Browsing by Subject "Access"
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Item Border security infrastructure projects : space, access, and mobility in the San Diego-Tijuana Transborder Region(2021-01-25) Galaviz, Manuel Guadalupe; Menchaca, Martha; Hartigan , John; Merabet, Sofian; Díaz-Barriga, Miguel; Dorsey, MargaretA primary aim of the U.S. government since the Immigration Act of 1917 is to regulate immigration and stop the entry of unauthorized border crossers. This dissertation examines the border security policies that have been passed by U.S. Congress to stop undocumented immigration from 1924 to 2018 in the San Diego-Tijuana Transborder Region. A second purpose of this dissertation is to illustrate how the public, specifically Latinx Mexican and Mexican American population’s access to public space, is affected due to the way border security policies limit their mobility and have led to their ethnic profiling because often they are racialized as undocumented. To explore the process of border security spatial interdiction, I conducted a 15-month ethnography from August 2017-November 2018, interviewing residents on both sides of the border. By employing transborder ethnographic methods and guided by racial spatial theories, I demonstrate how the infrastructures produced by border security policies, such as border patrol checkpoints and border fencing, led to social and legal processes that bar Latinx undocumented populations along the San Diego-Tijuana border from enjoying public space free of harassment or fear of deportation, such as in parks and along roads and freeways. Theoretically, I provide an analysis of the politics of infrastructure and their relation to the production of space and spatiality. In this dissertation, I also illustrate how color and class determine modes of access to space for other Latinx people who are not undocumented. That is, through interviews gathered about Border Patrol apprehension and detention stories, I found that the apprehended configure social spatial practices. I conclude that the militarized atmosphere generated by current border enforcement practices and military bases in San Diego County contribute to the segmentation of access to mobility opportunities for undocumented and racialized Latinx populationsItem Bureaucratic access points and leverage(2013-08) Sternemann, Daniel Thomas; Jones, Bryan D.This project studies how bureaucratic behavior influences policy implementation. It presents a novel bureaucratic access points and leverage theory, which help us understand how policies are successfully implemented in the midst of bureaucratic challenges resulting from organizational roles and responsibilities and contrasting assessments. The concept of access points has traditionally involved lobbyists and interest groups accessing elected officials and their staffs. I ask what is the effect of bureaucrats accessing bureaucrats directly in the policy implementation process and its subsequent evaluation. I argue that bureaucrats leverage other bureaucrats during policy implementation proceedings, which adds the notion of power to access points theory. The focus of this investigation is the relationship between humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) agencies and associated Department of Defense (DOD) components, particularly DOD medical components providing wellness intervention. Bureaucratic access and leverage enables a more unified implementation of over-arching HA/DR policy by disparate agencies with unique missions, resources, capabilities, and assessment measures. The existing literature does not fully capture how such agency differences are mitigated and overcome in implementing policy that spans multiple entities. Bureaucratic access points and leverage theory offers bureaucrats the analytical capability to know who is controlling policy implementation. It also presents a tool they can use to maintain and increase their own influence and power within a policy domain.Item Bus network redesigns in medium-sized cities : an equity evaluation on supermarket accessibility(2021-07-30) McGee, Jordan Kathleen; Karner, Alex; Wegmann, JakeTransit agencies across the country are redesigning their bus network for the first time in several decades in order to increase ridership and the attractiveness of the system. The reallocation of resources and resulting service cuts raise equity concerns. This report calculates and evaluates equity-focused performance measurements related to supermarket accessibility before and after the bus network redesigns in the medium-sized cities of Austin, Columbus and Indianapolis. The performance measures related to grocery store accessibility significantly improved under Columbus’ bus network redesign and appeared equitable. The measures for Indianapolis largely worsened, but people of color equitably fared better than white residents. Austin’s bus network redesign had mixed performance and equity results for grocery store accessibility. On average, the redesigns of the three bus networks did not raise significant equity concerns for grocery store accessibility.Item Can You Teach Old Buildings New Tricks(2018-01-09) Carter, Chris; Edwards, HarmonyItem Collaborative practices employed by collectors, creators, scholars, and collecting institutions for the benefit of recorded sound collections(2014-12) Vanden Dries, William Robert; Clement, Tanya ElizabethThere is a long history of collaboration between private collectors and collecting institutions. Literature that discusses collaboration between these two groups typically focuses on the donation or sale of a private collection to an institution. Existing research focuses less often on the collaborative practices these two groups use to create, preserve, and access their recording collections. Furthermore, there is no scholarly work that aggregates known public-private collaborative practices. As a result, these additional practices are consistently underdeveloped and underutilized. For the first time, this thesis compiles a list of collaborative practices employed by private collectors and collecting institutions. Data was gathered through a literature review and a series of semi-structured interviews with private collectors and information professionals working with recorded sound collections. The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis was used to analyze the data. This thesis finds and discusses twelve collaborative practices employed by private collectors and information professionals. This study also discusses factors that encourage and discourage the use of these collaborative practices, the potential for their continued use, and ways in which future studies can extend the exploratory research of this study. This study’s findings contribute to the efforts of both private collectors and collecting institutions to preserve and provide access to the vast body of sound recordings documenting the multitude of historic and cultural perspectives necessary for scholarly and personal research.Item The development of a geotechnical GIS-based database in Austin, TX(2011-05) Lawrence, Robert Hoff; Gilbert, Robert B. (Robert Bruce), 1965-; Maidment, David R.Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are useful in analyzing and visualizing database information. Specifically, the field of geotechnical engineering stands to benefit from a database encompassing GIS; as, geotechnical data varies spatially. The City of Austin Water Utility realized the advantages of a geotechnical database utilizing GIS which led to the motivation of designing a database for Austin, Texas. The main objective is to provide a detailed explanation of the design of a GIS-relational geotechnical database for Austin, Texas. In addition, several examples of useful methods of analyzing geotechnical data spatially are included. The examples show the identification of faults, the uses of structural contour maps, summarization of data through plots and tables, and analyzing temporal piezometric conditions. The idea of a database is to organize and store data in a basic efficient format so that information is not duplicated. Database queries are then used to combine and rearrange the data within the database through relationships. The queries are then connected to GIS for intelligent visualization. This process is designed specifically for the geologic conditions that exist in Austin, Texas. Understanding the geotechnical engineering state of practice is important when designing a database that will encompass geotechnical data for a given region. The City of Austin relies on experience and the geotechnical report filing systems to initially plan future projects around geologic conditions. With the help of a geotechnical database, the information from geotechnical reports is a “computer click” away. Also, the geotechnical data from multiple reports is viewable at one time in both a 2 and 3 dimensional environments through GIS. Database features coupled with GIS tools proves to be an effective way for engineers and geologists to use geotechnical data.Item Equitable access to green space : management strategies in San Diego California and Austin Texas(2014-12) Steverson, Jennifer; Dooling, SarahThis report is focused on the implementation strategies used by municipal governments to provision communities in San Diego California and Austin Texas with public parks. Green space is an important amenity in urban areas that improves the quality of life for residents. Low income who experience sustained mental fatigue from the stress associated with acquiring basic necessities may experience stress alleviation in vegetated environments. Comprehensive planning documents, city budgets and interviews with parks department employees were used to investigate the methods used to ensure equitable access to public parks in urban areas. Digital cartography was used to measure the proximity to green space at the city and neighborhood scale. Green space was broadly defined to include public parks, conserved lands, community gardens, greenways, and school yards. This is in keeping with the comprehensive plans of both cities.Item Examining transportation's role in social vulnerability : São Paulo, Brazil(2011-05) McGue, Mary Colleen; Zhang, Ming, 1963 Apr. 22-; Lara, Fernando LuizThe City of São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world, with 11,244,369 people living in the metropolitan area and over 19,672,582 people living in the greater metropolitan region, which is made up of 38 cities in the surrounding area (IBGE, Census 2010). Ten percent of the population in the entire country of Brazil lives in São Paulo, and 15.6% of Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product comes from São Paulo. There is an average of 38.1 million trips taken per day in the metropolitan region. Most of the city’s low-income population lives in the periphery of the city, where the land is least expensive, yet most job opportunities are concentrated in the city center, creating a spatial mismatch. Spatial mismatch occurs when low-income residents live in one area of a city, but their places of employment and job opportunities are located in another part of the city. In a spatial mismatch situation, low-income residents often travel long distances to find work and suffer from isolation based on the disconnect between where they live, where they work, and the difficulty in getting from one place to another. The current transportation infrastructure is insufficient to transport the number of commuters from the periphery to and from the city center to work on a daily basis. In this study I will explore this spatial mismatch through an analysis of both qualitative and quantitative travel data for the entire São Paulo Metropolitan Area, with a specific focus on the Zona Sul of the periphery, in order to understand the limitations of transportation infrastructure and spatial mobility for residents of the city.Item Predictors of instrumental music enrollment : how school policies may influence retention in Title I and non-Title I public schools(2013-12) Chappell, Elizabeth Whitehead; Costa-Giomi, Eugenia; Scott, LaurieThe purpose of this study was to (1) examine the academic and demographic characteristics of 6th-grade instrumental music students attending selected public schools of contrasting socioeconomic backgrounds, (2) examine the retention patterns of students who were required to enroll in 6th-grade instrumental music compared to those who elected to do so, and (3) construct a predictive model of student retention in middle school instrumental music programs. Individual student data (N = 1052) were gathered from beginning instrumental 6th-grade programs at selected schools in a large, urban school district in Texas. Data included students’ 5th and 6th standardized test results, 7th-grade class schedules, and demographic information. Data were analyzed according to the 6th-grade campus the students attended (Title I/non-Title I) and the type of school (elementary school with required music programs or middle school with elective music programs) to identify demographic and academic factors associated with 6th-and 7th-grade music participation. I examined students’ schedules for retention patterns associated with individual school scheduling and academic remedial policies. I used logistic regression to develop predictive models of retention based on the following factors: gender, ethnicity, special education, at-risk, gifted, 5th and 6th-grade standardized test results, 5th-grade campus and pre-AP enrollment. Only the 6th-grade standardized tests, either math or reading, predicted retention in instrumental music in all of the school settings. Ethnicity, at-risk, and 5th-grade standardized tests did not predict retention in any school setting. Each school setting was unique in the factors that predicted instrumental music retention. For example, in the Title I setting, giftedness and 6th-grade reading test results predicted retention whereas in the non-Title I setting, gender, pre-AP enrollment and 6th-grade math results predicted retention. I also observed that 6th-grade required music programs were, by default, more inclusive than elective programs, and that the diversity in the student population of the 6th-grade required programs was maintained during the 7th-grade when music became elective. Results from this study suggest that offering only one elective choice per year may exclude access to music education for low academic achievers and reduce enrollment in music ensembles.Item The re-mediation of the archive : situating new media in moving image archives(2010-05) Jannise, Stephen Tatum; Frick, Caroline; Winget, MeganThis thesis outlines the changing landscape of moving image archives in light of the emergence of new media. Whereas, in the twentieth century, these archives were once responsible for the preservation of endangered films and television programs, I argue that, in the twenty-first century, moving image archives will redefine their value to society not through preservation but through the decisions they make, which will affect not simply the intellectual community but the culture at large. The ways in which moving image archives situate new media materials and extend cooperation between institutions will determine, in large part, the discourse surrounding moving images throughout the upcoming century.Item Stranded in nepantla : Mexican asylum seekers stuck in the margins of asylum(2022-07-08) Lugo, Priscilla K.; Torres, Rebecca MariaThe U.S. asylum system has seen numerous attacks on its integrity and accessibility in the previous presidential administration that have continued into the Biden Administration. This thesis looks to analyze the ways that the system remains inaccessible to Mexican children and women seeking asylum and the harmful effects it had on them. Living in the borderlands due to immigration policies like metering and Title 42, in perpetual limbo has forced these folks to live in the same country they fear and are trying to flee. This not only continues the danger they are living in, but also prevents them from being able to move forward with their lives. They remain in what Gloria Anzaldúa refers to as nepantla, a transitional place where change and growth occurs. However, it is also a place where people can remain in– stuck in a form of purgatory, unable to begin the healing process until they move on with their life. The asylum seekers interviewed in this thesis are at various different stages of nepantla. Some remain stuck, unable to imagine life beyond the border because for far too long, they have been forced to wait. Others found their way through the borderlands through Title 42 exemption processes and were able to start imaging their lives, and create their lives and work through their conocimiento in the safety of the United States. The objective is to find the ways the policy and the borderlands creates these marginal spaces, but holds the potential to dissolve them.