Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Richmond Handbook: The Future Of Youth Engagement In The Planning & Design Sector Of Richmond, Virginia, Chanté C. Holt

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Storefront for Community Design is a non-profit organization in Richmond, Virginia that works to make design programs and resources accessible to all. While honoring this commitment, the organization also devotes resources to educating K-12 students on urban planning processes in the City of Richmond. Using this as a framework, the research creates parameters that guide the best practices for stakeholders such as the client Storefront for Community Design who are invested in producing urban planning educational material and programming. To effectively create recommendations for this client, the professional plan establishes the current state of urban planning education in the Richmond, …

Ev Charging At Multifamily Properties: Moving Beyond Barriers, Whit Jamieson, Anna Guida, Connor Herman

PSU Transportation Seminars

Transportation is the top contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the US and light-duty vehicles are the #1 contributor to transportation emissions. Mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is key in the fight toward a more sustainable future, but there are several factors that have delayed our transition to EVs.

EV charging at home is the most convenient and cost-effective charging option for EV drivers, but people living in multifamily housing face serious barriers to accessing home charging. During this session, we will explore why EV charging at multifamily housing is critical to mass adoption of EVs, barriers to charging …

Bike Buses: An Evaluation Of An Emerging Active Transportation To School Intervention, Evan Howington, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur

TREC Faculty and Staff Publications

Bike buses are a relatively new form of active transportation to school (ATS) that have primarily emerged in Europe and the United States. A form of coordinated, group bike riding along a defined route to school, bike buses are an outgrowth of Safe Routes to School interventions in North America that seek to reverse the declining rates of walking and biking to school among children. Our initial phase of research included a literature review of social and environmental factors affecting ATS in the contemporary North American context, and two convenience surveys of bike bus coordinators and parent participants. This initial …

Addressing Transportation Emissions Through State Climate And Energy Policy, Amy Schlusser

PSU Transportation Seminars

Oregon has adopted policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy and transportation sectors. This presentation will provide some background on these policy frameworks and explore how these policies impact transportation fuels and the transportation sector more broadly.

Fast-Tracking Transit: Unveiling Portland's First Bus Rapid Transit Line And Signal Optimization Strategies, Mark Haines, Jesse Stemmler

PSU Transportation Seminars

This presentation on the Division Transit Project will provide an overview of the project elements including roadway design, bus station design, traffic signal timing and operations and the Next Gen Transit Signal Priority (TSP) system. We will discuss some lessons learned and provide before and after results from the project.

Let Knowledge Serve The City! A Decade Of Better Block Psu Projects, Ryan Hashagen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Better Block PSU works with Planning and Civil Engineering students to bring community ideas to life! Over the last 10 years, the pathway has resulted in many real world pop ups and capital projects implemented by volunteers and PBOT.

An Update To The October 2015 Working Draft On Drogheda – Ireland’S Emerging Sixth City, Using 2022 Census Data, Brian Hughes Dr, Brian Hughes Dr

Reports

This research update of author’s earlier Paper of October 2015 ‘Greater Drogheda: Emerging Demographic Evidence Base for Ireland’s Sixth City’ by reviewing and updating the growth of the Greater Drogheda Area (GDrA). It includes an examination of the fusion of its two largest settlements, Drogheda and fast-growing Laytown, Bettystown, Mornington and Donacarney (LBMD) towns. The scale of Drogheda’s growth is evidenced as a city and not that of the National Planning Framework’s Regional Growth Towns, as the evidence of this Paper will show. My 2015 paper and also my 2010 PhD are published in [email protected], under Brian Hughes.

The Impacts Of A Multimodal Safety Project On North Lombard Street In Portland, Oregon, Jason Anderson

PSU Transportation Seminars

North Lombard Street/US-30 Bypass is a critical corridor in North Portland, serving both commercial and residential interests. This corridor is also ranked 11th in terms of fatal and serious injury crashes in Portland. The Oregon Department of Transportation and the Portland Bureau of Transportation undertook a reconfiguration to improve multimodal safety and accessibility for all users. The reconfiguration happened between North Fiske Ave and North Boston Ave. Improvements included additional curb ramps that meet ADA standards, safer crosswalks with fewer lanes to cross, buffered bike lanes, new pavement and center turn lanes, traffic signals, and RRFBs and median refuge islands. …

Transportation Decarbonization: A State Perspective, Tara Weidner

PSU Transportation Seminars

Oregon continues to be a leader in Transportation Decarbonization efforts nationally. The webinar will outline the state’s transportation GHG reduction roadmap, developed in 2012 to tackle legislatively mandated GHG reduction goals, with associated GHG targets for the state’s 8 metropolitan areas. Learn how this north star has guided our collective efforts within the state. How monitoring and new initiatives and regulations have kept us on course to these ambitious goals. And what actions remain to close the gap, both systematic changes at state and local levels, as well as individual choices by private firms and households. Actions that will both …

Eviction In Oregon's Subsidized Affordable Housing, Yi Wang, Lisa K. Bates, Azad Amir-Ghassemi, Minji Cho, Marisa Zapata, Jacen Greene, Colleen Carroll, Devin Macarthur

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Despite Oregon's expanded investments in affordable housing development and eviction prevention, over 5,400 eviction cases were filed in the state’s subsidized housing from January 2019 to December 2023. This report maps out the landscape of subsidized housing eviction in Oregon and brings attention to the high share of eviction judgments in subsidized eviction cases, the disproportionate rate of eviction filings from housing-authority-contracted management companies and nonprofit housing providers, and the great disparities in legal representation between landlords and tenants.

Promoting Cultural Humility, Belonging, And Inclusion To Improve Well-Being Among Direct Care Staff In Oregon Assisted Living, Residential Care, And Memory Care Communities, 2024, Jacklyn Kohon, Dani Himes, Laura Rodriguez, Sarah Dys, Paula Carder, Diana Jacoby, Madeline Fox

Institute on Aging Publications

The voices and experiences of those working and living in assisted living, residential care, and memory care (AL/RC) settings in Oregon are highlighted in this study to understand cultural humility, belonging, inclusion, and intersectional experiences related to sustaining the workforce and promoting quality care. This qualitative study collected data through individual and focus group interviews with a total of 68 people, including 25 direct care staff, voice memos or interviews with 9 former direct care staff, interviews with 9 administrators, interviews with 7 management representatives (owner/operators, human resources specialists, directors of operations, among other titles), and interviews with 18 current …

Webinar: Building Capacity In Gateway Communities Through The Gnar Academy, Jordan Katcher, Elizabeth Sodja

TREC Webinar Series

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities across the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased tourism. As we have documented via our prior NITC-funded research, this has created a range of big city challenges for these “gateway communities,” particularly in the form of interconnected transportation, land use, and housing issues. Seeking to help gateway communities better prepare for and respond to their transportation and planning challenges, the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative team translated the findings from our research on planning and development challenges in gateway communities into an online learning …

Wasted Space: Using Parking Lots & Vacant Land To Improve Neighborhood Completeness, Ryan Martyn

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This study conducts a spatial analysis of Portland, Oregon, focusing on leveraging underutilized areas like parking lots and vacant land—termed "wasted space"—to improve the city's completeness. Central to this investigation is the concept of a "complete neighborhood," characterized by access to daily necessities within convenient active transportation trip. This comprehensive idea encompasses walkability, equitable access to services, and sustainability.

This paper aims to redefine the concept of a complete neighborhood with precision and delve into its implications. The research looks at five regional, town, and neighborhood centers as defined by the city of Portland. These centers act as pivotal hubs …

Power To The Pedal: Assessing Barriers To Adoption Of Closed-Access Bike Share In Low-Income Communities, Jordan Del Valle Tonoian

University Honors Theses

Power to the Pedal is a fare-free, closed-access e-bike share program, operating more similarly to a lending library. The program aims to provide two low-income communities access to a reliable, low-emissions, electric assisted, active transportation option. The research conducted aimed to identify barriers faced by the community to adopting the bike sharing program. A survey and interviews conducted found that infrastructure, safety, cargo, financial ability, household structure, health, and culture all play a role when deciding when to use the program. Several recommendations are made to the program owner, operator, and other stakeholders both about improving the program directly, and …

Streets Are For People! Livable Streets 2.0 And Five Decades Of The Conflict, Power And Promise Of Our Streets, Bruce Appleyard

PSU Transportation Seminars

Streets constitute the majority of our urban public spaces, yet we struggle everyday with how they should be designed and operated for travel, safety, and livability. In 1969, when Dr. Bruce Appleyard was 4 years old, he was hit by a car and nearly killed. Around that time his father, Donald Appleyard, started work on what would become Livable Streets, published in 1981 – a ground-breaking and seminal work, the product of more than a decade of rigorous research and thoughtful analysis that would uncover the ill effects of traffic and laying out the seminal arguments that streets are for …

Oregon In Motion: Shaping Communities Through State Transportation Legislation, Cassie Wilson

PSU Transportation Seminars

About every eight years, the Oregon state legislature passes a large state transportation funding package. Transportation funding packages in Oregon have historically included funding mechanisms such as the gas tax, program areas such as Safe Routes to School, projects such as freeway widenings, and transparency and accountability measures such as establishing new reporting requirements and advisory committees. The way this legislation is developed and who has a seat at the table highly influences package contents and the public and political support needed for its passage. In this presentation, I will provide highlights from my recently published report, Oregon in Motion …

Forest Service Engineering, Lessons And Opportunities, Joe Totten

PSU Transportation Seminars

Working in the Forest Service Engineering has different challenges and benefits than other common organizations for Civil Engineers or Transportation Planners. This presentation should provide a perspective on how we utilize dynamic tensions to reach consensus, how we apply lessons learned across disciplines and agencies, and share opportunities for growth and learning.

Shifting Gears: Toward A New Way Of Thinking About Transportation, Susan Handy

PSU Transportation Seminars

The transportation system in the U.S. has been shaped by a core set of ideas that are embedded in professional practice. These ideas – freedom, speed, mobility, vehicles, capacity, hierarchy, separation, control, and technology – have produced a system in which most people are dependent on driving, with all the negative consequences that entails. Shifting to a system that offers people choices about their daily travel requires a shift in thinking on the part of the transportation profession. In this talk, I take a critical look at the way of thinking that, for the last century, has shaped our transportation …

Webinar: Marginalized Populations’ Access To Transit, Marisa Zapata

TREC Webinar Series

How do people with intersecting marginal identities experience social exclusion as they travel via mass transit? To answer this question, PSU researchers employed a qualitative method less common in transportation studies: photovoice. Researchers asked participants to describe the factors that shape their travel behavior and provide photographic data of their experiences. Then, they conducted in-depth video interviews to gain further depth and clarity regarding the visual data. The findings from this study can help transit system designers better understand how experiences of harassment and discrimination across the entire users’ journey affects the riders’ decisions about whether and when to take …

Contemporary Voter Suppression: Impact On The 2020 General Election, Tiffany Henley, Samuel Brown, Norou Diawara, Md Iqbal Hossain, Gregory Rivera

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

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Political Values, Democracy, And The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, George K. Kieh

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Limits Of Free Speech And Election Misinformation: A Case Study Of 2020, Scott Hofer

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

none

Webinar: Assessing Cool Corridor Heat Resilience Strategies For Human-Scale Transportation, Ladd Keith, Kristina Currans

TREC Webinar Series

Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States, and the implications of heat impacts range from individual transportation users, to emergency management services, and entire transportation networks and systems. In this presentation, we'll cover key concepts for urban planning and heat resilience, including heat mitigation and management strategies. Additionally, we will discuss the original NITC-sponsored data collection evaluating one such cool corridor strategy--PlusTI cool pavement rejuvenator--and the associated challenges of researching impacts of strategies on human-comfort in natural and built environments.

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Forests Are Chill: The Interplay Between Thermal Comfort And Mental Wellbeing, Loïc Gillerot, Kevin Rozario, Pieter De Frenne, Rachel Oh, Quentin Ponette, Aletta Bonn, Winston T. L. Chow, Douglas Godbold, Matthias Steinparzaer, Daniela Haluza, Dries Landuyt, Bart Muys, Kris Verheyen

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

As global warming and urbanisation intensify unabated, a growing share of the human population is exposed to dangerous heat levels. Trees and forests can effectively mitigate such heat alongside numerous health co-benefits like improved mental wellbeing. Yet, which forest types are objectively and subjectively coolest to humans, and how thermal and mental wellbeing interact, remain understudied. We surveyed 223 participants in peri-urban forests with varying biodiversity levels in Austria, Belgium and Germany. Using microclimate sensors, questionnaires and saliva cortisol measures, we monitored intra-individual changes in thermal and mental states from non-forest baseline to forest conditions. Forests reduced daytime modified Physiologically …

Assessing The Benefits Of Distributed Solar In Virginia: 2024 Update And Status Report, Damian Pitt, Dagny Oakley

Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environment Publications and Presentations

Distributed solar energy is growing rapidly in Virginia, and prices are dropping. If these trends continue, the state has the potential to meet a significant percentage of its electricity needs via distributed solar, supporting thousands of jobs and achieving substantial economic benefits in the process. However, reaching these targets will require the continuation of a positive policy and regulatory environment. This includes the removal of several remaining policy barriers, particularly related to shared / community solar, and avoiding some of the negative policy changes that have slowed distributed solar in other states.

This report is an update to a VCU …

What Drives Housing Choices Of Refugees And Immigrants?, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens, Yasmin Al-Zubi, Farah Naz

TREC Project Briefs

When newcomers to the US initially settle, if their chosen location does not meet their expectations or needs, that often propels them to relocate. To determine what helps drive those transition decisions, the researchers interviewed people if they fulfilled one of these requirements:

• They were members of the Dallas County community who were planning to move in the next five years.

• They had recently (within the past five years) moved from their initial residence following their arrival in Dallas County.
• They also had to be immigrants to or refugees in the US who were at least eighteen years old. Out …

Alternative Shelter Evaluation Report, Jacen Greene, Todd Ferry, Emily Leickly, Franklin H. Spurbeck

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

This report summarizes research by Portland State University’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative for the Joint Office of Homeless Services on the cost, participant experiences, and client outcomes in village-style and motel shelters as compared to each other and to traditional, congregate shelters.

Ledroit Park Photograph Collection, Jaclynn Martin

Prints and Photographs Department

The LeDroit Park Photograph Collection is a limited edition of ten (10) 12" x 12" gelatin silver print photographs capturing the revitalized LeDroit Park and its surroundings, taken in 2003 by Steven M. Cummings. The LeDroit Park Initiative, spearheaded in the late 1990s by then-Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert and Ms. Jamie Gorelick, Vice Chair of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), aimed to renovate and redevelop Howard University-owned properties within the LeDroit Park area. The initiative also explored innovative mortgage rates and payment assistance programs to enhance homeownership opportunities for the university-affiliated and neighboring community. Notably, the …

Do Americans Support More Housing?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

An analysis of opinion poll data on housing issues. The article finds that Americans generally believe that their community needs more housing of all types, but are more closely divided about whether such housing should be in their own neighborhoods. The article further finds that members of minority groups, lower-income Americans, and younger Americans are more pro-housing than older, affluent whites.