Browsing by Subject "Urban planning"
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Item An alternative way to promote our built environment : more reasonable way to realize the Baby Boomers’ urban living(2008-05) Kim, Hwan Yong, active 2008; Oden, MichaelCalculating the numbers of people, their age, and income demographic in our future not only gives the idea of how people’s lifestyle will change, but also provides a clue of how planners should prepare the future. In this perspective, planners should pay close attention to any possible changes in demographic profile. By closely researching the cause and effect of the changes, they are able to be more responsible to the future and design an environment that better meets the needs of the population. According to many researches about population projection, we will experience a significant shift in population pyramid and this can be traced to the Baby Boomer generation’s aging. This report starts with connecting the population change to the recent development theories in urban planning and design field. To make our living environment better, and to make the urban theories, such as Infill Development, or New Urbanism, more sustainable, I think the development patterns should be more flexible to reflect our future demographic changes. By doing so, we will be able to maximize the advantages of those theories and make our built environment more sustainable stage.Item Analysis of skyscrapers’ economic and societal effects or conflicts on urban fabrics : based on the case of 2nd LOTTE WORLD Project, S. Korea(2010-05) Lee, Dongyun; Kahn, Terry D.Generally the skyscraper has been the great architectural contribution of modern capitalistic society and treated as the pride of a city’s urban development with significantly embossed positive aspects over the past few decades. Yet the fact that the ripple effects resulting from these buildings don’t always proceed to only a bright future urban life has also been confirmed through our recent experiences, and is especially more easily observed in high density and congested areas such as Asia Pacific cities. Therefore the evaluation for the justification of skyscraper development projects would be different depending on the specific conditions that a city faces. It is a start point of this paper. In this aspect, this study is based on the case study, the 2nd LOTTE WORLD Project in Seoul, South Korea. Because this project is an unprecedented building type in South Korea and there are no standard of measurements to evaluate its adequacy, establishing a decision model for verifying the real value of this project would be worth for the systematic urban planning in Seoul City. Furthermore, because the author got directly involved with this project as an architectural planning consultant in CB Richard Ellis firm1, the author can be in seeing this project with credible data as well as several unopened documents. Notably, this project will contribute to a boom in local economy, improving the brand image of Seoul. However, as long as conflicts incurred exist those benefits cannot be only absolute grounds to define the real value of this project. Therefore this study analyzes credible factors, which are potentially influenced by the 2nd LOTTE WORLD Project, to make an evaluation tool. The result from the survey research shows that most responders select ‘Tourism industry’ and ‘Unique identity’ as main factors substantially resulting from the completion of this project and all factors belonging to the two ‘Economic effects’ and ‘Social / Political benefits’ highly preferred to those belonging to the ‘Social / Political conflicts’. And this supports the fact that the 2nd LOTTE WORLD TOWER project is worth proceeding with a huge amount of positive effects for local communities as well as Seoul City. However, because there is a limit to this survey research in that the small collected sample size is not enough to generalize the characteristics of this project, a more specific study is necessary to find real value and more specific relationships between skyscrapers and urban fabric in Seoul City in the future.Item Aqui hay mucha demanda : a case study of renting in Lima's Northern Cone(2013-12) Rojas, Danielle M; Ward, Peter M., 1951-This thesis contributes to the growing literature on low-income renting and affordable housing in Latin America. Through a case study of Independencia – a consolidated community in Lima’s northern cone – I examine the socio-economic foundations and potential implications of self-help renting in lives of participants. Low-income renting has a long history in Lima, but has largely operated outside of State intervention. While these policy decisions were the result of contextually specific political and economic pressures, they seem also to be a symptom of the changes in influential social and economic theories informing academic thinking on the region and their contributions to bias in the housing policies of many Latin American countries. In addition to several policy considerations based on research in Lima, some general considerations for future renting research are offered.Item Austin south shore : an experiential design strategy(2014) De Regt, Elizabeth Laura; Almy, DeanThis project takes an experiential design approach to urban planning. By focusing on the public spaces of an urban area, it develops a design process based on the experiences felt by those walking down the street: both visitors and residents. Each type of user has a different experience, and a variety of building-street interface typologies have therefore been developed. This project uses the same calculations and basic framework from Dean Almy’s Texas Futures Lab studio of Spring 2013. It then looks into the various user groups and adjusted the public spaces to provide more variety, reflecting the various experiences sought after by these users.Item Barriers to and opportunities for commercial urban farming : case studies from Austin, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana(2014-05) Vickery, Kathryn Koebert; Dooling, SarahThis professional report addresses 1) where urban agriculture is developing in cities and why; 2) the primary constraints affecting the development of long-term commercial urban farm operations within the boundaries of large metropolitan cities; and 3) how cities are planning and creating policies for commercial urban agriculture under different environmental, economic, and land-use constraints. Using case studies from Austin, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana, I address these questions through a qualitative analysis of current efforts to reform land use policies for urban farming, existing literature, and interviews with practitioners, farmers, policy makers, and planners. The history and context of each case study is addressed, honing in on specific environmental, social, regulatory, economic, and land use barriers to commercial urban farming.Item Bicycling toward sustainability : built environment and policy recommendations to grow the mode share at UT Austin(2016-08) Lofton, Zachary Tyler; Jiao, Junfeng; Zhang, MingDespite significant progress in prioritizing sustainability goals on campus, the University of Texas at Austin is finding it increasingly difficult each semester to ensure its transportation system is efficient and thriving in a sustainable way. In light of this, I have conducted a research project that sought to evaluate the state of the bicycling community on campus and developed recommendations to benefit bicycling and sustainability. This topic is important because transportation is a significant factor in determining a community’s overall sustainability. For this study, I carried out my work in three activity phases. In Phase I, I evaluated the current bicycle infrastructure, policies, and facilities on campus. Phase II involved conducting research on actual bike commuting traffic through surveys, manual bicyclist counting, pressurized tube counters, and a smart phone application in order to gain deeper understanding of usage and preferences for bicyclists on campus. Phase III entailed the analysis of Phase I and Phase II results to compose recommendations for specific actions to increase bike-commuting rates on campus through safe and efficient means. My main findings in this study are that there are many factors influencing peoples’ decisions to ride bikes to campus, and for the University to significantly grow the bicycle mode share and therefore benefit sustainability, a multi-pronged “carrot and stick” approach should be leveraged and tailored specifically to the community context and the core of the campus.Item Children in the city : the role of public recreational space(2009-05) Todd, Jennifer Lee; Sletto, BjørnWhile American cities are growing in size and population, they are losing one important group of people: children. Young people are essential to the vitality and social fabric of cities, yet cities are becoming increasingly unfriendly to young people and their families. Housing in cities is expensive, streets are devoted more to vehicles than pedestrians or bikes, and recreational space is not frequently convenient or adequate for the needs of children. While working to address any one of these needs would create greater equality for children, this report examines the impact of green recreational space for children. Adding green space to a city not only provides children with opportunities to play, which is vital to social, physical, and emotional development, but it also creates healthier communities with lower levels of crime and higher levels of community engagement. Creating spaces that are child-friendly and cherished by the community is not difficult, and can be achieved through deliberate planning and engagement with children. Due to recent downtown development initiatives, Austin has a unique opportunity to create green places for the community where children can play freely downtown.Item The city walls of Pompeii : perceptions and expressions of a monumental boundary(2013-05) Van der Graaff, Ivo; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Papalexandrou, Athanasio; Taylor, Rabun M.; Riggsby, Andrew M.; Thomas, Michael L.Fortifications often represent the largest and most extensive remains present on archaeological sites. Their massive scale is the primary reason for their survival and reflects the considerable resources that communities invested in their construction. Yet, until recently, they have largely remained underrepresented as monuments in studies on the ancient city. Beyond their defensive function city walls constituted an essential psychological boundary protecting communities from unpredictable elements including war, brigandage, and more elusive natural forces. These factors have led scholars to identify fortifications as playing a distinct role in the definition of a civic identity. Nevertheless, beyond the recognition of some general trends, a definitive diachronic study of their performance within a single urban matrix is still lacking. This dissertation examines the city walls of Pompeii as an active monument rather than a static defensive enclosure. The city preserves one of the most intact set of defenses surviving since antiquity which, in various shapes and forms, served as one its defining elements for over 600 years. Pompeii’s fortifications, through construction techniques, materials, and embellishments, engaged in an explicit architectural dialogue with the city, its urban development, and material culture. Their basic framework changed in response to military developments, but their appearance is also the result of specific political and ideological choices. As a result, the city walls carried aesthetic and ideological associations reflecting the social and political organization of the community. This study is the first of its kind. It provides a diachronic examination of the Pompeian fortifications by assessing their role in the social and architectural definition of the city. The walls were subject to appropriation and change in unison with the ambitions of the citizens of Pompeii. From their original construction through subsequent modifications, the fortifications expressed multivalent political, religious, and social meanings, particular to specific time periods in Pompeii. This analysis reveals a monument in continuous flux that changed its ideological meaning and relationship to civic identity, in response to the major historical and social developments affecting the city.Item Commercial corridor improvements on Mays Street in Round Rock, Texas(2020-05-09) Haggerty, Nicole Capri; Oden, MichaelSuburban cities across the United States are continuing to redevelop and revitalize neighborhoods and commercial areas to meet the changing needs of their communities. Commercial corridors, which can be characterized by retail strip centers, curb cuts and driveways, commercial signs, and sparse pedestrian infrastructure, have become a focus of revitalization efforts. In Round Rock, Texas, one of the fastest-growing cities in the country with a population of approximately 120,000, the City Council has recently become interested in improvements to one of the city’s busiest commercial corridors. This report focuses on a one-mile segment of Mays Street, a north-south commercial corridor in Round Rock, Texas. A qualitative analysis of existing conditions provides an understanding of the physical conditions, regulatory structure, and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the corridor. A study of current literature presents best practices for community engagement, as well as ideas from Complete Streets, Smart Growth, and Tactical Urbanism approaches as they relate to commercial corridors. Case studies from San Antonio, McAllen, and Pearland, Texas and Shoreline, Washington demonstrate best practices and lessons learned that could be applied to the Mays Street Corridor. Key findings show that there are both physical planning interventions and regulatory changes that cities can use to address commercial corridor concerns. Recommendations for the Mays Street Corridor are provided based on the existing conditions, literature review, and case studies. If improvements are successful along the Mays Street Corridor are considered to be successful, the same strategies can be applied to other commercial corridors in Round Rock. The report concludes with a summary lessons learned and next steps.Item Competing urban greening agendas(2009-05) Flynn, Colleen Frances; Mueller, Elizabeth J.; Dooling, SarahUrban greening has evolved into a diverse set of strategies based on community organizing and policy change to help create healthy communities. Currently, there are competing urban greening agendas and barriers to coalition building that prohibit urban greening projects and policies from reaching their maximum potential. Greening projects take the collective effort of residents, city government, nonprofits, community-based organizations and a range of technical experts. To move the agenda forward there is a need to create a framework around health and build community-based health coalitions. A healthy community framework taps into universal concerns and the need to build sustainable communities. In order to move forward we need collective action, coalition building and grassroots organizing in conjunction with economics, science, policy, planning, design and law.Item The contradictions of smart growth: transit-oriented development, affordable housing and community vision - the case of the Lamar/Justin Lane TOD, Austin, Texas(2014-08) Asuncion, Kendal Kawaihonaokeamahaoke; Sletto, BjørnSmart Growth is a comprehensive approach to planning that aims to shape more compact and well-connected communities across the United States. Among its principles are leveraging existing infrastructure, developing around transit, providing a mix of housing types and price ranges, and increasing community participation in the planning process. However, research suggests the comprehensive approach at times obscures potential tensions between these principles, in particular when Smart Growth principles are applied to a specific property. This is the case in Austin, Texas’ Lamar/Justin Lane TOD, where the City of Austin is currently evaluating development scenarios for a publicly-owned 5.6 acre parcel located within the TOD area. How equity and access is addressed in Smart Growth comes to fore in conversations between the City and affluent, neighborhood residents. This report examines the history of Smart Growth, reviews its implementation in cities across the U.S., and considers how the City of Austin may learn from other cities.Item Dollars for duplexes : assessing the fiscal impact of regulatory processes in Austin, Texas(2019-09-05) Andrews, Larsen Edward; Wegmann, Jake; Mueller, ElizabethBy testing the relationships between regulations and unit costs of duplexes in Austin, Texas, this master’s report seeks to offer a new quantitative basis to which future plans and policies on missing middle housing can refer. Across the country, housing development has become increasingly focused on the poles of the density spectrum: single-family detached units and mid-rise apartment blocks. This is evident in Austin, Texas, where missing middle housing has becoming a topic of fierce debate among neighborhood groups, housing advocates, and planners. A common claim is that regulatory processes add financial burdens to developers of missing middle housing, which are then passed down to consumers. This report gathers data from building permits and Zillow to compare the size, count, and cost of units affected and unaffected by various regulatory procedures to determine whether this assumption is true in Austin.Item Ecosystem services and Peter Calthorpe’s model of transit-oriented development : prospects and challenges for city planning(2012-05) Getchell, Julia Michelle; Steiner, Frederick; Dooling, Sarah; Kahn, TerryThis study explores the non-monetary values assigned by designers, planners, developers, and policy makers in integrating ecosystem services into the design and development of urban transit-oriented development (TOD). This thesis also investigates the theoretical and practical design strategies that incorporate ecosystem services into Urban TODs. Methods used for research and data collection included reviewing existing literature relevant to the subject matter, conducting interviews with policy makers, academics, and design professionals, and exploring two specific examples of progressive, urban, “green,” TODs in the Pacific Northwest. This study concludes with ideas for future research into the integration of ecosystem services into urban TOD planning, and potential urban environmental policies that can be adopted by municipalities to maintain and strengthen the ecosystem services of the growing metropolis.Item Enabling adult physical activity at parks with a focus on physical design elements(2010-05) Christoph, Ali Suzanne; Sletto, Bjørn; Kohl, Harold W.This report studies the built environment of Civitan Park, located in Austin, Texas. Through studying and observing how park design can influence adults’ ability to engage in daily physical activity, alternative design recommendations are suggested for Civitan Park in order to create a park more able to be used by adults for physical activity and in turn, decrease obesity rates.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 Evaluating strategies, opportunities, and tensions for implementing green stormwater infrastructure at the site scale(2022-05-10) La Bissoniere, Bryan Paul; Faust, Kasey M.; Lieberknecht, Katherine; Passalacqua, PaolaGreen stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is increasingly relied upon to improve the negative hydrologic and ecological impacts of urban development. Site scale strategies are often dependent on owners to adopt, manage, and fund. Although cities commonly offer rebate incentives, adoption remains correlated to high income residents and single-family homeowners. Renters unable to control property decisions, especially in multifamily apartments, are left behind by current programs that benefit owner occupied properties. Similarly, reductions to property fees offered for adoption provide little incentive to rental property owners who pass costs onto renters. Important to this conversation is that flood risk falls disproportionately on low-income residents and multifamily apartments, making the geography of GSI adoption misaligned with flood risk. At best, current strategies lead to inefficient use of funds with limited impact, while at worst, the strategies deepen hydrologic and financial inequalities. This study investigates the performance of current untargeted rain cistern implementation strategies’ performance relative to strategies that integrate cisterns for multifamily apartments, and a biofiltration pond. Survey data informs the renter and owner adoption rates used in this model. Multifamily scenarios are investigated under different impervious cover percentages, and increasing precipitation intensities, inquiring performance insight to future development and climate change projections. To answer these pressing questions, a Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA) model is used to simulate total runoff volume and peak discharge rate for a sub catchment in Austin, TX. Unsurprisingly, a general trend of decreasing performance under increasing precipitation intensity was seen for all GSI. Key results show reductions of total runoff for single-family scenarios range between 0-9%. The multifamily strategy, with a 16,000-gallon cistern, reduced total runoff volume 33-18% from the median to 25-year storm. Increasing impervious cover from 50 to 60% for the 16,000- gallon cistern multifamily scenario reduced total runoff volume to 35-24%. The results show integrating cisterns for multifamily apartments can lead to better outcomes under median storm intensities, increasing storm intensities, and denser urban development. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge and practice by recommending policy changes and suggesting new multifamily strategies absent from the literature that achieve improved results.Item Evaluation criteria for successful suburban-style transit-oriented development : a case study of TOD plans for commuter rail in the Austin, TX metropolitan area(2006-08) Hercules, Jason Michael; McMillan, Tracy E.This paper seeks to determine how the elements of true Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) can successfully be implemented in a suburban setting. The author establishes firm criteria for creating successful TOD. These criteria are then used to evaluate both TOD and neighborhood plans for case study sites in the Austin, TX metropolitan area. The paper completes this evaluation by pointing out synergies, discrepancies and offering recommendations for improvement, based on the case studies.Item An evaluation of online participatory planning spaces : a case study of the Oak Hill Parkway Virtual Open House(2014-05) Ettelman, Benjamin Lamond; Mueller, Elizabeth J.State planning and transportation agencies continually face the escalating problem of increasing needs coupled with limited financial resources to meet those needs. In this difficult fiscal environment, the importance of meaningfully involving the public in the decisions that shape the future of our cities and regions becomes even more amplified. Proactively working with the public to gain buy-in from the early stages of the planning process is one of the most effective strategies to reduce project costs. The classic process in which state planning and transportation agencies have engaged the public is no longer an effective or efficient model as public meeting attendance has consistently decreased. As technology continues to shape the way that the public communicates with each other and their government, the onus falls on state planning and transportation agencies not only to continue to provide the traditional methods of engagement, but to look for new and innovative ways to gain increased public participation in the planning process. The traditional methods of public engagement will always be an important part of the planning process, but discovering the effectiveness of emerging technologies in order to develop new best practices for public engagement is the charge of the future. This report will evaluate whether a) online participatory planning spaces expand participation in the planning process and b) examine how evaluative metrics gathered by using online tools can inform decision makers of the utility of virtual planning spaces. This report will then present an evaluative criteria in order to establish a baseline by which to assess the performance of public involvement processes. This report will then present a case study of the Oak Hill Parkway Virtual Open House Pilot Project, a pilot study conducted in Austin, Texas to test the effectiveness of online participatory planning spaces in the field. This report will also share the results of interviews with Oak Hill Parkway Project representatives regarding the usefulness of virtual planning spaces. The report will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and future research needs.Item An examination of new regionalism, smart growth, and federalism in the Denver Metropolitan Area(2007-05) Walker, Brett Robert; Butler, Kent S.Smart growth tools address a diverse range of specific concerns, including historic preservation, farmland protection, habitat conservation, flexible architectural design, and expedited land development. Smart growth unites the traditionally separate and competing growth promotion and growth control measures into a single growth accommodation approach. In addition to these important concepts, Henry R. Richmond posits that smart growth must now be explained within the context of “new urbanism” and “new regionalism.” What smart growth tries to accomplish is thus development with implied improvements in quality of life and environmental protection rather than mere urban growth or economic expansion per se. An important obstacle to smart growth measures is that growth problems rarely respect political boundaries. Scattered development patterns, as well as the traffic congestion, environmental degradation, fiscal stresses, and other problems that often accompany them, tend to be regional in nature, extending beyond the boundaries of any one locality. Accordingly, many growth problems are better addressed through regional solutions that federal, state and local smart growth measures my not provide. The general premise of “new regionalism” is that the economic health of the city and its outlying areas are inseparably intertwined, and that without regional planning and programs, individual jurisdictions in a single region compete with one another for limited resources and economic investment. New regionalists typically advocate from one of these three competing positions: greater economic prosperity, increased environmental protection, or improved social equity. Consequently, many politicians, advocates and activists are calling for the implementation of integrated policies that address the interrelatedness of all regional challenges, including housing, transportation, water, sewage, and other regional physical infrastructure systems. Denver evidences a suite of tensions between the promise and outcomes of planning with a wider, regional applicability. On the one hand, there is a progressiveness that embraces regional governance, growth management, economic vitality and quality infrastructure. But on the other hand, there is the reality of city sprawl, competitive local government relationships, and a convergence of interest between citizen choice and development industry behavior. This report will illustrate three issues regarding effective and efficient regional planning implementation at local, state and federal levels in the context of regional planning efforts in the Denver Metro Area. First, why does infill development and economic revitalization not only benefit the central city but the region as a whole? Secondly, how do land-use assignments and development design, like Smart Growth and New Urbanism, encourage regional planning efforts towards integrated mass transit? Finally, How does government fragmentation and overlap contribute to the lack of regional consensus and efficient planning?Item Expanding the middle : creating a more inclusive definition for missing middle housing(2023-04-21) Sullivan, Olivia M.; Wegmann, JakeCities nationwide are grappling with pressing challenges related to affordable housing, climate change, and discriminatory zoning practices. One potential solution at the intersection of these issues is Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek in 2010. This housing typology is known for its ability to encourage compact, walkable urban development that was more prevalent in US cities decades ago. With Parolek’s reimagination of housing types with two to nineteen units, cities across the country have begun updating their zoning codes to be more accommodating of Missing Middle Housing. However, Parolek’s narrow definition excludes several housing types that could offer higher densities and contribute to walkable urban neighborhoods at a time where cities need more housing. This report aims to expand the definition of Missing Middle Housing by examining three case studies of housing types that fit within this expanded definition. These case studies highlight a range of urban housing, already existing within cities, which promote the same density and walkability Missing Middle Housing does, without the strict adherence to the existing form of single-family neighborhoods promoted by Parolek. These case studies are then utilized in three future development scenarios in Austin, Texas, to display the potential of incorporating a broader range of housing types in urban planning and development efforts. By considering an expanded definition of Missing Middle Housing, cities can address multiple challenges simultaneously and promote more inclusive and sustainable urban development
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