Urban Studies Commons^™

Does Political Advertising Persuade? A Quantitative Assessment Of The Effects Of Campaign Contact In The Context Of Race, Ethnicity, And Immigrant Origin In New York City Council Primary Elections From 2001 Through 2017, Laura M. Tamman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a quantitative analysis of the relationship between New York city council campaigns’ spending and election results between 2001 and 2017, controlling for key factors such as incumbency, I find substantial and statistically significant positive effects for radio advertising on election outcomes. I find small but significant effects for mail, and smaller sized effects for canvassing. My findings underscore the need for further study of the role of ethnic and community media outlets, such as radio, in shaping voter behavior. Moreover, I argue that the fixation of the current persuasion literature on television ads in presidential general elections misses critical …

Abolition Ecologies And The Making Of Freedom As A Place In Bayview-Hunters Point, Spencer Daniel O'Hara

Master's Theses

In this paper, I critically explore the subjectivities of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), part of the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco since 1906. Applying an abolition ecologies framework, I ask what explains the duplicity of the Shipyard as a site of radioactive contamination and capital accumulation, and in the same time-space one that creates the conditions for radical place-making. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is a former commercial and military shipyard located on a peninsula in southeastern San Francisco. Motivated by its desire for a major shipbuilding and repair facility to project maritime power in the Pacific, the Navy …

Systematic Barriers To Success: The Impact Of Redlining On Modern Educational Outcomes In Omaha Public Schools, Sarah Sedivy

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The systemic denial of mortgages, loans, and other financial services to specific neighborhoods on the basis of race, a practice known as redlining, has continued to have a disproportionately negative effect on communities of color since its inception in the 1930s. The contemporary impacts of redlining can be seen in ongoing disparities in household income, property values, generational wealth, and more. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to extensively examine the history, application, and implications of redlining, with an emphasis on how the practice affects modern educational outcomes in Omaha public schools. The paper analyzes statistical data from the Nebraska …

The Impact Of Utilitarian Public Policies On Minority Communities: A Comparison Of New York City And New South Wales, Australia., Nicholas Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight and critique the ways in which utilitarianism manifests itself in comparative public policy. While public policy studies tend to focus on national levels, cities, and states can also be major sites of theoretical and policy formulation that are adopted globally. The moral ethics that are involved in public policy are especially important because these policies have a direct impact on society. Utilitarianism encompasses the logic of utility maximization: the ends justify the means and the idea that the moral ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the …

Gender & Sexuality In New York Politics, Bianca M. Guerrero

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Extending Research Of Neighborhood Governance Systems: An Empirical Study Of Community Councils In Cincinnati, Ohio, Julie Cencula Olberding, Darrin Wilson, Stefanie Swiger

The Journal of Economics and Politics

Neighborhood governance systems have been developed as a way to enhance citizen engagement in local government, particularly in major cities. Scholarly research on these systems is quite limited, and most articles focus on neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, California. Our study extends this research to another system in a different city – specifically, community councils in Cincinnati, Ohio. Based on Li, Wen, and Cooper (2019), we surveyed their governing board members and analyzed relationships between three aspects of board performance (internal capacity, attention-action congruence, external networking) and three dimensions of community council effectiveness (promoting civic engagement, resolving neighborhood issues, advising …

Towards Smart Cities As Innovation Systems: The Case Of Macau Sar, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Smart cities are emerging as major engines for deploying intelligent systems to enhance urban development and contribute to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The rise of smart city initiatives is not only seen in North America and Europe but also increasingly in Asia and across the developing world which faces rapid urbanization and technological change. Home to the UNU Institute in Macau, the city of Macau is a special administrative region (SAR) of China where “the East meets the West” in local governance, economy, and society. Our research article, recently published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, …

A Tale Of Two Cities: The Divergence Of Social Housing In Berlin And Vienna, Ben Eibl

CMC Senior Theses

The industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Berlin and Vienna led both cities to initiate a social housing program to create affordable housing for the masses moving into the cities. The cities share many characteristics and developed in similar directions at their early stages. Nevertheless, a century later, their social housing systems look far apart. While Vienna’s system continues to thrive and withstand pressures from the international and federal level, Berlin’s citizens showed their resentment towards housing in their city in a radical referendum demanding the expropriation of several real-estate companies. This thesis argues that we …

The Stateless Agent: A Multidisciplinary Analysis Of Transboundary Air Pollution In The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Region Of The U.S.-Mexico Border, Elizabeth Hernandez

CMC Senior Theses

The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez (EPJ) region has a history of nonattainment for ozone and particulate matter. Given transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region is not confined to the U.S.-Mexico border, it is important to implement a transnational response that accounts for the health and safety of everyone, including marginalized communities in EPJ. This thesis assesses the state of air quality and transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region through a multidisciplinary perspective that focuses on issues of data monitoring, environmental governance, and transnational environmental justice. Analysis of the quantity and placement of ambient monitoring stations reveals EPJ residents near …

Recommendations For Sustainable Tourism In Patagonia: An Exploratory Analysis Of Sustainable Tourism In Costa Rica, The Nordic Region, And Thailand’S Communities, Julia K. Lowery

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores different levels of governance and its role towards actualizing sustainable tourism in Patagonia. With the growing threat of climate change, international destinations such as Patagonia are looking to continue building their tourism industries in a sustainable way. Through analyzing case studies of national governance in Costa Rica, multi-national governance in the Nordic region, and community-based tourism in Thailand, we can better understand how each form of governance has the potential to create a sustainable tourism industry. With this understanding of successful governance in my case studies, as well as understanding the historical and political forces that have …

Wildfire Risk In Mountain West States, 2017-2021, Olivia K. Cheche, Corryn Richardson, Zachary Billot, Miguel Soriano Ralston, Vanessa Booth, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

This fact sheet examines data on wildfire destruction in the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The original report from the Insurance Information Institute presents findings on percent of properties at risk of wildfire destruction, the number of wildfires by state, and numbers of acres burned per state.

Best Cities For Affordable Homeownership In The Mountain West, Kelliann Beavers, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet highlights data on the best cities for affordable homeownership in the Mountain West, based on the SmartAsset report, “Best Cities to Buy an Affordable Family Home – 2021 Edition.” The report is SmartAsset’s second annual study, following the 2020 report, and includes data on 100 of the largest cities in the United States. This fact sheet highlights the rank, index, down payment-to-income ratio, housing costs as a percent of income, and four-year change in homeownership rate within each of the 15 Mountain West cities included in the original report.

Employing A Public Policy Evaluative Framework: An Analysis Of Domestic Theme Park Development, Anthony Gray Houser

Honors Theses

The intention of the thesis is to examine the relationship between the development of the Walt Disney Company’s theme parks and public policy. Using the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California and the Walt Disney World Resort outside of Orlando, Florida as case studies, this thesis will execute a comparative analysis to better understand the relationship between the Walt Disney Company’s theme parks and public policy. Using an evaluative framework, this thesis will provide a deeper understanding of how public policy affected the development and the current operations of these theme parks. The driving research question in this thesis is, ‘what …

Hudson Yards: Hybrid Capital's New Home, Massimo D. Scoditti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the material and metaphysical aspects of the Hudson Yards, the largest private development in US History. With its roots in the administration of Michael Bloomberg, the site is representative of neoliberal ideology. It is also one in which cultural production is central. This is in terms of the rationalization and mythos of the building of the space itself and the dreamworlds created to obscure the mechanisms of extraction and accumulation that make such a complex possible. The Hudson Yards is particularly interesting because, as Cindi Katz might suggest, topography lines connect it to transnational capital. And …

"Ethnic" Some Days, White The Rest: Whittier, Ca As A Case Study In Mexican-American Racialization And Assimilation In Los Angeles County, Maria Gutierrez-Vera

CMC Senior Theses

Per the U.S. Census Bureau, the Latino population in the United States stands at 60.5 million. This thesis tells the story of a few hundred-thousand Mexican-Americans in Southeast Los Angeles County’s suburbs, who live in a region nicknamed the “Mexican Beverly Hills.” This is a unique site of middle-class ethnic affluence, but also a place where questions of “Hispanic” racial identity, assimilation, and belonging are played out. The Mexican Beverly Hills promises residents the fulfillment of their own (Mexican-) American Dream, but also plays into tropes of model minorities, demands assimilation and ethnic betrayal from its residents, and is the …

Recruitment Machines, Community Power And Political Return On Investment (Proi): Economic Development Policy In The Age Of Amazon, Eric G. Griego Montoya

Political Science ETDs

ABSTRACT

A fundamental policy choice in economic development among local policy makers is the appropriate mix of “outside” strategies that use incentives to attract companies, and “inside” strategies that invest in smaller and local businesses. Using a mixed-methods research design, including national and state surveys along with qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with policy elites, I examine the role of ideology, elites, community, competition, social capital (trust and influence), and electoral politics in these policy decisions. I use new descriptive theoretical frameworks called “recruitment machines” and “Political Return on Investment (PROI)” to describe how and why local elected officials support …

Participatory Budgeting: A Librarian’S Experience, John P. Delooper

Publications and Research

This article discusses one librarian’s experience with the Participatory Budgeting process in New York City. It includes information about how New York’s Participatory Budgeting process works, as well as Participatory Budgeting’s principles, and some discussion of how libraries have utilized PB. In addition, it includes discussion of how librarian skillsets can be especially useful for participatory budgeting.

Skill Downgrading Among Refugees And Economic Immigrants In Germany: Evidence From The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Plamen Nikolov, Leila Salarpour, David Titus

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Upon arrival to a new country, many immigrants face job downgrading, a phenomenon describing workers being in jobs below the ones they have based on the skills they possess. Moreover, in the presence of downgrading immigrants receiving lower wage returns to the same skills compared to natives. The level of downgrading could depend on the immigrant type and numerous other factors. This study examines the determinants of skill downgrading among two types of immigrants – refugees and economic immigrants – in the German labor markets between 1984 and 2018. We find that refugees downgrade more than economic immigrants, and this …

Refugee Arrivals In The Mountain West, 2017-2021, Saha Salahi, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet displays data on the influx of refugee arrivals by nation to five Mountain West States: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Refugee Processing Center data, selected from annual reports and limited to the years 2017-2021, are presented.

Election Campaign Finance Rules In Canadian Municipalities: An Overview, Brittany L. Bouteiller

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

The Money and Local Democracy Project explores the effects of campaign finance rules on municipal election campaigns and election outcomes in Canada. Governments around the world regulate election campaign financing to ensure that elections are fair and competitive, although they do so in different ways. Funded by a Western University Undergraduate Student Research Internship (UWO) grant, research assistant Brittany Bouteiller was tasked with conducting preliminary research on 65 municipalities across Canada to determine the availability of campaign finance data from local and provincial governments and to identify clusters or trends. This research bulletin summarizes her findings.

Sanctuary In The City Of Brotherly Love: Probing The Effectiveness And Broader Implications Of Philadelphia’S Sanctuary City Policies, Thomas A. Koenig

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

Amidst the already fraught politics of immigration, “sanctuary” policies, whereby state and local law enforcement agencies limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities to varying degrees, have emerged as a particularly contentious issue. This paper sifts past the political vitriol surrounding the issue of “sanctuary” and uses original survey research in Philadelphia to answer a straightforward question: Are these policies working? That is, are the city of Philadelphia’s sanctuary policies actually building trust between its undocumented residents and local law enforcement, thereby laying the groundwork for higher rates of crime reporting and safer communities? My results from a survey …

Cities Leading The Way: Municipal Climate Policy In The Us, Naomi Bick

Dissertations

Understanding cities is a key feature for understanding responses (or lack thereof) to a collective action problem like climate change. In the absence of federal climate change policies in the United States, many city and state governments have adopted and implemented policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change. As mayors, city managers, and city councils increasingly become central actors, scholars have shifted their studies to focus on city climate change policy (Yi et al. 2017a, Hughes 2017). Descriptive case studies have identified a broad range of factors; however, the causal mechanisms of whether cities adopt and implement climate change …

Shifting The Industrial Food System Towards Sustainability: The Intersections Of Agriculture, Industrialization, & Health, Courtney Marchi

City and Regional Planning

This work traces the impact of the industrialization of corporate agriculture that has agglomerated globally. The aim of this paper is to discuss the major impacts and technicalities behind modern agricultural practices, and to draw attention to the intersections between industrialization, technology, health, and environmental concerns. This paper addresses the social and political implications associated with a global trade system and attempts to remedy some of them through environmentally and socially sustainable, and deconstructive, systemic approaches. There are several intersections between social equity, globalization, and agriculture that Urban and Regional Planners can work intimately with to improve overall food security …

Young People’S Perception Of Opportunities To Participate In Democratic Governance, Jennifer Nga Yu Tang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989) accords all young people the right to be heard and make decisions on matters affecting them. Despite the fact the United States remains the only country in the world not to have ratified this document, a number of American cities have nevertheless begun to engage young people in community decision-making (e.g., in neighborhood associations or community boards). However, as of yet there are few actual opportunities for youth to participate fully in the governance of their cities. This study examined the perspectives of young people …

Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement calling on cities to Defund the Police. The event sparked a nationwide reckoning that has reshaped the narratives and strategies for remedying the racial bias and police brutality apparent in the criminal justice system. The shift in police reform efforts embraces notions guiding police budgeting decisions. Today's advocates are transforming their approach to police reform to include budgeting decisions by promoting a municipal practice known as police budget reform. This Capstone explores the feasibility of successful police budget reform under current …

Affordable Housing In San Francisco: A Historical Analysis Of Its Finances And Policies, Ricky H. Tran

Master's Projects and Capstones

The affordable housing crisis is not new to San Francisco. As it has been made clear several times, The Bay Area continues to face a crisis of a massive wealth disparity as housing prices continue to rise as incomes for the top earners have risen dramatically since 1999. In San Francisco, rents and housing prices are one of the highest in the nation, and people are facing rent burdens, in which a large portion of their income goes to rent, as for those with low and extremely low income are facing severe rent burdens, which take up more than 50% …

Police Shootings In The Mountain West, 2015 - 2021, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Madison Frazee-Bench, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Criminal Justice

The Washington Post publishes and regularly updates a dataset regarding the use of deadly force by police since 2015. This fact sheet extracts data for each state in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah), and presents a regional perspective on the total number of individuals shot and killed by police, including demographic variables such as race, gender, and age. Two additional variables are included in this examination: the presence or absence of mental illness in the individual killed by police, and the presence or absence of a body-worn camera in incidents of deadly force by police.

The Eviction Landscape In South Carolina, Ethan Magnuson

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the South Carolinian eviction crisis from the perspective of radical geography. South Carolina was chosen for the severity of its crisis and the lack of research at a sub-state level. Court records of eviction filings from 2019 were geocoded and tested for spatial clustering, which was clearly visible. Plaintiff names were used to identify the most frequent filers and distinguish landlords by type. At the census tract level, eviction filing counts were compared with neighborhood characteristics using negative binomial regression, and most were found to be significant in South Carolina. …

Stranger Citizens: Migrant Influence And National Power In The Early American Republic, John Mcnelis O’Keefe

OHIO Open Faculty Textbooks

Stranger Citizens examines how foreign migrants who resided in the United States gave shape to citizenship in the decades after American independence in 1783. During this formative time, lawmakers attempted to shape citizenship and the place of immigrants in the new nation, while granting the national government new powers such as deportation.

John McNelis O'Keefe argues that despite the challenges of public and official hostility that they faced in the late 1700s and early 1800s, migrant groups worked through lobbying, engagement with government officials, and public protest to create forms of citizenship that worked for them. This push was made …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …