Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Access To Healthy Foods: A Descriptive Analysis Of Farmers’ Markets, Food Deserts & Usda Food Assistance Programs In Tennessee Census Tracts, Twanda D. Wadlington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food deserts are a growing problem in the United States, and occur in areas of low-income where people have limited access to healthy foods. In response, the presence of farmers’ markets has grown exponentially, and improved healthy food access. Additionally, the USDA has strived to connect families to healthy foods through food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP). This study investigated the relationship between farmers’ markets, their acceptance of food assistance benefits, and their locations within Tennessee …

New Probe Data Sources To Measure Cycling Behavior And Safety, Christopher Cherry

PSU Transportation Seminars

Emerging probe data sources from smartphones on on-board devices are able to measure behavior of cyclists with very high resolution. From this, for the first time, we are able to measure relatively precise behavior that allows new insights into exposure, route choice, safety behavior, or technology choice. Probe data, merged with other data sources, can begin to develop a more complete picture of cyclists on-road behavior.

This presentation will offer examples of analyses done to investigate cyclists behavior using app-based and on-board GPS data in the context of individual cyclists behavior (i.e., app users) and behavior of bikeshare users (i.e., …

Closing Schools Is Like “Taking Away Part Of My Body”: The Impact Of Gentrification On Neighborhood, Public Schools In Inner Northeast Portland, Leanne Claire Serbulo

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This “politically engaged educational ethnography” explores the role that gentrification played in the disinvestment of inner Northeast Portland neighborhood schools (Lipman, 2009, 216). Inner Northeast Portland, Oregon, USA, a predominately African American neighborhood, began gentrifying in the mid-1990s. As investment flooded into the neighborhood, its schools paradoxically declined, losing students and resources. As longtime resident families were displaced from gentrification pressures, newer white, middle-class residents utilized the school choice program to opt-out of sending their kids to the neighborhood schools. Facing declining community support, inner Northeast schools were targeted for closure or redesign. Despite these challenges, the longtime resident community …

California's Paradigm Shift From Los To Vmt As A Transportation Impact Metric: Policies, Politics, And Possibilities, Robert Liberty, Lynn Peterson

PSU Transportation Seminars

As part of California's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the state has passed a law leading to a radical shift in how it analyzes the traffic impacts of new land use developments and transportation projects. SB 743's goal is to "more appropriately balance the needs of congestion management with statewide goals related to infill development, promotion of public health through active transportation, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

The new measure of transportation impacts will be based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead of level of service (LOS). This ground shift has broad implications for lead agencies, planners, MPOs, …

Understanding The Linkages Between Urban Transportation Design And Population Exposure To Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Application Of An Integrated Transportation And Air Pollution Modeling Framework To Tampa, Fl, Sashikanth Gurram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid and unplanned urbanization has ushered in a variety of public health challenges, including exposure to traffic pollution and greater dependence on automobiles. Moreover, vulnerable population groups often bear the brunt of negative outcomes and are subject to disproportionate exposure and health effects. This makes it imperative for urban transportation engineers, land use planners, and public health professionals to work synergistically to understand both the relationship between urban design and population exposure to traffic pollution, and its social distribution. Researchers have started to pay close attention to this connection, mainly by conducting observational studies on the relationship between transportation, urban …

Improving Service Level Of Free-Floating Bike Sharing Systems, Aritra Pal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bike Sharing is a sustainable mode of urban mobility, not only for regular commuters but also for casual users and tourists. Free-floating bike sharing (FFBS) is an innovative bike sharing model, which saves on start-up cost, prevents bike theft, and offers significant opportunities for smart management by tracking bikes in real-time with built-in GPS. Efficient management of a FFBS requires: 1) analyzing its mobility patterns and spatio-temporal imbalance of supply and demand of bikes, 2) developing strategies to mitigate such imbalances, and 3) understanding the causes of a bike getting damaged and developing strategies to minimize them. All of these …

"Naturally Occurring" Or "Until Market Speculation Starts": Investigating The Precarity Of Affordable Rental Housing And The Potential For Displacement Along Planned Transit Lines, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

New transit infrastructure is a double-edged sword for low-income renters: one the one hand, increased mobility supports access to jobs and critical services; but if transit-oriented development fails to include and preserve affordable housing, they may be pushed out by rising rents. The question of whether public investments spur gentrification and displacement have created intense controversy around planned transit extensions in our region. My research on precarious rental housing illuminates the specific mechanisms of housing displacement and challenges for housing affordability in the single-family/duplex and the large multifamily rental market. The loss of low-cost housing is occurring even without new …

Localizing Human Rights In Response To Global Urban Crises And Right-Wing Populism, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights are under increased threat as the world faces economic insecurity, financial volatility, climate change, and the rise of right-wing populist movements. At a time global interdependence demands more intensive cooperation among national governments to address economic and environmental crises, nationalist tendencies are polarizing politics within and among countries.

Although news headlines have focused on the rise of exclusionary and racist movements, there is evidence of significant popular mobilization around more inclusive human rights claims. Because these movements challenge basic elements of the capitalist system, they get less traction in electoral contests and remain marginal to mainstream media and …

Who Is A Nuisance? Criminal Activity Nuisance Ordinances In Ohio, Joseph Mead, Megan Hatch, J. Rosie Tighe, Marissa Pappas, Kristi Andrasik, Elizabeth Bonham

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Criminal Activity Nuisance Ordinances (CANOs) are local laws found in thousands of cities throughout the country which penalize property owners if repeated incidents of criminal activity related to their property occur over a set period of time (typically, 12 months). Nearly 50 cities in Ohio have CANOs, including more than 20 in Northeast Ohio.

Drawing on extensive public records from a sample of Northeast Ohio cities, this report offers a snapshot of CANOs and how they are being used.
• CANOs disproportionately impact renters, people using housing vouchers, and people of color.
• Race and class stereotypes surface in public …

Countywide Bluetooth System: Use Cases & Performance Measures, Shaun Quayle

PSU Transportation Seminars

Washington County has 124 permanent roadside Bluetooth readers, which passively and in an anonymous fashion collect travel time, speed, and origin-destination information across the major arterials in the urban County. This presentation gives an overview of the program purpose, history, some interesting use cases, and the formation of comparative performance metrics to gauge the magnitude and duration of congestion across the County. These metrics and information will help planners improve travel demand models, consultants improve traffic analyses, operations staff prioritize timing, detection, and maintenance functions, agencies inform traveler information data, and leaders better communicate the story of traffic demand, delay, …

Comprehensive Exploratory Analysis Of Truck Route Choice Diversity In Florida, Trang D. Luong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a comprehensive exploratory analysis of truck route choice diversity in the state of Florida, for both long-haul and short-haul truck travel segments. We employ six metrics to measure three different dimensions of diversity in truck route choice between any given origin-destination (OD) pair. These dimensions are: (1) number of distinct routes used to travel between the OD pair, (2) the extent of overlap (or lack thereof) among the routes, and (3) the evenness (or the dominance) of the usage of different unique routes. The diversity metrics were utilized to examine truck route choice diversity from over 73,000 …

“Doing Well In Spite Of The School”: How African American Students Perceive Achievement, Engagement, And School Climate In The Aftermath Of California’S Local Control Funding Formula, Angela Clark Louque, Wil Greer, April Clay, Ayanna Balogun

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore urban African American students’ school experiences based on the aftermath of California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), focusing on achievement, engagement, and school climate. Survey data and focus groups of 62 participants were analyzed using chi-square, multiple regression, and an iterative process. Findings suggest that students desire information regarding honors courses, stronger teacher/student relationships, and fairer discipline treatment. Effective strategies and practices are recommended including the LCFF’s revisions to have specific goals for African American students.

Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecasts, 2017-18 To 2031-32: Based On October 2016 Enrollments, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Xi Yang

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC) for Portland Public Schools (PPS). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years and annual forecasts of enrollment for a 15 year horizon, from 2017‐18 to 2031‐32. Enrollment forecasts were prepared under high, medium, and low scenarios for the District. Forecasts for attendance areas by place of residence and for individual schools are consistent with the medium district‐wide forecast.

Preserving Housing Choice And Opportunity: A Study Of Apartment Building Sales And Rents, Seyoung Sung, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

NOAH sales show precariousness of this rental housing at a regional scale.

• Active transactions of multifamily rental properties have been disproportionately NOAH. There have been over two thousand transactions of NOAH buildings in the Portland metro area from 2006 to 2017 — over 68,000 units of housing. These sales are accelerating, with over 20 percent occurring in just the last 18 months.
• Sales prices for multifamily rental properties have increased substantially, making preservation of affordable rents more challenging. Regionally, the average sale price increased by 78 percent between 2010 and 2017; during this period there was a 43 percent …

An Integrated Framework For Modeling And Predicting Spatiotemporal Phenomena In Urban Environments, Tuc Viet Le

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis proposes a general solution framework that integrates methods in machine learning in creative ways to solve a diverse set of problems arising in urban environments. It particularly focuses on modeling spatiotemporal data for the purpose of predicting urban phenomena. Concretely, the framework is applied to solve three specific real-world problems: human mobility prediction, trac speed prediction and incident prediction. For human mobility prediction, I use visitor trajectories collected a large theme park in Singapore as a simplified microcosm of an urban area. A trajectory is an ordered sequence of attraction visits and corresponding timestamps produced by a visitor. …

How Transportation Network Companies Could Replace Public Transportation In The United States, Matthew L. Kessler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The quantity of cell phone applications or mobile apps have seen an upsurge at an exponential rate in under a decade. Many have been created for a variety of industries, including transportation. The advent and subsequent commercialized implementation of near-instant transport by a middleman-type of app is now known as a Transportation Network Company or TNC. Examples of the more renowned TNCs are Uber, Lyft and Sidecar.

In recent years, TNCs have cultivated a tremendous following, to the degree of taxicab desertion. Moreover, the massive success of TNCs led to expansion of its capacities into public transportation.

The TNC’s expeditious …

Housing Diversity In Children’S Literature, Carla Earhart

Charleston Library Conference

Previous studies have examined diversity in children’s literature: Gender diversity, racial diversity, religious diversity, and diversity in family composition. This project examines an often overlooked diversity issue in children’s literature: Housing diversity. In the stories they read and the accompanying images, children need to see a variety of housing environments and need to see the settings and the people portrayed in a positive manner.

Renting an apartment is an increasingly popular housing option for many families. However, many children’s books glamorize living in a traditional house. Using a rubric designed by the course instructor, students in a university immersive learning …

Uneven Urban Metabolisms: Toward An Integrative (Ex)Urban Political Ecology Of Sustainability In And Around The City, Innisfree Mckinnon, Patrick T. Hurley, Colleen C. Myles, Megan Maccaroni, Trina Filan

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21^st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, …

Urban Foraging: A Ubiquitous Human Practice Overlooked By Urban Planners, Policy, And Research, Charlie M. Shackleton, Patrick T. Hurley, Annika C. Dahlberg, Marla R. Emery, Harini Nagendra

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Although hardly noticed or formally recognized, urban foraging by humans probably occurs in all urban settings around the world. We draw from research in India, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States to demonstrate the ubiquity and varied nature of urban foraging in different contexts. Across these different contexts, we distill seven themes that characterize and thereby advance thinking about research and the understanding of urban foraging. We show that it is widespread and occurs across a variety of urban spaces and places. The species used and the local practices vary between contexts, and are in constant flux as urban …

An Exploratory Examination Of Perceptions Of Impacts To A Coastal Destination: Tourists Versus Locals, Eric Frauman

Journal of Tourism Insights

Do tourists believe they positively or negatively impact the destinations they visit, particularly those that rely on coastal nature and heritage-based environments to attract visitors? How do tourist’s perceptions compare to residents, and what additional insight might this information provide for destination management organizations (e.g., Convention and Visitors Bureau’s) and local government officials? Furthermore, how do residents perceive their own impacts to the communities they live in? As such, this exploratory study, unlike previous studies, compared tourists and residents perceived impacts to a coastal destination. Statistically significant mean differences were found across the social, economic, and environmental condition impact items …