Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Maximize “West End Opportunity” In America: Alternative Policy Options To Address Perceived Drawbacks Of Tax Increment Financing (Tif) & Opportunity Zones, Justin Avert, Samuel C Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

In March 2021, the Kentucky General Assembly passed House Bill 321 (Acts Chapter 203) authorizing the creation of a tax increment finance (TIF) district within the West End of Louisville. Designed to spur community-wide economic development, it set up a public-private nonprofit partnership. Known as the West End Opportunity Partnership (WEOP), this 21-seat board include community representatives and has sole control over any fund disbursement. Funds can be used towards a broad array of investments including small business loans, financing affordable housing units, home improvements, etc.

Residents within the district have expressed opposition to the TIF, skepticism towards the board …

Active Transportation Counts From Existing On-Street Signal And Detection Infrastructure, Sirisha Kothuri

PSU Transportation Seminars

The goal of agencies is to provide a safe and reliable multimodal transportation system that connects people and helps communities and economy thrive. In order to fulfill this mission, it is important to have a robust understanding of the usage of each mode within the system as well as the linkages between modes. Currently there is no systemic accounting of pedestrian traffic across the transportation network, making it difficult to understand systemic crash safety and prioritize projects. Analysts must rely on imperfect proxies such as land use density, race, income, and transit usage in the absence of measured pedestrian traffic …

Book Review It Takes An Ecosystem: Understanding The People, Places, And Possibilities Of Learning And Development Across Settings, Denise Montgomery

Journal of Youth Development

It Takes an Ecosystem: Understanding the People, Places, and Possibilities of Learning and Development Across Settings, edited by Thomas Akiva and Kimberly H. Robinson, is a call to take a holistic and dynamic ecosystem approach to thinking about, designing, developing, and investing in the allied youth fields to more equitably and effectively support young people’s learning and development. Published in 2022, the volume outlines a vision for out-of-school time programs and systems, schools, community-based organizations, and the public sector to move beyond focusing separately on individual systems to a learning and development ecosystem approach that more accurately and inclusively reflects …

The State-Led Platformisation Of Financial Services: Frictionless Ecosystems And An Expansive Logic Of "Smartness" In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This article explores the role of the state in driving the platformisation of industry, and in doing so offers a counterpoint to scholarship that focusses on the exploitative effects of private sector-led platformisation. That scholarship views platformisation as the latest incarnation of neoliberal urbanism, with the profit-maximising tendencies of the private sector driving the proliferation of platforms throughout everyday life. Notwith- standing, there remains a need to consider alternative models of platformisation. Drawing on 31 interviews with architects of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, we consider the state-led platformisation of financial services. We argue that state-led platformisation can open up marketplaces …

Restricted Powers, Special-Purpose Districts, And Path Dependence: Economic Graveyards In Downstate Illinois, Bethany Behrhorst

Dissertations

Property taxation in the United States is a critical issue warranting examination because it involves the directed distribution of government costs and benefits for citizens. The central question exists: Why are Illinois’ property taxes so high? Path dependence was explored as a theory to explain Illinois’ property tax reliance issues, asserting that as local governmental units in the State face budget limitations, they find alternative revenue streams. For example, restricted powers could lead to the development of quasi-governments, which are known as special-purpose districts. In such cases, once general-purpose municipalities charter a course by creating special-purpose districts, it is difficult …

Personality And The Intention To Use Bus Rapid Transit On Pandemic Covid-19: The Role Of Environmental Concern As A Mediator, Muhammad Abdan Shadiqi

Psychological Research on Urban Society

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the behavior of public transport users and raised concerns about the means of transportation. Therefore, this study aims to explain the mediating effect of environmental concern in the relationship between five personality traits on the intention to use Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) during the pandemic. A correlational survey of 425 participants was conducted, and the analysis found that all five personality traits did not directly predict the intention to use BRT. Furthermore, there was a positive mediating effect at the weak level of environmental concern on the relationship between four of the …

Zimbardo’S Time Perspective And Binge Drinking Patterns In Alcohol Consumption Among Black African International University Students In China, Alice Nguni, Houchao Lyu, Ravi Paul, Xiaobao Li

Psychological Research on Urban Society

Addictive alcohol use among university students in China is a growing public health concern. This study examines Binge drinking and time perspective among Black African students from Southwest University in China. While the Time Perspective focuses on the past, present, or future that may predict alcohol abuse, its relationship with Binge drinking among Black Africans in China remains unexplored. Among 370 participants, data was gathered using the Time Perspective Inventory and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. Regression analysis indicated a positive association between the present (fatalistic, hedonistic), future, and past-positive TP and binge drinking, while the Future time frame showed …

Webinar: Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona, Orhon Myadar

TREC Webinar Series

While resettlement typically allows millions of forcibly displaced persons to escape from unpredictable and often dangerous conditions of displacement, most refugees experience an array of challenges after resettlement as they integrate into new communities. Many of these challenges are related to their ability to get to and from places that are important to their sense of autonomy and well-being, including sites of education, employment, worship and medical care. In this talk, Dr. Myadar will present some of the key findings of her collaborative research project on mobility-related challenges faced by refugees in Tucson, Arizona after their resettlement. This webinar is …

Trimet & Tod – Opportunities For Growth, Miles Anderson, Fiona Lyon

PSU Transportation Seminars

Staff of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) will present TriMet's recently published Regional Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) plan, explaining its inception, creation, and delivery. The team will explain how the plan fits within a hierarchy of regional and sub-regional plans and how it delivers transparency to TriMet's TOD program, enabling all stakeholders to participate. Current TOD project examples will be showcased to demonstrate how partnerships can enhance project outcomes and indicate how stakeholders from various backgrounds can influence projects.

Transportation Planning In An Aging Society, Shengxiao (Alex) Li

PSU Transportation Seminars

By 2030, all Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) will be 65 and older in the U.S. However, the understanding of how Baby Boomers travel differently from the previous generations, and the opportunities and challenges of older people's travel, do not keep pace with the increasing number of older people. This presentation starts with an overview of transportation policies for older people and challenges, followed by several empirical studies investigating older people's generational travel differences, vehicle ownership over the life course, and the interaction of technology usage and travel among older people. It concludes with a policy agenda …

Different Stages Of Urbanization Lead To Cropland Loss: Geospatial Data Analysis In A Global Rural-Urban Continuum Perspective, Xiyu Li, Le Yu

I-GUIDE Forum

Rapid urbanization has resulted in widespread loss of cropland, but the spatial-temporal patterns and key stages of this transformation have not been clearly understood. In this study, we mapped cropland loss caused by urban expansion in rural-urban continuum since 2000 based on multiple global land maps. Results show a total 3.35 × 10⁶ ha cropland loss resulting from urban expansion and about 70 % of this land use change occurred in Asia. However, there is a trend of reducing cropland loss area caused by urbanization over the years. In a detailed view of urbanization stages, most cropland losses occurred …

Large-Scale Google Street View Images For Urban Change Detection, Fangzheng Lyu, Xinlin Ma, Yan Song, Eric Zhu, Shaowen Wang

I-GUIDE Forum

Urbanization has entered a new phase characterized by urban changes occurring at a micro-scale and “under the roof”, as opposed to external modifications. These changes, known as urban retrofitting, involve the incorporation of novel technologies or features into pre-existing systems to promote sustainability. Given the limitations of remote sensing images in identifying such urban changes, novel tools need to be developed for detecting urban retrofitting. In this study, we first build a pipeline to collect large-scale time-series urban street view images from Google Street View in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. And we examine the feasibility of utilizing the acquired dataset …

The Green New Deal And Transit Investment, Eric Bruun

PSU Transportation Seminars

I have spent much of my professional life advocating for high quality transit infrastructure even if it takes a long time to build. I now believe we must focus on investments that can reduce greenhouse gas generation quickly. I cite some examples of how slowly projects have been built compared to peer nations and explain why.

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

No. 13: Supermarkets In Mexico And The Mexico City Metropolitan Area: Logics Of Territorial Insertion And Socio-Spatial Inequalities, GuéNola Capron, SalomóN GonzáLez Arellano, Linda Moreno

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

The paper analyzes the logics of expansion and spatial distribution of supermarkets at three scales: global, national (Mexico), and especially metropolitan (Mexico City), from rich to poor spaces and social categories. It seeks to understand how supermarkets, in a country like Mexico where they initially target mainly the middle class, reproduce or mitigate socio-spatial disparities. We conclude that they are a factor both of mitigation (due to a relatively good distribution in the metropolitan space) and of reproduction of inequalities (due to the segmentation of the offer). In the case of Mexico City, the situation of oligopoly by the company …

Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment In Nevada, Brad Wimmer

Policy Briefs and Reports

The $45.45 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program’s primary objective is to extend broadband service to all unserved and underserved locations in the U.S. and its territories. Several industry studies predict that the BEAD program can meet its goal of providing universal access to broadband service if eligible entities execute their grant programs well. My review of the BEAD program indicates that policy makers can enhance the likelihood of program success by designing competitive grant programs that give applicants the incentive to undercut the subsidies proposed by their rivals and provide applicants the flexibility to design networks that …

Transportation Academies As Catalysts For Civic Engagement In Transportation Decision-Making, Nathan W. Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew, Matthew Ryan

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Citizen planning academies, which became popular in the 1990s, are increasingly being used in transportation planning and decision-making contexts. By making use of a longer-term, multiweek educational format, transportation academies have the potential to reduce barriers and enhance community capital leading to more meaningful and sustained government community interaction. This paper tracks the rise of transportation academies in North America, and provides a detailed look at two academies: one in Portland, Oregon with a 30-year history, and another recently launched in the Salt Lake City, Utah region. Postacademy surveys of participants provided data that illuminated whether the transportation academy model …

Shale Investment Dashboard In Ohio Q3 And Q4 2022, Andrew R. Thomas, Mark Henning, Samuel Owusu-Agyemang

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This report presents findings from an investigation into shale-related investment in Ohio, looking at up, mid and downstream activities. The investment estimates are for July through December of 2022. The report also includes an estimate of cumulative investment in shale in Ohio from 2012 through December 2022. Prior biannual investments are included in previously posted reports that are available from Cleveland State University.

Considering Equity In Infrastructure Planning Processes And Outcomes For Coastal Resilience, Wie Yusuf, Marina Saitgalina, Tom Allen, Nicole S. Hutton, Jennifer L. Whytlaw, Joshua Behr

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Las Facultades Especiales De Los Parques Públicos: Investigar Los Efectos Reconstituyentes De La Plaza Almirante Brown En Los Visitantes, Aidan Michelow

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En las últimas décadas, los psicólogos ambientales y expertos en la salud pública alrededor del mundo han realizado una cantidad creciente de estudios sobre los impactos de la salud mental de los espacios verdes urbanos en los visitantes. Este proyecto de investigación, que recogió datos de los participantes de la Plaza Almirante Brown en Río Grande, Argentina, es un estudio exploratorio que tiene el objetivo de investigar los efectos reconstituyentes de la Plaza en los visitantes. Las preguntas centrales son ¿Tiene la Plaza Almirante Brown efectos reconstituyentes en sus visitantes? En caso afirmativo, ¿qué aspectos del parque son reconstituyentes y …

Patrimonio Cultural, Arqueología, Medio Ambiente Y Economía: ¿Cómo Ha Afectado La Construcción Del Aeropuerto Internacional De Chinchero-Cusco A Las Comunidades Y La Tierra De Chinchero?, Sydney Berenson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La urbanización gubernamental ha sido un problema para las poblaciones indígenas, el medio ambiente y la protección del patrimonio cultural durante numerosos años en todo el Perú. Más recientemente, en la pequeña ciudad de Chinchero, ubicada a unos 30 kilómetros al noroeste de Cusco, se está construyendo un nuevo aeropuerto internacional, Aeropuerto Internacional de Chinchero-Cusco (AICC), para reemplazar el actual aeropuerto nacional de Cusco. Chinchero es un importante centro urbano que está conformado por 13 comunidades campesinas que participan en la industria agrícola de la región, además consta con una importante comunidad artesanal, ruinas arqueológicas precolombinas y una gran biodiversidad. …

Shades Of Housing: Real Estate Urbanism And State Planning In Egypt, Zeinab Nadeem

Theses and Dissertations

The housing crisis is a global dilemma, especially in the context of urban cities in developing countries. Housing affordability has become more challenging in the recent global and national turbulent economic conditions of rising inflation rates and construction costs, where Egypt is witnessing a surplus of vacant housing units that are either unsold or unoccupied with citizens involuntarily relocating to remote new cities. The government has also significantly engaged in real estate market speculation by offering public land for profits to private investors in the market since the 1990s. The shades of housing found in Egypt are the works of …

Metropolitan Transportation Commission Discretionary Transit Funding Methods Evaluation, Christopher E. Ferrell, John M. Eells, David Reinke, Richard Lee

Mineta Transportation Institute

In 2021, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) approached the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) with a proposal to have MTI provide an evaluation of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s (MTC’s) operational discretionary funding allocation policies and methods for Bay Area transit operators. The research was done in two parts. Part 1 investigated MTC’s past and current allocation methods for discretionary operational transit funding programs; Part 2 involved the evaluation of outcomes if MTC employed alternative allocation methods. After the Part 1 review of MTC’s various transit funding programs, the federal pandemic relief funds and the Transportation Development Act/State Transit Assistance …

A Bike System For All In Silicon Valley: Equity Assessment Of Bike Infrastructure In San José, Ca, Ahoura Zandiatashbar, Jochen Albrecht, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute

Investing in sustainable, multimodal infrastructure is of increasing importance throughout the United States and worldwide. Cities are increasingly making strategic capital investment decisions about bicycle infrastructure—decisions that need planning efforts that accurately assess the equity aspects of developments, achieve equitable distribution of infrastructures, and draw upon accurate assessment methods. Toward these efforts, this project uses a granular bike network dataset with statistical and geospatial analyses to quantify a bike infrastructure availability score (i.e., bike score) that accounts for the safety and comfort differences in bike path classes in San José, California. San José is the 10th largest U.S. city and …

Innovation District Policy Highlights, Molly Schnoke

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Defining And Measuring Equity In Public Transportation, Christopher E. Ferrell, David Reinke, John M. Eels, Matthew M. Schroeder

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transit should serve all users, regardless of age, race, ability, or any other identity. Policies and planning must be conscious of inequities when defining and measuring equity in public transportation. This study was done to aid the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the state’s transit agencies in assessing transit service equity and assisting with evaluating past, existing, and future inequities. This report identifies and evaluates policies and practices associated with equity measurement in public transit from extant academic and professional literature sources. These include the Federal laws and regulations addressing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and …

Park Access And Quality In Mountain West Cities, 2023, Maryam Raja, Julia Salangsang, Vanessa M. Booth, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

This fact sheet presents data from a 2023 publication from The Trust for Public Land ParkScore® Index1 which provides data on public parks for the 100 largest cities in the United States. The fact sheet includes park scores for the cities in the Mountain West states of Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. This fact sheet expands upon a previously published fact sheet on park access and quality from 2020.

Who Counts In Climate Resilience? Transient Populations And Climate Resilience In Boston And Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Johnna Flahive, Katsyris Rivera Kientz, Dlynzee Damas, Chris Watson, Evan Stewart, Ellen Douglas

Sustainable Solutions Lab

In the Northeast U.S., climate change impacts are predicted to increase and intensify unless global carbon emissions are reduced enough to mitigate impacts on local municipalities. As a result, thousands of people in Massachusetts are vulnerable to dynamic and extreme weather conditions, including temperature fuctuations and precipitation patterns, particularly those who are socially, politically, or economically marginalized. While decision-makers in Boston and Cape Cod municipalities must consider diverse stakeholder needs, one population is notably missing from most climate resilience efforts: people experiencing transience due to housing insecurity. Within the Commonwealth, there are two transient populations who are among the most …

Overview, Facilitation, And Strategies Involving Municipal Geothermal District Energy Systems In Ohio, Matthew R. Fulton, Andrew R. Thomas

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

As United States looks to decarbonize its energy systems, there is likely to be a surge in interest in multi-customer District Energy. Interest in networked thermal will be especially high for low-income neighborhoods, which have been targeted by the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy development. In northern climates, many such areas have no air conditioning, and residents are increasingly at risk with the intensity and duration of hot weather resulting from climate change. Geothermal systems (and heat pumps) provide both heat and air conditioning to buildings, especially when integrated with natural gas hybrid systems. Ohio law provides a clear …

Evaluation Of Driver Comprehension And Compliance Of Red Colored Pavement Markings For Transit Lanes In Portland, Oregon, Nathan Mcneil, Christopher Monsere, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many U.S. agencies have experimented with red colored pavement markings in transit lanes to enhance the message that they are restricted to transit vehicles. This study evaluates non-transit drivers’ comprehension of and compliance with red colored lane markings in transit priority lanes intended to communicate lane restrictions and appropriate turning and merging locations. Two complementary research methods were used: 1) an online survey of drivers’ comprehension of red colored pavement markings; and, 2) evaluation of video collected at locations pre and post installation of red colored pavement markings. In the survey, most drivers recognize the red pavement color as a …