Regional Planning Dissertations Collection

From Tank Trails to Technology Parks: the Impact of Base Redevelopment for New England

Schliemann, Bernd F. — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 06:24:09 PDT

Why do some communities thrive after closure of a major employment center such as a military base, while others suffer for many years with long-term unemployment, decaying infrastructure, or other indicators of a weak economy? Through a mixed-methods approach, this paper examines a wide variety of community characteristics from past base closures, builds a model of the most relevant indicators of success or failure, and then offers redevelopment lessons to communities facing base redevelopment. This research incorporates a multivariate statistical analysis including panel regression and then a historical study of the five major BRAC closures in New England. While strong pre-existing economic and social conditions are indicative of successful recovery in many situations, there is no universal set of indicators that can predict success. Nonetheless, there are actions that communities can take to help navigate a military base redevelopment - these include establishing a strong leadership system, aggressively seeking federal and state funding, and orchestrating comprehensive planning that synchronizes market research with available infrastructure and opportunity.

Reasons for Local Smart Growth Efforts: An Evaluation of the Commonwealth Capital Program and its Outcomes in Massachusetts

Jia, Jia — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:42:05 PDT

The Massachusetts model illustrates the latest approach to smart growth - the incentive based program. This study examines the reasons for and actual outcomes of local smart growth efforts through one of the Massachusetts’ smart growth incentives - the Commonwealth Capital (CC) Program.

The main objectives of this research are built on two conceptual models through a mixed approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method is mainly utilized to evaluate the implementation of the CC program. The results indicate that the program is a good measure of municipal smart growth efforts representative of goals of the state. Communities with diverse land bases have some advantage, as a variety of zoning methods can be employed. It is not obvious that communities have changed their own zoning in response to the stimuli of the CC program.

The first model is applied through various statistical tests to investigate the relationships among the towns’ characteristics and CC data. Homeownership, education and access to the highway system are significant factors related to municipal smart growth efforts in Massachusetts. Wealth, population and quantity of open spaces are only significant for certain type of communities (e.g. maturing suburbs, developing towns etc). Municipal political preferences (e.g. forms of municipal governance, DEM/GOP preference etc) and municipal planners’ efforts have some influence on the adoptions of smart growth policies, though the specific outcomes might vary case by case.

The second model tests the statistical relationships between CC data and the Urban Sprawl in Massachusetts. The urban sprawl are defined by Urban Sprawl Indicator (USI) as the amount of residential land consumed per building permit in the five past years per community in Massachusetts. The CC scores and USIs negatively fit the regression line well, indicating that local smart growth efforts have generally controlled land consumption in the past. In particular, the USIs in developing suburbs appear more responsive to the CC data. The spatial lag model shows sprawl is a net-effect phenomena and the cluster of sprawl in a region might weaken the effectiveness of particular municipal smart growth efforts.

Lastly, this research suggests that the design of state land use policies ought to follow the nature of geographic segmentation of municipal smart growth preferences.

Preserving Urban Landscapes as Public History --- A Qualitative Study of Kensington Market, Toronto

Li, Na — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:48:14 PDT

Situated within the interpretive and critical traditions, this study aims to contribute to one of the continuing primary themes in urban preservation: how to interpret and preserve the intangible values of built environments. A comprehensive analysis of dominant theories of urban preservation forms the conceptual framework within which this dissertation takes place. It starts by locating the intellectual context of preservation in North America, and examines its basic premises and core issues. It identifies three limits to the traditional approach to preservation planning. The complexity and fragility of history, its narrative quality and its particularities, its emotional content and economic values, all connect urban preservation with public history. Therefore, in the spirit of communicative democracy and "a shared authority", the study incorporates collective memory as an essential construct in urban landscapes, and suggests a culturally sensitive narrative approach (CSNA). The study employs an in-depth case study. The setting is Kensington Market in Toronto, Canada. It examines retrospectively the urban renewal planning of Kensington Market in the 1960s, identifies the pivotal events that prompted the change of urban renewal policies, and demonstrates, through the interpretive policy analysis, that sometimes urban renewal plans that fail to be implemented can become success stories in how to preserve urban neighborhoods as a kind of public history. To probe deeper into the sources of conflict between the professionals and the public, the study further explores the mutual relationship between collective memory and urban landscapes. It takes a selective look at some significant sites of memory, and connects them into a narrative path. Through oral history interviewing, field observation, and material cultural analysis, this part of the analysis constitutes an empirical study of CSNA. A proposition is derived from this critical case study. The study concludes with seven steps of CSNA, a guide for urban landscape preservation and planning.

Using social capital to promote and improve community preparedness for wildfires

Bihari, Menka — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:48:41 PST

Across the country, government agencies, NGOs and communities are coming together to manage their forests to reduce the risk of wildfire in the wildland urban interface. However, to have long-term impacts, communities must have the foundation necessary to continue these efforts after special programs have moved on or outside funding has been exhausted. Social capital may be one important component in sustaining wildfire preparedness as actions to increase wildfire preparedness are affected by decisions made at the individual and the community level. This study focuses on the essential components of social capital that are crucial in affecting community participation in wildfire preparedness and mitigation.^ In order to understand these relationships, a pilot study was developed to explore how perceptions of community preparedness efforts vary geographically in different ecosystems, forest types and USDA Forest Service regions at the national scale. Additionally, the study explores differences in perceptions of community preparedness between stakeholder groups, such as residents, fire officials, land managers, business/community leaders, and environmental advocates. Since preparedness involves both individual actions at the residential scale, as well as community actions such as planning and zoning, separate survey instruments were developed for local residents and community and government agency leaders. The study also analyzed the effect of variables like place attachment, past experience and previous involvement with wildfires, length and type of stay in the community, and affiliation with local organizations on creation or enhancement social capital as well as wildfire preparedness in the community in terms of change in defensible space actions, and change in people’ attitudes, understanding and outlook towards mitigation efforts over the years.^ This research has incorporated a mixed methods approach integrating both quantitative and qualitative research techniques because of the dual aspect of the research questions regarding the measure of social capital as well as the level of preparedness in the communities. Results from the pilot study conducted in six communities across the United States are discussed as the final outcome of this larger national scale project. Ultimately, the study provides insights about the underlying community variables that influence community preparedness actions and awareness about wildfire.^

School-Wide Positive Behavior Support: Student surveys of expectations and safety

Fisher, Lisa A — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:21:13 PST

School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) is a plan based on broad assessments of schools and their climate that can be implemented to create classrooms and schools that are focused on community and positive behavior (Horner, Sugai, Todd, & Lewis-Palmer, 2005). SWPBS involves creating and explicitly stating expectations, teaching those expectations, encouraging appropriate behavior, and defining ways to handle inappropriate behavior. Current tools that are suggested for use in conducting an assessment of school climate are: the Best Behavior School Discipline Assessment (BBSDA) also known as the Best Behavior Self-Assessment Survey (BBSAS), the School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET), the Oregon School Safety Survey, and the Effective Behavior Support Self-Assessment (EBS Self Assessment) (Horner, et al., 2005; Sprague & Walker, 2005). All of these indicators and evaluation tools are helpful in planning SWPBS programs as well as assessing the integrity of implementation and changes in behavior patterns; however, they gather limited information from students. Collecting and examining student attitudes and perceptions about their school and safety is an important aspect of the evaluation process. The current study examined information from student surveys concerning the behavioral expectations at school as well as places in the school they felt safe and unsafe. Information gathered from these surveys was used to create an intervention that targeted a specific area identified as being the least safe and most unsafe, the bathroom, in the school to improve students’ sense of safety. Based on the results of student survey information, an intervention was designed and implemented for six weeks. Compared to pre-intervention surveys, the treatment group reported feeling safer in the bathroom after the implementation of the intervention as compared to the control group, which reported no change. ^

Building Main Street: Village Improvement and the Small Town Ideal

Makker, Kirin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:08:03 PST

Before the American small town was enshrined as an ideal, it was a space of dynamic and pioneering progressive reform, a narrative that has been largely untold in histories of professional planning and landscape history. Archival research shows that village improvement was not simply a prequel to the City Beautiful in the years following the 1893 Chicago Expo, but a rich and complex history that places the residential village at the center of debates about the middle landscape as a civic realm comprised of complimentary and oppositional pastoral and urban worldviews. The second half of the nineteenth century saw an extensive movement in village improvement that affected the physical, economic, and social infrastructure of rural settlements of all sizes in every region of the country. As a concept referenced by planners working on comprehensively-designed suburban communities, the small town ideal has never been historicized with respect to the history and theory of the nineteenth century village landscape improvements. This study broadens the study of village improvement to include the history of ideas and debates surrounding rural development on the national and local level between the 1820s and 1880s and, in doing so, argues that the discussion-born theory of village improvement within a national rural reform movement led by some of the nineteenth century's most respected and influential reformers including B.G. Northrop (education), Col. George Waring (sanitation), N.H. Egleston (conservation), Isabella Beecher Hooker (women's rights), and F.L. Olmsted, Sr. (landscape architecture) was modeled on the Laurel Hill Association in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and that the local practice of this one society over the same period in line with the national movement together comprised the most active sustained discussion about the civic society and physical infrastructure of rural settlements in American history. This narrative tracks reform movements in rural settlements over several decades, beginning with landscape gardening through sanitation and up to the professionalization of city planning and the country life movement. Planning veered from broadly conceived urban pastoralism and multi-disciplinary rural improvement that viewed the village as an extension of the city toward preservation planning that viewed the small town as an increasingly idealized pastoral space, past-looking and unchanging. This trend was in line with an associated shift from planning as a series of fine-grained locally led practices to expert-driven professionalized planning as grandiose comprehensive vision.

Greenspace Conservation Planning Framework for Urban Regions Based on a Forest Bird-Habitat Relationship Study and the Resilience Thinking

Kato, Sadahisa — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:02:29 PDT

The research involves first conducting a "case study" of ecological data and applying the results, together with the resilience concept, to the development of a greenspace conservation planning framework for urban regions. The first part of the research investigates the relationship between forest bird abundance and the surrounding landscape characteristics, especially, forest area and its spatial configuration in urban regions at multiple scales. The results are similar for simple and multiple regression analyses across three scales. The percentage of forest cover in a landscape is positively correlated with bird abundance with some thresholds. Overall, the percentage of forest cover in the landscape, contrast-weighted forest edge density, and the similarity of land cover types to forest cover are identified as important for the conservation of the target bird species. The study points to the importance of species-specific habitat requirements even for species with similar life history traits and of maintaining some forest edges and/or edge contrast. The second part of the research involves the development of a landscape planning meta-model and its conceptual application to greenspace conservation planning, integrating the results of the first part. Administrative and planning units are recognized to exist in a nested hierarchy of neighborhood, city, and urban region, just as biodiversity can be conceived in a nested hierarchical organization of genes, populations/species, communities/ecosystems, and landscapes. Resilience thinking, especially the panarchy concept, provides a scientific basis and a metaphorical framework to develop the meta-model, integrating a proposed landscape planning "best practice" model at each planning scale. Ecological concepts such as response and functional diversity, redundancy, and connectivity across scales are identified as key concepts for conserving and increasing biodiversity and the resilience of an urban region. These concepts are then used in the meta-model to develop the greenspace conservation planning framework. Ecological processes such as pollination and dispersal, as well as social memory and bottom-up social movements---small changes collectively making a large impact at the broader scales as well as these incremental changes gaining momentum as they cascade across scales---are identified as cross-scale processes and dynamics that connect various planning scales in the meta-model.

An Assessment of Natural Resources Management Conflicts in the Working Landscapes of Mediterranean Turkey (Turkiye): Koprulu Kanyon National Park

Kemer, Nedim — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:35:41 PDT

Environmental conservation and natural resources management are critical global issues of the 21st century. The management of protected public lands emerges as a challenge particularly in developing countries because of the biophysical and socio-cultural importance of these lands. These lands are often referred to as 'working landscapes' where the natural systems and the collective actions of local residents have shaped one another in well-balanced interactions for generations. The working landscapes of the Köprülü Kanyon National Park (KKNP) in Turkey have provided the case study for this dissertation. Eleven villages exist within the park with a total of approximately 7,100 residents. The rich natural resources of the park have been contested by local communities, management and concessionaires. The objectives of the research were: first, to understand the fundamentals of the natural and socio-cultural dynamics within protected areas in general, and within the KKNP in particular; second, to examine the social conflicts which complicate the management of the KKNP; and third, to explore potential solutions whereby the stakeholders can cooperate in stabilizing the traditional dynamics of the park's working landscapes. Qualitative data was collected via 38 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with local residents, managers and concessionaires. The research found that an array of social disturbances and conflicts impact the social fabric and harm the land-human integrity of the site. These include shifting demographics, changing lifestyles of the villagers, pressures from tourism, multiple governmental authorities and instable management. Yaylacýlýk tradition, a semi-sedentary form of pastoralism, has played a significant role in both the traditional ecology and the social relations within the communities of the KKNP; and its abandonment has severely impacted both social and biophysical conditions. Through yaylacýlýk local residents had managed the lands as common property. The establishment of the national park, changing life styles and the pressures on the local agricultural economy brought an end to yaylacýlýk . Now the resources are treated in effect as open pool resources, thus leading to their demise. Throughout the eventful past of the KKNP the local residents have come from being integral elements of the 'working landscapes,' to being as antagonistic enemies of the park management. The three ideal characteristic elements of the 'working landscapes' of the KKNP (controlled access, coordination and communication) which once were maintained by the yaylacýlýk tradition, can be re-institutionalized within the region through contemporary applications by neutral third party initiatives. Restoration, conservation and efficient management of biophysical resources and the natural environment should be the outcomes of the resolutions of social conflicts which can be accomplished by the restoration of these three elements of the social structure.

Reimagining community: Community arts and cultural planning in America

Dreeszen, Craig Allen — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:01:11 PDT

The dissertation examines the effects of community arts and cultural planning on the local arts agencies that organized the planning and upon their communities. Community cultural planning is a structured community-wide, public/private process, that identifes community arts and cultural resources, needs, and opportunities, and plans actions and secures resources to address priority needs.^ A survey of the entire known population of cultural planning communities was the central research method. An on-site case study was conducted, nation-wide published plans were analyzed, and interviews conducted.^ Findings confirm that cultural planning is a widely distributed and growing practice. Many plans are wholly devoted to arts development and generally, more recommendations for action are devoted to the problems of arts organizations than to the problems of cities. Cultural planning does however, inspire community arts leaders to appreciate a broader civic constituency and plans increasingly apply the arts to build better communities.^ The most significant reported effects of cultural planning on local arts agencies were increased agency visibility/credibility, better understood community needs, and increased agency funding. Community effects were more responsive programs and services, increased civic awareness of local arts and culture, improved arts and civic communications, and increased access to the arts. Communities completing cultural plans sustained or increased arts funding in contrast to a national trend of reduced funding. The most significant effect of cultural planning was increased awareness of civic leaders and arts leaders of the potential of the arts to enhance community well being.^ Cultural planning is not without problems. The combination of ambitious agendas for change, the general lack of prioritization among objectives, ambiguity about who is to be responsible to take what actions, the tendency to not project implementation costs or sources of revenues, attempts by local arts agencies to continue previous programs while accepting new responsibilities, and the commitment of inadequate new funding creates a persistent problem of raised expectations without the resources to meet them. However, cultural planning yields significant benefits both to local arts agencies and to communities and should be encouraged. There are enough risks, that cultural planning should not be required as a prerequisite to funding. ^

Poverty, deforestation and land tenure institutions: The case of the communities living in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve

Milian, Bayron — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:17:54 PST

The Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) is the largest and most important conservation area in Guatemala, covering over 21,000 km². Because the Biosphere Reserve is home to over 58,000 people, environmental stabilization is deeply dependent on residents' use of the land. Initial governmental efforts to reduce migration and deforestation threats included designing land tenure regimes such as private lands, forest concessions and communal concessions in different zones of the Biosphere. Despite these measures, high rates of deforestation continue and are concentrated in Laguna del Tigre and Sierra de Lacandón National Parks. Previous research has shown a connection between land tenure and deforestation, but has not connected these to community well-being indicators. In this project seventy four communities located mainly around both National Parks were categorized into three land tenure regimes: communal, state protected and private. Using ANOVA and regression analysis, the regimes were compared to population, community well-being indicators (education, services, and economy), and analyzed for association with cumulative deforestation from 1986 to 2006. The analysis occurs in two scales or levels–at the level of the community (N = 74) and also at the level of privately owned lands, commonly called "parcels" in Petén (N = 1,510). Results indicate that the three regimes differ in cumulative deforestation and well being indicators, and these differences are statistically significant. Two explanatory regression models at community and parcel level were elaborated. In the first model dealing with community, the variables showing positive associations with cumulative deforestation are population size, cattle ranching, agriculture and alternative economy. The variables showing negative associations are schooling and communal and private regimes. Among the land tenure regimes, communal regime shows the best performance in the period under study, having the highest community well being index and lowest cumulative deforestation when compared to private and protected area regimes. In the second model dealing with households holding private parcels, the variables showing positive associations with cumulative deforestation are family size and total area of the parcel, and the variable showing a negative association is duration of occupation of the farm. Private parcel ownership was evaluated for associations between cumulative deforestation and ethnicity, and no statistically significant differences were found between ladino and Maya farms. ^