Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21474

The Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) is administered by the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). It is a campus-wide initiative that harnesses the expertise of UMD faculty and the energy and ingenuity of UMD students to help Maryland communities become more environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. PALS is designed to provide innovative, low-cost assistance to local governments while creating real-world problem-solving experiences for University of Maryland graduate and undergraduate students.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Howard County

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    Maryland’s Missing Middle Housing
    (Partnership for Action Learning Sustainability (PALS), 2024-05) Eldadah, Samaa; Carter, Niambi; Dawkins, Casey
    As Maryland localities struggle to meet the demand for a diversity of housing types at a range of income levels, the predominance of detached single-family zoning constrains available land for building new housing and limits the expansion of the housing supply. In this context, local governments have considered zoning change in detached single-family neighborhoods to better accommodate missing middle housing. As of May 2024, however, there have been no significant zoning changes to accommodate missing middle housing in single-family neighborhoods. However, counties are planning for future upzoning initiatives to increase density in residential neighborhoods through comprehensive plans. This report compiles lessons learned from four counties—Montgomery, Frederick, Anne Arundel, and Howard—about successes and challenges in preparing for upzoning to accommodate missing middle housing. These counties employ a range of strategies to address the market and political challenges to upzoning. Lessons learned from counties include using small area planning and zoning overlays, building political will through extensive stakeholder engagement, and offering incentives to developers to build missing middle housing.
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    Litter Tracking App for Patapsco Heritage Greenway
    (Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), 2021) Vyas, Shasvat; Chau, Daniel; Obenland, Jonathan; Henrici, John; Lan, Ziyang; Rainsford, TJ
    The Patapsco Heritage Greenway (PHG) and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) help preserve Maryland’s natural resources along the Patapsco River. PHG oversees volunteers who take on various roles ranging from litter cleanup to identification, while DNR works in conjunction with PHG in clean-up efforts. Both PHG and DNR seek to enhance their data collection methods and promote litter clean-up in the communities surrounding the Patapsco River. This proposed project will create functional wireframes for a mobile application that will allow users to report litter, see litter trends, and identify areas that need attention. The information collected needs to be sorted cleanly and concisely to identify data trends that can help create targeted programs to eliminate litter’s primary sources. This document describes the project deliverables and objectives and serves as a formal reference to the data collection, research, and wireframing process.