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 Greenvale in East Riverdale - Urbanism inspired by Sustainable Community Acion(2021) Venkitaraman, Bhavishya; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Greenvale, situated in East Riverdale is an Agrihood designed around three main ideas – community, sustainability, and wellness. This mixed-use development aims at creating an environmentally friendly neighborhood that remains relevant through ensuing climate change. The development seeks to bring equitable housing to the area in a manner that will incorporate economic growth in the form of jobs and affordable rents for its residents. It further seeks to preserve and enhance the existing diverse community through inclusive zoning, educational opportunities, and cultural programming. Through carbon reduction, storm water management, heat island mitigation and urban farming, the neighborhood models a contemporary method of incorporating mixed use developments in transit-oriented zones, giving the residents access to public modes of transportation, and connecting them across the DMV area. This thesis looks at how urban agricultural techniques might play a role in mitigating gentrification, while providing affordable and equitable housing, addressing climatic environmental change, considering integrated economic opportunities for communities facing displacement in the area and looks to model a seedling of change through the proposed development.Item Are Houston's Land Use Relationships Unique?(2021) Dorney, Christopher Leh; Knaap, Gerrit J; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The city of Houston, Texas has been at the heart of a long-running debate in the United States on government’s proper role in the land development process. As the only large American city that never adopted a city-wide zoning ordinance, Houston is often cited as an example for why more or less government planning is needed. Some authors claim that Houston is an outlier when it comes to land use relationships, with strange land use juxtapositions quite prevalent. Other authors argue that zoning is largely redundant to market forces and that Houston’s land use relationships are not all that different from zoned cities. The purpose of this study is to inform this ongoing debate by undertaking a quantitative analysis of land use relationships across large American cities to determine if Houston’s are distinctive. The study develops several metrics to quantify land use relationships and uses principal component analysis to determine if Houston is an outlier. The findings indicate that Houston’s land use relationships are not substantially different from those of zoned cities.Item A Micro-Level Examination of the Impact of Rail Transit Investments on the Patterns of Firm Dynamics(2018) Saeed, Basheer A.; Iseki, Hiroyuki; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transit-oriented development has been increasingly implemented at stations of both existing and new fixed transit systems across the U.S. to stimulate local economy and create livable communities. A common belief among planners in favor of transit-oriented development is that the provision of passenger rail systems promotes urban development around rail stations. There is a lack of empirical evidence, however, that supports this presumption. To address the gap in relevant literature, this dissertation examines the impact of passenger rail stations on the four different patterns of firm dynamics in the State of Maryland—firm birth and inward relocation as positive impacts, and firm closure and outward relocation as negative impacts. This dissertation uses both standard and propensity-score-weighted negative binomial regression methods to analyze the dependent variables of firm dynamics constructed from the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) panel data of the State of Maryland from 1990 to 2010. By examining both positive and negative impacts of firm dynamics, this dissertation estimates the likelihood of firm retainment and net relocation for areas in proximity of the passenger rail stations, while controlling for a number of potentially confounding factors. Positive and statistically significant relationships are found between proximity to the passenger rail stations and the rates of firm births and inward relocating firms in Maryland, regardless of differences in the level of maturity of stations. From 1990 to 2010, the areas of passenger rail stations in Maryland experienced a wide range of rates of growth in firm density, depending on the year of station opening. The results of the four different patterns of firm dynamics suggest that areas near passenger rail stations gain belated economic benefits, well after the introduction of rail stations, shown by higher likelihood of firm retainment and net relocation around the mature rail stations opened before 1990. In comparison, areas near the less mature stations that opened after 1990 had predominantly lower likelihood of firm retainment and net firm relocation. Planners and policymakers should be proactive in directing development near rail stations by adopting a variety of measures and policies that support or at least consistent with transit-oriented development.Item Designing Happiness: Architecture and urban design for joy and well-being(2016) Habtour, Rebecca; Simon, Madlen; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Scientific studies exploring the environmental and experiential elements that help boost human happiness have become a significant and expanding body of work. Some urban designers, architects and planners are looking to apply this knowledge through policy decisions and design, but there is a great deal of room for further study and exploration. This paper looks at definitions of happiness and happiness measurements used in research. The paper goes on to introduce six environmental factors identified in a literature review that have design implications relating to happiness: Nature, Light, Surprise, Access, Identity, and Sociality. Architectural precedents are examined and design strategies are proposed for each factor, which are then applied to a test case site and building in Baltimore, Maryland. It is anticipated that these factors and strategies will be useful to architects, urban designers and planners as they endeavor to design positive user experiences and set city shaping policy.Item Urban Catalyst: Continuing the Legacy of Massachusetts Avenue(2016) Englehart, Samuel; Noonan, Peter; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis proposes a reconnection of Massachusetts Avenue to the Anacostia River waterfront in Washington, DC. An intervention at the site of Reservation 13 will reconcile a difficult urban edge and reunite the neighborhood of Lincoln Park with the river. It also addresses the discontinuity of the avenue to the southeast and proposes the development of a bridge between the Western bank and ultimately Randle Circle. Along this reconciled corridor will be a series of architectural interventions that serve to promote community involvement. Ultimately this thesis is about generating an urban continuity and the cultural vibrancy and understanding that such a connection would foster.Item The Impact of Conservation Easements on Habitat Loss in Agricultural Regions(2012) Braza, Mark Anthony; Chen, Alexander; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Natural lands provide irreplaceable ecosystem services, such as wildlife habitat, water filtration and carbon sequestration, but in many regions, they are rapidly being converted to agricultural or urban uses. To counteract this trend, numerous land conservation programs purchase natural land but the impact of these programs is almost entirely unknown. This dissertation develops a framework for evaluating the impact of land conservation programs that incorporates theory from land economics and conservation planning. It posits that private land that enrolls in these programs will have lower economic value and higher ecological value than unenrolled lands. To test the framework, a Propensity Score Analysis is conducted for a federal conservation easement program in the northern plains of the United States. Measures of key economic characteristics (such as a tract's soil productivity, slope and distance to grain markets) and key ecological characteristics (such as a tract's accessibility to nesting pairs of migratory birds and the extent of grassland coverage surrounding a tract) are computed in a Geographic Information System. These measures are used to estimate a logistic regression model that predicts the probability that a tract of land enrolled in the program between 1990 and 2001. Consistent with expectations, tracts with lower economic value and with higher ecological value were more likely to enroll in the program. Using the predicted values from this model, enrolled tracts were matched with control tracts using four specifications of nearest neighbor matching with calipers. Under each of these specifications, the rate of grassland conversion between 2001 and 2006 on enrolled tracts was significantly lower (p<.0001) than the rate of conversion on control tracts by between 0.32 percent (for the specification with the lowest estimate) and 0.42 percent (for the specification with the highest estimate). These results indicate that the program did have a statistically significant impact on the rate of grassland conversion during this time period, although the impact was substantively slight.