Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Catholic Social Teaching And Homelessness: The World Tribe Of The Dispossessed, Ethna Regan

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Homelessness is a complex, global and growing phenomenon, and street homelessness is its most visible aspect. These children, men and women who live on the streets are, in the words of the Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, “the world tribe of the dispossessed/outside the halls of plenty/ looking in”. This article explores both the specific treatment of homelessness in Catholic social teaching and the ethical principles in Catholic social teaching that can be brought to bear on analysis, advocacy, and action in the area of homelessness.

"Free From Is Not Free For": The Experience Of Depaul Slovensko's Work With Homeless People In A Post-Communist Country, Juraj Barat

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Depaul Slovensko (Slovakia), a non-profit organization, was established as a response to the unreasonable dying of homeless people on the streets of Bratislava in the winter 2005/2006 and the absence of accommodation for them. The lack of experience, absence of professional social work and the prejudices of a postcommunist, ‘Christian’ society were the context for beginning a new form of work, without precedent in this environment. We learn to be authentic and faithful in the unity of our thoughts, words and deeds. All of this creates tension and we strive to keep these dynamics in balance. We grow, mature and …

Moving From Charity To Justice In Our Work To End Homelessness, Rosanne Haggerty

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

With a growing list of cities, regions-even countries-now reducing and ending forms of homelessness1 the key questions in our field have changed. If the familiar questions have been about resources and policy, the new ones are about purpose, and transformation. Is our purpose to run good programs or to end homelessness? If it’s to end homelessness, are we willing to hold our organizations and communities to that standard? Homelessness, in its raw visibility, confronts our shared beliefs about right and wrong, fairness, care, protection of the vulnerable, the importance of strong community bonds and the dignity of each person.

What The People We Call "Homeless" Have Taught Me, Bruno M. Duffé

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

I think I can say, as far as I can go back to my living memory and as a pastor, that the first thing I learned from “homeless” people we meet in our streets - and that we can sometimes find at the door of our institutions - is the determining importance of the gaze. And I would like to suggest, as a first contribution to our reflection, this intuition that has become for me a conviction and a major theological and ethical assertion: all human encounter begins with a look. Every truly human story finds its origin in the …

Introduction To The Issue, Meghan Clark, Anna F. Rowlands

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

This issue of JoVSA is a continuation of the conversations begun in Rome.1 In this issue are theological and practical reflections from Argentina, the Philippines, France/Rome, Ireland, England, and the United States. Throughout the articles, readers will find robust theological reflection, engagement with persons experiencing homelessness, and critical insights on policies by both government and church agencies. These essays invite all of us to consider more deeply the Catholic social teaching tradition and lived realities of people experiencing homelessness.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Editors

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

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Cover

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

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Contested Development: A Poor People's Movement For A Better Los Angeles, 1960–2018, Deshonay R. Dozier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Zooming in on the historical development of Downtown Los Angeles’s (LA) Skid Row, this dissertation traces a continuity of abolitionist alternatives made by homeless and poor Angelinos from the 1960s to our present day. Skid Row is an important entry way into Los Angeles urban politics, particularly with respect to how forms of difference, at the axis of race, gender, class, and ability shape regional relations of property and the built environment. I show how these relations shape Downtown Los Angeles’s geography through carceral practices. These carceral practices, made by social services and policing, shape space by routinely containing and …

Increasing The Supply Of The Missing Middle Housing Types In Walkable Urban Core Neighborhoods: Risk, Risk Reduction And Capital, Shrimatee Ojah Maharaj

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a low supply of the missing middle housing types (MMH) in walkable urban core neighborhoods. That is, a variety of compact low- to mid-rise housing in walkable areas that are accessible to entertainment, recreational and other amenities. The largest demographic, the millennials, followed by the baby boomers, prefer the MMH types. The MMH types is a new name for a variety of compact housing types that existed in traditional neighborhoods in urban areas pre-World War II. However, due to changes in housing preferences after World War II, the requisite land use and zoning changes facilitated larger single-family homes …

Belonging While Black At Lake Merritt: The Black Spatial Imaginary And Place-Making In Oakland, Ca, Betel Solomon Tesfamariam

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis aims to demonstrate how the processes of gentrification and displacement are interrelated processes that invent new ways of perpetuating anti- blackness in the U.S. I demonstrate this through an engagement with Christina Sharpe’s (2016) analysis of the imagery of the wake, the ship, the hold, and the weather as axis points that position Black life in the afterlife of slavery—how the conditions of slavery are ongoing today—presenting the racist encounters at Lake Merritt as illustrative examples. In her most recent book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Sharpe (2016) deploys an interdisciplinary approach to critically theorize …

A Euclid Dissent, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

In Euclid v. Ambler Realty, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of zoning, including zoning that excluded apartment houses and retail businesses. Although the decision was not unanimous, the Euclid minority did not write a formal dissent. The purpose of this article is to show what such a dissent should have looked like.

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

According to the popular press, expensive cities are being overrun by "ghost apartments"- condominiums owned by wealthy foreigners, but used as investments rather than being rented out to local residents. This article points out that such apartments are in fact a very small percentage of housing supply, even in some cities that are supposedly overran with such condos. More importantly, the existence of new “ghost apartments” does not justify exclusionary zoning policies. If a city popular with foreign investors discourages construction of new housing, investors are likely to purchase older housing units, outbidding local residents for those units. In this …

Hardware, Heartware, Or Nightmare: Smart-City Technology And The Concomitant Erosion Of Privacy, Leila Lawlor

Faculty Publications By Year

Smart city technology is being adopted in cities all around the world to simplify our lives, save us time, ease traffic, improve education, reduce energy usage and keep us safe. This article discusses smart city projects being utilized in crime prevention and investigations. Specifically, this article highlights examples of gunshot detection devices and surveillance that have led to improvements in public safety in Cape Town, Chicago and Atlanta, and discusses their impacts to privacy.

Introduction, Julian C. Juergensmeyer, Karen Johnston

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Two Smart Cities: Singapore & Atlanta, Karen Johnston

Faculty Publications By Year

This paper compares Singapore's top-ranked smart city strategy to Atlanta, Georgia, a city that does not make a top smart city ranking but boasts internationally recognized smart city projects.

Rainwater Harvesting: Legal Frameworks In The United States, Singapore And Other Countries, Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer, Audrone Vysniauskaite Durham

Faculty Publications By Year

With increasing climate change effects worldwide, rainwater harvesting is likely to become more and more important to ensure reliable alternative water supply and to conserve the environment. This article examines two goals to be accomplished through rainwater harvesting: (1) augmenting water supply for proposed development's use through regulations that have been formulated to make the proposed development responsible for at least a portion of the water supply needed to support the new development; and (2) managing stormwater runoff. The results show that many, perhaps most, rainwater harvesting programs, as exemplified by efforts in Singapore and elsewhere around the world, succeed …

Law And Neighborhood Names, Nestor M. Davidson, David Fagundes

Faculty Articles

This Article provides a novel investigation of how law both enables and constrains the ability of city residents to claim, name, and often rename their neighborhoods. A rich interdisciplinary dialogue in fields such as geography and sociology has emerged on the significance of place names, but this literature has largely ignored the legal dimensions of the phenomenon and its implications for urban governance, belonging, and community conflict. This Article’s empirical exploration of the role of law in change and conflict regarding neighborhood identity thus advances the discourse both for legal scholars focused on urban dynamics and across disciplines.

From gentrification …

Are Wide Streets Negligent?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

American commercial streets are typically designed to encourage rapid automobile traffic, thus making streets unsafe for pedestrians. In the 2016 case of Turturro v. City of New York, the New York Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict against a city for failing to slow down such traffic. This article describes Turturro, but shows how limited its holding was: the Turturro court emphasized a city's failure to study traffic calming, so if a city studies its options adequately it can avoid liability even if its policies are unsuccessful.

Island Invasion: The Silent Crisis In Hawaii, Sophia Janssen

Pomona Senior Theses

Keeping out invasive species may, upon first review, seem like a trivial environmental cry from ecologists and deep environmentalists; a belated wish to return to an undeveloped world where nature was pristine. However invasive species create problems that impact all of us and can have far more severe consequences than changing a stunning landscape. These problems are heightened in islands like Hawaii, where the fragile ecosystems have developed over centuries of evolution and adaptation. The introduction of a disease-carrying mosquito can put the people of Hawaii at risk to many vector-born illnesses and create an epidemic, taking human life. The …

Make New York Affordable Again, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Suggests a package of zoning reforms to hold down New York City housing costs, and responds to counterarguments.

Can A Global Fund Help Solve The Global Marine Plastic Debris Problem?, Karen Raubenheimer, Alistair Mcilgorm

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The problem of marine plastic debris impacts all of the world’s oceans and requires all nations to respond. However, developing States require funds to improve waste management infrastructure and services in order to reduce marine debris at source. Plastics manufacturers and retailers globally must be incentivised to design products for the environment as well as for the collection and end-of-life treatment facilities available within the intended markets. Given the oceans are a global common, we investigate the option of developing a global fund mechanism to progress the necessary actions to reduce plastic waste entering the world’s oceans. This requires consideration …

Cartographies Of Power: Unequal Urban Development And The Racialization Of Space In São Paulo, Jessica Hyman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This work aims first and foremost to add to the literature on urban politics and race in Brazil. Where other scholars have not so explicitly addressed the ever present ideology of whiteness in regards to spatial organization and displacement in Brazil, this piece aims to do so. I build off of the work of past scholars in reinforcing that the belief in the racial democracy of Brazil is in fact a myth. I do so by illustrating the processes of the racialization of space that occur in São Paulo’s favelas and their development. The right to the city —a Brazilian …

Case Study: Robin Hood Or Criminal? The Case Of A Bank Loan Officer, Vincent Agnello, Joseph F. Winter, Hai Ta

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Employees who deviate from established rules at work face suspension or termination from their employment. Yet, knowing these dire consequences employees may still find themselves walking on a different path of business policy. Most employee wrongful conduct is done with the specific intent of benefitting the employee. In some cases, the authorities are brought in to intervene and criminal charges are brought against the employee, as in the case of embezzlement. Some acts are done by employees who do not believe in their company’s rules and are willing to deviate from them, not for their own benefit, but rather for …

Usury And The Common Good, Jim Wishloff

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

The human person’s social nature makes justice and the common good subjects of immense importance. St. Thomas Aquinas defines justice as “the habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will” (Aquinas, 1948, II-II, q.58, a.1). Looking more closely at the definition, we see that justice resides in and perfects the rational will. By willing to be just we perfect our moral personhood. The essence of the virtue is to give to others what is their right by virtue of their nature as human beings. Thus, justice inclines us to think of and …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Editors

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Cover

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Holding Ridesharing Companies Accountable In Texas, Martha Alejandra Salas

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

The Rise Of Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Compares market urbanism to new urbanism and to defenders of suburban sprawl. Like new urbanists, market urbanists find urban life to be socially valuable, and emphasize that sprawl is not always in line with consumer preferences. But market urbanists are more likely to emphasize the role of government regulation in creating suburbanization, and to oppose anti-sprawl land use regulations.