School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1607
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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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 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.Item Empower Housing(2013) Boliek, Alison Lanford; Bell, Matthew J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines Wilmington, Delaware's low-income urban community and explores through innovative programming and design propositions the potential for future housing to facilitate healthy, responsive living, thereby better empowering the community and the residents it serves. All too often, this disadvantaged demographic lacks access to the most basic of human needs, let alone the more diverse opportunities of upward mobility, self-empowerment, and healthy social and cultural lives. Among the community's most pressing concerns is the limited availability of fresh produce - a vital ingredient for healthy living. This thesis hypothesizes that the pairing of housing with a farmers' market and some basic community amenities in a mixed-use project will yield a result that is greater than the sum of its parts. The primary agenda is to design homes which encourage healthy lifestyles while simultaneously engaging a variety of stakeholders in order to benefit not only residents living in the housing but the greater community. The resulting positive ripple effects will allow the region to reknit itself through these newly formed relationships, creating a stronger empowered community.Item The Promise of Small Cities: Connecting Urban Residents with the Environment and Their Community in Portland, Maine(2012) Meyer, Louise Parlin; Koliji, Hooman; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As modern American society has progressed, the need to live less expansively, more conscientiously, and more sustainably has become increasingly clear. Meanwhile, reliance on technology has driven urban residents to become further distanced from the environment, and further dissociated from their communities and local cultural traditions. Over the last 50 years, those interested in maintaining and fostering connections to the outdoors and a specific community have largely sought fulfillment in the suburban landscape. While, in recent decades, it has been recognized that the suburban residential model cannot be sustained, urban housing remains deficient. In order to acknowledge both the value of urban living and the potential for learning from the appeal of suburbia, it is incumbent upon designers to explore housing and amenities that better address the needs of the 21st century multi-family resident. This thesis aims to restore situational awareness of climate, community, and cultural traditions, by marrying opportunities for building community with higher density residences that have a strong emphasis on outdoor spaces.Item Recycling Suburban Sprawl: Coming to Terms with an Existential Crisis(2013) Goldman, Julian Hulman; Bell, Matthew J; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The sprawl development which typifies the American landscape has an uncertain future. Mounting costs, changing demographics, and an inherent instability in value threaten to lift some neighborhoods, gut others, and expand sprawl into the countryside in a relentless, destructive march. This thesis seeks to develop a strategy by which increased density and additional land uses may be inserted into existing tract housing developments as a means of protecting and improving our previous investments, rather than bulldozing and replacing them or seeing them laid to waste. These changes to the fabric of sprawl may lay the groundwork for breaking down barriers to further development and modernization which have been put in place by policy, systems of finance and land ownership, and the very nature of the places we have created. Adding density to current settlements may also reduce pressures to sprawl further, protecting the undeveloped wilderness beyond the city limits.