Urban and Regional Planning and Design Theses and Dissertations

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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    Modeling the Relationship Between the Housing First Approach and Homelessness
    (2020) Boston, David; Lung-Amam, Willow; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    A growing body of evidence from individual-level studies demonstrating that the Housing First approach is effective at keeping those experiencing homelessness in stable housing has led to the approach being championed by many leading experts, especially as a way to address chronic homelessness (O'Flaherty, 2019). This helps us understand the relationship between Housing First and an individual’s homelessness, but we know very little about the relationship between implementation of a Housing First approach and overall homelessness rates in a community. In a 2019 survey of homelessness research published by the Journal of Housing Economics, Brendan O’Flaherty wrote: “What has been missing in studies of Housing First are estimates of aggregate impact: does operating a Housing First program actually reduce the total amount of homelessness in a community?” Through this study, I sought to understand if Continuums of Care (CoC) that have adopted a Housing First approach by dedicating a higher proportion of their resources towards permanent housing units are associated with a lower proportion of people experiencing homelessness between the years 2009 and 2017 than CoCs dedicating a higher proportion of their resources towards emergency shelter and other short-term solutions. Additionally, I sought to understand how that relationship between the implementation of a Housing First approach and homelessness rates change as the values of median rent, unemployment, and other covariates typically associated with homelessness rates change. I hypothesized that CoCs adopting a Housing First approach, as defined in the context of this study, would experience lower homelessness rates. The hypothesis that homelessness rates would decrease as the Housing First index increases was supported by the results, but the relationship is more complex than hypothesized. The relationship between Housing First and homelessness rates was quadratic in nature and influenced by an interaction effect with housing tenure. Jurisdictions that adopted a Housing First approach generally experienced lower homelessness rates, except where a vast majority of households are owner-occupied.
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    A LOOK AT COHOUSING: WHY BABY BOOMERS ARE SELF DEVELOPING ALTERNATIVE HOUSING OPTIONS
    (2019) Matthews, Georgeanne Nabrit; Howland, Marie; Dawkins, Casey; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    An interdependent community with shared amenities and resources, like ‘cohousing’, is one solution to the challenges Baby Boomers face in finding suitable housing options to age in place. Cohousing developments are on the rise in the U.S., more often lead by a committed group of Baby Boomers who seem to be getting around existing public policy hurdles at great emotional and financial costs on the front end of development. This in an indicator that certain barriers exist in the public policy arena that make it difficult to get zoning approval for a cohousing development, and in turn to access traditional financing options to get these projects built. This dissertation looks at why and how Baby Boomers are self-developing their own alternative housing options as they face their retirement years. Over the next 20 years, the Census Bureau anticipates an increased national demand for moderate to middle-income housing posed by the retirement of 80 million Baby Boomers by the year 2031. This paper will highlight: 1) The demographic issue of the rapid growth in the retirement age population; 2) The social considerations that occur with family members living further afield than in previous generations, and therefore leaving the elderly without a built-in network to depend on. In addition, this generation is accustomed to independence and is looking for alternatives that support their ability to remain independent; and 3) The public policy gap highlighting the lack of affordable housing that meets the needs of Baby Boomers, who are ill prepared to shoulder the costs of retirement according to the Social Security Administration. Architects Schreiner and Kephart draw attention to the need for Baby Boomers to have safe, moderately affordable, amenity intensive housing with built-in community and safety nets (2010). The Harvard Journal on Housing (2008) acknowledges the challenge of providing quality housing across a broad income spectrum and points to population shifts indicating a future need for more cost effective, densely clustered housing that is smaller and more sustainable than the typical American dream home. Baby Boomers will be the largest group in this demand shift, accompanied by other groups like single parent headed households, individuals who live alone and Millennials. However, due to the sheer size of the Baby Boomer generation, this group has the potential to be a catalyst for the creation of new housing initiatives. This trend will require changes in land-use zoning for multi-family housing, and the creation of new financial options that support group living. Baby Boomers seem to be investigating various collective living options in order to offset the financial and social challenges that can come with the aging process. The cohousing model will be used as a case study for its claim that it offers luxury amenities, homeownership, community, cultural activities and a built-in social network by design.