Urban Studies & Planning Research Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1609

Browse

Start date: 2022End date: 2022

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Bicycle Accessibility GIS Analysis for Bike Master Planning with a Consideration of Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) and Energy Consumption
    (MDPI, 2022-12-20) McNally, Devin; Tillinghast, Rachel; Iseki, Hiroyuki
    Measuring the impact of bicycle infrastructure and other mobility improvements has been a challenge in the practice of transportation planning. Transportation planners are increasingly required to conduct complex analyses to provide supporting evidence for proposed plans and communicate well with both decision makers and the public. Cyclists experience two important factors on roads: (a) travel stress related to the built environment along with the traffic conditions and (b) changes in physical burden due to topography. This study develops a method that integrates an energy consumption calculation and “bicycling stress” score to take into account external conditions that influence cyclists substantially. In this method, the level of traffic stress (LTS) is used to select street segments appropriate for different comfort levels among cyclists and is combined with biking energy consumption, in addition to distance, which is used as travel impedance to consider the effects of slopes and street intersections. The integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis methods are used to evaluate bicycle infrastructure improvements in the coming years in Montgomery County, MD, USA. The analysis results demonstrated that the infrastructure improvements in the county’s bike master plan are well-targeted to improve bicycling accessibility. Furthermore, the use of energy as opposed to distance to generate bikeshed areas results in smaller bikesheds compared to distance-generated bikesheds. The method presented herein allows planners to characterize and quantify the impact of bicycle infrastructure and prioritize locations for improvements.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Recent intra-metropolitan patterns of spatial mismatch: Implications for black suburbanization and the changing geography of mismatch
    (Wiley, 2022-09-01) Eom, Hyunjoo
    Kain's spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) (1968) highlights the segregation of Black population in the inner city as well as the decentralization of jobs, both of which played a role in the poor labor market outcomes for Black residents in the inner city. Demographic and economic changes in U.S. metropolitan areas since the late 20th century have transformed the urban spatial structure. This paper aims to revisit the SMH and investigate whether the spatial pattern of mismatch has changed as a result of geographic shifts in the Black population. This paper specifically examines how the suburbanization of the Black population has affected the geographic patterns of mismatch and whether the mismatch is disappearing in the major U.S. metropolitan areas. Using spatial measures of mismatch, this paper presents intra-metropolitan spatial mismatch patterns that capture the clustering of jobs and the Black population based on their relative distributions, showing that the overall level of spatial mismatch declined in major U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2015. However, geographical evidence reveals that the spatial mismatch has shifted to the outer suburbs, replicating city-suburb spatial inequality, implying that although mismatch may have declined in the inner city due to Black suburbanization, spatial mismatch continue to persist in U.S. metropolitan areas in Black suburbs. The findings also demonstrate that although spatial mismatch generally declined in the inner city, it increased in cities with high inner city polarization, particularly New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Moving Up the Ladder in Rising Waters: Community Science in Infrastructure and Hazard Mitigation Planning as a Pathway to Community Control and Flood Disaster Resilience
    (Ubiquity Press: Open Access, 2022-05-19) Hendricks, Marccus D.; Meyer, Michelle A.; Wilson, Sacoby M.
    Public participation is the democratic gateway to more just, inclusive, and resilient communities. However, infrastructure and hazard mitigation planning tends toward top-down, expert-driven processes that fail to meaningfully include communities most at risk of disasters. In this article, we critically examine the potential of citizen science in infrastructure and hazard mitigation planning with a focus on stormwater infrastructure and extreme wet-weather events, as floods are the most common disaster in the US. We review literature on various citizen science approaches, from crowdsourcing to community science, and offer a framework that situates them within Sherry Arnstein’s foundational piece on public participation, a “Ladder of Citizen Participation.” We discuss the opportunities different participatory methods offer for meaningful public involvement, knowledge generation, and ultimately community control and ownership of stormwater and flood infrastructure. We provide case study examples across the US of how public works departments, emergency management, and related organizations have engaged communities around hazard risks and flooding challenges, and offer recommendations for how these programs can be improved. We conclude that in order to produce data needed to mitigate flood disasters and increase trust and public interest in infrastructure needs, civic participation should be grounded in community science, utilizing a multimedia and technological platform. The methods applied and data generated can be leveraged toward public safety, and provide voice, agency, and power particularly to disenfranchised communities most at risk from current hazards and looming climate change impacts.