Urban and Regional Planning and Design Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/26355
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Item DO INTERIOR PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACES FOSTER URBAN PUBLIC LIFE? A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FOUR NYC PUBLIC SPACE TYPOLOGIES(2024) Donahue, Alex; Simon, Madlen; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on a specific kind of public space—privately owned and mandated for public use and enjoyment. In exchange, the property owner receives bonus floor area or waivers. The arrangement provides a unique dilemma: how can a space provide ideal benefits to the public while recognizing the individual rights associated with a privately owned space? The primary inquiry of this research is to compare Interior Privately Owned Public Spaces (IPOPS) with three other space typologies: Privately Owned, Restricted to Public Space (PORPS), Privately Owned, Publicly Available Space (POPAS), and Urban Street (URBS) to discover how successfully the physical characteristics of IPOPS foster urban public life, focusing on aspects of (a) sociability; (b) inclusion; (c) wayfinding; (d) ownership; (e) well-being; and (f) community. The six themes comprise the Hexa-model for assessing ideal space, a tool the researcher developed for this study. I use the following methods to understand better the connection between the built environment, human use, and interaction: (a) architectural analysis; (b) signage analysis; (c) behavioral observation; and (d) archival analysis. I focus on four case study sites within New York City, each including all four typologies: (a) along Maiden Lane from Water Street to South Street; (b) on East 42nd Street and Park Avenue; (c) around 3rd Avenue and East 49th Street; and (d) along 45th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. The findings illustrate that while the IPOPS included free-of-charge access to secure, sheltered, and climate-controlled seating, tables, natural light, bathrooms, and plants, there was a relative lack of urban public life. The IPOPS demonstrated a lack of urban public life in limited occupancy and activity when compared to the other spatial typologies and a lack of public space legibility, a generic identity with little sense of place, impromptu closures, a fortress-like aesthetic, and rules that conscribe and exclude the types of uses that are allowed to occur within the space. This research illustrates that in the sample of spaces studied, and compared with other spatial typologies, IPOPS lacked several normative criteria outlined in the Hexa-model. As a consequence, the public is currently not receiving the full benefit of public space as outlined in the agreements made with the city of New York. I recommend that further study be conducted at a larger scale, covering more locations and at various times of day and year to confirm the present study’s findings and promote policy changes to improve the public nature of IPOPS.Item THE ENDURANCE OF GENTRIFICATION: THREE ESSAYS ON MEANING, MEASUREMENT, AND CONSEQUENCES(2022) Finio, Nicholas James; Knaap, Gerrit J; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gentrification is the process through which an influx of new investment and new residents with higher incomes and educational attainment flow into a neighborhood over time. This dissertation expands scholarly understanding of gentrification’s meaning, measurement, and consequences through three essays. The first essay reviews, inventories, and critiques the numerous methods scholars have used to identify gentrification. The second essay critiques the normative foundations of the smart growth movement and improves empirical understanding of how that urban policy agenda and gentrification are linked. The final essay identifies gentrification in Maryland’s Purple Line Corridor and with quantitative methods illustrates how gentrification impacts the local business economy. The findings of this dissertation show that gentrification is often not properly identified, smart growth and gentrification can be linked, and that businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods are more likely to close.Item Planning towards an equitable sharing economy: On housing, on transportation, on policymaking(2021) Zou, Zhenpeng; Knaap, Gerrit; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The sharing economy has experienced phenomenal growth in the past decade. Its two most popular sectors, short-term rental (STR) and shared mobility, have significantly transformed people’s travel behavior and disrupted the urban housing/transportation markets. On the other hand, planning and policy efforts lag behind the growth of the sharing economy due to its novelty and its market-based business model. In this dissertation, I use three empirical studies to demonstrate one of those planning and policymaking challenges from the equity perspective. In the first study, I investigate the impact of STR on single-family housing prices in Washington DC using a data-driven, hedonic analytical framework. Not only do I find a significant price inflation as a result of increasing STR activities, but I also identify the spatially uneven impacts that can adversely affect housing affordability in some minority-populated neighborhoods in the city. In the second study, I focus on the built and social environment factors to explain the spatial distribution of e-scooter sharing trips on Washington DC’s streets. Using real-time, trip trajectory level data, I am able to examine not only the built environment factors for a trip’s origin and destination neighborhoods, but also the street design factors for a trip’s traversing paths. Moreover, I apply a machine-learning based clustering analysis to segment trips by their temporal patterns, built environment, and social environment attributes. With both data-intensive analyses, I identify potential equity issues and opportunities associated with the emerging e-scooter sharing in DC. In the third study, I expand my analysis on STR and shared micromobility in a cross-city, cross-section exploration. I find similar tourist-oriented spatial patterns for three types of activities, including STR, station-based bike-sharing, and dockless bike/e-scooter sharing. Additionally, I find a significant lag in their uses in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in eight cities, as well as identifying a potential connection between active STR business and gentrification in communities of high social vulnerability. The policy heterogeneities within the eight cities provide different angles to understand the feasible and effective planning practices and policy approaches to address the equity concerns on the rising sharing economy.Item Are Houston's Land Use Relationships Unique?(2021) Dorney, Christopher Leh; Knaap, Gerrit J; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The city of Houston, Texas has been at the heart of a long-running debate in the United States on government’s proper role in the land development process. As the only large American city that never adopted a city-wide zoning ordinance, Houston is often cited as an example for why more or less government planning is needed. Some authors claim that Houston is an outlier when it comes to land use relationships, with strange land use juxtapositions quite prevalent. Other authors argue that zoning is largely redundant to market forces and that Houston’s land use relationships are not all that different from zoned cities. The purpose of this study is to inform this ongoing debate by undertaking a quantitative analysis of land use relationships across large American cities to determine if Houston’s are distinctive. The study develops several metrics to quantify land use relationships and uses principal component analysis to determine if Houston is an outlier. The findings indicate that Houston’s land use relationships are not substantially different from those of zoned cities.Item RECENT INTRA-METROPOLITAN PATTERNS OF JOBS AND WORKERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SPATIAL MISMATCH HYPOTHESIS(2021) Eom, Hyunjoo; Dawkins, Casey J. C.J.; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the seminal work of John Kain in the 1960s, scholars have explored the spatial mismatch between suburban job opportunities and the residential segregation of low-income Black populations in the inner city. Since then, the spatial structure of U.S. metropolitan areas has undergone dynamic changes and reshaped the demographic landscape and economic geography, which have important implications for the spatial patterns of mismatch in the 21st century. Particularly, the movement of Black populations to the suburbs has the potential to perpetuate spatial mismatch if those newly suburbanized Black populations continue to be spatially segregated in suburbs apart from where jobs have relocated. Although previous studies provide evidence for continued residential segregation, it is yet unclear how it affects spatial patterns of mismatch for suburban Black populations as well as the changing geography of opportunity. In this dissertation, I examine the spatial patterns of mismatch with a particular focus on whether the spatial distributions in the 21st century continue to disadvantage the Black population in accessing job opportunities. I also estimate the differing relationship between the neighborhood job accessibility and labor market outcomes by the residence in the city and the suburb, availability of auto, and the level of residential segregation. By incorporating the geographic scale of segregation and inequality, the measures used in this dissertation captures the spatial interactions with neighboring areas that take into account the spatial clustering as well as the concentration of opportunities and disadvantages. The results reveal geographical evidence of a shift in the geography of spatial mismatch into the suburbs into which Black populations have predominantly moved since the 1980s, indicating that changes in urban structures contribute to the expansion of inequality of opportunities beyond the boundaries of the inner-city. Further, there is an increasing trend of within- neighborhood subarea inequality in both cities and the suburbs, which suggests a greater spatial heterogeneity at the local geographical level. The study concludes by arguing that the spatial mismatch is not disappearing from U.S. metropolitan areas. Rather, the geography of the spatial mismatch has merely shifted in such a way that the same pattern of neighborhood disadvantages now exists in the suburbs.Item SMALL, SLOW AND STEADY: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ARTS DISTRICT DESIGNATION AND ARTS-LED DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES ON ENTERPRISE GROWTH IN A SMALL, MID-ATLANTIC TOWN(2021) Manjarrez, Carlos Arturo; Howland, Marie; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers and planning professionals have become increasingly interested in leveraging arts and culture programming and investments as strategies for community revitalization. Arts-themed strategies employed by local governments and community organizations include arts and music festivals, commissioning public art, physical development of cultural facilities, artist live/work spaces and more. As these practices expanded in the early 2000s, local actors began concentrating arts-led development activities in designated “arts districts. Many of these new districts received their designation from state agencies hoping to bolster tourism, support local business, and attract artists, knowledge economy workers and creative industries. Despite their impressive growth, evidence of arts district effects on local economies is limited. Past research has focused narrowly on single sites, without the benefit of controlled comparisons, or has pooled many different arts districts into the same model, ignoring the unique effects of the different arts-led development strategies they employ. This project offers a middle ground, one that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the impact of arts district designation and programming on business enterprise growth. The primary focus of the project is Frederick, Maryland, a small city 43 miles northwest of DC, which received formal recognition from the State of Maryland in 2002. The first part of the project uses the Synthetic Control Method to compare the enterprise growth rate of the Frederick arts district to that of a statistically-derived, synthetic comparison unit over a 20 year time period. Frederick's business growth rate was found to be significantly larger than its synthetic counterpart, and enjoyed a more robust recovery after the Great Recession. The second part of the analysis employs a site-based qualitative analysis of interviews, local media and administrative records, and an analysis of visitorship using a unique dataset derived from the cell phone location data. Triangulating findings from these different sources provides a more robust basis of evidence to assess arts district impacts, detailing the ways in which arts-based development efforts, concentrated in narrowly targeted areas, can result in significant business enterprise growth in small communities.Item THE PEOPLE’S PARK: A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DESIGN AND CONVIVIAL BEHAVIOR IN SUPERKILEN(2020) RODRIGUEZ, MARIA BELTRAN; Simon, Madlen; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research project investigates the relationship between design solutions andconvivial behavior among users of urban landscapes, particularly within areas characterized by diverse populations. By unpacking the entwined physical features and signs of convivial behavior at play in a People’s Park, this analysis provides insight into the role design can have in promoting convivial behavior. This is particularly important in Europe, which has long struggled to accept diversifying population and where urban neighborhoods are increasingly heterogeneous. This current diversification has tremendous implications for the ways people live together. The typology of the People’s Park is one of the contexts where this will play out. I define a people’s park as an everyday space with the potential to promote social wellbeing. It is characterized by an intent to design spaces for and with all members of a community. I define conviviality as a social condition contributing to everyday quality of life. I examine the people’s park as an institution for fostering convivial behavior in public life. The ultimate goal is to inform urban planning policies addressing social life in the public realm in multi-ethnic or diverse communities. The means to that goal is the development of a methodology for studying the relationship between design and convivial behavior that can guide park design to promote convivial coexistence and that can assist in assessing and improving existing underperforming parks. Research on these questions was undertaken using a single case study site, Superkilen, a park in Copenhagen’s multi-ethnic Nørrebro district. This case study tests the methodology I developed for this research, examining different areas of the park, in an attempt to ascertain what attributes of urban design are associated with convivial behavior, comprising the activities of eating, playing and chatting. Through the findings on Superkilen, I present the People’s Park as a useful model in helping diverse communities live together, through ordinary convivial behavior activity. Superkilen shows a possible path for societies that have historically been perceived as homogenous and must make space for difference and must deal with cultural diversity, as in Copenhagen, Denmark, but also many other European cities.Item EXPLORING PUBLIC HEALTH RISKS AND VULNERABILITIES TO EXTREME HEAT THROUGH URBAN BUILT ENVIRONMENT(2021) Peng, Binbin; Hendricks, Marccus; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Extreme heat events have rapidly increased over the last several decades and is a leading cause of health threats in cities and communities worldwide. Despite the seriousness of this situation, urban planning scholars have yet to sufficiently examine the multidimensional nature of health risk to extreme heat in the scope of the built environment. Furthermore, literature that empirically explores relationships between extreme heat scenarios and road safety in cities is scant. This dissertation research focuses on the intersection of extreme urban heat, public health risk, and the built environment; it presents three interconnected and standalone studies. To synthesize what we know to date on how heat-related risks and associated health outcomes manifest in urban planning and the built environment, this study systematically reviewed urban areas’ extreme heat and health mortality and morbidity. The literature review used empirical evidence drawn from refereed manuscripts to bring attention to the built environment factors that are significant but understudied public health threats in times of extreme heat events. The review highlighted the linkages that have been least explored and/or in the germane literature and expatiated on key challenges in conducting research on associations between extreme heat and health risk in the context of urban environment. The first empirical study applied latent variable analysis analytics to explore the dimensionality of health risk associated with extreme heat by integrating a wide range of data sets from multiple disciplines, including but not limited to public health, applied geography, environmental science, and urban planning. Socioeconomic and socioenvironmental factors related to extreme heat are examined altogether with human behavioral risk factors in the dimensionality analysis. The final empirical piece examines the relationship between extreme hot days and non-motorized traffic crashes from a spatiotemporal perspective. Using a series of spatial econometric approaches, I found significant associations between extreme hot days and both the occurrence and severity of non-motorized crashes. I suggest that future research needs to adopt a dynamic traffic risk management approach that considers both urban climate and spatial dependencies when making transportation safety management plans. This dissertation is the first attempt to utilize latent variable analysis technique in a more sophisticated way to explore the dimensionality of health risk to extreme heat and the underlying factors resulting in different degrees of health risk associated with heat. It is also the first trial to quantify the spatiotemporal relationship between heat extremes and the mobility exposure and consequences, i.e., non-motorized traffic crashes.Item Housing Value and Light Rail Transit Construction: Evidence from Three Essays(2020) Peng, Qiong; Knaap, Gerrit Jan; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In three essays, this dissertation explores what’s the determinants of multifamily rents and whether an anticipated investment in light rail transit influences multifamily rents and single-family housing prices in the rail transit pre-service period. In the first essay, I applied a multilevel linear model approach to account for the multifamily housing hierarchical data structure, and assessed the effects of service provision and management on multifamily rents. The findings show that pet allowance, availability of a short-term lease, and storage service increase rents significantly, while general renovations and availability of services for those with disabilities do not increase rents. The second essay empirically tests whether light rail transit in the pre-service period impacts multifamily housing rent in the transit corridor. Two approaches, a first-difference method and a difference-in-difference method, are used to test the research question. The results indicate that the rents of two-bedroom, three-bedroom, and four-bedroom units within a half-mile from planned light rail stops have significantly increased from 2015 to 2018 compared with the rent of units in other areas in Montgomery County. The third essay examines the temporal and spatial variation of the effect of the Purple Line on single-family home prices during the rail line pre-service period. The results show that the housing market saw a premium in 2012, the year the Purple Line project progressed into the preliminary engineering phase. The results also show that the effect of the new light rail transit line is distributed unevenly across the catchment areas of newly built stations and established stations.Item HOUSING DEMAND AND TENURE CHOICE FOR SENIOR CITIZENS: LESSONS FROM THREE ESSAYS(2020) Kim, Jinyhup; Dawkins, Casey J; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The U.S. housing market faces a huge surge brought on by the growth of the older population. Housing researchers and gerontologists are now focusing on potential challenges that older households could face over the coming decades and are attempting to estimate how such challenges will affect the housing market. This marks a critical point for assessing housing affordability, availability of accessible housing, and housing demands based on geographical locations – all of which will be of utmost importance to aging populations in the coming decades. Although the older population is growing rapidly and is receiving considerable attention from both researchers and policymakers, there have been relatively few empirical studies about the housing behaviors of older Americans. This dissertation examines the aforementioned three challenges through empirical essays by employing micro-data (e.g., the 2004–2014 Health and Retirement Study, the 2011 American Housing Survey, and the 2013–2017 Public Use Microdata Sample). Specifically, the first paper will examine the reasons why elderly homeowners make the downward transition from homeownership, with a particular focus on the significance of property taxes on elderly behaviors. The second paper will investigate the living conditions of existing housing for stayers – those who have remained in their place of dwelling since reaching the retirement age of 65 – and estimate how accessible their housing is to meet the daily needs for aging in place. The third paper will seek empirical determinants on residential mobility and housing choices by elderly households in the Baltimore MSA, accessing the net impact of individual and housing attributes on migration behaviors and housing consumption. The results of these analyses show that property tax abatement programs fail to provide tax subsidies targeted to low income seniors in need. Furthermore, policy approaches to grow the accessible housing stock have proven largely unsuccessful. Finally, seniors who migrate throughout the Baltimore MSA show a strong tendency to downsize and become renters – particularly of apartments – regardless of location. This research will provide timely new evidence, which will help decision-makers better understand the burning issues that impact aging adults’ housing-related behaviors in the U.S. housing market.