Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in City and Regional Planning

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Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in City and Regional Planning

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/73257

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School of City and Regional Planning

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Does green infrastructure promote equitable development? The mediating role of social capital in shaping impacts

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-05-17) Fisch, Jessica Ann

Planners, policymakers, and elected officials increasingly view investments in green infrastructure, parks and other green development as opportunities for spurring economic growth, increasing environmental quality, and providing social and recreational amenities in urban areas. However, research has indicated that these projects do not adequately address equity concerns, such as access for low-income and marginalized groups, housing affordability, and displacement of existing residents. Consequently, green infrastructure projects can lead to ‘environmental gentrification. While several works have argued that social capital—the building of relationships, trust, and networks of stakeholders—has the potential to promote more equitable development, the conditions under which more equitable outcomes for green infrastructure projects might be supported and the role of social capital in addressing these concerns has not been adequately examined. This study seeks to clarify the mechanisms through which green infrastructure planning might advance the development of social capital and in turn how social capital influences the housing affordability, gentrification, and community benefits aspects of green infrastructure planning and policy development. The research examines these interrelationships in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., cities with a prominent focus on planning for green infrastructure, high levels of segregation by race and income, and distinct city-wide approaches to coping with gentrification. In clarifying interactions between social capital and green infrastructure planning processes and outcomes, the research enhances our understanding of how social capital might support an increased focus on equity in green infrastructure planning. In particular, the study finds that green infrastructure planning may reinforce social capital, which in turn shapes green infrastructure projects and planning processes with regard to addressing housing affordability and community benefits concerns. It further finds that social capital has served as a catalyst for advocacy and the development of organizations, policies, and programs focused on housing affordability and workforce development. Finally, state and city-level political contexts concerning the goals and tools for promoting housing affordability and community benefits shape the ability of municipal and neighborhood-level actors to address equity concerns associated with green development. These findings support several recommendations for policy and planning to promote more equitable development surrounding green infrastructure projects and planning processes.
Adaptive efficiency in coffee clusters: Resilience through agglomeration, global value chains, social networks, and institutions

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-04-18) Douthat, Thomas

This dissertation builds and tests a model of economic and environmental resilience in developing country agricultural clusters. Borrowing from economic geography, institutional economics, global change, and environmental management theories, I seek to explain resilience through adaptive efficiency. The dissertation examines adaptive efficiency and its impact on resilience in the specific context of coffee production in Costa Rica and Mexico. Local coffee economies (sub-clusters) are adaptively efficient within Global Value Chains (GVCs) when they can capitalize on spatial agglomeration economies, and are organized around institutional structures and organizations that promote strong and open networks. This adaptive efficiency model is measured and tested using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates statistical models, social network analysis (SNA), and comparative case studies to assess the model’s efficacy in predicting coffee cluster resilience. From the standpoint of a coffee cluster, resilience is the capacity to withstand market-based and environmental shocks, and upgrade over time to remain competitive in the Global Value Chain and in terms of environmental practices. Coffee cluster resilience is measured through changes in local coffee land use patterns and production volumes, as well as qualitative data, focused on product and production upgrading, governance reorientation, and support for farmers. In terms of planning and development practice, this research will help to build methods that allow policy makers to promote more effective institutions and develop policies at the cluster level with greater knowledge of the factors leading to resilient local industries.
Utility-based approaches to understanding the effects of urban compactness on travel behavior: a case of Seoul, Korea

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-11-08) Gim, Tae-Hyoung

Automobile use is associated with significant problems such as air pollution and obesity. Decisions to use the automobile or its alternatives, including walk, bicycle, and public transit, are believed to be associated with urban form. However, in contrast to the hypothesis that compact urban form significantly reduces automobile travel, previous studies reported only a modest effect on travel behavior. These studies, largely built on microeconomic utility theory, are not sufficient for assessing the effect of compactness, for several reasons: (1) The studies postulate that travel invokes only disutility, but travel may also provide intrinsic utility or benefits insomuch as people travel for its own sake; (2) the studies have traditionally focused on how urban compactness reduces the distance between trip origin and destination and accordingly reduces trip time, but urban compactness also increases congestion and reduces trip speed, and thus increases trip time; and (3) the studies have mostly examined automobile commuting, but people travel for various purposes, using different travel modes, and the impact of urban compactness on the utility of non-automobile non-commuting travel has not been duly examined. On this ground, to better explain the effects that urban compactness has on travel behavior, this dissertation refines the concept of travel utility using two additions to the microeconomic utility theory: activity-based utility theory of derived travel demand and approaches to positive utility of travel. Accordingly, it designs a conceptual model that specifies travel utility as an intermediary between urban compactness and travel behavior and examines the behavior associated with and utility derived from travel mode choices for alternative purposes of travel. Twenty individual models are derived from the conceptual model and tested within the context of Seoul, Korea, using a confirmatory approach of structural equation modeling and data from geographic information systems and a structured sample survey, which is initially designed and validated by semi-structured interviews and subsequent statistical tests. By comparing the individual models, this research concludes that the urban compactness effect on travel behavior, represented by trip frequencies and supplemented by mode shares, is better explained when travel utility is considered and if travel purposes are separately examined. Major empirical findings are that urban compactness affects travel behavior mainly by increasing the benefits of travel in comparison to its modest effect on the cost reduction and people’s behavioral response to urban compactness is to shift modes of commuting travel, decrease travel for shopping, and increase travel for leisure. These purpose-specific findings have implications for transportation planners and public health planners by assisting them in linking plans and policies concerning urban compactness to travel purposes.
Resilience in the social and physical realms: lessons from the Gulf Coast

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-05-17) Carpenter, Ann Marie

Community resilience to disasters is an affected area’s ability to rebound after a catastrophic event. The mounting frequency and scale of natural disasters, increasing urbanization, a growing reliance on interdependent technologies and infrastructure systems, and inflated expectations of interventions are responsible for greater disaster vulnerability and demonstrate the need to develop more resilient communities. Given the increasing shocks of natural disasters, a more complete understanding of resilience is important for creating safer, more sustainable communities. One factor that is known to impact resilience is social networks. Urban planning research has shown that walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods can encourage the development of social networks and place attachment through an increase in interactions and a higher density of neighborhood amenities, including characteristics of the built environment that influence social networks, such as varied land uses and pedestrian-oriented design. The built environment connects residents to a place and can serve as a benchmark for recovery. Therefore, it is possible that the traditional planning domain of urban design can be harnessed to foster greater resilience by facilitating stronger social networks. In order to determine the legitimacy of this supposition, this research examines how social networks and the built environment create greater resilience to disasters. Given that social networks increase community resilience to all types of disasters, social networks are shown to be influenced by certain types of space, and the built environment is a common intervention for planners, this research explores the potential for creating cities that are more resilient by creating spaces that foster social networks. The Mississippi Gulf Coast was chosen as a case study area in order to explore the above relationships. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the region, resulting in massive wind and storm surge damage to the Mississippi Coast. Communities in the area have recovered at varying rates and levels. Therefore, this region provided an opportunity to contrast higher and lower resilience communities and to test the above research questions. The research was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, a quantitative model was developed in order to address whether there are statistically significant effects on resilience due to the built environment. In the second stage, a qualitative case study analysis of communities was undertaken using interviews with local residents. The results demonstrate that certain aspects of the built environment are associated with greater resilience, including intersection density, net residential density, the density of historic sites, and community amenities where social networks gather. Furthermore, urban design features with the greatest capacity to increase resilience were also useful features for the types of local social networks that were found to be most important for resilience.
Implementing sustainability in large public organizations: impacts of bureaucracy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-04-09) Keysar, Elizabeth J.

Environmental Planning theory tells us that continued improvement in environmental outcomes will require new approaches that are voluntary; behavior change will come from within organizations, not imposed from outside. The concept of sustainability fits in this new phase of environmental planning and policy. In order for organizations to be successful in achieving sustainability goals, they must create an organizational context that produces innovative ideas (considered a strength of organic or learning organizations), along with an organizational context that effectively manages and implements continuous change (considered a strength of bureaucratic organizations). Effectively striking this balance appears to be a key component of making progress in sustainability for large public organizations. The research completed through this doctoral dissertation addresses gaps in the literature by asking the question: How have large public organizations implemented sustainability programs? A multiple case study design was used that examined three large public organizations that have adopted sustainability goals and established programs for achieving these goals. The data were analyzed based on a conceptual framework that predicts the types of activities and attributes organizations will exhibit to successfully achieve sustainability goals. The results demonstrate that sustainability implementation in these organizations is dependent upon leadership support, cross-functional teams, orientation to the external environment, effective management systems and consistent support over time. Bureaucratic organizations are structured to effectively accomplish the core mission, but if they also want to be more sustainable, they must adopt and promote more organic attributes to enable change, learning and innovation.
Planning for the new urban climate: interactions of local environmental planning and regional extreme heat

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-11-12) Vargo, Jason Adam

The Earth's climate is changing and cities are facing a warmer future. As the locus of economic activity and concentrated populations on the planet, cities are both a primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions and places where the human health impacts of climate change are directly felt. Cities increase local temperatures through the conversion of natural land covers to urban uses, and exposures to elevated temperatures represent a serious and growing health threat for urban residents. This work is concerned with understanding the interactions of global trends in climate with local influences tied to urban land covers. First, it examines temperatures during an extended period of extreme heat and asks whether changes in land surface temperatures during a heat wave are consistent in space and time across all land cover types. Second, the influences of land covers on temperatures are considered for normal and extreme summer weather to find out which characteristics of the built environment most influence temperatures during periods of extreme heat. Finally, the distribution of health vulnerabilities related to extreme heat in cities are described and examined for spatial patterns. These topics are investigated using meteorology from the summer of 2006 to identify extremely hot days in the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Phoenix and their surrounding metropolitan regions. Remotely sensed temperature data were examined with physical and social characteristics of the urban environment to answer the questions posed above. The findings confirm that urban land covers consistently exhibit higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas and are much more likely to be among the hottest in the region, during a heat wave specifically. In some cities urban thermal anomalies grew between the beginning and end of a heat wave. The importance of previously recognized built environment thermal influences (impervious cover and tree canopy) were present, and in some cases, emphasized during extreme summer weather. Extreme heat health health vulnerability related to environmental factors coincided spatially with risks related to social status. This finding suggests that populations with fewer resources for coping with extreme heat tend to reside in built environments that increase temperatures, and thus they may be experiencing increased thermal exposures. Physical interventions and policies related to the built environment can help to reduce urban temperatures, especially during periods of extremely hot weather which are predicted to become more frequent with global climate change. In portions of the city where populations with limited adaptive capacity are concentrated, modification of the urban landscape to decrease near surface longwave radiation can reduce the chances of adverse health effects related to extreme heat. The specific programs, policies, and design strategies pursued by cities and regions must be tailored with respect to scale, location, and cultural context. This work concludes with suggestions for such strategies.
Innovation-diffusion processes in urban design movements: application of the model-prototype-adaptation framework to new urbanism and neighborhood development practices in Atlanta

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-08-27) Kim, Jaecheol

This dissertation investigates the transitions of urban design models in practice: the ways in which practitioners have adopted the urban design models and the factors that have influenced such adoption. In particular, this dissertation focused on the unexpected consequences of the adaptations of urban design models and distinguished these effects from those stemming from the inherent limitations of urban design models themselves. The major goal of this dissertation is to clarify the patterns of the transitions associated with urban design models in practice (particularly adaptation) to ensure a better understanding their impact on the urban environment. However, the transitions of urban design models in practice are complex phenomena that multiple actors with diverse interests have participated in and implemented numerous principles of the models over a long period of time and in diverse contexts. Therefore, to minimize such complexities while capturing important elements of the diffusion and adaptation processes, this dissertation presented a theoretical framework, the Model-Prototype-Adaptation (MPA) framework, based on recurring patterns of urban design movements. In the MPA framework, a "model" refers to an integrated set of urban design principles derived from a consensus of opinion of the enthusiastic proponents of an urban design movement; "prototypes" are projects developed by enthusiastic proponents who have strong commitment to the model and the movement; and "adaptations" are projects developed by eclectic followers who have weak commitment to the model and the movement and take advantage of the model for their interests and concerns. With these three key elements, the MPA framework hypothesizes two distinct transitions of urban design models in practice: "evolution," the developmental transition from old prototypes to new prototypes by enthusiastic proponents seeking to more effectively embody the model; and "divergence," a "watered down" application of the model in practice by eclectic followers responding to external factors such as market forces. This dissertation fleshed out the proposed basic MPA framework with historical reviews of the three urban design movements (Garden City, City Beautiful, and Modern) and a literature review of innovation-diffusion theories. In particular, the literature review focused on theories that present major factors influencing the adoption of innovations. The theories suggested that the ways in which adopters, who have different innovativeness and roles, perceive the attributes of innovations influence their decisions to adopt the innovations. In addition to the theoretical construction of the MPA framework, this dissertation presented a comparative case study with New Urbanist practices to test the MPA framework in a real world context. In particular, "divergence" of New Urbanism principles was examined specifically through a comparison of the six matched prototype-adaptation pairs of neighborhood developments in the Atlanta area. The case study first hypothesized three predictions about the perceptions and implementation of New Urbanism principles based on the MPA framework, that is, 1) enthusiastic proponents of New Urbanism perceive New Urbanism principles more positively than eclectic followers; 2) prototypes developed by enthusiastic proponents incorporate more New Urbanism principles and do so more thoroughly than adaptations developed by eclectic followers; and 3) New Urbanism principles that actors perceive more positively are implemented more often and more thoroughly. Data for the case study have been collected through interviews, surveys, field observations, planning documents, and local periodicals. The methods of analysis that were used in this study were pattern matching between predictions and observations, the explanation-building for the findings from pattern matching based on detailed contextual information derived from each case, and finally, cross-case synthesis. The comparative analysis showed that the case observations generally confirmed the three predictions. For example, among the New Urbanism principles, the "creation of an identifiable neighborhood" was perceived the most positively and also implemented the most often and thoroughly by both the enthusiastic proponents and the eclectic followers while "access to public transit" was perceived the least positively and implemented least often by both groups. In addition to the general confirmation of the three predictions, the analysis also revealed numerous unexpected findings, and efforts to build explanations for such findings based on the detailed contexts of each case yielded several important insights: the issue of compatibility between the thorough implementation of the New Urbanism model and the supply of affordable housing; the possibility of positive externalities from the proximity of prototypes to adaptations; two distinct flexibility arguments--flexibility for incremental accomplishment and that for contexts; the extent of public-private partnerships that broaden the influence of the New Urbanism principles beyond project boundaries; and communication problems between enthusiastic proponents and eclectic followers.
The role of collaboration in everglades restoration

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-08-21) Frank, Kathryn Irene

This dissertation examined the impacts of multiple collaborative planning and implementation processes on ecosystem management of the Everglades wetlands of South Florida. In particular, the research focused on collaboration's role in (1) reducing phosphorus pollution in runoff from the Everglades Agricultural Area in the historic northern Everglades and (2) improving the water flow regime in Shark Slough of the southern Everglades. Restoration of the greater Everglades watershed is the largest such initiative in the world, and it may also be the most collaborative, with scores of these processes used at various scales since the mid-1960s. Ecosystem management is the most advanced approach to environmental governance, and its three tenets of integrative, adaptive, and ecologically protective governance provide a framework for evaluating environmental planning processes. Proponents of collaborative processes believe they are exceptionally suited to promoting the tenets of ecosystem management. Critics of collaboration, however, are concerned with the potential for cooptation of environmental interests, among other issues. Using qualitative case study methodology, the research found that collaborative processes improved ecosystem management, but not to the degree expected by collaboration proponents. Collaborative processes were integrative of values, information, activities, and political support across the ecosystem, yet integration had biases and limits as a result of groups' strategic behaviors and processes' emphasis on reaching agreement rather than fully exploring the issues. Cooptation of environmental interests was not a significant problem. Collaborative processes promoted adaptation and social learning in specific cases, but at a macro level helped to maintain the status quo of the dominant water management agencies and technocratic paradigms. Process outcomes were protective of ecological health in that they made steady, incremental progress towards ecological restoration. Progress had significant setbacks however, because collaboratively developed policies were subject to capture by economic interests. Despite the collaborative improvements in ecosystem management, ecological health remains a distant and uncertain prospect for the Everglades.
A remote sensing analysis of residential land use, forest canopy distribution, and surface heat island formation in the Atlanta Metropolitan Region

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-05) Stone, Brian