As the effects of climate change become increasingly damaging and costly, a public and political consensus is building for planning that will protect private property and public infrastructure. Climate-related planning has primarily focused on mitigation, assessing vulnerability, and building adaptive capacity. Adaptation has not gained substantial ground in the area of implementation. The uncertainty associated with climate change projection and variability has emerged as a dominant barrier to adaptation. However, as knowledge accrues, the global and national science communities have been developing more detailed, fine-scale climate projections. Regional climate assessments are available for the sub-national climate regions in the U.S., and have been created based on the measurement of many components of climate, often referred to as indicators. This thesis evaluates the use of those and other indicators as adaptation decision support tools. Findings suggest that indicators can be effectively integrated into a step-wise, risk-based adaptation planning process to overcome barriers to adaptation, many of which contain concern over climate change uncertainty at their core. The combination of climate science data and information about the local experience of climate change are found to be key to the effective use of indicators in adaptation, as is the direct integration of indicators into the policy-making process. Ideally, these indicators can be used to inform trigger points for phases in a flexible adaptation approach, but more work is needed to develop methods for managing the risks and costs associated with adaptation.

Twenty years ago the public schoolyards in Boston, Massachusetts were in a deplorable state: most were entirely paved, seriously neglected and used predominantly for parking. Since 1995, the Boston Schoolyards Initiative (BSI) has worked to transform these spaces into vibrant environments of recreation and learning. Renovations typically include adding play structures, gardens, murals and seating that can engage children at recess or support an educational activity. Recent research has shown that BSI renovations have had a positive impact on student academic performance (Lopez, Jennings and Campbell, 2008), but little attention has yet focused on how these revived and greened spaces have contributed to citywide urban greening efforts and to the environmental quality of their surrounding neighborhoods. This study uses design plans and GIS data to compare pre- and post-renovation canopy cover and pervious surfaces at 12 BSI schools. Data analysis included both an examination of the percent increase in canopy cover and pervious surfacing as well as exploration of the spatial configuration of green space and play space within the newly designed schoolyards. Data indicates that overall BSI renovations have a slightly positive impact on canopy cover and pervious surfacing, but gains are not uniform and many schools are left not meeting citywide goals for canopy cover and pervious surfacing. In addition, schoolyard designs emphasized traditional play structures and paved spaces, subordinating opportunities for children to interact with vegetation. Although eight school renovations included an outdoor classroom with natural features, only one provided any space for children to interact more informally with vegetation. Schools are organized into five different typologies based on the proportions of spaces they contain and spatial configurations, and one typology is recommended as a model for future renovations. In conclusion, this study addresses the challenges and constraints facing urban schoolyard renovations and proposes a framework for integrating recommendations in an iterative experimental manner.

The public lands of the United States administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are used for multiple purposes, like conservation, recreation, grazing, mining, logging, and oil and gas development. Many of these activities have the potential to disturb the surface of the landscape, which can negatively impact scenic values. While the BLM has a system for managing visual resources and mitigating the potential impacts of development on visual quality, it does not adequately consider cumulative visual effects, which are the combined impacts of the same type of activity on the environment over space and time. This paper studies the challenges and opportunities faced by managers of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado, a landscape particularly affected by oil and gas development, at measuring and managing cumulative visual effects. This paper also reviews the results of a series of interviews conducted with experts in the field of cumulative visual effects and of a visual preference survey that highlight the strengths and limitations of existing methods for assessing cumulative visual effects. This research paper concludes with a list of recommendations for the BLM to incorporate cumulative visual effects into its existing visual resource management system and details directions for future research on this subject.

As an intervention strategy set amid a stark and neglected, yet highly energized urban setting of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this project seeks to relieve a stagnating urban condition through the introduction of contemporary and dynamic forms of expression. Skateboarding and street art can be seen as interpretative modes of action that reinvent objects, spaces, and conditions within the urban landscape, lending creative and engaging gestures to the everyday. As (sub) cultural expressions in their own right, these practices transcend their mere formal representations, and present unique identities, spaces, and modes of engagement within a society, initiating a creative mindset and DIY ethos among its respective practitioners. By putting these forms into action through programmatic functions of exhibition, practice, cultivation and production, this project aspires to channel the transformative qualities of these art forms into a design intervention that will animate a neglected urban space with new activities and opportunities as well as serving as a much needed public space of art, leisure, and excitement.

While the utilization of energy efficiency has grown in recent years, it has not been distributed evenly across the country. In some states, over 2% of a utility’s budget is spent on energy efficiency; in other states that number is 0. Much of the growth in energy efficiency has been due to state policies and the development utility-level energy efficiency programs. Yet, all utility programs are not created equal. Because they are often exempt from state regulation (and therefore state energy efficiency policy), publicly-owned utilities have traditionally lagged behind IOUs when it comes to EE programs. This research quantifies energy efficiency programs in four Midwestern states: Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. The first part of the thesis evaluates 474 electric utilities as to whether they had an energy efficiency program in 2010. The second part of the thesis evaluates each utility’s EE program spending in terms of energy and utility specific factors, as well as socio-economic, housing stock and political variables. Through descriptive statistical analysis and the creation of a predictable linear regression model, this thesis identifies relationships between the dependent variable (EE program spending as a % of a utility’s total revenue) and commonly cited barriers to EE program development. Through the analysis, this study finds widespread EE program coverage in Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin. Also, it finds states are the greatest predictor of utility energy efficiency program spending. A utility’s ownership type and the share of homes that heat with electricity are also significant predictors of program spending.

Sustainable development practices and historic preservation efforts are imbued with contradictions, overlappings and shortcomings. Adaptive reuse is a tool for the sustainable preservation of existing building stock that bridges these approaches and more appropriately addresses the values of time, energy, place and community with respect to the built environment. Destruction of both material and abstract qualities can be circumvented by actively engaging a site, landscape or context through revealing and crossbreeding complex patterns, traces and perspectives. The value of a datascape is optimized when such a re-contextualization consists of both additive and subtractive manipulations and is flexible, continuous and regenerative. To avoid demolition and severing connections to the past and to extend the potential success of the development of the former Belchertown State School for the Feeble Minded in Belchertown, Massachusetts, I investigated ways by which the existing Auditorium Building and its relationship to the site could be re-contextualized. Since 1992, this defunct state-operated facility has been closed, transferred to the town and considered for economic development. Within the one hundred fifty-five-acre parcel that remains to be developed there are approximately sixty acres of forested areas and wetlands, a freshwater pond, and numerous abandoned school buildings in poor condition. The Auditorium Building, centrally located within the buildable area of the state school parcel, acted as a gateway into the campus and historically served as a gathering, performing and learning space for both school and Belchertown residents. In conjunction with precedent and programmatic research, I mapped patterns of State School site data which included not only existing, visible data but that which is historical, potential and invisible. The interpretation of these vectors, connections and boundaries served as a framework for re-contextualization and aimed to identify contextual attributes that require preservation, accretion or removal. The grafting of this data to the Auditorium Building and its surroundings exposed and affected various patterns of behavior that ultimately impacted its form, program and relationship to the landscape.

In recent years there have been many advances in the measurement of urban form. However, there is often a gap between the quantitative and qualitative approach, which can prevent useful policy application- scholars and policy makers often do not speak a similar language. This thesis seeks to answer whether LEED for Neighborhood Development can bridge the gap between the quantitative and qualitative and therefore serve as a useful policy metric for assessing urban form. Does it accurately capture an areas spatial structure and more importantly, is it policy relevant?

There is a lack of emphasis in the planning world, both academically and in the field, on preventing crime. Defensible Space and Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) has been the two main approaches taken by planners and criminal justice officials that is design-based and that has brought some level of collaboration between the two professions. This study will analyze the built environment of select crime hotspots in the city of Boston from a design-based crime prevention perspective in order to draw correlations between high crime areas and elements of design-based theories. Using GIS, a kernel density analysis is conducted in 8 of the 13 neighborhoods in the city of Boston. Pictures taken during field observations of the hotspots are used to compare strong and weak examples of design-based crime prevention theories. A CPTED matrix is also used to provide a weighted score to Roxbury, a neighborhood that ranks high in both property and violent crime. Overall, the kernel density results reveal that the hotspots in Roxbury tend to be higher in quantity but less dense and smaller in size than other Boston neighborhoods. This study reveals that for poorer neighborhoods the condition of land uses seems to be a more prevalent factor of the physical environment than the land-use mix that are exhibited in middle and upper class sections of the city. Urban planners play a key role in bringing together and maintaining land uses that will be less conducive to crime given a neighborhood’s or greater geographic area’s history and current socioeconomic and crime context.

The development of the downtown business district of Provo, Utah has closely followed the orderly growth envisioned by its founders. However, one early change in the city's layout had a profound effect on the direction of Provo's development. In 1852, Brigham Young moved the site of the Provo tabernacle from its original location in the designated public square to a location on the fringes of the earliest city boundaries. The result of this action was a sometimes heated controversy among residents regarding the city's true public center. As commercial development reached a peak between 1896 and 1915, the controversy erupted into a rivalry between east-side and west-side residents. Jesse Knight and Thomas Nicholls Taylor, two of the city's most prominent citizens and businessmen, became opponents in advocating opposite sides of the city for development. The strong emotions generated by the rivalry reached a peak with the election to decide the location of Provo's Union Passenger Depot in 1909.Throughout the period of their rivalry, the opposing efforts of Knight and Taylor to establish a commercial center in Provo played a key role in the location and style of the city's most important commercial and residential buildings. These structures are an important focus of study since they represent the playing pieces in a competition that was almost single-handedly responsible for the growth and composition of central Provo. This thesis evaluates the effect of the Knight-Taylor rivalry on architecture in Provo between 1896 and 1915, and examines some of the buildings that resulted from the controversy within the context of contemporary architectural trends.

The Latter-day Saint settlements in southeastern Utah, namely Bluff, Monticello and Blanding, were impacted by the physical and cultural geography of the area. These geographic elements hindered, and in some cases prevented, the Latter-day Saint colonizers from fulfilling the seven basic principles of Latter-day Saint expansion and colonization in the Great Basin. The impacts of physical geography were the geology, the climate, the soil and the rivers and streams. The impacts of cultural geography were the Navajo Indian Tribe, the Paiute Indian Tribe, and the criminal element. This thesis discusses the geographic elements of the area, how they impacted the settlements of Bluff, Monticello and Blanding, how the Mormons reacted to the situation, and how the impacts were eventually dealt with and solved.