Browsing by Author "Tesfaye, Abby"
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Item The City of Frederick – An Architectural Tour Guide(Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), 2014) Tesfaye, Abby; Linebaugh, Donald W.The City of Frederick requested an architectural tour guide as part of this year’s PALS initiative. With a rich history and well-preserved historic district, the City’s historic resources draw local, regional, and national attention. Tourists seek out Frederick’s diverse cultural attractions. While the City has several existing tour guides, none specifically highlight architectural resources. The existing tour guides are also difficult to access as they are scattered across different websites and brochures.This project sought to address the City’s need for an architectural tour guide in a comprehensive way. The goal was to provide the content necessary to produce an architectural tour guide, one that could be used on various platforms including brochures, websites, or apps (see Attached Brochure). The project takes an interactive approach to the tour guide, focusing on the content, translating this content into a range of user-friendly media, and making recommendations on how to make these resources as available as possible. This paper should be viewed as a resource and as a background document for the actual tour guide, explaining how and why various choices were made.Item Healthy and Safe Neighborhoods(Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), 2015) Patterson, Diane; Cheesman, Denine; Bullen, Lindsey; Tesfaye, Abby; Liu, ChaoFor this project the Healthy and Safe Neighborhoods group worked with Baltimore’s Southwest Partnership (SWP) to create mapping resources for their seven partnering neighborhoods. The primary focus was to investigate the health and safety of Southwest Baltimore’s current neighborhood using the most recent ACS (American Community Survey) and Census Data as well as open source data provided by the City and the SWP, to determine if certain conditions influence one another. Like much of Baltimore, the Partnership’s neighborhoods have been isolated and neglected due to white flight, racially restrictive zoning, redlining, and “decades of disinvestment.”1 By using GIS mapping to visualize the neighborhood conditions and GIS analysis to pinpoint areas of opportunity and concern, we hope to help SWP focus their resources to attract new residents and investment, particularly from its neighboring partners and anchor institutions. Recently planners have used GIS to map areas of opportunity and spatial mismatch where, for example, employment needs do not match resident skills. Using crime data provided by the SWP and the City, this report compares street conditions and demographics in Southwest Baltimore with contributing factors or variables that would affect the neighborhoods’ health and safety. The following variables were mapped: racial demographics, median household income, vacant houses, crime density by type and time of day, urban tree canopy, street conditions, street lights, and illegal dumping sites. Analysis showed that the neighborhood trends reflected issues facing Baltimore City as a whole, so the study area was expanded to provide context and draw comparisons between the City and the SWP area. Both Baltimore City and the SWP area have overlapping clusters of aging infrastructure, low income, crime, and vacancies abutting areas of wealth and security. In the end, the limiting factors on the analysis were due to incomplete data sets, which SWP recognizes and continues to build.Item Sustainable Frederick(Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), 2015) Bearne, Amee; Chamy, Adam; Engel, Albert; Habtour, Rebecca; Hirsch, Oren; Johansson, Christopher; Kedar, Boaz; Pastore, Max; Rattanni, Ryan; Tesfaye, Abby; Cohen, JamesDuring the academic year and the summer, master’s students in the University of Maryland’s Urban Studies and Planning Program (URSP) are able to fulfil their requirement for a community planning studio. In the studio, students conduct research on a key planning issue or issues in a given study area, based on input from public officials, public agency representatives, community activists and other stakeholders. The students design the research strategy, collect and analyze primary and secondary data, and produce a written report with findings and recommendations. This summer 2015 studio report is somewhat different from previous studio documents. The report was created in the same academic year in which the University of Maryland premiered its Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) program. Created by the University’s National Center Smart Growth Research and Education in 2014, PALS offers the opportunity for UMD faculty and students to explore – and make recommendations for addressing – challenges identified by a city or county in Maryland related to economic opportunity, environmental quality and/or social equity. The jurisdiction selected to be the site for the premier year of the PALS program was the City of Frederick. From September of 2014 through August of 2015, thirty (30) UMD classes focused part or all of their attention on a sustainability-related issue or challenge that the City requested to be studied. In April of 2015, the City also completed a draft sustainability plan. This studio report consists of a suggested sustainability plan for the City of Frederick. The report builds on the City’s draft sustainability plan by expanding the current plan elements; adding material related to economic opportunity and social equity considerations; adding two new plan elements (economic development and housing); and drawing on material from other selected PALS class reports. The students hope that the City officials and planners, and others who actively participated in creating the current sustainability plan draft, will find it useful in their efforts.