Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Community Development Corporations And Neighborhood Stability In Hartford And New Haven, Ct, Gabriell Nelson

Masters Theses

This study investigated the effects of CDC housing revitalization programs in Hartford and New Haven, CT on neighborhood stability. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, this study sought to connect the observed impacts in Hartford and New Haven with the literature on revitalization in formerly industrial cities. Data on three key indicators of neighborhood stability (property values, owner occupancy rates, and vacancy rates) were collected for the time period spanning 2000 to 2019. Street conditions were observed by a Google Street View “windshield survey” of the CDC focus areas; conditions were observed in 2011 and again in 2019 …

Community Operational Research: A Survey Of The Discipline, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, Jason D. Wright, George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Trec/Oapa Webinar: Authentic Community Engagement, Eryn Kehe, Wendy Serrano

TREC Webinar Series

This webinar will provide practical tools for designing effective and authentic community engagement for transportation projects. Too often, we can forget to ask ourselves who, what and why for our engagement processes. Authentic community engagement requires us to think through exactly why we need to involve the public, how they can influence project decisions and who the most impacted people may be. This session will walk you through the steps to plan a unique engagement approach for each project and share examples of what can happen when these tools are used correctly and what can go wrong when they are …

Uwt Experiences In The Townships Of South Africa, Bridging Borders, Breaking Bread, Fern Tiger, Christopher Knaus, Maija Thiel, Anneka Olson, Autumn Diaz

Conflux

In late August, 2017, twelve students representing all academic levels (undergraduate, masters, and doctorate) from all three University of Washington campuses (Tacoma, Bothell, Seattle) journeyed to Cape Town, South Africa, where they participated in a three-week UWT study abroad course. Students examined a range of community development activities and gained an understanding of pressing “township” development issues, including a range of conflicts between business interests and community needs. Students also learned how schools and non-governmental organizations have sought to empower and transform communities. This paper synthesizes key reflections of this remarkable urban experience from Professor Fern Tiger, Christopher Knaus and …

Focusing On Equity In Regional Plans, Kristine M. Williams

TREC Project Briefs

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have long been required to consider the equity implications of their regional transportation plans and processes.

Paradoxes Of Violence: A Post-Colonial 'Gaze' On Chicago's Segregation, Zackary Rupp

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Although post-colonial theory was developed to examine the legacy of colonial powers, this project proposes that post-colonial theory can nonetheless fruitfully be used for a literary analysis of the Fair Housing Act to account for the typically non-colonial legacy of US segregation. Even though Chicago is not a city in the colonial context, the post-colonial discourse of violence, territorialization, and citizenship are useful tools for understanding the language in legislation that shaped American systemic segregation. Through a post-colonial lens, the research shifts the individual attention away from the marginalized offender and focuses on systemic othering that has shaped spaces suffering …

Evaluating The Distributional Effects Of Regional Transportation Plans And Projects, Kristine Williams, Aaron Golub

TREC Final Reports

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have long been required to consider the equity implications of their regional transportation plans and processes. Funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, this research aims to provide additional guidance to MPOs on how to evaluate distributional equity in regional plans and projects. The report begins with an overview of federal requirements related to equity in transportation planning. We then synthesize contemporary methods for measuring transportation equity and the distributional effects of plans and projects from a review of the literature and MPO plans and studies. The report concludes with exploratory case studies of …

Community Land Trusts: A Help Or Hindrance To Community Development In The United States, Andrew Kuka

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

The availability of affordable housing in the United States continues to be an issue for Americans who are on the brink of homelessness, rely on housing subsidies, or struggle to pay their mortgages or rents. These issues, as well as the gentrification threat that community development poses to low-income residents can have deleterious effects on democratic participation and community development efforts. One proposed solution to these problems is the implementation of more community land trust programs nationally. This paper will assess the practicality of CLTs, and what such an implementation would mean for individuals, government entities, community members, and community …

Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: #11;A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Financial Intermediaries For Community And Economic Development In Ohio: Market Assessment, Ziona Austrian, Brian A. Mikelbank, Afia Yamoah, Charles Post, Candice Clouse, David O. Kasdan

Ziona Austrian

This report describes the results of an in-depth market assessment study conducted for the Finance Fund by the Center for Economic Development and the Center for Housing Research and Policy at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs. The Finance Fund, located in Columbus, Ohio, is a statewide nonprofit financial intermediary. It finds funding and provides resources to support organizations that assist low- and moderate-income families and communities.1 The Finance Fund works primarily within low-income rural and urban communities throughout the state of Ohio by connecting local community development organizations and small businesses with needed funding in the form …

Razing Lafitte: Defending Public Housing From A Hostile State, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

The contentious politics of the demolition of Lafitte public housing in post- Katrina New Orleans and its replacement with mixed-income properties is a telling case of the strategic conflicts housing advocates face in public housing revitalization. It reveals how the qualified outcomes of HOPE VI interact with local institutional and historical circumstances to confound the equity and social justice goals of housing and community development advocates. It shows the limits to public housing revitalization as an urban recovery strategy when hostile government leadership characterizes a region, and the state is recast as an adversary rather than revitalization partner. This case …

Advancing The Human Right To Housing In Post-Katrina New Orleans: Discursive Opportunity Structures In Housing And Community Development, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

In post-Katrina New Orleans, housing and community development (HCD) advocates clashed over the future of public housing. This case study examines the evolution of and limits to a human right to housing frame introduced by one nongovernmental organization (NGO). Ferree’s concept of the discursive opportunity structure and Bourdieu’s social field ground this NGO’s failure to advance a radical economic human rights frame, given its choice of a political inside strategy that opened up for HCD NGOs after Hurricane Katrina. Strategic and ideological differences within the field limited the efficacy of this rights-based frame, which was seen as politically radical and …

Urban Form In Europe And America, Pietro S. Nivola

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

Why do America's cities sprawl whereas European cities remain comparatively compact, and what difference do the patterns of urban development make? Pietro Nivola, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, addresses these questions. Nivola examines two kinds of determinants of urban form: (1) market forces, including those influenced by geography, demographics, and technological change, and (2) public policies shaping national transportation systems, tax policy, educational institutions, and more. He also discusses the implications of the different cityscapes for energy consumption.

Financial Intermediaries For Community And Economic Development In Ohio: Market Assessment, Ziona Austrian, Brian A. Mikelbank, Afia Yamoah, Charles Post, Candice Clouse, David O. Kasdan

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This report describes the results of an in-depth market assessment study conducted for the Finance Fund by the Center for Economic Development and the Center for Housing Research and Policy at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs. The Finance Fund, located in Columbus, Ohio, is a statewide nonprofit financial intermediary. It finds funding and provides resources to support organizations that assist low- and moderate-income families and communities.1 The Finance Fund works primarily within low-income rural and urban communities throughout the state of Ohio by connecting local community development organizations and small businesses with needed funding in the form …

Permanently Failing Organizations? Small Business Recovery After September 11, 2001, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

Small businesses in Lower Manhattan after September 11, 2001, paint a telling portrait of vulnerability after disasters. This qualitative analysis of recovery for small retail and service firms with 50 or fewer employees is based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and documentary research from September 2001 through 2005. A postdisaster emphasis on place-based assistance to firms conflicted with macro-level redevelopment plans for Lower Manhattan. Small business recovery was impeded as aid programs responded to a new sense of urgency, attachment to place, and prestorm conceptions of the neighborhood at the expense of addressing community-wide economic changes accelerated by the disaster. Ingredients …

Gateway Gardens Site Analysis, Chris Gage, Rory Renfro, Jessica Sarver, Ben Sturtz, Nicole Wolters

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Gateway Gardens Site Analysis takes a comprehensive look at a largely-vacant land area in Portland’s Gateway District. Currently owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), the 38-acre site currently serves as right-of-way for surrounding freeways, namely Interstates 84 and 205.

The project team developed a sequential process for completing this report. To gain an understanding of the project site, the initial step consisted of identifying key historical events and land uses that formed the site into what it is today. The team then conducted an in-depth existing conditions analysis, covering a wide range of elements including natural and …

The Market For Change: Community Economic Development On A Wider Stage, Peter R. Pitegoff

Faculty Publications

Community economic development (CED) is distinguished by a specific agenda for broader development and accountability - for building local resources, economic capacity and political clout in lower- and moderate-income communities. Organizing and development of low-income communities must take account of microenterprise as the locus of substantial economic activity.

Helping Everyone Have Plenty: Addressing Distribution And Circulation In An Hours-Based Local Currency System, Jonathan Lepofsky, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper summarizes research conducted by the authors who served as the ad-hoc Disbursement Task Force created by NCPlenty, Inc., the non-profit managing agency for a local currency system in central North Carolina, USA. NCPlenty, Inc. began printing a scrip-based local currency called the PLENTY in October 2002. The PLENTY, or Piedmont Local EcoNomy Tender, is based on the Ithaca HOURS currency and has faced circulation and distribution issues similar to other HOURS-based systems in the US. While at the start of the PLENTY’s first year of circulation the number of participating individuals and businesses nearly doubled and a vibrant …

Neighborhood Associations: The Foundation Of Community Development, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Neighborhood associations are one of the most ubiquitous types of voluntary organization. This paper reviews a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives on the concept of neighborhood and the various organized expressions of neighborhood organizing in rural and urban communities.

Holgate Lake Study: An Examination Of The Issues Associated With Groundwater Flooding, John J. Lynch Jr., Heidi A. Mader, Mark Mccann

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This project examines Holgate Lake. Despite its natural hazard characteristics, the Holgate Lake area has not been immune to development pressure. Holgate Lake is an intermittent water body that forms when groundwater levels rise. Historical accounts show that the lake has formed at many different times in the last century. Because the lake fluctuates with the groundwater level, it is not necessarily present from year to year. As the area has developed, more and more people built in the location of the natural lakebed when the water was not present. When the lake level returned in the 1960's flooding of …

A Pathway To Sustainability, Patricia Scruggs, Ethan Seltzer, Portland State University. Institute Of Portland Metropolitan Studies

Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Publications

This workbook is meant to provide basic information and options for developing a strategy within your own community. Since economic, environmental, social, and political aspects differ from town to town, there is no magic wand for developing a sustainable community effort. There are, however, common processes which have been used by communities across the country that can provide a foundation for local efforts.

Boston's Housing In 1984: Issues And Opportunities, Rolf Goetze

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

Sharp cutbacks in federal aid for housing and community development now challenge Boston to become more resourceful in its housing strategies. In the neighborhoods where new solutions are needed, much has already been happening that can be adapted and expanded. Fortunately, the City's resurgence can also help achieve more results with less public resources, but a fresh approach involving community interests is essential. At the same time, local laws, procedures and programs devised to address past problems must also be critically re-evaluated to determine their appropriateness to the new realities.

Confidence in Boston's future is being uplifted, and many neighborhoods …