UMD Theses and Dissertations
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Market Forces and Urban Spatial Structure: Evidence from Beijing, China(2010) Zhao, Xingshuo; Ding, Chengri; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation contributes to the literature on urban spatial structure by addressing two research questions. First, it empirically examines the urban economic theory by testing the relationship between the distance elasticities of land prices and housing prices. The theory indicates that land prices are more elastic with respect to distance from the city center than housing prices; in other words, land prices decline faster than housing prices. Using data from Beijing, which include matched housing and land prices, my findings support the theory. Second, this dissertation investigates the impacts of housing services production in general and the impacts of the capital-land substitution in particular on urban spatial structure. Using a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function for housing services, I theoretically derive the impacts of the elasticity of capital-land substitution on urban spatial structure, which is measured in terms of the distance gradients of land prices and capital densities, the housing output per unit of land, and the ratio of the distance elasticity of land prices to the distance elasticity of housing prices. The derived results suggest that an increase in the elasticity of capital-land substitution leads to increases in the land price, the capital density, and the housing output per unit of land at any location within the city, flattening of the land price and capital density curves, an increase in the ratio of the distance elasticity of land prices to the distance elasticity of housing prices, an expansion of the city boundary, and a growth in the population. These theoretical results are verified by numerical simulations and empirical estimations using the Beijing data. The simulations also reveal the magnitudes of these impacts: a 1% change in the elasticity of capital-land substitution leads to 15-20% changes in the total land value and housing output. The findings of this dissertation have practical implications in housing market behaviors, land value assessment for property taxation, and urban land use policy and planning.Item Design and Analysis of Vehicle Sharing Programs: A Systems Approach(2010) Nair, Rahul; Miller-Hooks, Elise D; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transit, touted as a solution to urban mobility problems, cannot match the addictive flexibility of the automobile. 86% of all trips in the U.S. are in personal vehicles. A more recent approach to reduce automobile dependence is through the use of Vehicle Sharing Programs (VSPs). A VSP involves a fleet of vehicles located strategically at stations across the transportation network. In its most flexible form, users are free to check out vehicles at any station and return the vehicle at a station close to their destination. Vehicle fleets are comprised of bicycles, cars or electric vehicles. Such systems offer innovative solutions to the larger mobility problem and can have positive impacts on the transportation system as a whole by reducing urban congestion. This dissertation employs a network modeling framework to quantitatively design and operate VSPs. At the strategic level, the problem of determining the optimal VSP configuration is studied. A bilevel optimization model and associated solution methods are developed and implemented for a large-scale case study in Washington D.C. The model explicitly considers the intermodalism, and views the VSP as a `last-mile' connection of an existing transit network. At the operational level, by transferring control of vehicles to the user for improved system flexibility, exceptional logistical challenges are placed on operators who must ensure adequate vehicle stock (and parking slots) at each station to service all demand. Since demand in the short-term can be asymmetric (flow from one station to another is seldom equal to flow in the opposing direction), service providers need to redistribute vehicles to correct this imbalance. A chance-constrained program is developed that generates least-cost redistribution plans such that most demand in the near future is met. Since the program has a non-convex feasible region, two methods for its solution are developed. The model is applied to a real-world car-sharing system in Singapore where the value of accounting for inherent stochasticities is demonstrated. The framework is used to characterize the efficiency of Velib, a large-scale bicycle sharing system in Paris, France.Item "Let the People Have a Victory": The Politics of Transportation in Philadelphia, 1946-1984(2010) Kobrick, Jacob Ian; Muncy, Robyn L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Urban transportation planning in the United States underwent important changes in the decades after World War II. In the immediate postwar period, federal highway engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads dominated the decision-making process, creating a planning regime that focused almost entirely on the building of modern expressways to relieve traffic congestion. In the 1960s, however, local opposition to expressway construction emerged in cities across the nation, reflecting growing discontent with what many citizens perceived to be a closed planning process that resulted in the destruction of urban neighborhoods, environmental degradation, and inadequate attention paid to alternative modes of transportation. Local freeway protestors found allies in the new U.S. Department of Transportation, which moved in the mid-1960s to absorb the Bureau of Public Roads and support legislation promoting a planning process more open to local input as well as a greater emphasis on federal aid for urban mass transportation. The changing culture of transportation planning produced a series of freeway revolts, resulting in the cancellation or modification of interstate highway projects, in major American cities. Changes in transportation planning played out differently in every city, however. This dissertation examines controversies over Philadelphia's major expressway projects - the Schuylkill Expressway, the Delaware Expressway, and the never-built Crosstown Expressway, in addition to major mass transit developments such as the city's subsidization of the commuter railroads, the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and the building of a railroad tunnel known as the Center City Commuter Connection, in order to trace the evolution of the city's transportation politics between 1946 and 1984. Significantly, Philadelphia's own freeway revolt succeeded in eliminating the proposed Crosstown Expressway, which would have created a daunting racial barrier while decimating several low-income African American neighborhoods. The Crosstown Expressway revolt, however, failed to change the overall trajectory of Philadelphia's transportation planning politics, which continued to be dominated by an exceptionally strong alliance between City Hall and large business interests. Philadelphia's turn to mass transit in the 1970s, in contrast to those of other cities, failed to redistribute transportation resources to its low-income residents, mainly because the city chose to devote a massive percentage of its federal funding to the Center City Commuter Connection, a downtown rail tunnel designed to serve approximately 8% of the region's commuters. The prioritization of a rail system serving predominantly affluent white suburbanites left Philadelphia's lower-income population saddled with a crumbling urban mass transit system, demonstrating that, despite a more open planning process and a greater emphasis on mass transportation, fundamental inequalities persisted.Item HEALTH | CENTER JAMAICA, NEW YORK: DESIGN IN PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY WELLNESS(2010) SWIATOCHA, BRETT; BELL, MATTHEW J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis is a series of conjectures on the potential for architectural and urban form to positively influence the health and wellness of a community in Jamaica, New York. The proposition examines the relationship between site, building, and context at multiple scales, providing a vision for the physical and sociocultural revival of a historically significant urban center whose identity is threatened by visionless development and whose population of residents is suffering from increasing rates of chronic health problems. This thesis contends that urban revitalization can be used as a mechanism for stimulating the advancement of healthy lifestyles within the population surrounding the project site. The site selected as the vehicle for investigation is the Downtown District of Jamaica, Queens in New York City with a focus on the redevelopment of the site and immediate urban context of the former Mary Immaculate Hospital, vacated in early 2009.Item BUILD to WIN: Community Organizing, Power, and Participation in Local Governance(2009) Bullock, John Thomas; Kaufmann, Karen; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on community organizing and uses it as a mechanism to compare the political environments in Baltimore and Washington over the last three decades. By conducting comparison case studies, I identify the contextual circumstances that affect the ability of grassroots organizations to achieve desired ends. The fact that both cities have functioning Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) affiliates - Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) and the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) - provides the opportunity to investigate the conditions that give rise to community organizing. Examining the interactions between BUILD/WIN and mayoral administrations over time sheds light on the varying temporal contexts while also explicating the different managerial styles of central political actors. By conducting these case studies, I highlight the optimal political conditions for the inclusion of grassroots organizations representing the interests of neglected neighborhoods.Item Stadspoort Amsterdam(2009) Marcelis, Ritsaart Jens; Williams, Isaac S; Schumacher, Thomas L; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis will attempt to redevelop the immediate context of Amsterdam's central train station in order to reinvigorate the station's intended purpose of serving as a gateway to the city. Implicit in this goal is the need to examine the transportation and visitor functions housed on the site and to resolve them in a more urbanistically coherent way. However, the main focus of the thesis is to investigate the history and culture of the city and to synthesize them into a built form which is clearly evocative of Amsterdam's gestalt. Since architecture inherently reflects the attitudes of the community that produced it, it is hoped that much of this synthesis may be achieved by examining the tectonic approaches used in Amsterdam's recent and distant architectural past and then reinterpreting them for the twenty-first century. A secondary focus for the thesis is to attempt to repair the rift in the city's urban fabric that was caused by locating the station at Amsterdam's waterfront, effectively splitting the city in two. Although the primary area of interest is the plaza in front of the station, this secondary focus will necessitate interventions both in the station itself and on its waterfront edge. By means of these investigations and interventions it is hoped that the site can be reinvigorated as a culturally and urbanistically significant entryway to the city.Item Architecture: Music, City, and Culture(2009) Riad, Mahmoud M.; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many scholars have discussed the relationship between architecture and music. Design methodologies have been created to highlight this intersection, attempting to attain the sublime. While architecture theorists have used western music as a foundation, this thesis aims to investigate this relationship in a non-western setting. Music would be used as a cultural identifier, to unlock "hidden dimensions" shared in language, music, and architecture. The case study site is historic Cairo, between the Fatamid Walls. For the past two centuries, Cairo has abandoned its cultural heritage and embarked on a process of westernization. Those who seek to hold onto the city's identity are abusing traditional motifs in a manner that seems cliché and somewhat absurd. The thesis calls for a deeper understanding and evolution of Cairo's heritage, using concepts of the Arabic Melodic modes, Maqams, to create a place for listening, al Masmaa'.Item ANALYSIS OF ACTIVITY CHOICE: THE ROLE OF ACTIVITY ATTRIBUTES AND INDIVIDUAL SCHEDULES(2009) Akar, Gulsah; Clifton, Kelly J; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Activity-based approaches have taken hold in transportation research over the last several decades. The foundation of the activity-based approach is to view travel as a result of our activity choices and scheduling decisions. Therefore, better understanding of activity choice, planning time horizons, and activity attributes will lead to more accurate demand forecasts. This dissertation extends the current activity choice modeling framework by incorporating the characteristics of the individuals' schedules, planning time horizons and focusing on the salient attributes of the activities. This study consists of three parts which are linked to one another by their conceptual and empirical findings. The first part identifies the determinants of the planning time horizons - defined as when people decide about performing their activities. Several household and individual characteristics, and activity attributes are tested for their association with planning times. The activity attributes which have significant impacts on the planning time horizons of the activities are used in the second part for generating new activity groups. The second part clusters activities based on their salient attributes, such as duration, frequency, number of involved people and flexibilities, rather than their functional types (work, leisure, household obligations, etc.) and creates activity groups such as "long, infrequent, personally committed activities", "quick, spatially fixed, temporally flexible activities" etc. The activity groups generated in this part inform the activity choice modeling structure developed in the third part. The main analytical techniques used in this research are the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and discrete choice models. PCA is used to define the new activity groups. The analysis of the planning time horizons and activity choice are performed by mixed logit models. The model results reveal the significant relationships between socio-demographics, temporal characteristics, travel, and characteristics of the schedules on activity choice. The findings of these models could be integrated in the activity choice modules of the existing activity-travel simulation models by either applying the comprehensive model (which may face limitations due to the availability of data) or integrating the findings of the models in the decision rules.Item Chesapeake City, Maryland: Creating a Vision for Eastern Shore Town Development(2009) McKearin, Jonathan Matthew; Bell, Matthew J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Exploring the future of town development on Maryland's Eastern Shore, this thesis confronts the pattern of sprawling suburban expansion by offering an alternative masterplan of compact, limited development for the historic town of Chesapeake City. In addition to proposing a comprehensive strategy for managing future growth in the region, this project actively engages the local discourse surrounding the Chesapeake Country National Scenic Byway, asserting Chesapeake City's position as the northern gateway to the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland's Eastern Shore. By reconnecting the town to the Scenic Byway and strengthening the town's presence on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the project augments the town's access to the recreational and tourist opportunities of the northern Chesapeake region. Furthermore the project proposes a carefully woven network of neighborhoods and districts, promoting a diverse, livable community.Item Reversing the Process; Taking a Detail to a Design(2009) Schooley, Zachary Ryan; Kelly, Brian P; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A comprehensive understanding of the development of the architectural detail is currently lacking in the professional education of architects. Detail development is normally seen as the end product of an architectural design process. In academic settings the majority of time is devoted to abstract generalizations, parti development, and schematic design. This thesis will reverse the typical architectural design process by taking a detail to a design. By using the proposed Washington, D.C. `Purple-line' light-rail initiative as a vehicle for study, a framework to support an in-depth exploration of tectonic, conditional details will be developed. These prototypical details will require adaptations due to location or function, yet will need to exhibit a unifying language for the overall identification of the line. This proposition will pursue an alternative to the traditional architectural design methodology. By implementing detail development at the beginning of the design process, a deeper educational experience can be achieved.