Urban Studies Commons^™

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. …

Urban Perception: Sensing Cities Via A Deep Interactive Multi-Task Learning Framework, Weili Guan, Zhaozheng Chen, Fuli Feng, Weifeng Liu, Liqiang Nie

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social scientists have shown evidence that visual perceptions of urban attributes, such as safe, wealthy, and beautiful perspectives of the given cities, are highly correlated to the residents' behaviors and quality of life. Despite their significance, measuring visual perceptions of urban attributes is challenging due to the following facts: (1) Visual perceptions are subjectively contradistinctive rather than absolute. (2) Perception comparisons between image pairs are usually conducted region by region, and highly related to the specific urban attributes. And (3) the urban attributes have both the shared and specific information. To address these problems, in this article, we present a …

Nevada Population Density Maps, 2015 - 2019, Jaewon Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet reports the population distribution for the 687 census tracts in the State of Nevada between 2015 and 2019. Mapping population distribution by census tract can misrepresent population density. Oftentimes, in rural regions with low population density, large census tracts are home to a small number of people. Likewise, urban cores have many small census tracts, each with high population density. Using a method for constructing density-equalizing projections, or cartograms (i.e. maps that show statistical information in diagrammatic form) by Mark Newman and Michael Gastner at the University of Michigan, the constructed maps in this fact sheet better …

Webinar: Transit Impacts On Jobs, People And Real Estate, Arthur C. Nelson, Kristina Currans, Robert Hibberd

TREC Webinar Series

This webinar has six elements: Introducing themes related to how transit should affect the location of jobs and people, and how real estate should respond; Creating a research typology of different landscapes served by transit that is also useful in transit planning; Analyzing how transit stations influence shifts in the regional share of jobs, people and housing; Investigating how transit station proximity influences mode choice and household transportation budgets; Estimating the effect of transit station proximity on real estate rents by type of transit system and type of real estate, and the extent to which outcomes are consistent with theory; …

The Housing Market And The Covid-19 Pandemic: Implications For Las Vegas, Phoenix, Riverside, Los Angeles, Orlando, And New Orleans, Jenny Schuetz, Sarah Crump

Policy Briefs and Reports

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted virtually every part of the U.S. economy in the past year, and wreaked havoc on people’s daily lives. Housing markets are no exception. Millions of renters have fallen behind on their rent, fearing eviction while accumulating debts they cannot pay. At the same time, prices for owner-occupied housing have soared while the inventory of for-sale homes has plummeted. In this brief, we analyze several measures of housing distress from 2007 to 2019 for six metro areas, chosen based on their housing and labor market characteristics. Los Angeles, Riverside, Las Vegas, and Phoenix were among the …

Short-Term And Long-Term Effects Of New Light Rail Transit Service On Transit Ridership And Traffic Congestion At Two Geographical Levels, Huajie Yang

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation quantitatively examines the effect of new Light Rail Transit (LRT) services on transit ridership and traffic congestion over time at two different geographical levels: at the corridor level, this study conducts case studies of two LRT lines in the Portland, Oregon region; at the regional level, this study uses a synthetic control method to construct a "synthetic" control Urbanized Area (UA) that closely approximates the counterfactual transit ridership and traffic congestion scenario in the absence of light rail project in three UAs across America. The results of the corridor-level study suggest that both LRT lines increased transit ridership …

Bi-Objective Optimization For Battery Electric Bus Deployment Considering Cost And Environmental Equity, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu, Yirong Zhou, Ran Wei, Aaron Golub, Devin Macarthur

TREC Final Reports

Public transit, compared with passenger cars, can effectively help conserve energy, reduce air pollution, and optimize flow on roadways. In recent years, Battery Electric Bus (BEB) is receiving an increasing amount of attention from the transit vehicle industry and transit agencies due to recent advances in battery technologies and the direct environmental benefits it can offer (e.g., zero emissions, less noise). However, limited efforts have been attempted on the effective deployment planning of the BEB system due to the unique spatiotemporal features associated with the system itself (e.g., driving range, bus scheduling). In this project, we developed an innovative spatiotemporal …

Aging In The 100 Largest Metropolitan Areas: How Do Older Adults Fare?, Jan Mutchler, Yang Li

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

New estimates from the 2020 Elder Index show that living expenses are high in metropolitan areas across the U.S., and many older singles and couples lack the resources needed to get by in their communities. Focusing on the 100 largest metropolitan areas, we compare the 2020 Elder Index to household incomes among adults aged 65 years or older living in one- and two-person households. Based on this comparison, we find that in each of the 100 largest metro areas, at least 37% of older singles are at risk of being unable to afford basic needs and age in their own …

Call For Papers—Special Issue Of Service Science: Innovation In Transportation-Enabled Urban Services, Niels Agatz, Soo-Haeng Cho, Hai Wang, Saif Benjaafar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Today, around 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas or cities, and that figure is expected to rise to 70% over the coming decades. Rapid developments of city infrastructure and technologies—mobile location tracking and computing, autonomous and connected vehicles, wearable devices, robotics and robots, smart appliances, biometric authentication, various Internet-of-Things devices, and smart monitoring systems, to name a few—are creating numerous opportunities and inspiring innovative and emerging urban services

Rethinking Streets For Physical Distancing, Marc Schlossberg, Rebecca Lewis, Aliza Whalen, Clare Haley, Danielle Lewis, Natalie Kataoka, John Larson-Friend

TREC Final Reports

This report summarizes the primary output of this project, a book of COVID-era street reconfiguration case studies called Rethinking Streets During COVID-19: An Evidence-Based Guide to 25 Quick Redesigns for Physical Distancing, Public Use, and Spatial Equity. COVID-era needs have accelerated the process that many communities use to make street transformations due to: a need to remain physically distanced from others outside our immediate household; a need for more outdoor space close to home in every part of every community to access and enjoy; a need for more space to provide efficient mobility for essential workers in particular; and a …

Transit Impacts On Jobs, People And Real Estate, Arthur C. Nelson, Robert Hibberd, Kristina Marie Currans, Nicole Iroz-Elardo

TREC Final Reports

This is the first volume of a five-volume set of publications comprising the report titled “Transit Impacts on Jobs, People and Real Estate.” It is the culmination of four research projects funded by the the National Institute of Transportation and Communities (NITC), a US DOT funded National University Transportation Center. This volume includes a preface that review key findings of the prior four research grants, an executive summary that reviews key findings of all five volumes of the current report, the context that reviews the context of the present research including details on more than 50 fixed route transit systems …

Clean Energy Scorecard For Mountain West Cities, 2020, Eshaan Vakil, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

As climate change continues to affect the Mountain West, many cities are taking measures to reduce carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. This fact sheet reports the rankings of Mountain West municipal governments, based on efforts to improve energy efficiency and increase their utilization of clean energy. The rankings are collected from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s (ACEEE) “2020 City Clean Energy Scorecard.”

Cost Of Oregon Evictions Report, Lisa K. Bates, Marisa Zapata, Jacen Greene, Stefanie Knowlton

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

A new report from Portland State University’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative (HRAC) estimates that evictions could cost Oregon as much as $3.3 billion after the statewide eviction ban expires in June.

The center worked with community partners to gather data from emergency shelters, inpatient and emergency medical services, child welfare, and juvenile justice services to estimate the downstream costs of evictions using the Cost of Eviction Calculator developed by the University of Arizona College of Law.

The center’s cost calculation is an estimate of the scale of the crisis that Oregon could face without additional eviction interventions. It does …

Webinar: Land Use And Transportation Policies For A Sustainable Future, Liming Wang

TREC Webinar Series

Even though there are tremendous uncertainties in the timing and evolution path of the Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology, it may become a likely reality within most MPOs' long-range regional transportation plan horizon of twenty years. Yet a recent survey of the largest MPOs in the US indicates only one of them "even mentions driverless, automated, or autonomous vehicles in its most recent RTP". One of the uncertainties in assessing the impacts of AV is their direction: on one hand, self-driving cars could increase VMT by increasing roadway capacity, lowering costs of travel; on the other, they may reduce VMT by …

The Legacy Of Car-Share And Light-Rail Transit For Mobility And Accessibility Improvements In Economically Marginalized Neighborhoods In The New York Metro Area, Kyeongsu Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the value of the car-share program and a new light rail system with respect to their impact on mobility and accessibility improvements in economically and transportation access-wise marginalized neighborhoods in NYC and its adjacent communities. It consists of three main essays that took deep dives into how each new service or system altered mobility or accessibility for those in need. The first essay (Chapter 2) investigates car-share vehicle utilization rates of the Zipcar across NYC. It assesses the utilization rates by vehicle type, service location, time period, and weekday usage compared to weekend activity. With a multivariate …

Sullivan County Covid-19 Needs Assessment, Melissa Mccollister

2020 Fall Reports (Sullivan)

Sullivan responded and continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. A community needs assessment was performed through the SOWK 382 course in partnership with United Way of the Wabash Valley. The needs assessment revealed how the community has responded in relation to mental health and addiction, food, schooling, and stability. The assessment reveals how Sullivan should respond to further help the community members during this pandemic.

Generation Of 3d Model Of Downtown Sullivan, Jim Speer

2020 Fall Reports (Sullivan)

The City of Sullivan identified the downtown area as an area for improvement and needed a way to depict areas. In ENVI 610, one graduate student was able to address the agreed upon goals of developing a 3D model of the downtown square. Some recommendations for future use of the 3D model were made for land-use planning, drainage systems, elevation, and more.

Public Transportation Use By Commuters In The Mountain West, Francisco Reyes, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet synthesizes data on methods and accessibility of transportation for commuters in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah). This fact sheet explores data from the most populous county in each state, using data originally provided by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. This dataset includes the type of transportation available (personal automobile, air travel, and maritime travel), the number of resident workers, the percent of these workers that commute to work, and the number of workers commuting within each county.

Webinar: Transportation Benefits Of Polycentric Urban Form, Reid Ewing, Sadegh Sabouri

TREC Webinar Series

A “polycentric” region consists of a network of compact developments connected with each other through high-quality transportation options. Rather than continuing the expanse of low-density development radiating from an urban core, investments can be concentrated on central nodes and transit connections. This development pattern is very popular in Europe and is linked to significant benefits. This presentation is aimed at exploring the academic literature and empirical evidence surrounding polycentric development, analyzing more than 120 regional transportation plans to see how they promote polycentric development, defining types of centers in a hierarchy of centers, quantifying the transportation benefits of polycentric development, …

Peddlers In Means Of Public Transportation In Egypt A Discussion Of Policy Options/ الباعة المتجولين في وسائل النقل العام في مصر: نقاش حول بدائل السياسات, Dina Ahmed Ali, Shatha El Sherif, Zainab Mahmoud Taha

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

The Metro and railway stations play crucial roles in Greater Cairo. Most working-class residents use the Metro and trains as the main transport means to reach their workplace. The Metro carries around 4 million passengers daily, whereas the railways take around 1.4 million passengers per day (Saif Eldien, 2019).

This policy paper is tackling the issue of the informal transportation peddlers namely in the Metro (subway) and railway stations. The authors dealt with this kind of informal peddlers as an occupational segment of the society that contributes to the national economy rather than groups of people who are distorting the …

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 …

Pedestrians Under Attack, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

A review of Right Of Way by Angie Schmitt

Applying Data-Driven Multimodal Speed Management Strategies For Safe, Efficient Transportation, Yao-Jan Wu, Xianfeng Yeng, Sirisha Kothuri

TREC Project Briefs

How can we use a variety of data-driven speed management strategies to make transportation safer and more efficient for all modes–whether you’re driving, walking or taking transit? The project was led by Yao Jan Wu, director of the Smart Transportation Lab at the University of Arizona. Co-investigators were Xianfeng Terry Yang of the University of Utah, who researches traffic operations and modeling along with connected automated vehicles, and Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University, whose research has focused on improving signal timing to better serve pedestrians. “We want to improve mobility for all users, be it pedestrians, vehicle drivers or …

Difference In Travel Behavior Between Immigrants In The U.S. And U.S. Born Residents: The Immigrant Effect For Car-Sharing, Ride-Sharing, And Bike-Sharing Services, Sangwan Lee, Michael J. Smart, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding immigrants’ travel behavior is important to transportation planners and policymakers working to implement better transportation planning and public policies to serve those needs. The recent changes to the transportation system, specifically, the recent emergence of shared mobility services, such as car‐sharing, ride‐ sharing, and bike‐sharing, may have resulted in changes in how immigrants travel. Thus, we explored two research questions: (1) whether immigrants in the U.S. are more likely to rely on the three newly emerging transportation modes than US‐born persons, and (2) whether the assimilation theory can be applied to the modes. To answer these questions, we used …

Bringing Judaism Downtown: A Smart Growth Policy For Orthodox Jews, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Until the late 20th century, the most rigorously traditional Jews, haredi Jews (often referred to as “ultra-Orthodox”) tended to congregate in New York City. But as New York became more expensive and haredi population grew due to high birth rates, some haredi Jews (known collectively as “haredim”) moved to small towns and outer suburbs in search of cheaper land, sometimes creating towns dominated by haredim such as Kiryas Joel, New York and Lakewood, New Jersey. As haredi populations have continued to grow, their households now seek undeveloped land outside these enclaves. But as haredim move deeper into the countryside, zoning …

Collaborative Competition In Homeless Services: Three Essays On Federal-Local Partnerships, Andrew Alfred Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The United States’ federal government funds homeless services provided at the local level through the McKinney-Vento Act, encouraging collaboration among providers. This dissertation studies three aspects of homelessness: merging of local planning bodies, identification of homeless students, and the relationship between experiencing homelessness in high school and long-term educational outcomes.

The first chapter studies the effect of merging Continuums of Care (CoCs), local planning bodies for homeless services. While merging brings organizations into the same network and could make use of economies of scale, it brings service provision to a less-local level, taking away responsiveness to the community and inter-jurisdictional …

Data Files: Bi-Objective Optimization For Battery Electric Bus Deployment Considering Cost And Environmental Equity, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu, Yirong Zhou, Ran Wei, Aaron Golub

TREC Datasets and Databases

This data supports the research project Bi-objective Optimization for Battery Electric Bus Deployment Considering Cost and Environmental Equity and a final report published on NITC’s website.

Dataset collected through multiple sources and organized into different formats including CSV format, JSON format, shapefile and code repository.

Context: The research project develops a bi-objective model that aims to help transit agencies to optimally deploy BEB while considering both capital investment and environmental equity. The unique spatio-temporal characteristic of BEB system, charging limitations (on-route and in-depot charging), and operational constraints are also considered and incorporated into the model.

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 …

Isbanban Foundation Volunteers During The Covid-19pandemic: Activities & Innovation, Ariza Bima Putra, Puspitasari Puspitasari

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

ISBANBAN is an educational driving foundation in Banten that arranges programs to achieve curriculum goals in schools through 21st Century Skill that elaborates and encourages the ability of fostered to master the skills of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity for children aged 4 - 12 years old. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the adoption of large-scale social restrictions and physical distancing by the government, this affected the voluntary activities carried out at Isbanban Foundation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to obtain information about the ISBANBAN volunteers activities in Banten during this covid-19 pandemic, as well as innovative …

Hate Speech In Election 2019: Case Study Of Youth Organizations, Harsih Setiawandari, Adis Imam Munandar

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Technology advance such as social media utilization to communicate, to express opinions, to interact with each other, and to discover and share information, but this also has its own susceptive. Its positive effect, social media can be used to accelerate the spreading of information, but the negative effects are the spreading of radical ideas, hate speech, hoaxes, etc. which can threaten the national defense and the sovereignty of the Republic of Indonesia. This research used complex models and a limited amount of samples so that in the data analysis using Smart-PLS software. Smart-PLS using the bootstrapping methods or random multiplication. …