in 5-year intervals. Expected future populations that result from the most-likely demographic trends throughout Lane County are presented in this report.