Urban Studies Commons^™

The New Urbanism In New York City: A Case Study Comparing Battery Park City And Alphabet City, Lena Farley

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis examines two Manhattan neighborhoods, Battery Park City and Alphabet City, through the lens of New Urbanism—an urban planning approach developed in the 1990s. New Urbanist principles prioritize walkability, connectivity, mixed-use development, diversity, varied housing options, architectural quality, green transportation, sustainability, and accessible green spaces. While Battery Park City represents a top-down, master-planned New Urbanist neighborhood based on a 1979 plan, Alphabet City emerged from the 1811 Manhattan grid with significant community-driven design, notably through community gardens and grassroots initiatives. Using a mixed-methods approach including residential surveys, qualitative, and quantitative analyses, this research investigates how these neighborhoods embody New …

Norfolk Core Redevelopments And Population Disruption Dispersal, Sumner Darling

Institute for the Humanities Master's Papers, Projects, and Capstones

This project is an analysis of the racial impacts of the redevelopment of the downtown area of Norfolk, Virginia in the period of 1939-1959. The overall goal is to understand the ethnic and racial impacts of redevelopment and how populations were treated differently during the two styles of redevelopment that were employed in the city. The existing research on this topic tends to focus on the segregation of the education system in the city over the community population segregation. This makes it difficult to find sources that show the impacts of other factors like redevelopment of minority communities. Through research …

Local Development Councils: Baseline And Recommendations For Optimizing Participatory Processes, Czarina Medina-Guce, Lawrence G. Velasco, Anne Marie T. Rey

Development Studies Faculty Publications

The Local Development Council (LDC) plays a critical role in local governance through its integrative and participatory planning and budget policymaking functions mandated by the 1991 Local Government Code. The LDC’s participatory governance goal, stemming from the Code’s requirement for civil society organization (CSO) membership, has been gradually problematized over the years to extend beyond the operational functionality of formalized activities and mechanisms toward participation that empowers citizen influence in policymaking in local government units (LGUs). Drawing from a national baseline survey of LDCs, this study examines CSO participation through the lens of compliance with mandated mechanisms and practices that …

Housing On The Ballot: A Comparative Analysis Of Measure United To House La And Bring Chicago Home, Gwen Tucker

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2022 and 2024 respectively, activists in the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago put forward ballot measures to address their city’s housing crisis by implementing a progressive real estate transfer tax to fund affordable housing and homelessness services. While Measure United to House LA overwhelmingly passed, Bring Chicago Home later failed. To understand why two seemingly similar ballot measures in two large, progressive cities resulted in such different outcomes, I employ a three-pronged framework, rooted in the literature of social movement studies, which examines each city’s historical context around housing and homelessness, policy design and framing opportunities, and process …

Urban Isolation In The Digital Age- Examining The Sociological Impact Of The Digital Divide On Civic Life In U.S. Cities, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

The digital divide remains a persistent barrier to civic participation and social inclusion in urban America, particularly in historically underserved communities. This mixed-methods study investigates how digital lack of access affects civic engagement, social capital, and community cohesion in U.S. cities, with a focus on Chicago’s South Side, Harlem New York, St. Louis, and Orlando. Drawing on quantitative data from recent surveys and qualitative insights from peer-reviewed literature, the research applies four sociological frameworks, Urban Sociology, Social Capital Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Symbolic Interactionism. These were used to examine the structural and interpretive aspects of digital isolation. Findings reveal …

More Than Players, More Than Coaches: Institutional Agents And Youth Development In Urban And Suburban Minority-Majority Neighborhoods, Rainah N. Folk

Theses and Dissertations

Institutional agents play a crucial role in shaping youth development. While the institutional agent framework is well established in postsecondary research, less is known about its role during mid-adolescence. Using relational ethnography and responsive interviewing, this study compares an urban and a suburban high school in minority-majority neighborhoods in Cook County, Illinois, to explore how development is influenced through relationships between sport coaches and high school athletes. Athletes in both contexts face significant challenges tied to neighborhood conditions and socioeconomic status. In response, coaches form deeply caring and supportive relationships, though their roles diverge in ways shaped by their urban …

The Permanent Supportive Housing Of Central Virginia’S Aged Out Foster Youths: The Permanent Supportive Housing Of Central Virginia’S Aged Out Foster Youths A Plan To Increase Regional Capacity, Fill Gaps In Service, And Identify Potential Sites., Matthew Snow

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

As of 2024, Virginia’s Central Region continues to produce one of the highest rates of foster care emancipations in the state, despite having minimal infrastructure to support young adults transitioning out of care. Each year, dozens of foster youth in the region age out of the system without reunification, adoption, or other forms of permanency, disproportionately entering adulthood without the stability of housing, employment, or accessible services. Although permanent supportive housing (PSH) has emerged as a nationally validated model for housing and service integration, few PSH developments in Virginia are designed specifically for aged-out foster youth or their families.

This …

Richmond Handbook: The Future Of Youth Engagement In The Planning & Design Sector Of Richmond, Virginia, Chanté C. Holt

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Storefront for Community Design is a non-profit organization in Richmond, Virginia that works to make design programs and resources accessible to all. While honoring this commitment, the organization also devotes resources to educating K-12 students on urban planning processes in the City of Richmond. Using this as a framework, the research creates parameters that guide the best practices for stakeholders such as the client Storefront for Community Design who are invested in producing urban planning educational material and programming. To effectively create recommendations for this client, the professional plan establishes the current state of urban planning education in the Richmond, …

Discontent In The World City Of Singapore, Gordon Tan, Jessie P. H. Poon, Orlando Woods

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

A burgeoning literature on ‘left behind’ places has emerged that captures the backlash against globalisation and highlights the locales that lag world cities. This paper integrates the ‘left behind’ and world cities literatures through the lens of discontent in the context of Singapore, using sentiment analysis and topic modelling as well as interviews with local professionals to unpack the multidimensional aspects of discontent. Focusing on the Singapore–India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement that spurred discontent directed at foreign Indian professionals, we show that the worlding generated by transnational flows has accentuated intra-urban inequality through racialisation and spatialisation of financial business and …

Young Women In Cities: Urbanization And Gender-Biased Migration, Yumi Koh, Jing Li, Yifan Wu, Junjian Yi, Hanzhe Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Young women outnumber young men in cities in many countries during periods of economic growth and urbanization. This gender imbalance among young urbanites is more pronounced in larger cities. We use the gradual rollout of Special Economic Zones across China as a quasi-experiment to establish the causal impact of urbanization on gender-differentiated incentives to migrate. We highlight the role of the marriage market in increasing rural women’s chance of marrying and marrying up in urban areas during rapid urbanization.

[Review Of The Book The Two Faces Of Fear: Violence And Fear In The Mexican Metropolis, By A. Villarreal], Francis Adams

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] Mexico has long been a transhipment point for illegal narcotics between South America and the United States. Clashes among drug cartels over territory and trafficking routes have caused insecurity and violence in parts of Mexico for decades, especially along the U.S. border. When Filipe Calderón became president in 2006, he declared a "war on drug traffickers" and deployed thousands of federal troops to combat the cartels. Over the next decade, violence in Mexico dramatically escalated, with tens of thousands of people killed or disappeared. Violence also became more generalised throughout the country, impacting areas that had previously been …

An Empirical Assessment Of The Determinants Of Radicalization: Evidence From North-Western Pakistan, Fahim Nawaz

CBER Conference

Radicalization is a formidable challenge to the security of several nations. While radicalization continues to grow, empirical evidence on its determinants remains scant. Drawing on the surge in radicalization in Pakistan, this study jointly tests a set of salient micro, macro, and meso factors to identify the influential determinants of radicalization. This is accomplished using survey data collected in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The study constructs a multi-dimensional index of radicalization, taking into account the support for militant groups, violent behavioral intentions, and the endorsement of persecution/violence against Ahmadis and the alleged blasphemers of Islam. Results show that …

Honorable Mention Research Paper: The Impact Of External Factors On Urban Youth Behaviors, Erin Simmons

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This study examines how community, family, and educational dynamics impact behavioral and academic outcomes for students in urban communities, focusing on Black and Latinx youth. Through qualitative research involving interviews and observations, the study explores how factors like family instability, economic challenges, and community violence influence students’ behaviors and motivations in school. Findings reveal that unresolved trauma and external stresses manifest in the behavior and emotions of students within the classroom, affecting both student engagement and achievement. The research offers insights for educators, counselors/ therapists, social workers, families and policymakers to develop supportive interventions that address students’ unique experiences.

Consistent Vmt Mapping And Modeling In California: How Can We Better Assess The Vmt Impacts Of State And Local Transportation Projects?, Serena E. Alexander, Shams Tanvir, Syed Tanvir Ahmed, Annie Jones

Mineta Transportation Institute

Despite California’s ambitious target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the state is not reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from personal vehicle travel, and per capita Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and GHG emissions continue to increase. One central challenge of climate planning facing California is the lack of consistent methods to measure the VMT impacts of transportation projects. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this research answers the question: “What are the advantages and limitations of existing VMT calculators to determine the climate impacts of transportation projects to help meet California’s climate goals?” Research methods included: (1) a quantitative analysis …

An Aggregate Matching And Pick-Up Model For Mobility-On-Demand Services, Xinwei Li, Jintao Ke, Hai Yang, Hai Wang, Yaqian Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an Aggregate Matching and Pick-up (AMP) model to delineate the matching and pick-up processes in mobility-on-demand (MoD) service markets by explicitly considering the matching mechanisms in terms of matching intervals and matching radii. With passenger demand rate, vehicle fleet size and matching strategies as inputs, the AMP model can well approximate drivers’ idle time and passengers’ waiting time for matching and pick-up by considering batch matching in a stationary state. Properties of the AMP model are then analyzed, including the relationship between passengers’ waiting time and drivers’ idle time, and their changes with market thickness, which is …

Bike Buses: An Evaluation Of An Emerging Active Transportation To School Intervention, Evan Howington, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur

TREC Faculty and Staff Publications

Bike buses are a relatively new form of active transportation to school (ATS) that have primarily emerged in Europe and the United States. A form of coordinated, group bike riding along a defined route to school, bike buses are an outgrowth of Safe Routes to School interventions in North America that seek to reverse the declining rates of walking and biking to school among children. Our initial phase of research included a literature review of social and environmental factors affecting ATS in the contemporary North American context, and two convenience surveys of bike bus coordinators and parent participants. This initial …

Ev Charging At Multifamily Properties: Moving Beyond Barriers, Whit Jamieson, Anna Guida, Connor Herman

PSU Transportation Seminars

Transportation is the top contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the US and light-duty vehicles are the #1 contributor to transportation emissions. Mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is key in the fight toward a more sustainable future, but there are several factors that have delayed our transition to EVs.

EV charging at home is the most convenient and cost-effective charging option for EV drivers, but people living in multifamily housing face serious barriers to accessing home charging. During this session, we will explore why EV charging at multifamily housing is critical to mass adoption of EVs, barriers to charging …

Addressing Transportation Emissions Through State Climate And Energy Policy, Amy Schlusser

PSU Transportation Seminars

Oregon has adopted policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy and transportation sectors. This presentation will provide some background on these policy frameworks and explore how these policies impact transportation fuels and the transportation sector more broadly.

Fast-Tracking Transit: Unveiling Portland's First Bus Rapid Transit Line And Signal Optimization Strategies, Mark Haines, Jesse Stemmler

PSU Transportation Seminars

This presentation on the Division Transit Project will provide an overview of the project elements including roadway design, bus station design, traffic signal timing and operations and the Next Gen Transit Signal Priority (TSP) system. We will discuss some lessons learned and provide before and after results from the project.

The Heterogeneous Effects Of Cannabis Dispensaries On Crime: The Importance Of Foot Traffic, Thomas Lebesmuehlbacher, Justin Roush, Rhet A. Smith

Hunt Institute Working Paper Series

This paper pairs exact dispensary locations with city block level crime data to study the impact of medical cannabis dispensaries on crime in the state of Florida from 2016-2019. Leveraging a Florida state law that requires broadly uniform security provisions across dispensaries, we capture important dispensary heterogeneity by incorporating customer volume and local non-dispensary foot traffic with smartphone geopositional data. We use not-yet-operational dispensary locations as a control group and a geo-spatial difference-in-differences framework and find reductions in larceny, vehicle burglary, and motor vehicle theft following the opening of high-volume dispensaries. We fail to find evidence of similar deterrent effects …