Urban Studies Commons^™

Visions For Waterville's Future: Perceptions Of Its Residents, Alex Wolansky

Honors Theses

Mills and factories in the United States have steadily been closing down as industry is outsourced in the globalized economy. Cities that were once prosperous face decay and often have no hopeful future outlook. Post-industrial towns face major unemployment and poverty and are not typically places for re-investment. But Rust Belt cities like Baltimore, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis are not the only post- industrial hubs that are struggling. Many small towns in rural areas once thrived from manufacturing and are becoming forgotten. Local governments, policy makers, urban planners, developers and scholars are working to figure …

Robocar Risks, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Suggests that policymakers should not widen roads or stringently enforce anti-jaywalking laws in order to accommodate autonomous vehicles.

The Fountain District: Framework Plan, Kara Boden, Alyssa Brook, Jennifer Davidson, Michael Kimble, Julia Lui, Raina Smith, Steven Rosen, Laura Voss, Victoria Weakley

Urban Design Workshop

The 'South Auditorium' neighborhood established itself in the days when loggers and other workers filled the district’s hotels due to its proximity to the river. In the wake of the Great Depression and as the logging trade declined, the area began to fall into disrepair and development shifted away from the Willamette River. By the 1950s, many of its 2,000+ inhabitants were low-income or elderly and living in small, poorly maintained apartments, shuffling from one to the next as they were forced out of their prior home. The neighborhood was also extremely diverse, housing numerous immigrant families, particularly Italian, Jewish, …

Exploiting New Data Sources To Quantify Arterial Congestion And Performance Measures At A Regional Scale, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Robert L. Bertini, Travis B. Glick, Nicholas B. Stoll, Wei Feng, Bobjot S. Sidhu, Anurag Pande

TREC Final Reports

Transit travel time, operating speed and reliability all influence service attractiveness, operating cost and system efficiency. These metrics have a long-term impact on system effectiveness through a change in ridership. As part of its bus dispatch system (BDS), the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) has been archiving automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) data for all bus trips at the stop level since 1997. In 2014, a new and higher-resolution bus AVL data collection system was fully implemented.

This new AVL system provides stop-level data as well as five-second resolution (5-SR) bus position data between …

Introduction To Data Science For Transportation Researchers, Planners, And Engineers, Liming Wang

TREC Final Reports

Building on the successful scientific computing training program offered by the Software Carpentry (http://www.software-carpentry.org/), this course exposes students to the best practices in data science through hands-on lab sessions. Using transportation data and examples, it also aims to help students tackle the challenge of “drinking from a hose” when dealing with the overwhelming amount of data that is increasingly common in transportation research and practice.

Although computing is now an integral part of every aspect of science and engineering, transportation research included, most students of science, engineering, and planning are never taught how to build, use, validate, and share software …

A Synthesis Of James Howard Kunstler’S Themes Of Urbanization And The Impending Oil Crisis In The Geography Of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, The City In Mind, And The Long Emergency, William S. Humphrey

Tenor of Our Times

This paper examines and synchronizes the thoughts put forth by American social critic and author James Howard Kunstler in his four books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, The City in Mind, and The Long Emergency. Kunstler asserts that human beings are losing their sense of being while simultaneously facilitating daily life, thus leaving a world rife with nothingness. A large portion of Kunstler’s argument deals with how humans have knowingly increased suburban sprawl while depleting valuable resources; such activity, left unchecked, will worsen the state of the world. The United States, in particular, is the most problematic. …

The History And Development Of British Tramways And The Impacts That It Had, Noam Schuldenrein

Honors College Theses

The thesis is about the general history of the British tramways and how they developed throughout England in the nineteenth century. It includes their general development; how it affected England economically; how it affected England demographically; and how it affected the surrounding neighborhoods in England.

Voices Of Cully: A Case Study Of The Living Cully Weatherization And Home Repair Project 2.0, Lucy J.T. Cultrera

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The Cully neighborhood is situated in the Northeast quadrant of Portland, Oregon. It is 2.75 square mile plot of land and home to roughly 13,000 people. In addition to being one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Portland, it is the most densely populated, with the smallest amount of parkland per capita. Over the last two decades, home value has increased 203% in Cully, compared to a 90% citywide increase. Amidst these development trends are stories of incredible resilience, resistance and activism from the affected community. My project is a case study of one anti-displacement initiative, which was developed and …

The Lloyd Public Space Plan, Stuart Campbell, Àlvaro Caviedes, Ben Kahn, Raina Smith-Roller, Daniel Scheppke, Layne Wyse

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This plan defines a set of recommended strategies for enhancing and activating public spaces in Lloyd that fall within three main themes: Safe Lloyd, Collective Lloyd, and Dynamic Lloyd. Implementing these actions will help realize a new vision of Lloyd: A vibrant community filled with activities and amenities for people at different times of the day, days of the week, and months of the year.

The report Measuring Public Space is included here as a supplemental file.

Umatilla Together, Amber Ayers, Belen Herrera, Carlos Callava, Nate Miller, Samuel Roberts, Laura Voss

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Umatilla Together sets the stage for great opportunities and seeks to inspire the residents of Umatilla to imagine what your city could be: a truly desirable place to live, work, learn, and play. Great places are not created by accident. They are the result of a vision, leadership, planning, public investment, unrelenting tenacity on the part of city champions, and strategic, meaningful partnerships.

Summary Umatilla Together plans in English and Spanish are included here as supplemental files.

Effect Of The Relocation Policy Of Public Agencies In South Korea, Chan Ho Kim

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In 2005, the government announced the relocation policy of public agencies to non-capital regions. The main purpose of the policy was to decentralize population in the SMA (Seoul Metropolitan Area) through building regional competitiveness. The transfer of 98% of the public institutions was completed in April 2017 (MOLIT 2017). However, unlike the blueprint for the initial plan for the relocation of the agencies, there may be an increase in social cost and insufficient contribution to the regional economic development.

This study empirically examines effectiveness of the policy and its impact on regional economic growth and on how differently the policy …

Effective Traffic Noise Policy Of Urban Development Projects In South Korea, Jaechang Jo

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In 1980, South Korean government built a large scale apartment complex in the Seoul metropolitan area because of consecutive urbanization and rapid industrialization. However, in late 1980, as the housing market surged rapidly, the government constructed several huge new towns. These new towns and urban development projects contributed to stabilizing the housing market, but residents in new towns began to suffer from traffic noise and this became social problems.

Traffic noise is caused by tire friction and also influenced by various factors such as vehicle volume and traffic speed. There are two primary measures to mitigate the traffic noise; reducing …

St. Johns Housing Action Plan, Jai Singh, Julia Michel, Andres Oswill, Gabriel Rousseau, Ludwig Salzmann, Eric Rutledge

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The St. Johns Housing Action Plan (Action Plan) is designed to serve vulnerable St. Johns residents who are first to feel the impacts of increased housing costs and market pressures. It also intends to capture the support of residents who are not at risk of displacement but realize that the neighborhood change they fear is partly fueled by housing instability.

Brentwood-Darlington: Say Our Name! Neighborhood Assessment And Action Plan, Laura Combs, Samuel Garcia, Olivia Holden, Amanda Howell, Andrea Pastor, Shannon Williams

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

We wrote this plan with two audiences in mind: the city agencies that will be responsible for the large scale capital improvement projects; and engaged neighborhood residents who will be the steadfast advocates driving the direction of Brentwood-Darlington’s evolution. Our hope is the plan serves as a guide and a touchstone—a reminder of where the neighborhood has been, and an arrow pointing the way to the community’s shared vision of the future.

Rethink Nw 13th: Nw 13th Phased Action Plan, Cassandra Dobson, Courtney Simms, Dylan Johnstone, Geoff Gibson, Russ Doubleday, Santiago Mendez

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

NW 13th has its own set of challenges and opportunities that set it apart from other streets in the Portland Pearl District. This plan refocuses the historic district street around the pedestrian, placing all other modes as secondary to the experience and comfort of those walking on the street. Creating a plan for the pedestrian includes creating stronger bonds with the residents, businesses, and services that run the street’s entire length.

Two appendices: Community Engagement, and Existing Conditions, are included here as supplemental files.

Columbia View Park Expansion Plan: St. Helens, Oregon, Paul Gagliardi, Jonathan Morales, Takayuki Shigematsu, Deme Shor, Nathan Williams

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Vista Planning led public engagement surrounding a waterfront park expansion to help determine how the City should expand and renovate Columbia View Park. Between March and June 2017 Vista Planning ran engagement activities to learn about the local community, build interest around the park expansion and broader framework plan, and ultimately develop a preliminary site plan based on community input.

The Potential And Limits Of Extended Producer Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis Study, Jessica Bass

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis draws on the concept of product stewardship and its focus on incorporating all of the actors in a product’s lifecycle into steps to take responsibility for waste management. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) recognizes the producer’s distinct potential to consider and drive change in waste management. Producers often serve like mediators between the design and use phases of a product’s lifecycle. Through EPR policies, the producer takes on the costs of ensuring safe end-of-life waste disposal. In this way, EPR can be expected to help relieve the public of some of the costs of waste disposal, and to support …

No-Place, New Places: Death And Its Rituals In Urban Asia, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In many Asian cities, particularly those that confront increasing land scarcity, the conversion from burial to cremation has been encouraged by state agencies in the last several decades. From Hong Kong to Seoul to Singapore, planning agencies have sought to reduce the use of space for the dead, in order to release land for the use of the living. More secular guiding principles regarding efficient land use in these cities had originally come up against the symbolic values invested in burial spaces, resulting in conflicts between different value systems. In more recent years, however, the shift to cremation and columbaria …

Contesting Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor’S Strategies Of State Engagement In Chennai, India, Subadevan Mahadevan, Ijlal Naqvi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing accounts of how the urban poor in the global south engage with the state fall short on two fronts. Firstly, the literature lacks an overarching framework articulating the urban poor’s strategies for engaging the state. Secondly, these accounts typically capture singular instances of state engagement pursued by the urban poor and theorise on that basis. Using Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society as our theoretical point of departure, we draw on ethnographic evidence from Chennai’s informal settlements to demonstrate how and when the urban poor deploy different strategies of state engagement to advance their claims to urban …

Estimating And Decomposing Changes In The White-Black Homeownership Gap From 2005 To 2011, Kiat Ying Seah, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kien Le

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study evaluates the effects of the recent US housing bust on the White-Black homeownership gap by estimating and decomposing the changes in the distribution of the gap between 2005 and 2011. Our analysis shows that the housing bust did not affect the homeownership gap uniformly. In fact, we find that the gap decreased for households that were the least likely to own and remained unchanged for households that were the most likely to own, and that Black households with around a 50% probability of homeownership were especially vulnerable to the crisis. We also find that the contribution of the …