Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / This paper examines the continued encroachment of Tucson, Arizona’s built environment on the borders of the surrounding protected lands. This will be a concern as the city of Tucson continues to grow and develop its rural areas. Case studies were conducted on three separate cities: Tucson, AZ, Estes Park, CO, and Missoula, MT. In each of the case studies the cities growth rate is looked at, as well as the zoning laws located around the boundaries of the cities respective protected lands. Tucson’s zoning laws and growth was compared to the other two case study cities. A sample buffer zone was created to show how these protected lands could help implement policies to maintain the ecosystems health, while also protecting Tucson’s rural population from dangerous encounters with wildlife or natural disasters.

This dissertation analyses movements from and to a contemporary 21st century Indian multi-caste village in the Kumaun Himalayas, where movements have traditionally involved transhumance and border trade with western Tibet. With the closure of the Indo-Tibetan borders after the Indo-China war in 1962, the economy and livelihoods of the people of the region have fundamentally changed and movements now take place in the form of migration for work to the plains of India, both in the private sector and in government services. The dissertation is based on an ethnographic village study and explores all contemporary forms of movement visible in the village: out-migration; return-migration; and in-migration. It examines how these different types of movement tie in with the changing socio-economic lives of the villagers. This explorative study focuses on the patterns, causes and effects of migration on rural lives past and present, and on the multiple interrelated social changes, which are part of these migratory processes. The author uses mixed qualitative-quantitative methods, including a census survey of all 148 households, 45 semi-structured interviews, follow-up in-depth interviews, and innovative methods such as arts-based visual methods. The framework applied is interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical and contributes to the existing empirical body of literature on migration, development and change. The author chooses to employ the framework of the rural left behind when examining the lives of the wives and elderly parents of migrants. However, she argues that those in the village who are in the truest sense ‘left behind’ are not the family members of migrants, but the unemployed men who lack the capabilities to migrate for work and who reside in the village without any gainful economic activity. The thesis structure includes eight chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 reviews the relevant literature on migration and development and is followed by the methodology chapter (chapter 2), a village background chapter (chapter 3) and a chapter covering the historical context (chapter 4). The structure of the main analysis (chapters 5-8) is along the lines of patterns and reasons for out-migration (chapter 6), out-migration types and their impact (chapter 6), return migration types, reasons and impact (chapter 7) and in-migration types, reasons and impact (chapter 8). Each analysis chapter ends with brief conclusions; these are expanded in the final conclusions (chapter 9).

The Chesapeake Bay, once one of the worlds most productive estuaries, has been severely impacted by human activity in the water and on the lands around it. Viewed as an ecosystem, the Bay is no longer able to support the variety and abundance of biota that it was historically able to. Several decades of research on the Chesapeake have pointed to human activities as being the principle reason for this decline. Of these detrimental activities, elevated inputs of Nitrogen and Phosphorus to the Bay were singled out as being the greatest cause of water quality deterioration. The state of Virginia is trying to reduce its annual load of Nitrogen, to the Potomac River, to 60% of what the load was estimated to be in 1985. Virginia would like to accomplish this goal at the lowest cost to its citizens. Therefore the state needs to determine the combination of nitrogen control efforts which will achieve the goal at the lowest cost. The state would also like to be able to maintain nitrogen loads at or below this cap level, indefinitely into the future. This study was undertaken with three primary objectives. The first was to project the level of annual nitrogen inputs to the Potomac River, from the state of Virginia, over the next 15 years. The second was to estimate the minimum annual costs necessary to achieve and maintain a 40% reduction in total nitrogen inputs, using the Virginia's estimated 1985 inputs as a baseline. The final objective was to assess the potential cost savings that may result from using one of two alternative development patterns within the rapidly urbanizing Northern Virginia portion of the Potomac Watershed. The first alternative is prohibiting low-density development within the Northern Virginia region, and the second is to restrict all new development to be within 5 miles of an existing urban area. Study results suggest that there has been no significant progress toward meeting the nitrogen reduction goal, due to the increase in population within the watershed, over the past 13 years. To attain the goal in 1998, a minimum of $27 million, above what is currently being spent annually, would be required. Under the current land use trend within Virginia's Potomac Basin, the annual cost for maintaining the goal is estimated to rise to $38 million annually, in 1998 dollars, by the year 2013. This is a 40% increase in cost. If the first alternative development pattern is adhered to over this 15-year period, then the annual cost will be $33 million, for an annual cost saving of approximately $5 million in 2013. The second alternative could achieve similar results if implemented, costing roughly $5 million less in 2013 than the annual cost per year under the current trend. These findings suggest that the use of alternative development patterns can help slow but not prevent the annual cost, of maintaining the cap, from rising. The study indicates that the reason for the continuous rise in annual cost, over this fifteen-year period, is due primarily to an increase in nitrogen loading to the Potomac that will result from the wastewater disposal needs of the growing population within the Basin. Furthermore, the state will eventually exhaust its lower cost options for reducing Nitrogen loadings, and at that point the annual cost for maintaining the Nitrogen Cap will begin to rise exponentially. Under current land use trends this rapid rise in cost is unlikely to occur within the next 15 years, and is more apt to occur sometime within the next 20 to 40 years. Once annual expenditures begin to rise exponentially it is unlikely that the state of Virginia would be able to maintain its 40% reduction goal. / Master of Science

This thesis will focus on a major Swedish city, Karlstad. The study uses a combined method consisting of a content analysis and semi-structured interviews. The qualitative content analysis is based on categorizing ongoing detailed plans for housing development in Karlstad. The respondents in the semi-structured interviews consist of people active in real estate development in Karlstad, the current chairman of the urban planning committee in Karlstad, and another politician with experience of urban planning. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the development pattern in the housing sector in a Swedish city. This in connection with investigating how the cooperation between local actors works regarding housing development. In the next step, the purpose is operationalized by studying Karlstad as a case. The section on previous research presents relevant research on the topic of development in the housing sector. The theory chapter provides the theoretical framework for the study. A theoretical model regarding how development is achieved in the housing sector is central, the model summarizes various factors that contribute to achieving development. The results section presents the respondents' experience of how housing planning looks like in Karlstad and how cooperation works between different local actors. How Karlstad is growing with a focus on both densification and expansion in the city is central to the empirical data. A central part of the empirical data is that there is a picture of differing opinions on how cooperation looks between different local actors. One conclusion reached is that Karlstad works for an inclusive and varied densification while the city is expanding. Another conclusion that can be reached is that sustainability thinking in terms of social, economic and ecological aspects is to some extent guiding contemporary housing planning but will become even more important in the future. The main research question relevant to this thesis is: What is the pattern of development in the housing sector in Karlstad? / I denna uppsats är en svensk större stad i fokus, Karlstad. I studien används en kombinerad metod som består av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Den kvalitativa innehållsanalysen utgår från att kategorisera pågående detaljplaner gällande bostadsutveckling i Karlstad. Respondenterna i de semistrukturerade intervjuerna utgörs av tre personer verksamma inom fastighetsutveckling i Karlstad. Dessutom har den nuvarande ordförande för stadsbyggnadsnämnden i Karlstad och en annan politiskt aktiv person med erfarenhet från stadsbyggnad intervjuats. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka exploateringsmönstret i bostadssektorn i en större svensk stad. Detta i samband med att undersöka hur samarbetet mellan lokala aktörer fungerar gällande bostadsutveckling. I nästa led operationaliseras syftet genom att studera Karlstad som fall. I avsnittet gällande tidigare forskning presenteras relevant forskning kring ämnet exploatering. Teorikapitlet utgör det teoretiska ramverket för studien. En teoretisk modell gällande hur en exploatering nås är central och modellen sammanfattar olika faktorer som möjliggör exploatering av bostäder. I resultatdelen presenteras respondenternas upplevelse av hur bostadsplaneringen ser ut i Karlstad och hur samarbetet fungerar mellan olika aktörer. Hur Karlstad växer med fokus på att det både sker en förtätning i staden och en expansion av staden är centralt i empirin. En central del i empirin är att det finns en bild av att det finns åsikter som skiljer sig åt kring hur samarbetet ser ut mellan olika lokala aktörer. En slutsats som nås är att Karlstad verkar för en inkluderande och varierande förtätning samtidigt som staden expanderar. En annan slutsats som går att nå är att hållbarhetstänket ur sociala, ekonomiska och ekologiska aspekter är till viss del vägledande i nutida bostadsplanering men kommer i framtiden att bli ännu viktigare. Den huvudsakliga forskningsfrågan som är aktuell i detta uppsatsskrivande är: Hur ser mönstret av exploatering ut i bostadssektorn i Karlstad?