Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item LIVE, LEARN, WORK, WALK: CREATING RESILIENT MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING IN DETROIT, MICHIGAN(2023) Edwards, Joseph Chase; Kelly, Brian P.; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Detroit, Michigan, and its residents have suffered through economic, social, and environmental hardships from the fall of industrialization since 1950. Some of the largest issues within the city of Detroit are high vacancy rates, high unemployment rates, poverty, and overall lack of acknowledgement to its residents. However, in recent years, organizations within the city have begun to implement various outreach programs to beautify Detroit, improve its current housing situation, and promote community engagement. This thesis proposition looks to help aid these efforts through the introduction of a vertical smart growth architectural hybrid typology used as a catalyst human-centric, resilient urban housing. This is accomplished through the introduction of a community-focused and supportive building program. Overall, creating a self-sufficient, live-work micro-ecosystem to bring life back into the city center.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 A New Chapter...Refugee Housing: From Enclave to Hub(2020) Neugebauer Peters, Taina; Williams, Joseph C.; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Ref.u.gee (noun): “A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” 30,000 refugees were resettled to the United States in 2019. Coming from countries all around the world, refugees experience the tough reality of leaving their homes in search of a better life in a distant and unfamiliar place. With little knowledge and understanding of new customs, many struggle to establish daily routines and complete simple tasks. Resettlement Agencies also struggle to find adequate accommodations, especially in California, where the current housing crisis has led to a shortage of affordable housing. This thesis proposes an affordable housing model that facilitates refugee integration into new communities by providing housing options that meet their needs as well as community spaces that educates and promotes cultural diversity throughout the greater urban community.Item Re-thinking Residence: How to Mass Produce Diversity?(2020) Ahmed, Mansoor; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Due to shortage of housing, Pakistan has launched a project to build five million new dwellings within the next 5 years, through public-private partnerships. Currently, in Pakistan, only 0.3 million units are built in one year and this project would increase that number drastically, greatly impacting the environment and the built fabric. This thesis looks at an alternative to the simple idea of repeating one house to make many. It is a vision to reimagine Pakistani cities through this expansive development: mass produce dwellings that are responsive to environmental and contextual conditions, minimize the impact on existing infrastructure, energy consumption, and the environment. The proposal is an optimized system of construction that has the ability to mass-produce customizable and personalized units. The aim of this thesis is to showcase a balance between mass production and personalization.Item 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.Item [CREATIVES] Housing, Design for Innovation and Entrepreneurship(2017) Akpedeye, Nicole A.; Hill, Joshua; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Globally, the technology revolution is still expanding, coupled by a rise in entrepreneurship in many parts of the world. With the growing interest in technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, housing must advance to meet the demands of these creative individuals and families in order to enable them to succeed in their professional endeavours as well as support their future families at the same time. Maximizing one’s time requires housing that enables living and working in close proximity. There are opportunities to create diverse, mixed-use communities for both living and working in derelict or abandoned areas of cities. Cities, such as Baltimore, historically enabled people to live in close proximity to work, but due to zoning laws and flight to the suburbs, many workers spend too much time commuting and away from their families. This thesis will explore master planning, creating a place and housing types that allow for innovation and entrepreneurship within a city. By re-creating the work-life balance historically present in cities, derelict areas can have a chance at a second life. The emergence of innovation districts in many parts of the country is a precedent that shows how compact areas with various amenities and services can be established to benefit start-ups, entrepreneurs, and the whole community. Thus, mimicking cities of old.Item Barriers and Facilitators to Homeownership for African American Women with Physical Disabilities(2016) Miles, Angel Love; Thornton Dill, Bonnie; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation fills an important gap in the literature by exploring the social, economic, and health characteristics and experiences of members of a social group that has been otherwise under-examined: African American women with physical disabilities. It raises questions about homeownership to facilitate a better understanding of the relational aspects of gender, race, class, and ability related inequalities, and the extent to which African American women with physical disabilities are, or are not, socially integrated into mainstream American society. It uses grounded theory and develops a Feminist Intersectional Disability analytical framework for this study of homeownership and African American women with physical disabilities. The study found that African American women with physical disabilities experience barriers to homeownership that are multiple, compounding and complex. It suggests a research and social policy agenda that considers the implications of their multiple minority status and its impact on their needs.Item Studying the Causes and Consequences of Internal Labor Migration Using Survey and Administrative Data Sources(2016) Goetz, Christopher F.; Haltiwanger, John; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter motivates the use of a novel data set combining survey and administrative sources for the study of internal labor migration. By following a sample of individuals from the American Community Survey (ACS) across their employment outcomes over time according to the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database, I construct a measure of geographic labor mobility that allows me to exploit information about individuals prior to their move. This enables me to explore aspects of the migration decision, such as homeownership and employment status, in ways that have not previously been possible. In the second chapter, I use this data set to test the theory that falling home prices affect a worker’s propensity to take a job in a different metropolitan area from where he is currently located. Employing a within-CBSA and time estimation that compares homeowners to renters in their propensities to relocate for jobs, I find that homeowners who have experienced declines in the nominal value of their homes are approximately 12% less likely than average to take a new job in a location outside of the metropolitan area where they currently reside. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that housing lock-in has contributed to the decline in labor mobility of homeowners during the recent housing bust. The third chapter focuses on a sample of unemployed workers in the same data set, in order to compare the unemployment durations of those who find subsequent employment by relocating to a new metropolitan area, versus those who find employment in their original location. Using an instrumental variables strategy to address the endogeneity of the migration decision, I find that out-migrating for a new job significantly reduces the time to re-employment. These results stand in contrast to OLS estimates, which suggest that those who move have longer unemployment durations. This implies that those who migrate for jobs in the data may be particularly disadvantaged in their ability to find employment, and thus have strong short-term incentives to relocate.Item Essays on Firm Dynamics and Macroeconomics(2015) Decker, Ryan Allen; Haltiwanger, John C; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I describe two studies in firm dynamics and macroeconomics. Chapter 1 reports on the large decline in entrepreneurial activity that preceded and accompanied the Great Recession and proposes a model relating this decline to the housing collapse. The collapse in entrepreneurial activity coincided with a historic decline in home values that preceded the onset of the broad recession by at least nine months. I describe a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model with both housing and entrepreneurship. The model is characterized by financial frictions that affect both credit supply and credit demand. I consider the consequences of a “housing crisis” as compared to a “financial crisis.” The model produces a negative response of entrepreneurship to a housing crisis via a housing collateral channel; this mechanism can account for at least a quarter of the empirical decline in entrepreneurs’ share of activity. A financial crisis (which works through credit supply) has more nuanced effects, causing economic disruption that entices new low-productivity entrepreneurs into production. Chapter 2 describes a theory of endogenous firm-level risk over the business cycle based on endogenous firm market exposure. Firms that reach a larger number of markets diversify market-specific demand shocks at a cost. The model is driven only by total factor productivity shocks and captures the observed countercyclicality of firm-level risk. Consistent with the model, data from Compustat and the Longitudinal Business Database show that market reach is procyclical and that the countercyclicality of firm-level risk is driven mostly by those firms that adjust their market reach. This finding is explained by a negative elasticity between firm-level volatility and various measures of market exposure.Item Seeking Wisdom in Tradition: The Promise of Future Housing(2015) Kim, Ju Eun; Koliji, Hooman; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As a result of rapid development in the last 40 years, modern Korean housing has experienced the indiscriminate vertical growth of high-rise slab construction which has overlooked both the traditions of the Korean family and society that were embodied in the traditional house. This has compromised cultural and generational relationships, created conflicts among neighbors, and isolated people from nature thereby causing disconnection between Koreans and their own unique cultural elements. Contrary to the current housing conditions, Korean desire for a healthier environment and cultural standing in the world keeps rising. This thesis will introduce design strategies and concepts to help mitigate these problems in contemporary housing by proposing a new type of housing in Seoul, Korea that supports the tradition and characteristic of Korea. It will identify the essence of tradition embodied in the traditional house, and re-envision contemporary design ideas for Korean society that can lead to new types of and more enlightened housing for its future.