Urban Studies Commons^™

Accessory Dwelling Units In Portland, Oregon, Matthew Gebhardt, Beth Gilden, Yael Kidron

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

The Institute for Sustainable Solutions is spearheading an initiative to make it easier and more affordable for Portland homeowners to construct a second house on their property—increasing housing options in a city with some of the fastest rising rents and lowest vacancy rates in the nation.

Called “accessory dwelling units” or ADUs, these small backyard homes can be used by family members or rented out to others in the community. They provide more affordable housing options while reducing pollutants that cause climate change.

In 2018, Matthew Gebhardt, assistant professor of Urban Studies and Planning, and Yael Kidron, Ph.D. candidate in …

The Use Of Mt. Mazama Volcanic Ash As Natural Pozzolans For Sustainable Soil And Unpaved Road Improvement, Matthew D. Sleep, Morgan B. Masley

TREC Final Reports

Natural pozzolans can be a replacement for portland cement in many applications. Some natural pozzolans are byproducts of industrial processes. Other natural pozzolans, such as volcanic ash, occur naturally. This study determined the suitability of Mt. Mazama volcanic ash as a natural pozzolan and explored innovative uses of the material for roadway improvement. Requirements of natural pozzolans are specified in ASTM C618 – coal fly ash and raw or calcined natural pozzolan for use in concrete. This study concluded that volcanic ash from Mt. Mazama meets chemical requirements of a natural pozzolan. In its unprocessed, natural form, Mt. Mazama volcanic …

Pedestrian Observation And Data Collection Curriculum Guide, Jennifer Dill, Tara Beth Goddard

TREC Final Reports

This guidebook provides a comprehensive set of class exercises suitable for students in courses related to travel behavior, traffic safety, urban planning and design, community health, or civil engineering. Exercises include activities developed through this project as well as an extensive set of educational materials drawn from online resources. The exercises developed as part of this project focus on pedestrians. They include elements of both traditional traffic counts and behavioral components, the latter of which are often lacking from current data collections efforts. By encouraging students to consider behavioral interactions of roadway users, these exercises can provide students with field …

Making Sustainable Roadways From 7,000 Year-Old Volcanic Ash, Matthew D. Sleep, Morgan B. Masley

TREC Project Briefs

Volcanic ash from Mt. Mazama, prevalent in Southern Oregon, could be used as a natural pozzolan for unpaved roadway improvements. Sustainability benefits would include reduced carbon emissions.

Nationwide Worker Database To Analyze Transit Outcomes Using An Economic And Demographic Lens, Robert Hibberd, Arthur C. Nelson

TREC Datasets and Databases

This extensive database project provides demographic data for workers, both in terms of where they live and where they work, for 39 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Planners and researchers can use this database to assess the extent to which transit stations and station areas are associated with economic and demographic change, and to forecast similar magnitudes of change through proposed new or expanded transit systems. Specific data elements include job numbers based on job sector, earnings, race, education, sex, and distance of census blocks to transit separated by mode type. Data were extracted as part of a larger project …

A Survey Of Ride-Hailing Passengers, Steven Gehrke

PSU Transportation Seminars

In less than a decade, the ride-hailing industry, led by Uber and Lyft, has dramatically transformed the way we travel in our metro regions. Rider adoption of these on-demand mobility services has proceeded much quicker than our understanding of their impacts to our urban transportation systems. Planning for this transformation in personal mobility, which will have unintended consequences, has been made more difficult by the scarcity in meaningful data made available by these ride-hailing companies. Public agencies responsible for managing congestion and transit services are hindered in their ability to successfully plan for the integration of this emergent travel mode …

Post-Katrina Retention Of Law Enforcement Officers: A Case Study Of The New Orleans Police Department, Richard A. Williams Sr

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a case study of the New Orleans Police Department and identified factors that affected the retention of law enforcement officers post-Hurricane Katrina. The NOPD was chosen because the agency was an extreme case and experienced the unprecedented separation of over 300 officers during and post- Hurricane Katrina. The variables examined included tenure, age, salary, education, and job satisfaction, as well as, race, sex, marital status, and New Orleans residency.

This research is significant because in a time of decreasing budgets and increased cost to replace employees, where skills are scarce and knowledge is important, recruitment is costly, …

Protecting San Francisco Residents From The Wolves Of Wall Street: A Case Study, Jessica Lindquist

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research conducts the first deep data analysis of the public complaints filed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Consumer Complaint database by San Francisco residents. The case study highlights how consumer financial harms are a citywide problem: San Franciscans living at every income level and in every part of the city are struggling to resolve their financial issues with the wolves of Wall Street, the financial services industry. The recommendations center on what the city, particularly the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment, can do at a local level now that the Trump administration is focused on deregulating the …

Utrecht, Bike Capital Of The World, Martijn Rietbergen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Utrecht is a bustling, bicycle-friendly city in the Netherlands. Every day, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., over 125,000 cyclists ride to their work, school, university, public transport, shops or home through the city centre.

The municipality wants to make cycling even more attractive for these and other cyclists. Consequently, the bicycle is given precedence in the mobility policy of the municipality of Utrecht. We want to be the most bike-friendly city in the world. We want to keep our growing city livable, accessible and economically strong, and we are convinced that the bicycle can and should play a major …

Assessing The Potential For A Backfire Effect On Citizen Perceptions: A Test Of Hot Spot Policing In Las Vegas, Steven Andrew Pace

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objects: In this dissertation, I explore whether the use of motorized police saturation patrol in high crime neighborhoods negatively impacts citizen perceptions of police activity, opinions about the police, and perceived safety level. This research focuses on evaluating

whether or not any backfire effects were attributed to the use of the hot spot policing tactic. Methods: I report on survey data from the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI), which entailed face-to face interviews in 12 hot spot neighborhoods (n=1,005) (6 paired locations) as part of an evaluation from the SPI on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Mobile Crime Saturation Team. …

The Impacts Of Green Spaces On Crime In New York City, Matthew Edward Iannone Jr.

Student Theses 2015-Present

From the early 1960s through the mid-1990s, crime in New York City ran rampant. With a gradually dwindling police during this time, a high unemployment rate, and an rapidly increasing metropolitan population, crime peaked in the early 1990s, with the murder rate hitting a record-high of 2,245 in 1990. When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994 and appoint Bill Bratton as the NYPD police commissioner, these rates immediately plunged. Numerous factors may have contributed to this sudden decline in crime: the police force grew significantly through the 1990s, more criminals were placed and held in prison, and the economic …

Science, Advocacy, Policy, Planning: Tools For Advancing Transportation Equity, Garrett S. Mcallister

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The theme of this portfolio is how different tools and approaches can be used for advancing transportation equity. Broadly defined, transportation equity is about fairness in transportation. There are a number of ways this fairness can be assessed. The most common way to assess transportation equity is by looking at the fairness of outcomes, distributed geographically, socially, or even by mode of transportation. Equity can also be defined by the fairness of processes. The first half of the portfolio illustrates some of the problems with the current transportation system and how it is unhealthy (Piece 1) and unjust (Piece 2). …

Analysis Of The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability, Rebecca Lewis

PSU Transportation Seminars

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of the project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …

Climate Change Vulnerabilities In The Coastal Mid-Atlantic Region, Charles Colgan, Juliano Calil, Hauke Kite-Powell, Di Jin, Porter Hoagland

Publications

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) has identified increased understanding of the possible effects of climate change on the socio-economic assets and systems of the region as a priority need. This is based both on recent experience studying climate change and concern for the economic values that have been placed at risk. Changes in ocean temperatures and chemistry are already affecting fisheries, while the critical marine transportation facilities of the region must now address concerns about sea level rise in addition to shifting global transportation markets. New research is showing that coastal and ocean ecosystems are already changing …

Overcoming Barriers To Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau

TREC Project Briefs

This project focused on the community-driven creation of the GTFS-realtime v2.0 format, which establishes better guidance for transit agencies, application developers, and automatic vehicle location system vendors on what fields are required or optional under various transit use cases.

Transportation And Land Use—What Determines Livability?, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker

TREC Project Briefs

Livability is a key focus of transportation and land use planning throughout the United States, and a concept that has been guiding U.S. Department of Transportation policy since 2009. In Oregon, the state’s long-range transportation plan identifies “enhancing livability” as a key outcome, but little research has tackled how these planning efforts contribute to residents’ perceptions of livability. This project seeks to fill this research need by exploring the question, “How do residents understand the connection between transportation and land use planning, and its association with livability?”

A Fair Distribution Of Accessibility: Interpreting Civil Rights Regulations For Regional Transportation Plans, Karel Martens, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The US Department of Transportation requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to consider social equity in their plans and projects in accordance with civil rights–related laws. In this paper, we suggest four interpretations of directives’ distributional standards in relation to accessibility. Employing this framework, we review the equity assessments of regional plans of the ten largest MPOs in the United States. Against our expectations, we find that MPOs tend to employ relatively strong distributional standards, albeit never explicitly. We argue that more explicit guidance regarding standards would improve the fairness and consistency of planning practice

Improved Safety And Efficiency Of Protected/Permitted Right Turns In Oregon, David Hurwitz, Christopher M. Monsere, Sirisha Kothuri, Hisham Jashami, Kamilah Buker, Andrew Kading

TREC Final Reports

This research aimed to develop an understanding of the safety and operational implications of using the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) in permitted and protected/permitted right turn (PPRT) operations to maximize safety and efficiency. This report includes a review of more than 50 scientific and technical articles on the selection of right turn phasing alternatives and a review of Oregon crash data at intersections with exclusive right-turning lanes from 2011-2013. The study had three phases: 1) a web-based survey, 2) a microsimulation model, and 3) and a driving simulator study. The survey measured Oregon driver’s comprehension of right-turn signal display. Analysis …

Fundraising Tools For Community-Based Housing Organizations In Syracuse, Ny: Collaboration With A Tiny Home For Good, Michelle Kincaid

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This Capstone is a two-part project that seeks to better understand the impediments to affordable housing development in Syracuse, New York and take action to ameliorate the problem with a local community-based housing organization. A Tiny Home for Good is a Syracuse-based nonprofit agency dedicated to ending the cycle of chronic homelessness. They do this by managing tiny homes and rent them to individuals who are facing or have faced homelessness. Their long-term goal is to build 50 homes by 2020. One problem facing their work is that they do not have enough money to achieve their long-term goals. Further, …

San Jose's Walk N' Roll Program: An Evaluation Of School Pedestrian Education Programs, Stephen Ngo

Master's Projects

The City of San Jose has been recognized as among the safest cities in the United States, but an area that the city seeks to improve in is reducing the number of traffic accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists. As stated by the city, “San Jose’s injury crash rate is about half the national average” (Vision Zero San Jose, 2015, p. 6), but, on average, 40 people are killed annually and 150 are seriously injured on San Jose’s streets. To address this, San Jose is using data, education, and technology to make a shift towards creating streets and roads that benefit …

Cost Burden Of Social Isolation For Wheelchair Users In Louisville, Kentucky., Connie Light

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Social isolation is an important predictor for poor health status, chronic diseases, and healthcare utilization and costs. There is a growing number of Americans with one or more disabilities, and evidence suggests that many are also socially isolated. This is especially true for those with immobility, as the built environment including housing structures are not universally designed to be accommodating. Immobility describes those who use walkers, canes, or wheelchairs, with the latter suffering the most impact. The cost of social exclusion can be measured by the exacerbation of disease in wheelchair users, whose fragile health status and social networks …

Smarter Crm From A Customer Service Perspective: A Process Evaluation On The City Of San José'S My San Jose Smartphone Application For City Services, Roxanna Moradi

Master's Projects

This research paper provides background on the City of San José’s smart phone application history and reviews other similar municipal smart phone applications. It also analyzes current literature on implementations of non-emergency service communications and service requests (311). Primarily, this research paper investigates whether the functioning of the My San Jose smartphone application and website platforms are meeting the intended goal of improving the customer experience for city services.

This paper analyzes My San Jose raw service request data to review performance. In addition, this paper analyzes qualitative information gathered from semi-structured interviews of City of San José employees to …

Cycling Into The Future: Implementation Of Enhanced Bikeways Along San Fernando Street In Downtown San Jose, Patrick Rubens

Master's Projects

In 2012, the City of San Jose acquired funding from the Transportation for Livable Communities Grant Program and began installing “green striped” enhanced bicycle lanes on a 1.5 mile stretch San Fernando Street between Diridon Station and 10th Street connecting San Jose’s Downtown Train Station to San Jose State University. According to city documents, these enhanced bikeways are intended to “enhance the visibility and safety of this route as a primary bikeway.” An important element of the project was the installation of LED streetlights to improve nighttime visibility. This specific project undertaken by the city falls under the umbrella of …

Eliminating The Right Hook: Safer Intersections For Bikes, Sirisha Kothuri, Andrew Kading, Andrew Schrope, Kelly White, Edward Smaglik, Chris Aguilar, William Gil

TREC Project Briefs

Over the last decade there has been increased interest in promoting active and sustainable transportation modes such as bicycling and walking especially in urban areas, as a means to alleviate congestion, lower emission levels and improve personal health. In urban areas, intersections are locations where a variety of modes converge, thus increasing the propensity for conflicts. Many bicycle-vehicle crashes occur at intersections. A common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right-hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. Intersections are also the source of increased stress for many bicyclists where the interactions with cars are more …

Improving Bicycle Crash Prediction For Urban Road Segments, Krista Nordback, Sirisha Kothuri, Wesley Marshall, Geoff Gibson, Nick Ferenchak

TREC Project Briefs

The 2010 Highway Safety Manual (HSM) provides methods for predicting the number of motor vehicle crashes on various roadway facilities. However, it includes only a rudimentary method for predicting the number of bicycle-related crashes. Despite research demonstrating that bicycle volume is an important factor in estimating number of bicycle crashes, the method does not include the volume of bicyclists using the roadway. To remedy this, this project will investigate the potential of various simplified methods to include bicycle volumes in future versions of the HSM. By studying locations where bicycle traffic volumes, motor vehicle traffic volumes, bicycle collisions, and roadway …

Intersection: Orientation And Mobility As Interdisciplinary Conversation, Amy T. Parker, Prateek Dujari

PSU Transportation Seminars

Knowing where one wants to go and how to get there are essential life skills for all people. Community access and travel skills are not only important rites of passage for youth in becoming adults, they are linked to higher rates of employment and overall health. People who are blind and visually impaired (BVI) face challenges in accessing public transportation, yet studies have shown that with relevant orientation and mobility instruction, technology, and accessible design, vision loss need not preclude community travel.

Join PSU's Amy Parker and Intel's Prateek Dujari on the ways that knowledge from consumers and the field …

Segregation Of Student Financial Aid In Higher Education: The Effects On Low-Income Students When Ebt Is Not Accepted At University Campuses In San Diego, Ca., Tanisha-Jean Martin

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

The student bodies of universities are made up of a diverse financial class of students which utilize various methods to cover financial obligations on campus, even with the use of welfare governmental assistance. Low-income students that are involved in government welfare programs are given an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card to support them while they are pursuing an education; however, every university in San Diego, CA (and nearly the entire United States), segregate EBT into an unacceptable category and refuse to accept the card at any venues on campus. The EBT card is a plastic card that can be used …

Webinar: Tools And Techniques For Teaching Collaborative Regional Planning And Enhancing Livability And Sustainable Transportation In Gateway & Natural Amenity Regions, Danya Rumore

TREC Webinar Series

Small towns and cities outside of national parks and other major natural amenities throughout the western United States are becoming increasingly popular places to visit and live. As a result, many of these gateway and natural amenity region (GNAR) communities—including places such as Jackson, Wyoming, and Moab, Utah—are facing a variety of “big city” issues, such as severe congestion, lack of affordable workforce housing, and concerns about sprawl and density. This webinar will introduce the planning and transportation concerns being experienced by GNAR communities throughout the west. It will then share the tools and resources developed by the University of …

Fhwa Guidebook For Measuring Multimodal Network Connectivity, Joseph Broach

PSU Transportation Seminars

In 2016 the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) published a Guidebook for Developing Pedestrian and Bicycle Performance Measures that presents methods for measuring walking and bicycling performance and activities and embedding them into the transportation planning and decisionmaking process (U.S. Department of Transportation 2016). Building on the 2016 guidebook, this resource focuses on pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity and provides information on incorporating connectivity measures into state, metropolitan, and local transportation planning processes.

Connectivity measures can help transportation practitioners identify high priority network gaps, implement cost-effective solutions that address multiple needs, optimize potential co-benefits, and …

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …