Urban Studies Commons^™

Pathways To Planning: A Field Guide For Long Range Planning, Sally Bernstein, Adrienne Chaille, Jake Davis, Theresa Huang, Rhey Haggerty, Emily Scott

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

In 2017, the City of Monroe Planning Commission decided to update its Comprehensive Plan, last amended in 1986 and sought technical support. In addition to developing a Buildable Lands Inventory, Housing Needs Analysis, and Economic Assessment to support the comprehensive plan update process, Constellation Planning created a Field Guide as an interactive resource to be used for long range planning processes in Monroe, recognizing an opportunity to increase planning capacity.

The Field Guide includes educational appendices and usable worksheets that are intended for a diverse audience, including community members, commissioners, elected officials, city staff, planning partners, and consultants. Using a …

Municipal Diverging From “Bureaucracy:” A Case Study Of Organizational Image In Housing Services, Shawn T. Flanigan Ph.D.

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

This article presents a case study of efforts of a workforce development unit within a local public housing authority to recraft its image as separate from the larger housing authority, in order to better attract participants to its optional supportive services. Using qualitative interview data with Section 8 voucher recipients and public housing authority staff, and descriptive quantitative data from a larger dataset, and drawing on theories of street-level bureaucracies and agency-client interactions, the case study finds that service recipients perceive the housing authority as a largely compliance-oriented organization that is overly bureaucratic, excessively regulating of private spheres of family …

Aesthetic Perception Of Urban Spaces: New York, Timur Pozhidaev

Theses and Dissertations

Aesthetic perception is an important field of interest in many aspects of everyday human life. It affects individual and social unconscious behavior and is strongly related to the decision-making processes in the human mind. The current study can serve as an important prototype for planning purposes and social and environmental justice among the regional units of New York City. With the current scientific sphere lacking a comprehensive methodology for assessing social superstructure, an aesthetic framework has the potential for success in evaluating the aspects of sustainable and resilient urban development.

Defining And Measuring Equitable Access To Washington Park In Portland, Oregon, Marisa Zapata, Joseph Broach, Kara Boden, Qingyang Xie

TREC Final Reports

Explore Washington Park (EWP) is a 501c3 non-profit that serves as the Transportation Management Association for Washington Park. At 410 acres, Washington Park receives over 3 million visitors each year and is home to some of Portland’s most popular attractions including the International Rose Test Garden, Portland Japanese Garden, Oregon Zoo, Portland Children’s Museum, World Forestry, and Hoyt Arboretum. EWP, in partnership with Portland Parks & Recreation, provides transportation management and guest services to the park and its cultural institutions with the goal of decreasing the number of vehicle trips to the park. Since beginning its work in 2014, transit …

Planning In Gateway And Natural Amenity Region Communities: Understanding The Unique Challenges Associated With Transportation, Mobility, And Livability, Danya Rumore, Philip Stoker, Zacharia Levine, Lindsey Romaniello

TREC Final Reports

Communities outside of major public lands and other natural amenities throughout the western United States face a variety of transportation and planning-related concerns associated with rapid growth and increases in tourism. Surprisingly, while the unique transportation and planning-related challenges of these western gateway and amenity region (GNAR) communities have, to some extent, been documented in recreation and tourism research, these concerns have largely been overlooked in planning scholarship. To begin to address this gap, this report presents key descriptive findings from a study aimed at examining the unique transportation, mobility, and access to opportunity-related challenges being experienced by GNAR communities …

Life-Space Mobility: How Transportation And Policy Can Support Aging In Place For Older Adults, Ivis Garcia Zambrana, Alan Kenneth Delatorre

TREC Project Briefs

Research on older adults frequently explores the notion of "aging in place"—providing older adults the opportunity to continue to live in their own homes and communities. However one’s ability to stay or leave, particularly in old age, often depends on the built environment. An accessible neighborhood that prioritizes mobility affords the ability to meet basic needs like goods, services, and social activities.

This life-space mobility is rarely applied in the field of urban planning and architecture. A NITC project led by Ivis Garcia Zambrana of the University of Utah and Alan DeLaTorre of Portland State University sought to operationalize this …

Small Towns With Big City Problems: Mobility Challenges And Solutions In Our Natural Areas, Danya Rumore, Philip Stoker, Zacharia Levine, Lindsey Romaniello

TREC Project Briefs

Western North America boasts an abundance of scenic mountains, ski areas, stunning desert landscapes and national parks. Living near these natural amenities are small communities, many of which are becoming increasingly popular places to live and visit. The influx of visitors creates unique transportation and mobility challenges for these small towns and cities, such as seasonal spikes in severe roadway congestion and a desire for e-bike share programs in communities of less than 1,000 people. These challenges often in turn affect community character and wellbeing.

Given their proximity to these impacted communities, NITC researchers Danya Rumore of the University of …

Can Ridehailing Deliver Equity? Lessons For New Mobility Planning, Anne Brown

PSU Transportation Seminars

Modes including ridehailing, bikeshare, and e-scooters offer the potential to revolutionize how people travel. But as cities and agencies work to integrate these new services into the existing transportation landscape, the equity implications of these modes remain murky.

This talk presents research on ridehail travel and equity from Los Angeles and compares the equity outcomes of ridehailing to the previous status quo embodied by taxis. The research highlights both the promise of new mobility services and the remaining obstacles to delivering equitable access. Findings yields implications for policies that cities and planners can advance to ensure that new travel modes …

Life-Space Mobility And Aging In Place, Ivis Garcia Zambrana, Alan Kenneth Delatorre, Ja Young Kim, Julianne Reno, Keith Diaz Moore, Jordan Pieper, Jason Wheeler, Nicole Zinnanti, Brenda Jose

TREC Final Reports

Research on older adults explores the notion of “aging in place”—providing older adults the opportunity to continue to occupy familiar surroundings, to live in their own homes and communities. But oftentimes one’s ability to stay or leave, particularly in old age, depends on the built environment. Mobility is the ability to meet the basic needs to access goods, activities, services, and social interactions as they relate to quality of life. Thus, mobility is essential to older adults due to their limited, or gradually reducing, physical and cognitive abilities. In transportation research, mobility is often regarded in terms of travel behavior …

Webinar: Engaging Youth To Choose Car-Free Mobility, Autumn Shafer

TREC Webinar Series

Today’s youth are tomorrow’s riders, bikers, walkers, voters, and transportation planners. As more transit agencies begin to offer free fare passes to public middle and high school students, it is important to have good communication strategy in place to encourage transit usage so they don't miss out on the potential to affect behavior change.

Thus, transit agencies need to develop age-appropriate messaging strategies and tactics that promote youth car-free mobility.

This webinar will present results from a NITC research project that sought to create and evaluate communication messaging that fosters more positive attitudes, intentions, and behaviors related to transit and …

Making The Seemingly Impossible Project Real Through Local Improvement Districts, Andrew H. Aebi

PSU Transportation Seminars

The planning process identifies community needs but often needs the creative use of financial leverage to make those projects a reality on the ground. Timing is important on Local Improvement District (LIDs), and the window of opportunity is often short.

For Portland's Bureau of Transportation, managing the public's desire for streets in good condition with room to walk and bike safely and accommodating freight movement and population growth can be a tall order. Add in the need to work with water, sewer and underground utilities, and things get complicated.

When needs exceed resources, smart strategies can help fill the gap. …

Understanding The Dynamics Of Public Space: Zoning, Urban Design, And Use Value. A Case Study Of Downtown San Francisco, Joaquin Cabello Silva

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper seeks to understand how zoning, urban design, and use value control the dynamics of a city and the public space, from the way they are shaped, to the way they are built, and finally to the way they are used. In this research the first step is to recognize that the strategies of zoning in a city are a way of governing and guiding the development of the space, followed by the urban design—which is a more tangible way of interpreting the different rules because it is the actual form zoning takes—to then see how they generate an …

Green Ring Wayfinding Map, Lorena Nascimento, Adam Brunelle, Arlene Amaya

Student Research Symposium

Lents is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Portland, with a higher percentage of Latinos and Asians than the average city demographics. The neighbors are either long-term homeowners, people displaced from North Portland due to the gentrification, and new residents seeking economic development areas with an affordable price. The Green Ring Wayfinding Map is a community place-making project that improves neighborhood safety, accessibility, and enjoyment through conversations and collaboration across Lents diversity and geography. After three years of focus groups and surveys with the Lents residents, a Green Ring Wayfinding Map is being created to praise the values, branding, …

Value Capture To Fund Public Transportation: The Impact Of Warm Springs Bart Station On The Value Of Neighboring Residential Properties In Fremont, Ca, Shishir Mathur

Mineta Transportation Institute

This study estimates households’ willingness to pay for single-family houses and condominiums/townhouses located within 2 miles of Warm Springs (WS) BART Station in Fremont, CA. The study finds that, compared to the houses sold in the referent category (2 to 5 miles away and sold during the pre-project-announcement period of 2000-2001), an average-priced single-family house within two miles of the WS BART Station was higher in price by 9% to 15%. The total property value increment for the single-family houses is large enough to fund the $802 million Warm Springs BART Extension Project cost five times over.

How Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Local Government Budgeting And Finance? Case Studies Of On-Street Parking, Curb Management, And Solid Waste Collection, Benjamin Y. Clark

TREC Final Reports

This report is an examination of parking, curb zones, and government service changes in the context of AVs. Given that there are very few actual AVs on the road, the analysis in this report is an attempt to project what we might see, using the current phenomenon as starting points. The report uses a mix of econometric modeling, cost accounting, and case studies to illustrate these projections. The first section of this report looks at the effects of transportation network companies (TNCs)—Uber and Lyft in particular—on parking revenue in the city of Seattle. The results of the study indicate that …

The E-Bike Potential: Estimating The Effect Of E-Bikes On Person Miles Travelled And Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Michael Mcqueen, John Macarthur, Christopher Cherry

TREC Final Reports

Many cities have goals for reducing automotive VMT in order to reduce tailpipe emissions and to reduce congestion. Conventional cycling is a good solution, though its uptake has slowed in recent years in several cities, despite the implementation of greenways, bikeshare, and bike lines (Anderson and McLeod 2017). Electric bicycles (e-bikes) could be an effective new part of the solution to combat mode shift stagnation. The e-bike is a recently introduced mode of travel that is rapidly gaining in popularity throughout the United States.

The e-bike can offer a cheaper alternative to car travel (Popovich et al. 2014) and can …

How E-Bike Incentive Programs Are Used To Expand The Market, Michael Mcqueen, John Macarthur, Christopher Cherry

TREC Final Reports

The electric bicycle (e-bike) is a low emission mode of transportation that offers communities benefits in the areas of health, planning, time, cost, street safety, congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and energy security (Blondel, Mispelon, and Ferguson 2011). In a recent study conducted by Portland State University, e-bikes have been found to enable more people to ride a bicycle for longer distances despite physical limitations, difficult terrain, and the presence of cargo (MacArthur et al. 2018). However, overall e-bike adoption in the United States remains limited due in part to high purchase cost (Dill and Rose 2012; Popovich et al. …

Preparing Cities For An Automated Future, Benjamin Y. Clark

TREC Project Briefs

This report is an examination of parking, curb zones, and government service changes in the context of AVs. Given that there are very few actual AVs on the road, the analysis in this report is an attempt to project what we might see, using the current phenomenon as starting points. The report uses a mix of econometric modeling, cost accounting, and case studies to illustrate these projections. The first section of this report looks at the effects of transportation network companies (TNCs)—Uber and Lyft in particular—on parking revenue in the city of Seattle. The results of the study indicate that …

Inheritances Of Injustice/Transference Of Freedom: An Intimate Project On Black Women's Intergenerational Relationships And The Consequences Of The Punishment System, Whitney Richards-Calathes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project centers the multi-generational familial relationships between system-impacted Black women, mapping and uncovering the ways in which incarceration and practices of punishment impact, shape, hurt, and displace Black femme lineages. Through a qualitative lens and a specific focus on the current social and political landscape of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines the ways Black women are impacted by carceral ideology; from punitive definitions of Black womanhood, to the surveillance on Black femme familial intimacy and the rupture of Black women’s sense of home and place. Understandings of mass incarceration are frequently male-centered and most analyses of Black women’s system …

“Paying” The Way For A Better Bart Future: A Call For Better Enforcement Of Fare Evasion Policies And Strategic Planning At Bart, Ethan S. Tan

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has undoubtedly shaped the way the San Francisco Bay Area operates today. BART has molded itself to becoming a popular form of transportation for citizens of the area. However, numerous problems have arisen in recent years in regard to the overall “healthiness” of the BART system with its ex-aging fleet of trains, undertrained staff, lack of BART Police presence, rampant illegal drug use, etc. which has made BART unpopular with riders. The root cause of these problems through, is the lost revenue through “stolen” rides. At any one of BART’s 48 stations in …

Access To Opportunity Project: Final Report, Shawn Flanigan, Emily Lieb, Lisa K. Bates, Raphael Bostic, Sheryl V. Whitney

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project’s goal is to lift up promising approaches, suggest new strategies and encourage honest conversations that result in public policy solutions to income and racial segregation and poverty. The overarching question that motivates this work is:

• What are effective policies and strategies that promote access to high-opportunity amenities for low-income families?

As a first step, the researchers surveyed efforts on the ground in the metropolitan areas encompassing Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, California, to determine whether there were any candidates for deeper study. We selected these three metropolitan areas for several reasons. First, prior interaction revealed that …

Addressing Changing Demographics In Environmental Justice Analysis, Aaron Golub

TREC Project Briefs

Since 1994, every Federal agency has a mandate to develop a strategy for identifying and addressing disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on low income populations and minority populations. In transportation planning this means including those communities’ voices in the planning process, and evaluating the social impacts early on.

A new report from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), prepared by Portland State University and ICF International, provides an in-depth analysis of national demographic trends and a synthesis of best long-range planning practices borne out of five case studies

Improving Transportation Access Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Noelle Fields, Courtney Cronley, Kate Hyun, Stephen Mattingly, Multiple Additional Authors

TREC Project Briefs

This study explored how engineers, planners, and social workers interact around issues of transportation and transportation equity, and identified opportunities for enhanced collaboration and training in anticipation of emerging transportation needs for environmental justice (EJ) populations. This study provided the foundation for future educational research, identify strategies for using two Android apps (Safe Activity and My Amble) developed at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and identified opportunities for collaborative solutions within the state of the practice. The study assessed the current level of knowledge amongst professionals (engineers, planners, and social workers) about the training needs of the other …

2019 Point-In-Time: Count Of Homelessness In Portland/Gresham/Multnomah County, Oregon, City Of Portland, Home Forward, A Home For Everyone, Multnomah County, City Of Gresham, Tiffany Renée Conklin, Cameron Mulder, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

The Count provides important information on the people who were counted living unsheltered, in emergency shelter, and in transitional housing (collectively the “HUD homeless” or “literally homeless” population) the night of Jan. 23, 2019. As always, the date of the Count and the definition of homelessness that determines who is counted were set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The Regional Research Institute of Human Services at Portland State University (PSU) led the unsheltered portion of the Count, which is referred to as the unsheltered count. At our request, PSU staff also conducted a separate count …

“El Dialogo Es Unilateral... No Cambian Una Coma”: La Participación Y Protección De Derechos En El Proyecto Del Hábitat Del Barrio 31 En Buenos Aires, Jacqueline Negro

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta investigación estudia el proyecto de urbanización en el Barrio 31 de la Secretaría de integración social y urbana de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires que empezó en el año 2015. Tiene un enfoque especifico en el proyecto de Hábitat, lo que tiene el objetivo mejorar las situaciones de vivienda en el Barrio. Es constituido de dos equipos: Mejoramiento de Vivienda y Reasentamiento. Este informe analiza la cuestión de la participación de los vecinos en tomar decisiones que afectan a sus viviendas y estilos de vida desde la perspectiva de los derechos humanos internacionales. A través de entrevistas con trabajadores …

Empleo Regional Y Transporte Público: Un Estudio De Caso Comparado De Accesibilidad Al Transporte De Parques Industriales En El Gran Buenos Aires Basado En La Medida De Sistema De Información Geográfica, Clara Wang

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La accesibilidad al transporte es considerada como un elemento crítico del desarrollo urbano y además la clave del empleo. Este informe intenta analizar el problema de la baja tasa del empleo local enfrente de Malvinas Argentinas (MA)en relación con el bajo nivel de conectividad entre la zona industrial y residencial del municipio. Para contextualizar el problema de este desequilibrio en la región metropolitana de Buenos Aires, La Matanza (LM) será el caso de estudio por tratarse de un municipio similar en localización y estructura industrial. El Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG) se utiliza para análisis de espacio y visualización de …

La Lucha Por Urbanización: El Derecho De Elegir Donde Y Como Vivir, E. Joella Hartzler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite Chilean government efforts to eradicate campaments, or informal settlements, the number of campamentos has drastically increased in the recent years. These informal settlements originate from the urban migration in 1940-60, but persist today due to the difficulty to access affordable housing and the lack of appeal of social housing projects. To be considered a campamento, there must be eight or more families living on unregulated land without at least one of the three basic services: electricity, potable water, or a sewage system. The department of Housing and Urban Development, the Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo, recently reinforced the efforts …

How Can Interdisciplinary Teams Leverage Emerging Technologies To Respond To Transportation Infrastructure Needs? A Mixed-Methods Evaluation Of Civil Engineers, Urban Planners, And Social Workers’ Perspectives, Noelle Fields, Courtney Cronley, Kate Hyun, Stephen Mattingly, Vivian J. Miller, Saeed Reza Ramezanpour Nargesi, Sheida Khademi, Shamsun Nahar, Jessica Williams, Erin Roark Murphy, Melinda Kitchens, Vanessa Wattron

TREC Final Reports

This study explored how engineers, planners, and social workers interact around issues of transportation and transportation equity, and identified opportunities for enhanced collaboration and training in anticipation of emerging transportation needs for environmental justice (EJ) populations. This study provided the foundation for future educational research, identify strategies for using two Android apps (Safe Activity and My Amble) developed at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and identified opportunities for collaborative solutions within the state of the practice. The study assessed the current level of knowledge amongst professionals (engineers, planners, and social workers) about the training needs of the other …

Housing And Mobility Toolkit For San Mateo County, Serena Alexander, Joseph Kott, Bruce Appleyard, Mark Garrett, Shannon Mcdonald, Maaza Mekuria, Udeme J. Ndon, Anurag Pande, Eric Peterson

Mineta Transportation Institute

Since the end of the Great Recession, San Mateo County has attracted new workers at a record rate without building anywhere near enough housing. This jobs-housing imbalance drives the cost of housing up and forces many moderate and lower-income employees and their families out of the County. A lack of access to quality affordable housing in the County and the entire Bay Area along with limited transportation options means that an increased number of employees drive in and out of the County every workday. The resultant congestion, gridlock, and long commutes along with other negative environmental, social, and economic impacts …

Pedpdx: Addressing Equity Through Citywide Pedestrian Planning, Michelle Marx, Francesca Patricolo

PSU Transportation Seminars

Pedestrian safety and access is an equity issue. In Portland, inadequate pedestrian infrastructure and traffic safety concerns disproportionately impact low-income communities and people of color. The City is attempting to rectify these inequities through PedPDX, Portland’s new citywide pedestrian plan (anticipated for adoption in Spring 2019). PedPDX prioritizes sidewalk and crossing improvements and other investments, policies, strategies and tools to make walking safer and more comfortable across the city.

Come learn about the strategies PedPDX is using to address transportation equity in Portland, including establishing a data-based prioritization for citywide pedestrian investments, identifying roadway and behavioral characteristics most closely …