Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Data Snapshot: Challenges To Small Business, Applied Policy Research Institute, Wright State University

Defense Policy

The percentage of contract dollars awarded to small businesses at DoD increased from just over 16% to just over 19%, but the actual dollars only changed by approximately 10%. The number of small business contract actions at DoD fell by nearly 70% yet the value of those contract actions rose by nearly 290%. As the data shows, fewer small companies are winning contracts, but the contracts won are larger in dollar amount.

Halprin Sequence Reimagined, Andrea Villarroel, Nate Miller, Kris Decker, Foster Gough, Scott Robinson

Urban Design Workshop

The Halprin Sequence is a series of underutilized green spaces in the heart of Portland, Oregon. Once a booming attraction, as time has past and the city has grown, the Halprin Sequence has been forgotten amongst the towers. With a rich history in urban development and design, the Halprin Sequence could offer much more to the people of Portland than it is currently. The surrounding street of Fourth Avenue is also underutilized. The street is primarily used by automobiles, and the sidewalks are not pleasant to walk through.

For a green space network, the Halprin Sequence is in an ideal …

Who Votes For Mayor?, Jason R. Jurjevich, Phil Keisling, Kevin Rancik, Carson Gorecki, Stephanie Hawke

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Voter turnout is shockingly low in elections for mayor and other local officials across the United States. For the most recent round of mayoral elections in America’s 30 largest cities, turnout of eligible citizens in 15 of them was less than 20%.

Creating An Inclusionary Bicycle Justice Movement, Aaron Golub, Melody L. Hoffman, Gerardo Francisco Sandoval, Adonia Lugo

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a chapter in: Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation: Biking for All?

Forging Links Between Food Chain Labor Activists And Academics, Charles Z. Levoke, Nathan Mcclintock, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, Amy K. Coplen, Jennifer Gaddis, Joann Lo, Felipe Tendick-Matesanz, Anelyse M. Weiler

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Interest in food movements has been growing dramatically, but until recently there has been limited engagement with the challenges facing workers across the food system. Of the studies that do exist, there is little focus on the processes and relationships that lead to solutions. This article explores ways that community-engaged teaching and research partnerships can help to build meaningful justice with food workers. The text builds on a special roundtable session held at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Chicago in April 2015, which involved a range of academic scholars and community-based activists. We present these …

The Landscape: Walkable Tigard, Elizabeth Morehead

Metroscape

Elizabeth Morehead takes a walk in Tigard and reviews the effort to make Tigard and other suburbs - built in a car-dependent area - more walkable, healthy, and attractive to current and prospective residents

Getting Outside The Supermarket Box: Alternatives To "Food Deserts", Megan Horst, Subhashni Raj, Catherine Brinkley

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Supermarkets are often proposed as a solution to “food deserts” – places where access to healthy food appears limited. In places as diverse as New York City and Portland, Oregon, planners have incentivized supermarkets to locate in these under-served areas. However, there are some serious problems with both the notion of food deserts and the promotion of supermarkets as the answer. As an alternative, we propose that planners and their colleagues focus on community-based solutions, rather than strategies that mostly benefit corporations.

Socio-Spatial Differentiation In The Sustainable City: A Mixed-Methods Assessment Of Residential Gardens In Metropolitan Portland, Oregon, Usa, Nathan Mcclintock, Dillon Mahmoudi, Michael Simpson, Jacinto Pereira Santos

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

As cities take center stage in developing and brokering strategies for sustainability, examining the uneven distribution of green infrastructure is crucial. Urban agriculture (UA) has gained a prominent role in urban greening and food system diversification strategies alike. Despite that it is the preeminent form of food production in North American cities, residential gardening has received little scholarly attention. Moreover, research on the intra-urban variability of home gardens is sparse. In this paper, we use a mixed-methods approach to assess the scale and scope of residential gardens in Portland, Oregon, a metropolitan region renowned for its innovations in sustainability. Using …

The Influence Of Urban Development Dynamics On Community Resilience Practice In New York City After Superstorm Sandy: Experiences From The Lower East Side And The Rockaways, Leigh Graham, Wim Debucquoy, Isabelle Anguelovski

Publications and Research

While (urban) resilience has become an increasingly popular concept, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), it is often still used as an abstract metaphor, with much debate centered on definitions, differences in approaches, and epistemological consider- ations. Empirical studies examining how community-based organizations (CBOs) “practice” resilience on the ground and what enables these CBOs to organize and mobilize around resilience are lacking. Moreover, in the growing context of competitive and entrepreneurial urbanism and conflicting priorities about urban (re)development, it is unclear how urban development dynamics influence community- based resilience actions. Through empirical …

Afroreggae And Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae: A Study Of The Early Years, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

The following study of AfroReggae and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) calls attention to Brazilian presence and community organizing in the field of Hip Hop studies with a long memory framework: placing AfroReggae and GCAR in a long history of Africana resistance through music in Latin America. !990s GCAR group arises when reggae and Hip Hop music had become new global forms of solidarity among urban marginalized youths worldwide, making use of old and new strategies of social healing (Fernandes 2011). A close look at lyrics from the Hip Hop fusion band and the associated nonprofit organization shape the concepts …

Deny, Deny, Deny, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Some commentators argue that new housing supply and less restrictive zoning will not reduce housing prices in high-cost cities. This article discusses and critiques their arguments.

How To Make Suburbia Less Sprawling, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Review of Retrofitting Sprawl, edited by Emily Talen.

Politicians Turn A Deaf Ear To Planning And Housing Problems, Lorcan Sirr

Media

Just before Christmas I spent an hour with RTE recording a radio programme reflecting on some of the year’s most significant building and development issues. We discussed building defects, houses being flooded, ghost estates, and so on. After each clip played I gave my analysis of the situation, and it wasn’t long before I found myself repeating the same line, which was effectively: “I bet you there’s a planning report somewhere that says, ‘We don’t recommend you do this’.” But it was done anyway because the politicians—local and national—for their own reasons said “do it”, when the professionals said “don’t”. …

The Roots Of Expensive Zoning, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Review of Zoning Rules, by William Fischel.

"Treat Everybody Right:" Multidimensional Foodways In Detroit, Alex B. Hill

Wayne State University Theses

Detroit is assumed to be a “food desert” even with contradicting evidence. With fruits and vegetables available at each of Detroit’s 70+ independent grocery stores, there remains a lack of understanding in consumer preference and perception of nutritional access. It was reported in 2010 that upwards of $200 million in grocery spending leaves the City of Detroit. Throughout the months of July to September 2014, 73 Detroit residents participated in focus groups and group interviews to discuss food purchasing habits and perceptions of food access. Of the 73 participants, 51 completed a Food Purchasing and Eating Patterns (FPEP) survey which …

Looking Back At Planning Oregon, Henry Richmond, James Sitzman

Metroscape

An interview with Henry Richmond is the product of a new project called People and the Land: An Oral History of Oregon's Statewide Land Use Planning Program. Richmond explains the political and economic conditions in which land use program was forged, and how these have changed over time.

The full interview is available here: http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16296

Small Jazz Ensembles And Ideals Of Urban Social Interaction, Kaori Otera Chen

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

There is general consensus in urban theory that "community" is good. Nevertheless people in communities may or may not interact to a significant extent with one another nor engage in intertwined social lives, yet tend to claim within-group unity and harmony. A musical model of interaction and engagement may offer a new perspective on the dynamics of community. By listening closely I explore how musicians in small jazz ensembles interact with one another and function during their collective music-making processes and find a set of musical behaviors that exhibits an ideal model for human interaction and engagement in the social …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Beyond The Screen: Uneven Geographies, Digital Labour, And The City Of Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism, Dillon Mahmoudi, Anthony M. Levenda

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we demonstrate that an examination of the socio-environmental impacts of digital ICTs remains a fruitless enterprise without “materializing” digital labour. We suggest one approach to materializing digital labour: this first includes connecting political economic analyses of digital ICTs to the co-evolution and geography of planetary urbanization and technological change, and second, examining the relationships between immaterial, digital, labour with the material industrial production system. In the context of broad changes in technology, social life, and urbanization, many scholars have theorized a shift towards a third phase of capitalism, beyond mercantilism and industrialism, based in immaterial, digital, and …

Is The Right To Bicycle A Civil Right? Synergies And Tensions Between The Transportation Justice Movement And Planning For Bicycling, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter was inspired by a long-standing debate among transportation justice and equity advocates about the importance of investments in bicycle transportation as a goal of the transportation justice movement. Bicycle investments are notably absent in transportation equity analyses for regional plans (e.g. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, 2013), and from broader transportation justice discussions (for instance the word “bicycle” does not appear in the index of the overview of transportation justice practice published by the American Planning Association (Sanchez and Brenman, 2007). The transportation justice movement, with its lineage in the civil rights and environmental justice movements, focuses on improving the …