Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Roadway Not Improved: Exploring Temporary Uses And Community-Based Alternatives For Unimproved Streets, Leah Hyman, Al Klein, Rani Boyle, Katie Lynd, Emily Lieb

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Woodstock neighborhood of SE Portland is home to a high concentration of unimproved streets. Through conversations with the Woodstock Neighborhood Association and representatives at City of Portland agencies, LARKE Planning identified a disconnect between City street policies and residents' desires and concerns surrounding unimproved streets. Through Roadway Not Improved, LARKE is exploring temporary uses and community-based alternatives that will provide more flexibility to respond to the variations that exist among streets' physical characteristics and residents' visions for how these streets can or should contribute to neighborhood character and livability. Although the project focuses specifically on the Woodstock neighborhood, LARKE …

Growing Zenger Farm, Turhan Sonmez, Elizabeth Milner, Stacey Glenewinkel, Kate Carone

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Zenger Farm is a working urban farm in outer southeast Portland, Oregon, that promotes sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship and local economic development. Currently operating on 6 acres of farmland and 10 acres of wetland, the farm has an opportunity to expand onto 4 additional acres of adjacent land, and has asked Ecotone to help maximize the potential of that expansion. Growing Zenger Farm is a unique opportunity to learn how urban agriculture can best address the needs of communities. Food security, community development, education, economic development and environmental stewardship are components of Zenger's stated mission and goals and are …

Harvesting Opportunity: A Strategic Vision For Farmworker Housing And Microenterprise In Washington County, Nadine Appenbrink, Raihana Ansary, Elizabeth Decker, Kate Mcquillan, Karla Nelson, Emily Picha

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Farmworkers in Washington County face stagnant incomes, limited opportunities and a shortage of affordable, quality housing. In this six month workshop project, Tierra Planning explored the connection between quality affordable housing and economic development opportunities for farmworkers in Washington County. We worked with stakeholders, regulators, landowners and farmworkers to identify barriers, opportunities and alternatives. Our final product was a "strategic vision" that included both general recommendations and recommendations specific to Washington County based on extensive research, outreach, and alternatives analysis. Our hope is that our work will spark discourse among local farmers, housing developers, and policy makers in the Portland …

Gateway Ecodistrict Pilot Study, Michael Budds, Erin Reome, Dan Schauer, Aaron Wilson

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Gateway EcoDistrict Pilot Study used site conditions, community priorities, and plans for future growth and development to recommend catalyst projects. The study’s objectives included raising awareness about the EcoDistrict concept, mapping physical and social assets conducive to an EcoDistrict, and identifying organizations interested in management of the pilot EcoDistrict. An assessment of opportunities and constraints to establishing an EcoDistrict in Gateway served as a corollary part of the study. This project was conducted under the supervision of Sumner Sharpe and Ellen Bassett.

Reshaping The Planning Agenda, Heidi Guenin, Bob Kellett, Vivian Siu, Lindsay Walker, Jenny Weinstein

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Housing Land Advocates and AARP Oregon have identified that the participation of older adults in the planning process in Clackamas County is not leading to outcomes that address their needs. One potential barrier to advocacy is older adults' lack of understanding of the planning process. A better informed population of older adults will lead to more effective participation in planning processes and an increased ability to advocate for their needs. Another potential barrier may be the way in which planners engage older adults in planning. Through better engagement strategies there will be better outcomes. This project was conducted under the …

The Rhetoric Of The Regional Image Interpreting The Visual Products Of Regional Plannning, Alissa Barber Torres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Rhetoric of the Regional Image: Interpreting the Visual Products of Regional Planning investigates the manner in which visual conventions and visual contexts of regional visioning scenarios affect their interpretation by urban and regional planners, who use visual communication to meet the technical and rhetorical demands of their professional practice. The research assesses Central Florida‘s ―How Shall We Grow?‖ regional land use scenario using focus groups and interviews with planning professionals, a corresponding survey of community values, and rhetorical analysis to explore the ―How Shall We Grow?‖ scenario as persuasive communication. The Rhetoric of the Regional Image proposes specific recommendations …

Health-Related Needs Assessment Of Older Residents In Subsidized Housing, Victoria Cotrell, Paula C. Carder

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

When a nonprofit organization with nursing-home and assisted-living experience purchased a 30-year-old highrise apartment building in downtown Portland, Oregon, the new owners were faced with how to manage a building that provided housing to more than 200 older residents whom they knew very little about. As long-term care providers, they knew that older people were at risk for developing chronic illnesses, disabilities, and other factors that could result in moves to nursing homes, hospitalizations, and early death. They also knew that older adults in subsidized housing, such as this Section 8 building, have higher levels of disability than their age …

Dilemmas In Contemporary Planning And State Of The Practice Of Ppgis, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Beyond Sprawl And Anti-Sprawl, Thad Williamson

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The widespread acceptance of the term suburban sprawl stands as a major rhetorical victory for critics of the land-use, transportation, and growth patterns characteristic of metropolitan America. As both friends and critics of suburbia have noted, the term sprawl itself has an almost inescapably pejorative connotation (Gordon and Richardson 1997; O'Flaherty 2005). Despite the best efforts of numerous academics to define the term with rigor and precision, what comes to mind first for most people on hearing the term is not some scholar or another's strategy for defining and measuring sprawl, but rather an image of something unpleasant-- a particularly …

2000-2009 Intercensal Population Estimates By Age Group For Oregon And Counties, Portland State University. Population Research Center

Oregon Population Estimates and Reports

This item only contains Oregon population tables, by age group, comparing 2000 and 2009 census data.

The Landscape: Forest Grove, Elizabeth Mylott

Metroscape

A brief look at the community of Sherwood, Oregon, highlighting its history, attractions, landmarks, and future prospects.

It's The Principal Of The Thing: Guiding A Rural School Has Its Own Trials, Susan Wilson, Tim France

Metroscape

The difficulties of K-12 education have become familiar to citizens of the metroscape, but they are usually viewed through the lens of urban and suburban schools, with their problems of multi-ethnic populations, crowded classrooms, strained budgets, and the like. Metroscape® was curious about the struggles and triumphs of the schools in the rural areas of the region, so we sent our interviewer, Susan Wilson, a Portland freelance writer, to Willamina to talk to a small town education leader in hopes of glimpsing the realities of schooling kids in that often overlooked setting.

A small-town principal is a versatile member of …

Jobs And Gender: Does Sex Play A Role In The Region's Recession?, Mary C. King

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

Unemployment rates in Oregon have been among the highest in the nation. In a real role reversal, unemployment in the seven counties of the Portland metropolitan area have hovered less than a percentage point below the state level, defying the usual rule that unemployment hits the rural counties far harder than the more diversified economies of the urban areas. Are we experiencing a “he-cession” here in the metroscape? Is the economic downturn hitting men hardest, leaving women relatively unscathed? Has stimulus spending disproportionately benefited men? Does it even make sense to think about an economic downturn having a gendered impact, …

Photovoice As Authentic Civic Engagement: Lessons Learned In One Immigrant Community, Meg Merrick, Angie Mejia

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

It is widely acknowledged that equitable and sustainable public policy can only be achieved when it is informed by the concerns, hopes, and experiences of those who are affected. Public agencies wishing to engage recent immigrants can find this to be challenging, however. Effective public participation and civic engagement can be difficult when community members cannot speak English and/or come from very different cultural and political environments. The Chronic Disease Prevention Program (CDPP) of the Multnomah County Health Department and Metro, two public agencies serving the Portland, Oregon region, have actively sought to learn from the experiences of immigrant community …

Understanding School Travel: How Residential Location Choice And The Built Environment Affect Trips To School, Yizhao Yang, Marc Schlossberg, Robert Parker, Bethany Johnson

TREC Final Reports

This project investigates issues related to parents’ decisions about children’s school transportation. This has become an important area of research due to the growing concerns that increased reliance on private automobile in school travel has led to adverse health impacts on children and negative impacts on environment. This study examines school transportation in the context of where families live and how families make decisions about school travel in the process of choosing their residence.

Using a middle-sized school district in Oregon State, we conducted a 5500-household survey and a number of interviews and focus groups. The study shows that parents …

Rural Transit In Oregon: Current And Future Needs, Jennifer Dill, Margaret B. Neal

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of the research reported was to identify the current status and needs for general public transportation in Oregon’s rural areas, as well as opportunities and barriers (e.g., funding, governance issues, and leadership) to expanding services over a 20 year period. Oregon is a largely rural state. This lack of density poses problems for the provision of public transit, whether through fixed route or demand response service. People living in the rural areas and who lack cars and access to public transportation are at a strong disadvantage. With no access to these transit resources, they may be limited to …

Caretakers Of The Garden Of Delight And Discontent: Adirondack Narrative, Conflict, And Environmental Virtue, Eric Richard Holmlund

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation concerns a widely recognized natural area, New York's Adirondack Park, that serves both as an international model for conservation and as a context for persistent conflict over natural resources, space, wealth and esthetics. It employs narrative inquiry as a method to examine the sources and the function of narratives or stories explaining the history and the present status of social groups in the Park. Narrative theorists maintain that we borrow from such socially circulating narratives to craft our own identities, and then repeat them until we believe them, almost without regard for the factual basis in history or …

The Changing Landscape Of A Rural Region: The Effect Of The Harry S Truman Dam And Reservoir In The Osage River Basin Of Missouri, Melvin Arthur Johnson

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Harry S Truman Dam and Reservoir project is of immense size. Many thousands of tons of raw materials were required to complete the construction of the dam and relocations. Millions of dollars were spent to acquire land, compensate those who were displaced, and to pay those who were employed in the planning, purchasing, coordinating, defending, and managing the myriad of contractors, contracts, and legal defenses. The affected area of the project is not only complex physically but also socially and economically. It is, therefore, not surprising that the counties studied (Benton, Henry, and St. Clair) would react in different …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2009, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Each student in his or her senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. The senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real-world solution to an engineering challenge.

A highlight of the year-long senior design project is the senior design competition. This competition, which usually takes place the week before finals each semester, helps focus the senior students on increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects.

Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on innovation, commercial …

Tigard-Tualatin School District Enrollment Forecast Update, 2010-11 To 2019-20, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Vivian Siu

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years, estimates of the impacts of housing development on TTSD enrollment, and forecasts of districtwide and individual school enrollments for the 2010-11 to 2019-20 school years. The Tigard-Tualatin School District (TTSD) enrolled 12,467 students in Fall 2009, a decrease of 128 students (1.0 percent) from Fall 2008. The loss occurred at both the elementary and high school levels, with decreases of 88 students (1.5 percent) in …

[Re]Formulating The Informal, Sebastien Coles

Architecture Senior Theses

The identity associate with the inhabitants of the "Bidonvilles" of Haiti is arguably nonexistent aside from its connection to the impoverished conditions of the Haitian slum/shantytown. This thesis contends that with the insertion of a reformative intervention in the heart of the community promoting a conducive and educational environment while overlaying a currently absent infrastructure, will help in creating a positive inner growth within the informal typology. More specifically architecture will act as a form of "pride of place," enticing interaction through the direction connection to culture.

Development Of A Multi-Class Bicyclist Route Choice Model Using Revealed Preference Data, Joseph Broach, John Gliebe, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Existing regional travel forecasting systems are not typically set up to forecast usage of bicycle infrastructure and are insensitive to bicyclists' route preferences in general. We collected revealed preference, GPS data on 162 bicyclists over the course of several days and coded the resulting trips to a highly detailed bicycle network model. We then use these data to estimate bicyclist route choice models. As part of this research, we developed a sophisticated choice set generation algorithm based on multiple permutations of labeled path attributes, which seems to out-perform comparable implementations of other route choice set generation algorithms. The model was …

Commercialization Of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology In North America: Pathways To Success In Northeast Ohio, E. Brandon Henneman, Et Al.

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The feasibility of hydrogen as a source of energy has been researched in one capacity or another for over a century. The first usage of the term ‘hydrogen economy’ is attributed to 11John Bockris in 1970. At the time, Dr. Bockris was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. During a discussion at the General Motors technical center in Michigan he used this term to describe his vision of United States cities being supplied with energy derived from the sun. Typical of a disruptive technology, many years of laboratory testing have created a hydrogen fuel cell product that is ready …

New Establishment Dynamics: Business Formation And Survival Trends In Ohio, Afia Yamoah, Ziona Austrian, Joel A. Elvery

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The Ohio New Establishments Dynamics data (O-NED) is a new data set, developed by the College and Center. O-NED tracks employment and number of establishments for establishments that first started employing people between the 2nd quarter of 1997 and the 1st quarter of 2008. The report “New Establishment Dynamics: Business Formation and Survival Trends in Ohio” summarizes how trends in employment growth and establishment survivorship differ across sectors of the economy and various regions of Ohio. This new data set allows us to analyze the number of establishments born in a specific year called “birth cohort” and document their survival …

The Impact Of An Urban Wal-Mart Store On Area Businesses: An Evaluation Of One Chicago Neighborhood's Experience, Center For Urban Research And Learning, Julie Davis, David Merriman, Lucia Samayoa, Brian Flanagan, Ron Baiman, Joseph Persky

Center for Urban Research and Learning: Publications and Other Works

Having achieved nearly complete coverage of non-urban and suburban markets, mega-retailer Wal-Mart has turned its attention to urban expansion. Evaluations of Wal-Mart’s impact on urban retail businesses and local employment are necessary to inform policy makers, scholars, and community activists looking to improve economic opportunities for inner-city residents. This study focuses on the Wal-Mart store that opened on the West Side of Chicago in September 2006.

A Study Of Land Use Planning Practices And The Relationship Between Population Distribution And Transportation Infrastructure In Kathmandu, Nepal., Walter Suwal

Theses and Dissertations

This particular paper is meant to investigate planning in Kathmandu, Nepal specifically land use planning practices and the implications on the transportation network(s). Very early on in the research including existing land use (if any), and current transportation networks, it was clear that investigations must be made into the political and planning situation leading up to the modern era in Nepal. The overview of past political events is necessary to explain current planning trends and techniques, and also the mindset of the people of Kathmandu towards planning. Of course universal planning truths can be applied in various international contexts, but …

Validation Of A Commercial Geographical Information Systems Database Of Walking And Bicycling Destinations, Heather A. Whitcomb, Ellen K. Cromley, Kosuke Tamura, Steven J. Melly, Sayali Kale, Francine Laden, Peter James, Robin Puett, Eran Ben-Joseph, Philip J. Troped

GIS Day

Background: Recent interdisciplinary studies in public health, transportation, and urban planning have shown that stores and other destinations such as banks, post offices, and physical activity facilities within close proximity to residences are positively related to recreational and transportation physical activity. The built environment has been measured several different ways, including conducting field audits and by surveying individuals’ perceptions of their neighborhood. Increasingly researchers are also using geographic information systems (GIS) software and commercially available data sources to create objective measures of the built environment. The advantages of commercial data are that they are relatively easy to access and are …

National Trends In The United States Of America Physician Assistant Workforce From 1980 To 2007, Xiaoxing Z. He, Ellen Cyran, Mark J. Salling

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The physician assistant (PA) profession is a nationally recognized medical profession in the United States of America (USA). However, relatively little is known regarding national trends of the PA workforce. We examined the 1980-2007 USA Census data to determine the demographic distribution of the PA workforce and PA-to-population relationships. Maps were developed to provide graphical display of the data. All analyses were adjusted for the complex census design and analytical weights provided by the Census Bureau. In 1980 there were about 29,120 PAs, 64% of which were males. By contrast, in 2007 there were approximately 97,721 PAs with more than …

Northeast Ohio Entrepreneurship Confidence Survey: Fourth-Year Findings, David O. Kasdan

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The continued objective of the entrepreneurship Confidence Survey is to assess the entrepreneurial climate and entrepreneurs’ confidence in their ability to start and sustain a business in Northeast Ohio. This is the fourth year that the survey has been conducted and the intention is to continue conducting the survey annually for the next several years to identify trends that might emerge. The survey has been constructed to measure respondents’ perceptions regarding several issues, including access to capital, workforce supply, information provided by educational institutions and business support organizations, networking opportunities, government responsiveness, attitudes toward entrepreneurs, adequacy of infrastructure, quality of …

Achieving Sustainable, Compact Development In The Portland Metropolitan Area: New Tools And Approaches For Developing Centers And Corridors, Gil Kelley, Sheila A. Martin, Elizabeth Mylott

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

This report represents the work of a group of local public, private and institutional experts in real estate development and finance convened by the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University. This was done at the request of Metro, which wanted outside expert advice on ways to achieve more robust development of centers and corridors in the Portland metropolitan area, an important aspect of implementing the 2040 Growth Concept. Although the expert advisory group (EAG) enthusiastically took on this task, it wanted to first back up a step and deliberate over whether and to what extent center and …