Urban Studies Commons^™

Do Tods Make A Difference?, Arthur C. Nelson, Matt Miller, Dejan Eskic, Keuntae Kim, Reid Ewing, Jenny H. Liu, Matt Berggren, Zakari Mumuni

TREC Final Reports

In this report, we present research that measures the outcomes of TOD areas in relation to their metropolitan area controls with respect to (1) jobs by sector; (2) housing choice for household types based on key demographic characteristics; (3) housing affordability based on transportation costs; and (4) job-worker balance as a measure of accessibility. Prior literature has not systematically evaluated TOD outcomes in these respects with respect to light rail transit (LRT), commuter rail transit (CRT), bus rapid transit (BRT), and streetcar transit (SCT) systems. Our analysis helps close some of these gaps. We apply our analysis to 23 fixed-guideway …

Investigations In Transportation, William G. Becker, Carol Biskupic Knight

TREC Final Reports

The Investigations in Transportation program is an elementary school partnership and curriculum development project that will engage science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals in school-based activities and projects that will bring real-world applications to elementary classrooms for grades 3-5. The Portland Metro STEM Partnership (PMSP) is providing leadership and facilitation to a team of educators from Portland State University, Beaverton School District and Hillsboro School District who will work with volunteers from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to design, develop, implement and assess the impact of an in-class unit entitled "Investigations in Transportation". This report presents a study …

Three Bridges, Robert Liberty

PSU Transportation Seminars

In the last decade, three important new bridges in the Portland area were the subject of intense discussion and analysis: the Tilikum Crossing, the Sellwood Bridge and the Columbia River Crossing. One of those bridges is completed, the second is under construction and the third one was canceled.

As a Metro Councilor, Robert Liberty was involved in the decision making process for all three projects. The way in which those projects were analyzed and presented to the public revealed to him a great deal about the many weaknesses in the way we make major transportation investment decisions. Those insights are …

Model-Based Analytics And Processes For Transportation Investment Alternatives Analyses: From Least Cost Planning To Multi Criterion Evaluation, Jeff Frkonja

PSU Transportation Seminars

Many public and private organizations that make decisions regarding whether and how to invest in transportation assets or programs do so via a structured decision-support process. This talk will address the technical aspects of the family of such processes that use travel demand model outputs—and other sources of quantified performance data—as inputs to analytic tools including benefit cost analysis (BCA) and multi criterion evaluation. Example applications of this framework have included tolling and pricing studies, capital investment alternatives analyses, and programmatic evaluations. Example processes include "Least Cost Planning" frameworks borrowed originally from the power generation industry.

The talk will also …

Squeeze On Space Lifts Profit But Shrinks Living Standards, Lorcan Sirr

Media

When it comes to the topic of apartment sizes, planners and local authorities should keep this old adage to the forefront of their minds: less is not more. Ireland’s size standards for residential housing have tended to followBritain’s since about the 1940s. The UK has been producing ever-smaller units and with, in effect, no minimum national standard, it has the smallest homes in western Europe. This is not a trend we need to follow. Minimum space standards for a one-bedroomapartment in Dublin reduced from 484 sq ft in 1961 to 344 sq ft in 1987—and finally up to a more …

National Study Of Brt Development Outcomes, Arthur C. Nelson, Joanna Ganning

TREC Final Reports

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is poised to become the “next big thing” in public transit. From virtually no systems a generation ago, there are now 19 lines operating with at least seven under construction and more than 20 in the planning stages. BRT is gaining popularity because of its combination of low capital cost and potential for high levels of benefits. But are BRT systems effective in attracting development?

To answer this and many more trending BRT questions, the Metropolitan Research Center (MRC) reviewed multiple studies using data from the United States Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics, and CoStar data …

Rating The Cities: Constructing A City Resilience Index For Assessing The Effect Of State And Local Laws On Long-Term Recovery From Crisis And Disaster, John Travis Marshall

Faculty Publications By Year

Superstorm Sandy, the 2008 Iowa floods, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita all supply recent reminders that U.S. cities can no longer adopt an ad hoc approach to threats presented by climate change and natural hazards. The stories detailing long-term recovery from these disasters underscore that federal, state, and local governments are struggling to appreciate the legal tools and institutions necessary to implement the large-scale infrastructure, housing, and community development programs that climate change and more frequent natural disasters demand. This Article calls for development of a tool allowing succinct evaluation of the range of community capacities that will figure critically …

Webinar: Transport Cost Index: A New Comprehensive Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use, Liming Wang

TREC Webinar Series

Recent federal and state policies are placing increasing emphasis on using comprehensive transportation performance measures to guide transportation decision making processes covering policy areas ranging from mobility, safety, economy and livability, to issues of equity and environment. While it is relatively easy to build consensus on mobility measures that center on the transportation system alone, it is much harder for performance measures to incorporate both transportation and land use, loosely defined as accessibility measures, even with continuous efforts to catalog and design such measures.

Two projects at PSU sponsored by Oregon DOT and National Institute of Transportation Communities (NITC) aim …

The Trade-Offs Between Population Density And Households' Transportation-Housing Costs, Haizhong Wang

PSU Transportation Seminars

As metropolitan area governments and others promote density-promoting “smart growth” policies, finer analysis is needed to quantify the impact of such policies on households' transportation and housing costs. Existing research suggests that households in urban areas trade-off between housing costs and transportation costs, but does not explore how policies to increase urban densities might explicitly impact this balance. Furthermore, the research does not adequately distinguish between the effect of urban area density and the effects of other factors associated with urban area density (e.g metropolitan area size and household incomes) on housing costs. This research uses the 2000 Census Public …

Affordable Housing As A Prerequisite For A Safe, Healthy, Equitable Transportation System: Evidence From A Nationwide Evaluation Of Location Efficiency Within The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Lihtc) Program, Arlie Steven Adkins

PSU Transportation Seminars

Mountains of research over the last several decades show that how we get around and how much physical activity we get are closely linked with the built environment of the neighborhoods where we live. This means that the health, economic, and environmental benefits associated with active travel and transit are place-based and that affordable housing in walkable, location efficient places needs to be thought of as a critical component of planners’ efforts to provide safe, healthy, and equitable transportation systems. This talk will provide an overview of the links between affordable housing and transportation planning and present research findings from …

Transportation Leadership Education: Portland Traffic And Transportation Course A Case Study And Curriculum, Nathan Mcneil

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Portland Traffic and Transportation course serves a number of different purposes. On one hand, it is designed to develop citizens who are informed about the transportation system, including how it got where it is today, what agencies and actors play a role in its operation and development, and how they, as citizens, play a role in its future. In this sense, there is a goal of broadening and deepening the existing knowledge about the system among the general population. On the other hand, there is an implicit goal of encouraging participation in the system with the understanding that doing …

Crowdsourcing The Collection Of Transportation Behavior Data, Christopher Bone, Seth Kenbeek, Ken Kato, Jacob Bartruff

TREC Final Reports

Understanding the travel behaviors of individuals who use public transit is essential for enhancing the performance, sustainability and efficiency of public transportation. Contemporary methods for collecting data on transportation behavior are focused on manual or automated procedures for counting the number of individual passengers entering or exiting transit vehicles. While such methods provide useful data for understanding transit demand throughout a network, they ignore the important details of how passengers travel to and within a network as well as their personal experiences during their commute, all of which can enrich the ability of transit agencies to provide sustainable transportation. To …

Neighborhood Change And The Role Of Environmental Stewardship: A Case Study Of Green Infrastructure For Stormwater In The City Of Portland, Oregon, Usa, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Throughout the history of cities, the ecological landscape has often been buried, removed, or taken for granted. A recent recognition that humans are part of the global ecosystem, and that human actions both cause and are affected by ecological change, brings with it an awareness of the value of nature in cities and of natural systems on which cities depend. The feedbacks between humans and their environment within an urban context can have profound implications for the growth of and change in cities, yet there is a limited understanding of the interactions between biophysical changes in cities and the implications …

Webinar, Part I: Americans' Views Of Transportation And Livable Communities, Jennifer Dill, Hugh Morris

TREC Webinar Series

The National Association of Realtors® and Portland State University conducted a nationwide survey in the 50 largest metropolitan areas, asking Americans about where they live, where they want to live, and their travel habits.

This webinar will present the key findings from that survey, including people’s preferences to live in mixed-use, walkable communities and what may help them walk, bicycle, and take transit more. The large sample (3,000) allows us to look at demographic differences, including between the generations (Millennials, Baby Boomers, etc.).

Conveniently Located Disaster: Socio‐Spatial Inequality In Hurricane Sandy And Its Implications For The Urban Sociology Of Climate Change, Gordon Douglas, Liz Koslov, Eric Klinenberg

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

Hurricane Sandy was a major event with major implications for how sociologists think about the relationship between climate change and crisis in urban areas. The storm’s impact on New York provides a valuable case for considering how to study the impacts of climate change on large, densely settled cities with vulnerable hard infrastructure and highly complex social conditions that produce differentiated experiences across many different communities. This working paper considers data at several levels of analysis with the aim of assessing neighborhood inequalities in the impacts of such extreme weather. Drawn from the authors’ ongoing research project on unequal vulnerability …

Promising Practices For Long-Term Community Engagement, Meg Merrick, Andrée Tremoulet, Tina Dippert

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

Washington County has initiated a planning process to rethink the structure and support system for its ongoing, long-term community participation program. The impetus for this planning process began with a fall 2014 announcement by the service provider that had supported the county’s Citizen Participation Organizations (CPOs) and the Committee for Citizen Involvement (CCI) for several decades, Oregon State University Extension, that it would no longer continue this role effective fall 2015. The planning process has since evolved into an opportunity to take a thorough look at the program and plan a system of engagement for the 21st century.

Washington County …

Portland’S Food Economy: Trends And Contributions, Jamaal Green, Greg Schrock, Jenny H. Liu

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

The primary goal of this report is to document the scope, growth, and contribution of the food economy to the city of Portland and the region. Specifically, this report addresses the following research questions:

• What is the "food economy," and how is it defined?
• What is the size of Portland’s food economy, and how has it changed in recent years?
• How is the food economy distributed spatially within the city and the region? How is this changing?
• What kind of employment opportunities does Portland’s food economy offer? How do they compare to the broader economy?
• Who works in Portland’s food …

Columbia Corridor Drainage Districts Governance Study, Thomas Potiowsky, Jenny Liu, Mike Paruszkiewicz, Jeff Renfro, Marisol Cáceres, Peter Hulseman

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

This study focused on major questions related to drainage district consolidation in the Columbia Corridor, arising from the geographic and economic diversity that characterizes the four entities. The magnitude and type of economic activity within the districts varies considerably, and results in a broad range of operational resources and levee system requirements.

Energy For Development: The Concept, Holmes J., Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Worldwide, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.7 billion are still cooking on harmful and inefficient stoves1 . Many live in remote rural village communities, and until they have access to energy services, little progress can be made to develop and improve their lives2 . As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated, “energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity, and an environment that allows the planet to thrive”3 . Improving the lives of rural communities by developing smart villages is a concept analogous to the more familiar smart cities. The vision …

Renting Trouble: Current Government Policy Of Relying On The Private Rented Sector To Deliver Social Housing Is Unlikely To Succeed, Tom Dunne

Reports

A review of the history of housing in Ireland shows that owner occupancy and social housing were policy choices by successive governments. Owner occupancy was heavily supported through a system of grants and tax breaks and social housing was directly provided through local authorities at subsidised rents. In recent years policy has changed and tenure neutrality is now guiding the government’s attitude to housing. This is a significant change which has not been sufficiently discussed and has consequences which are not appreciated. Relying on the market to provide rental housing for people on low incomes and who may be in …

Urban Inspiration Can Come From Unlikely Sources: What Boston Can Learn From Cities In Transition Around The World, Andrew Tarsy

New England Journal of Public Policy

Boston is a city in transition, with power passing to a new mayor for the first time in a generation. The capital of New England should consider the examples of cities around the world in defining its next agenda. The urban centers that make up the Forum for Cities in Transition have all endured years of conflict and yet each continues to plan for a better future. Belfast, Nicosia, and Kaduna might not be role models for Boston; but three consensus points came out of the group’s recent summit: (1) it is hard to move forward without confronting the past; …

Fourth Plain Forward: Action Plan For Vancouver's Multicultural Business District, Mandia Gonzales, Jamin Kimmell, Eddie Montejo, Lauren Patton, Kate Rogers, Anthony Thompson

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Fourth Plain Forward is an action plan for Fourth Plain's multicultural business district, created in collaboration with the City of Vancouver, Washington. Fourth Plain's business district reflects the rich diversity of its surrounding communities, but the area faces significant economic challenges. To address these issues, the action plan builds on the economic development goals outlined in the 2007 Fourth Plain Corridor Subarea Plan, and aims to improve conditions along the corridor for both businesses and residents. Broadly, Fourth Plain Forward outlines strategies and actions to grow economic security and opportunity, and maintain the area's diversity.

This project was conducted under …

Tachomea: Infill Tools For A Happy City, Anaïs Mathez, Michael Cynkar, Hannah Silver, Nicholas Kobel

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The City of Tacoma has policies that both encourage the densification of neighborhoods through a broadened range of residential infill options and also protect the character of single-family housing patterns. However, recent residential development has illustrated the difficulty of achieving goals of compatibility and density simultaneously. How can development incorporate better design standards and placemaking practices that respond to a neighborhood’s unique character, while diversifying the housing stock to provide a greater variety of housing options?

Relating to the city’s anticipated population growth, as well as regional environmental and economic pressures, this report frames the discussion, analysis and recommendations around …

Getting Green To Work In The Northwest Industrial District, Stefan Heisler, Sara Ivey, Alexis Kelso, Ryu Sakuma, John Dornoff, Dianne Yee

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Forest Park and its surrounding watershed experience measurable environmental problems such as urban heat island impacts, increased storm water runoff containing pollutants, fragmentations of habitat connectivity due to their proximities to high-impact land uses, poor air quality, absence of public space, and lack of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Getting Green to Work in the Northwest Industrial District identifies strategies to address environmental issues that affect local human and environmental health in the Northwest Indusrial District, Forest Park and the Willamette River, while benefiting local businesses workers and firms. Getting Green to Work explores voluntary approaches to address local environmental problems …

Cathedral Waterfront Plan, Mathangi Murthy, Tabitha Boschetti, Michelle Anderson, Saumya Kini, Rosa Lehman, Violet Brown

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association anticipated the imminent development of 15-acres of waterfront property (the Steel Hammer Site) in the heart of their community and worked with the PSU MURP team to bolster the voice of the community through public engagement and thoughtful urban planning. The student team reached out to the neighbors, talked with shareholders, conducted site analysis, and developed a shared community vision for the Steel Hammer Site, which resulted the Cathedral Waterfront Plan that includes:

• Twelve community goals for future development
• Three scenarios demonstrating how development on the Steel Hammer Site could contribute to community priorities without …

North Portland Greenway Trail Strategic Plan, Lewis Kelley, James Dubois, Savannah Erzen, Gena Gastaldi, Lisa Harrison, Nick Stoll

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Grow Willamette Greenway was initiated through a partnership between npGreenway and Willamette Planning Studio, a group of six Portland State University graduate students in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning program. Through a four month collaborative process of community engagement and analysis, including health impacts, economic development, and traffic demand modeling, a series of findings and recommendations were developed. The process built upon previous work undertaken by npGreenway, Metro, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R), and other government agencies and community organizations to present a strategic action plan for npGreenway to pursue what moves the …

Making South Downtown Portland, Artur Queiroz, Beth Gilden, Flávia Martins, Hannah Six, John Todoroff, Linn Davis, Maria Schafaschek, Nely Silveira, Sayonara Batista, Taissa Sanccao

Urban Design Workshop

Principals that guided the project:

(1) Create connection between existing activity centers.

• Education: Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and Portland State University
• Parks: Halpern Sequence, Park Blocks, and Waterfront
• Transit centers: Orange Line, Yellow Line, Streetcar and Bus Connection

(2) Add to multi-use nature of area to provide a 24 hr neighborhood environment. Additional residential Development - catering to late night and residence not just office crowd.

(3) Improve pedestrian experience: Increase safety by making traffic changes, add wayfinding and dampen freeway noise.

(4) Design for a diversity of ages

(5) Activate existing/underutilized "dead" …

Green Loop Swpdx Concept Plan: Alignment And Design Treatment Recommendations For The Southwest Green Loop, Ashley Eaton, Brian Gunn, Jake Adams, Kate Washington, Mohd Meidiansyah

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Green Loop SWPDX project was conducted by five students in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability Urban Design Studio and Portland State University's Campus Planning Office. It explores potential alignments and design treatments for Portland's Green Loop, specifically with the southwest downtown quardrant of the Central City. The southwest quadrant of the Green Loop links the South Park Blocks to the non-automobile Tilikum Crossing bridge. The Green Loop SWPDX project explores both large and small-scale possibilities for creating a sense of safety and a place for cyclists and pedestrians in the Central City. This document reports …

Paalf People's Plan: East Portland Pilot, Todd Borkowitz, Lorrie Chang, Christine Corrales, Leslee Humphrey, D. H. Strongheart, Timothy Wood

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Recognizing the traumatic experience of being forced to move and losing community, this plan reflects the hopes of community members who seek to rebuild their lives in a new place. The East Portland Pilot Plan applies the urban planning practice of placemaking as a transformative intervention for addressing challenges and stabilizing the Black community in East Portland. This plan also emerges at a critical time, as existing city plans for East Portland indicate significant future public investment and development.

This plan has been written with a wide audience in mind. The material is relevant to homeowners, community activists, urban planners, …

Fishing For A Sustainable Future: Aquaponics As A Method Of Food Production, Richard Ramsundar

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis compares and explains the advantages aquaponics farming has over modern industrial intensive farming. Through a comparison natural capital usage, conservation, recycling and cost, the thesis advocates for the expansion of aquaponics usage in urban settings. The thesis also explains the history of intensive farming and aquaponics in America, the science of how aquaponics operates, the economic and environmental costs of modern intensive farming versus aquaponics farming, and the social implications of aquaponics. Lastly, I propose a policy that reallocates farm subsidies by modifying the Farm Bill. Then I propose policies that support creating a new standard of farm …