Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

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 …

Circular Economy: Waste-To-Wealth, Jobs The Global South, Katie Conlon, Randika Jayasinghe, Ranahansa Dasanayake

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Circular Economy [CE] is predominantly framed as a means for circulating material streams within the technosphere as economically as possible, for as long as possible, in both applications of theory and practice. Arising from requirements for regulatory compliance, some global north industries have ventured into CE, and now this model is making headway in all industrial sectors. Whereas, in the global south, CE has been conceptualized as a mechanism for keeping materials out of the waste streams otherwise destined to reach landfills, waterways etc. Characteristic haphazard waste management is a serious socio-environmental issue in Sri Lanka. As a result, CE …

Reflection Roundtable: White Supremacy In Oregon History, Karen J. Gibson, Darrell Millner, Carmen Thompson, Adrienne Nelson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Oregon Historical Society Panel Discussion with Dr. Karen Gibson, Dr. Darrell Millner, Dr. Carmen Thompson, and Justice Adrienne Nelson, Moderator. Reflection on Hatfield Lecture by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. October 29, 2020.

This panel reflects upon the Oregon Historical Society event two days prior, the second virtual Hatfield Lecture Series talk held October 27 that featured the one and only Henry Louis Gates, Jr., host of Finding Your Roots and author of a number of books including his latest work, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow.

Racial Justice Is Climate Justice: Racial Capitalism And The Fossil Economy, Julius Mcgee, Patrick Trent Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The narrative of oppression moves through dialectical pressures. Capitalism evolved from the feudal order that preceded it, creating new forms of racial oppression that benefited an emerging ruling class [1]. Racial tensions evolve alongside economic oppression that subjugates labor to capital. The preceding racial order molds to emerging mechanisms of expropriation and exploitation by way of force and resistance. Beneath the surface of these tensions lies the interconnected threads of ecological and human expropriation. At the heart of all oppression, lies the manipulation of reproduction. The social processes necessary to reproduce black and brown communities, the ecological processes necessary to …

How Long Can Neoliberalism Withstand Climate Crisis?, Julius Mcgee, Patrick Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The climate crisis is proving to be antithetical to the neoliberal machines that define current forms of social organization. On the one hand, reducing fossil fuel consumption, the largest contributor to climate change, requires collaborative efforts. These efforts must take into consideration the foundational role of fossil fuels in modern economies. We must acknowledge, for instance, that most peoples’ livelihoods are tethered to fossil fuels, which recent studies have demonstrated is not the result of random historical development but deliberate policy.1 Fossil fuels continue to be used as a form of social domination—a means to expropriate productive and reproductive …

Adaptive Injustice: Responsibility To Act In The Plastics Economy, Katie Conlon

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

How can plastic material be reduced, reused, repurposed, or salvaged so it is kept out of rivers, oceans and ecosystems in general? Social awareness about the impacts of plastic pollution is growing, and creative, social solutions to the ‘plastic menace’ are popping up globally. Every day, one can read about the latest, innovative method for managing plastic waste at the local level: plastic PET bottles stuffed with plastic-film food wrappers to make ‘ecobricks;’ paving roads with plastic waste; making yoga-wear out of marine plastic pollution; weaving plastic into tote bags; using a 3D printer to make plastic into products for …

Albina Zone, Lisa Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Story Summary:
In near future Portland, the police have been abolished, but what else is needed for real liberation? A gifted young woman and her mother struggle to communicate across a rift of unspoken history.

Foreword to Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Memories of Abolition Day

There are times when our lived reality feels stranger than science fiction - a viral pandemic, an economic crisis, global conflicts on multiple frontlines, the rise of white supremacist racism, a wave of state violence against Black bodies, the fiery uprisings across the nation, and militarized guards deployed in response… It was the Red Summer …

Transforming Innovation For Decarbonisation? Insights From Combining Complex Systems And Social Practice Perspectives, Nicola Labanca, Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Matt Watson, Kristian Krieger, Dario Padovan, Laura Watts, Mithra Moezzi, Grégoire Wallenborn, Rebecca Wright, Erik Laes, Multiple Additional Authors

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Technological innovations seem to be among the great promises for achieving the urgent modernisation of economies towards carbon-neutrality. Ranging from fusion energy, bio-based fuels, carbon capture and storage to PV panels and so-called smart energy systems, plenty of technologies promise to reduce use or greenhouse gas emissions of carbon based energy sources. This techno-centric view disregards to a great extent that technological change affects and is affected by societal practices and norms.

The present paper argues that contemporary methodological approaches informed by complex systems and social practices theories provide urgently needed insights into innovation for decarbonisation. It specifically addresses the …

Assessing The Barriers To Equity In Smart Mobility Systems: A Case Study Of Portland, Oregon, Aaron Golub, Vivian Satterfield, Michael Serritella, Jai Singh, Senna Phillips

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is an active debate about the potential costs and benefits of emerging “smart mobility” systems, especially in how they will serve communities already facing transportation challenges. This paper describes the results of an assessment of these equity issues in the context of lower-income areas of Portland, Oregon, based on a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research. The study found that by lowering costs and improving service for public transit, ridesharing and active transportation, smart mobility systems could address many of the needs of transportation disadvantaged communities. Similar to those found in other case studies, significant barriers prevent smart mobility …

Access To Opportunity Project: Final Report, Shawn Flanigan, Emily Lieb, Lisa K. Bates, Raphael Bostic, Sheryl V. Whitney

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project’s goal is to lift up promising approaches, suggest new strategies and encourage honest conversations that result in public policy solutions to income and racial segregation and poverty. The overarching question that motivates this work is:

• What are effective policies and strategies that promote access to high-opportunity amenities for low-income families?

As a first step, the researchers surveyed efforts on the ground in the metropolitan areas encompassing Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, California, to determine whether there were any candidates for deeper study. We selected these three metropolitan areas for several reasons. First, prior interaction revealed that …

Adapting An Elementary School Nutrition Context Assessment For High School Settings And Students, Deborah H. John, Beret Halverson, Tia H. Ho

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The school nutrition context is comprised of supportive environmental features, programs, policies, and social relationships that shape students’ healthy dietary choices and patterns. When engaging students as change agents, advocates, and partners in making healthy nutrition choices easier, environmental assessment tools developed for adults may be too complex or inappropriately tailored for youth. Adolescents need practical, user-tailored tools that reliably measure the food and beverage environments they encounter in school to inform youth-led changes to the school nutrition context. To meet this need, an evidence-based school environmental assessment was adapted for use in high schools by students as evaluators. Cooperative …

Changes In Farmland Ownership In Oregon, Usa, Megan Horst

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The ownership of agricultural land has important implications for food systems, the environment, farmer livelihoods, and rural economies, communities, and landscapes. This article examines the changing ownership of agricultural lands in the United States, specifically focusing on Oregon, a state with a history of family farm ownership. I first review historical and recent trends in farmland ownership, including private enclosure, consolidation, investor purchase, development, and rising farmland prices. Next, I examine the county records for all Oregon farm properties that sold between 2010 and 2015. I provide summary statistics about the volume and pace of transactions, price per acre, and …

Rescaling Air Quality Management: An Assessment Of Local Air Quality Authorities In The United States, Kelsea A. Schumacher, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Institutional design for local air quality management is an underdeveloped area for research and practice. Although the United States has more than a century of organizational experience managing air quality at the Federal level, the recent years have seen a surge of interest in addressing municipal-scale solutions. Without information about the institutional designs, governance structures, and implications of localizing air quality management, practitioners may face challenges reducing population exposure to air pollutants. We offer a US national perspective on managing local air quality by assessing and surveying 117 local air quality authorities identified by the National Association of Clean Air …

Integrating Satellite And Ground Measurements For Predicting Locations Of Extreme Urban Heat, Vivek Shandas, Jackson Lee Voelkel, Joseph Williams, Jeremy Hoffman

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The emergence of urban heat as a climate-induced health stressor is receiving increasing attention among researchers, practitioners, and climate educators. However, the measurement of urban heat poses several challenges with current methods leveraging either ground based, in situ observations, or satellite-derived surface temperatures estimated from land use emissivity. While both techniques contain inherent advantages and biases to predicting temperatures, their integration may offer an opportunity to improve the spatial resolution and global application of urban heat measurements. Using a combination of ground-based measurements, machine learning techniques, and spatial analysis, we addressed three research questions: (1) How much do ambient temperatures …

Nature-Based Designs To Mitigate Urban Heat: The Efficacy Of Green Infrastructure Treatments In Portland, Oregon, Yasuyo Makido, Dana E. Hellman, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island effect, combined with warming effects of climate change, is likely to cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Alterations to the physical, built environment are a viable option for mitigating urban heat, yet few studies provide systematic guidance to practitioners for adapting diverse land uses. In this study, we examine the use of green infrastructure treatments to evaluate changes in ambient temperatures across diverse land uses in the city of Portland, Oregon. We apply ENVI-met® microclimate modeling at the …

Capturing The Built Environment-Travel Interaction For Strategic Planning: Development Of A Multimodal Travel Module For The Regional Strategic Planning Model (Rspm), Liming Wang, Brian Gregor, Huajie Yang, Tara Weidner, Anthony Knudson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Integrated land use and transportation models have evolved along a spectrum from simple sketch planning models to complex microsimulation models. While each has its niche, they are largely unable to balance the flexibility and realism of microsimulation and the speed and interactivity of simple models. The Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) aims to fill this gap by taking a microsimulation approach while making other simplifications in order to model first-order effects quickly. It enables planners to consider the robustness of prospective policies in the face of future uncertainties by accepting a broad range of inputs and allowing rapid simulations of …

Small Steps On The Long Journey To Equality: A Timeline Of Post-Legislation Civil Rights Struggles In Portland, Leanne Claire Serbulo

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Leanne Serbulo presented a timeline of civil rights struggles in Portland, Oregon, at a public history roundtable at the Oregon Historical Society commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In this record of her presentation, Serbulo documents milestones in dismantling racial discrimination between 1949 and 1990. For this timeline, Serbulo researched Metropolitan Human Relations Commission (MHRC) records held at the Portland City Archives and traces how the commission navigated the process of improving race relations in the city and Multnomah County. As Serbulo argues, “civil rights legislation was simply the first step in a long and unfinished …

Reorganizing School Lunch For A More Just And Sustainable Food System In The Us, Jennifer Gaddis, Amy K. Coplen

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the "heat-and-serve" economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that …

The Labor Between Farm And Table: Cultivating An Urban Political Ecology Of Agrifood For The 21st Century, Amy K. Coplen

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The variegated landscape of food production and consumption reveals a great deal about socionatural relations and processes of urbanization and globalization under capitalism. Food production has changed dramatically over time, shifting away (but never fully divorced) from the rural agrarian landscape to spaces that are characterized as industrial and/or urban. Workers transform nature at each stage in the food production process, not only on farms but also in processing plants, grocery stores, restaurants, and other spaces. This paper draws on urban political ecology (UPE) to position labor as central to understanding the socioecological relations embodied in food systems. It puts …

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

Transforming Development And Disaster Risk, Frank Thomalla, Michael Boyland, Karlee Johnson, Jonathan Ensor, Heidi Tuhkanen, Asa Gerger Swartling, Guoyi Han, John Forrester, Darin Wahl

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Abstract:

This article focuses on the complex relationship between development and disaster risk. Development and disaster risk are closely linked as the people and assets exposed to risk, as well as their vulnerability and capacity, are largely determined by development processes. Transformation is key to moving from current development patterns that increase, create or unfairly distribute risks, to forms of development that are equitable, resilient and sustainable. Based on a review of existing literature, we present three opportunities that have the potential to lead to transformation in the development-disaster risk relationship: (i) exposing development-disaster risk trade-offs in development policy and …

Assessing Vulnerability To Urban Heat: A Study Of Disproportionate Heat Exposure And Access To Refuge By Socio-Demographic Status In Portland, Oregon, Jackson Voelkel, Dana E. Hellman, Ryu Sakuma, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extreme urban heat is a powerful environmental stressor which poses a significant threat to human health and well-being. Exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, heat events are expected to become more intense and frequent as climate change progresses, though we have limited understanding of the impact of such events on vulnerable populations at a neighborhood or census block group level. Focusing on the City of Portland, Oregon, this study aimed to determine which socio-demographic populations experience disproportionate exposure to extreme heat, as well as the level of access to refuge in the form of public cooling centers or residential …

Goodbye To The National Endowment For The Arts?, Naomi Adiv

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the shadow of the truly egregious policies rolled out by the Trump administration in their first year in office (anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies, de-staffing the State Department into paralysis, shrinking national monuments, strangling the ACA), and a general tone of chaos surrounding the office of the presidency, a standing threat remains. That is: among other cuts, freezes and gag orders, the administration has vowed to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Here, I demonstrate how current political arguments around defunding the NEA are derived …

Hedonic Modeling Of Commercial Property Values: Distance Decay From The Links And Nodes Of Rail And Highway Infrastructure, Kihwan Seo, Deborah Salon, Michael Kuby, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study investigates the impacts of positive and negative externalities of highways and light rail on commercial property values in Phoenix, Arizona. We hypothesize that the positive externality (i.e., accessibility) of highway and light rail accrues at exits and stations, whereas nodes and links of highways and light rail emanate negative effects. Positive and negative effects decay with increasing distance and are captured by multiple distance bands. Hypotheses are tested using a spatial error regression model. Results show that commercial property values are positively and significantly associated with the accessibility benefits of transport nodes. The distance-band coefficients form a typical …

Book Review Of, City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance And Public Space In The Age Of Shrinking Democracy, Naomi Adiv

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book review of, Jeffrey Hou and Sabine Knierbein, City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, New York and London: Routledge, 2017.

In response to austerity politics and market-based governance of urban land, large-scale social protest has erupted in the public spaces of cities across the globe. In City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (Routledge, 2017), editors Jeffrey Hou of UW-Seattle and Sabine Knierbein of SKuOR, Vienna – both scholars of the dynamics of public space – have compiled the stories, strategies and theories derived from social movements …

Growth Without Displacement: A Test For Equity Planning In Portland, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland, Oregon, is considered a pioneer of regionalism, integrated land-use and transportation planning, and sustainability as a criterion for planning policy. After four decades of land-use planning, Portland has a national and international reputation for urban livability and climate change mitigation. While these successes are laudable, in the past decade Portland’s underrepresented and underserved communities have been raising a voice to demand that planners address issues of income and racial inequality. In response to and in collaboration with communities, over the past five years Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) has adopted an equity strategy with a racial justice …

Divergent Pathways On The Road To Sustainability: A Multilevel Model Of The Effects Of Geopolitical Power On The Relationship Between Economic Growth And Environmental Quality, Patrick Greiner, Julius Alexander Mcgee

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The authors examine the effect of a country’s placement in the world system in 1960 on its ability to use wealth to mitigate environmental impacts. They use random-coefficients models to examine if countries belonging to core, semiperiphery, and periphery categories are able to use growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita to reduce CO2 emissions per capita. The findings indicate that core nations have an attenuated relationship between GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions per capita at higher levels of economic activity. However, nations in the semiperiphery have a relationship between GDP per capita and CO2 per capita …

Closing Schools Is Like “Taking Away Part Of My Body”: The Impact Of Gentrification On Neighborhood, Public Schools In Inner Northeast Portland, Leanne Claire Serbulo

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This “politically engaged educational ethnography” explores the role that gentrification played in the disinvestment of inner Northeast Portland neighborhood schools (Lipman, 2009, 216). Inner Northeast Portland, Oregon, USA, a predominately African American neighborhood, began gentrifying in the mid-1990s. As investment flooded into the neighborhood, its schools paradoxically declined, losing students and resources. As longtime resident families were displaced from gentrification pressures, newer white, middle-class residents utilized the school choice program to opt-out of sending their kids to the neighborhood schools. Facing declining community support, inner Northeast schools were targeted for closure or redesign. Despite these challenges, the longtime resident community …

"Naturally Occurring" Or "Until Market Speculation Starts": Investigating The Precarity Of Affordable Rental Housing And The Potential For Displacement Along Planned Transit Lines, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

New transit infrastructure is a double-edged sword for low-income renters: one the one hand, increased mobility supports access to jobs and critical services; but if transit-oriented development fails to include and preserve affordable housing, they may be pushed out by rising rents. The question of whether public investments spur gentrification and displacement have created intense controversy around planned transit extensions in our region. My research on precarious rental housing illuminates the specific mechanisms of housing displacement and challenges for housing affordability in the single-family/duplex and the large multifamily rental market. The loss of low-cost housing is occurring even without new …

Preserving Housing Choice And Opportunity: A Study Of Apartment Building Sales And Rents, Seyoung Sung, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

NOAH sales show precariousness of this rental housing at a regional scale.

• Active transactions of multifamily rental properties have been disproportionately NOAH. There have been over two thousand transactions of NOAH buildings in the Portland metro area from 2006 to 2017 — over 68,000 units of housing. These sales are accelerating, with over 20 percent occurring in just the last 18 months.
• Sales prices for multifamily rental properties have increased substantially, making preservation of affordable rents more challenging. Regionally, the average sale price increased by 78 percent between 2010 and 2017; during this period there was a 43 percent …