Urban Studies Commons^™

Job Density In The Mountain West, Ember Smith, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet highlights the job density patterns in large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the Mountain West states (Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado) using the findings of Where Jobs are Concentrating and Why it Matters to Cities and Regions, a report by Chad Shearer, Jennifer S. Vey, and Joanne Kim of the Brookings Institution.

Foot Traffic & Walkable Urbanism, Ember Smith, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet highlights the performance and expansion of WalkUPs (regionally significant, walkable areas) with a focus on Denver, Los Angeles, Orlando, Phoenix, and Las Vegas as detailed in Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros, a report by George Washington University.

The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy And Inequality In Diy Urbanism, Gordon Douglas

University Scholar Series

When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism, Dr. Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes, and more. He explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people’s relationships to their urban surroundings …

Opioids In The Las Vegas Metro, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Health

In 2014, Nevada was one of 7 states selected to participate in a national policy coalition to reduce prescription drug abuse. As a result, the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) created a data dashboard to track opioid prescriptions and opioid-involved overdose incidents. This Fact Sheet synthesizes state-level data from the Nevada Opioid Overdose Surveillance Dashboard and focuses on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The data track opioid prescription rates as they correlate to opioid-involved overdose deaths, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations.

E-Grocery Home Delivery And The Freight & Travel Demands Of Multifamily Dwellings, Katherine Keeling, Gabby Abou-Zeid

PSU Transportation Seminars

Double Feature: E-Grocery Home Delivery and the Freight & Travel Demands of Multifamily Dwellings

E-Grocery Home Delivery Impacts on Food Access and Equity

The adoption of e-grocery home delivery (HD) has the potential to change social norms of acquiring household foods and necessities. In light of recent interest in food deserts, a case study of Portland, OR reviews the new elements of inclusion, exclusion, and value created by the service of four major e-grocery businesses: Shipt, Instacart, Walmart, and Amazon Prime Now. These e-grocers are reviewed in terms of service areas, pricing, and inventory choice, as these are key factors …

Opioids In Nevada, Peter Grema, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Health

This Fact Sheet presents data from the Washington Post’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) database on opioid shipments in the United States and provides information pertaining to Nevada and each of its 17 regions (16 counties and one independent city). This Fact Sheet compares the Washington Post’s opioid shipment data with opioid prescription rates relative to Nevada’s population in 2010.

Webinar: New Travel Demand Modeling For Our Evolving Mobility Landscape, Reid Ewing, Sadegh Sabouri

TREC Webinar Series

Conventional four-step travel demand models are used by nearly all metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), state departments of transportation, and local planning agencies, as the basis for long-range transportation planning in the United States. A flaw of the four-step model is its relative insensitivity to the so-called D variables. The D variables are characteristics of the built environment that are known to affect travel behavior. The Ds are development density, land use diversity, street network design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit. In this seminar, we will explain how we developed a vehicle ownership model (car shedding model), an intrazonal travel …

Community Resilience To Climate Change: Theory, Research And Practice, Dana E. Hellman, Vivek Shandas

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This reader is an Open Educational Resource, meant to accompany a graduate or higher-level undergraduate university course in climate change resilience, adaptation, and/or planning. While the material is geared toward students in urban and regional planning, it may also be of interest to students of urban studies, public health, geography, political science, sociology, risk management, and others.

Each section of this volume includes (1) an introductory summary, (2) a reading list with full text articles, (3) student exercises meant to enhance understanding and facilitate in-class discussion, and (4) additional discussion prompts or activities for instructors to use in class. The …

The Role Of Building Characteristics, Demographics, And Urban Heat Islands In Shaping Residential Energy Use, Chrissi Argyro Antonopoulos, Alec Trusty, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

As global temperatures continue to rise, questions about infrastructure capacity to keep up with energy demand are increasingly germane. Energy demand is mediated by several structural and environmental conditions, though we have a limited understanding about the role of differences in local ambient temperatures as a predictor for energy demand. This study assesses the effects of residential building structure, socio-demographics, and ambient temperature conditions of a neighborhood to overall energy expenditures of a household. Using annual utility billing and demographic data, existing tax-lot records, and an unusually high-resolution description of ambient temperatures, we ask two research questions: (1) What role …

Using Open Source Data To Identify Transit Deserts In Four Major Chinese Cities, Junfeng Jiao, Mingming Cai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The concept of transit deserts stems from the concept of food deserts. There is substantial research on transit deserts in developed countries. However, there is no known research that has studied this subject in Chinese cities. Using open-source data, this paper identified transit desert areas in four major Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu). The results show that: (1) In these four cities, the transit desert areas are mainly concentrated in city centers and hardly occur in any suburban areas, which is very different from the cases in the US. (2) Shanghai has the largest transit-dependent population living in transit …

Understanding The Shared E-Scooter Travels In Austin, Tx, Junfeng Jiao, Shunhua Bai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper investigated the travel patterns of 1.7 million shared E-scooter trips from April 2018 to February 2019 in Austin, TX. There were more than 6000 active E-scooters in operation each month, generating over 150,000 trips and covered approximately 117,000 miles. During this period, the average travel distance and operation time of E-scooter trips were 0.77 miles and 7.55 min, respectively. We further identified two E-scooter usage hotspots in the city (Downtown Austin and the University of Texas campus). The spatial analysis showed that more trips originated from Downtown Austin than were completed, while the opposite was true for the …

Promoting Environmental Justice Populations’ Access To Opportunities With Suburban Boomtowns: An Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Approach To Addressing Infrastructure Needs, Jandel Crutchfield, Courtney Cronley, Kate Hyun, Erin Findley, Mehrdad Arabi

TREC Final Reports

This study used a community-engaged interdisciplinary approach to assess the gaps between economic growth and transportation infrastructure development, and the impact of potential gaps on access to opportunities for environmental justice populations within North Central Texas, where population growth has increased over 100% since 2000. The interdisciplinary team, comprised of social work and civil engineering researchers, in partnership with the regional homeless coalition, measured residents’ perspectives of the economic growth in the area over the past decade, the extent to which transportation infrastructure has matched the economic growth, and the implications for access to affordable quality housing, employment, quality public …

When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure: Access To Opportunities In Suburban Boomtowns, Jandel Crutchfield, Courtney Cronley, Kate Hyun

TREC Project Briefs

In the last twenty years, the population increased over 100% in Collin County, Texas. The county is projected to have over 2.4 million residents by 2050 -- more than three times its population in 2010. When enough people flock to an area to call it a boomtown, the population tends to grow much faster than the infrastructure to support it. Where does that leave mobility options for residents? Researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington’s (UTA) School of Social Work and College of Engineering partnered with the Collin County Homeless Coalition (CCHC) to investigate gaps in transportation services and …

How Two Psychology Professors Earned $6 Million To Support Chicago Youth At Risk Of Violence, University Marketing And Communications, Lavome Robinson, Leonard Jason

DePaul Download

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Cities, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

The challenges faced by the cities today particularly in the developing world are mainifold. These are rising population, growing urbanization, widening inequalities, adapting and mitigating climate risks and realizing the full economic potential of agglomeration of economies . How to make cities sustainable in the wake of these onerous challenges is therefore not an easy task ? What is Sustainability ? There are many different interpretations but what is most accepted definition is “ meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs” . It has three main pillars: economic, environmental, and social. …

Webinar: Assessing The Impacts Of New Mobility On Cities, Rebecca Steckler, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Webinar Series

Autonomous vehicles (AVs), e-commerce and the sharing economy are rapidly changing land use and transportation in cities. City leaders and professional planners are wondering how these technologies will change how they plan and operate cities. For the past year, the University of Oregon’s Urbanism Next Center and Sustainable Year Program focused staff and students on helping the cities of Gresham and Eugene better understand the potential impacts of a wide-range of topics and study a variety of potential responses to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. These topics include issues related to safety, social equity, active transportation, …

Best Performing Cities: Where America's Jobs Are Created And Sustained, Peter Grema, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet summarizes and expands upon the findings of the Milken Institute’s 2018 Best Performing Cities series report on the top 200 large cities and top 200 small cities in the United States in 2018. For the purposes of this Fact Sheet, the report focuses on 26 metropolitan areas located within the Mountain West region of the United States (Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico).

The Effects Of Historical Housing Policies On Resident Exposure To Intra-Urban Heat: A Study Of 108 Us Urban Areas, Jeremy Hoffman, Vivek Shandas, Nicholas Pendleton

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The increasing intensity, duration, and frequency of heat waves due to human-caused climate change puts historically underserved populations in a heightened state of precarity, as studies observe that vulnerable communities—especially those within urban areas in the United States—are disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. Lacking, however, are insights into fundamental questions about the role of historical housing policies in cauterizing current exposure to climate inequities like intra-urban heat. Here, we explore the relationship between “redlining”, or the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to whole neighborhoods based on a racially motivated perception of safety for investment, with present-day summertime …

Policy Making In The Nevada Legislature: How Interest Groups Make The Difference, Madison Frazee

Student Research

This paper examines the structure of the Nevada legislature and how interest groups influence the policy making process. In particular, this paper aims to answer the questions of how interest groups are able to make a difference in the legislative process and how those groups are able to gain access to the political environment in the state. By understanding how interest groups advocate for certain policies, the best methods to engage citizens in the political process can be understood. By utilizing SB179 as the case study for this analysis, the processes of the legislature can be examined. Through moving to …

Approaches To Urban Land Use Governance: Conservation Or Housing Development?, Zlata Nourie

Public Administration ETDs

Around the globe cities are growing and expanding in size. The increase in urban areas changes the face of our planet. Since every city, county, and state have a set amount of land that they can conserve or develop, this thesis investigates factors that impact land conservation or land development for housing. It also establishes the relations between land use, economic, social, and environmental processes in the selected area. From the very beginning, this paper researches different approaches to land use that help municipalities maintain and use their land resources.

The focus of this research is an area of land …