Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Housing First, Neighborhood Second? : The Role Of Housing And Neighborhood Characteristics On Residential Stability In Two Housing First Projects., Carey D. Addison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the impacts of neighborhood and housing type on housing stability for formerly homeless individuals participating in Housing First projects in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Both projects operate similarly except that the Louisville project has only scattered-site housing while the Cincinnati project has both project-based and scattered-site housing. The first chapter presents five key research questions that frame the study. Chapter 2 reviews literature on homelessness and policies to address this urban problem with a specific emphasis on Housing First. Chapter 3 proposes qualitative and quantitative methods for answering the proposed research questions. Chapter 4 summarizes findings …

Broadband Infrastructure In The 21st Century : An Evaluation Of Local Outcomes And Conditions., Chad Stephen Foster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since 2001, the Federal government has invested approximately $10 billion to expand broadband infrastructure throughout the nation, including various loan programs and grants authorized through Farm Bills and, more recently, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Kruger, 2012). These investments dwarf capital investments made by the top telecommunications and cable companies estimated at $50 billion per year (Federal Communications Commission [FCC], 2010, p. 18). While the rage on all levels has been connecting residents, few studies have attempted to measure investments in broadband infrastructure to demonstrate positive outcomes or improvements, especially from a wide variety of economic and …

Assessing Urban Freeway Deconstruction : A Survey Of 21 Cities With Case Studies Of San Francisco And Milwaukee., Doddy Aditya Iskandar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluates the effect of urban freeway deconstruction on the local economy. Scholars for years debated the role of urban freeway on the local economy. Those who found a positive effect of urban freeway use national data to support their finding. However, other scholars found the effect of urban freeway on the local economy mixed. Four major questions are raised in this study: What are the key factors of the city that affect the decision to remove urban freeways? What are the similarities and differences between cities that choose to remove their urban freeways? Does freeway deconstruction bring about …

Living Cities: The Integration Initiative In Cleveland, Ohio- Greater University Circle Community Wealth Building Initiative: Evaluation Executive Summary Year 3, Ziona Austrian, Kathryn W. Hexter, Candi Clouse, Serineh Baboomian

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The Living Cities Integration Initiative (TII) began in 2011 as a three-year program to accelerate local initiatives promoting greater economic inclusion in five cities across the country. In Cleveland, Ohio, the TII was known as the Greater University Circle (GUC) Community Wealth Building Initiative and was part of the more comprehensive Greater University Circle Initiative (GUCI) between 2011 and 2013. The GUCI began in 2005 and will continue beyond TII. This report will refer to the three-year Living Cities program as the GUCI/TII.

This executive summary combines findings from two evaluation reports. The first is a formative and system change …

The Fundamental Law Of Highway Congestion Revisited: Evidence From National Expressways In Japan, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hongliang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The fundamental law of highway congestion states that when congested, the travel speed on an expanded expressway reverts to its previous level before the capacity expansion. In this paper, we propose a theory that generalizes this statement and finds that if there exists a coverage effect, that is, the effect of longer road length on traffic conditional on capacity, then the new equilibrium travel speed could be lower than its previous level. Given the fundamental law, the theory predicts that the elasticity of traffic to road capacity is at least 1. We estimate this elasticity for national expressways in Japan …

Urban Livestock Ownership, Management, And Regulation In The United States: An Exploratory Survey And Research Agenda, Nathan Mcclintock, Esperanza Pallana, Heather Wooten

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

As interest in urban agriculture sweeps the country, municipalities are struggling to update, code to meet public demands. The proliferation of urban livestock—especially chickens, rabbits, bees, and goats—has posed particular regulatory challenges. Scant planning scholarship on urban livestock focuses mostly on how cities regulate animals, but few studies attempt to characterize urban livestock, ownership and management practices in the US in relation to these regulations. Our study addresses this gap. Using a web-based survey distributed via a snowball technique, we received responses from 134 livestock owners in 48 US cities, revealing the following: why they keep livestock; what kind of, …

Living Cities: The Integration Initiative In Cleveland, Ohio - Greater University Circle Community Wealth Building Initiative: Programs And Projects Report, Year 3, Candi Clouse, Ziona Austrian, Kathryn W. Hexter

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Smart Data Collection Using Mobile Devices To Improve Transportation Systems, Tharindu Dasun Abeygunawardana

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Travel time is a matter that affects most of us, especially those that live in highly congested cities. Ideally, we want to reduce travel time as much as possible, thereby freeing up more of our time and enabling a higher quality of life. Data collection of transportation metrics helps us get a clearer picture of the transportation system, and helps us make smarter choices when it comes to improving the existing system. The rapid emergence of interconnected mobile devices carried along by travelers opens up many possibilities for gathering data as they travel, and also to serve them relevant data …

Exploring The Neighborhood Preferences Of A Segment Of Millennials In Omaha, Nebraska, Aaron Kloke

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

In 2010, Millennials, or those between 18 and 34, surpassed the Baby Boomers in population size. Today, Millennials, also known as Generation Y, make up over 25 percent of the United States’ population. In Omaha, they make up 26.9 percent of the population. The next largest generation in Omaha, the Baby Boomers, make for 19.2 percent of the population. Clearly, this emerging demographic has the ability to change the way we create and design our built environment if it so chooses.

To review how this generation may choose to change the way we design our future neighborhoods, national trends were …

Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’S Photography Of A Forgotten New York, Irina Nersessova

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article addresses the impact urban space has on individuals through the use of Situationist International theory and psychogeography. Representations of homelessness in New York in Margaret Morton's photography are used to demonstrate the interconnectedness among space, people, and social issues. Social issues manifest themselves in urban decay, and the inhabitants react to this phenomenon emotionally and artistically. Some inhabitants demonstrate their relationship with space by responding with material production of housing and art, which they accomplish by building without exploiting the environment the way the manufacturing of commodities often does.

Mapping As Performing Place, Aslihan Senel

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Mapping is an emerging act in contemporary discourse to understand, criticize, and re-imagine complex cultural, social, and physical relationships in the built environment. Maps are documents nearly as old as the human history in representing the relationships of people to land. Yet, mapping rather than map-making is a newly created concept as an alternative way of thinking about this relationship. Mapping refers less to a representation than a performance, in which the maker, place, and the product redefine, reposition and reproduce each other in the process. Mapping may allow developing an embodied and critical understanding of place, which is continuously …

Assessing Impacts Of Time Use On Children's Physical Fitness In Relation To Risk For Obesity And Diabetes, Jessica Guo

PSU Transportation Seminars

Researchers from the transportation, planning and health fields share the common goal of promoting physically active lifestyle. One challenge that researchers often face is the measurement of physical activity, particularly among children. This is because the sporadic nature of children’s physical activity patterns makes it difficult to recall and quantify such activities. Additionally, children’s lower cognitive functioning compared to adults prevents them from accurately recalling their activities. This presentation will describe the design and application of a novel self-report instrument - the Graphs for Recalling Activity Time (GReAT) - for measuring children’s activity time use patterns. The instrument was applied …

Urban Foraging And The Relational Ecologies Of Belonging, Melissa R. Poe, Joyce Lecompte, Rebecca J. Mclain, Patrick T. Hurley

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show …

Exploring The Community Factor Of Economic Resiliency, Al G. Gourrier

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Resilience takes on many different meanings, but when we speak of the resilience of a market we are generally referencing the capability of that market’s capacity to respond, regroup and move forward, usually after an event or series of events that impede or encumber a market’s economic sustainability. The outcomes of a stable and performing market are indicated by its economic performance. Using economic indicators as a base, this study analyzes three markets as they recover from destabilizing events and attempt to respond, regroup and move forward. The study analyzes the Las Vegas, New Orleans and Detroit markets from an …

Transportation And Road Weather, Rhonda Young

PSU Transportation Seminars

Weather has a tremendous impact on the transportation system and is one of the largest contributors to non-recurring delay and increased crashes. Road weather is the a multidisciplinary area involving transportation engineers and meteorologists who are working to mitigate the negative effects of weather on the operation and maintenance practices of transportation systems. The talk covers the broad types of issues being studied in this field and looks at ways in which technology is playing a large part in the proposed solutions. The issue of weather as a complicating factor in the use of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies is …

Transit Planning Practice In The Age Of Transit-Oriented Development, Ian Carlton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Transit serves as backbone infrastructure for many regional and local visions for sustainable urban development. Also, many modern policies predicate transit funding on the potential for transit-oriented development (TOD) near proposed infrastructure investments. However, little research has examined how TOD considerations have informed transit planning. This presentation discusses the results of recent dissertation research that fills this gap. Through multiple transit project case studies and interviews with nearly 100 transit planning professionals, this research categorized how transit projects across 19 U.S. regions were designed to foster TOD and how transit planning professionals identified TOD opportunities as projects were planned. During …

Feasibility Study Of Consolidating Public Safety Answering Points In Berea, Broadview Heights, Brook Park, North Royalton, Olmsted Falls, Seven Hills, And Strongsville, Ohio, Daila Shimek, Kyle Johnson, E. L. Kramer

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This study found that – based on selected configurations of communities and specific cost considerations – it is economically viable to consolidate public safety answering points (PSAPs) in Berea, Broadview Heights, Brook Park, North Royalton, Olmsted Falls, Seven Hills, and Strongsville. When comparing 2012 staffing and noncapital costs to estimated staffing and noncapital costs for a consolidated PSAP, the consolidated PSAP would provide an estimated collective reduction in costs ranging from $117,500 to $1.72 million. The analysis also revealed that consolidation is legally feasible. It would also offer improved service by ensuring all dispatchers are certified professionals and would provide …

Relationships Between Environmental Governance And Water Quality In A Growing Metropolitan Area Of The Pacific Northwest, Usa, Heejun Chang, Paul R. Thiers, Noelwah R. Netusil, J. Alan Yeakley, Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens, Steve Bollens, Sonia Singh

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigate relationships between environmental governance and water quality in two adjacent growing metropolitan areas in the western US. While the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metro areas share many common biophysical characteristics, they have different land development histories and water governance structures, providing a unique opportunity for examining how differences in governance might affect environmental quality. We conceptualize possible linkages in which water quality influences governance directly, using monitoring efforts as a metric, and indirectly by using the change in the sale price of single-family residential properties. Governance may then influence water quality directly through riparian restoration resulting from …

An Introduction To The Nacto Urban Street Design: Changing The Dna Of City Streets, Peter Koonce

PSU Transportation Seminars

In this seminar Peter will summarize his contributions to the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide, a guidebook focused on a paradigm shift in transportation, pulling away from the traditional bias toward highway designs that do not always meet the complex needs of streets in cities.

Identifying High Crime Areas Using Spatial Analysis, Elisa Trepanier

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

Crime incident locations and trends are examined spatially using GIS to produce maps that pinpoint high crime areas or Hot Spots Crime mapping aids police departments by identifying areas to allocate limited resources where and when they are most needed. This project introduces the availability of GIS technology to smaller police departments as a tool to assist in the development of crime prevention strategies. In this model crime incident reports for Windham, Maine are geocoded and patterns of motor vehicle and structure burglaries analyzed for date, time and location of incident. An addressing protocol is followed to protect victim privacy …