published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

A significant number of studies have identified clear links between chronic health issues, including asthma, obesity, and diabetes, and the design of the built environment. As shapers of the built environment, urban planners can play a central role in ameliorating these current health epidemics. Indeed, during the early history of the planning profession the fields of planning and public health were closely connected, and improved public health was seen as a key mission of the planning profession. Today, however, public health issues are not a central concern in planning, neither as a normative value of the field nor as a core element of daily planning practice. Instead, health is a value-based cause taken up by concerned practicing planners, who face numerous challenges in incorporating a health focus into their daily work. This research argues that there is a need for a focus on health outcomes within the planning field, based on the initial mission of planning discipline and current research showing the impact of the built environment on public health. Through a nationwide survey of planners and interviews with planning and health professionals in five cities, findings show that collaboration between health and planning departments is key to instilling a health focus within the practice of planning. Planners who seek to promote a health focus in planning are pursuing this value-based imperative through a variety of ad-hoc strategies, since existing regulations and professional guidelines are inadequate in terms of facilitating collaboration between public health and planning in order to systematically address health issues related to land use and the built environment. Research also shows that collaboration between planning and public health departments, when this does occur, is often initiated and driven by processionals in the public health discipline. Though planners and health professionals who have sought to collaborate have faced institutional, political, and awareness challenges, there are opportunities that can be leveraged to overcome these obstacles. These opportunities include the professional expertise available in the public health field, the availability of health data in order to reframe planning issues, and the potential of individual champions of health to drive health considerations in planning projects, and promote health as a normative value. Ultimately, individual planners who see the creation of healthier communities as central to their professional practice pursue collaborative strategies with health professionals despite the challenges they face. From the perspective of collaborative planning theory and theories of institutional change, this individual engagement and initiative by planners through their everyday practice has the potential to effect institutional change by forging a focus on health as a normative value central to the planning discipline. / text

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My dissertation examines theoretically the effects of environmental taxation on welfare in various cases. Using a general equilibrium model, the first chapter shows that a Pigouvian tax provides a larger welfare gain than an output tax, since it induces substitution among inputs as well as reduction in output of the dirty good, while an output tax induces only the output reduction. Using data for China and the U.S., numerical simulation results show that the potential welfare loss from not being able to use a Pigouvian tax is much larger in developing countries than in developed countries. The second chapter focuses on the fact that recycled material needs reprocessing to be substitutable for virgin material. Reprocessing uses resources and, in the process, generates pollution. Incorporating these 'imperfect' characteristics into a simple general equilibrium model, I examine how these realistic factors affect the structure of taxsubsidy schemes when the Pigouvian taxes are not available. A generalized Deposit-Refund system can achieve the optimum if illegal dumping is not taxable. Without a Pigouvian tax on illegal dumping, recycling is subsidized for its role in diverting illegal disposal into proper disposal. If Pigouvian taxes on neither illegal disposal nor waste from imperfect reprocessing are available, a combination of output tax on reprocessed material and subsidies for clean inputs can be used to restore the optimum. In the process, another reason to subsidize recycling emerges: recycling is a clean input for imperfect reprocessing. The third chapter focuses on the validity of the results obtained in the first chapter in the case of two vertically-separated oligopolies where the upstream industry is polluting. Using an analytical partial equilibrium model, I show that a tax on pollution is potentially superior to a tax on intermediate good, since the former can utilize both the upstream firms' input substitutability and the downstream firms' input substitutability, while a tax on intermediate good only utilizes the downstream firms' input substitutability. I also derive the conditions that government can improve social welfare through various revenue-neutral tax reforms.

This is a scoping report that presents conclusions and recommendations regarding the potential relationship between the people of Monroe and Lenawee Counties, Michigan and proposal to consider locating the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in these counties. The study area is located within the two counties but includes only the extreme eastern portion of Lenawee County. This report discusses the social and cultural impacts that could derive from siting the SSC in these counties, the possible local resident responses to these potential SSC impacts, and potential statewide responses to the project. This scoping research was founded through a contract between the Michigan Energy and Resource Research Associations (MERRA) and the Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan. Scoping g research was conducted between April 15, 1986 and August 31, 1986.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Geography / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study was designed to inform the third party Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required for the Quitchupah Creek Road, UTU-57907, Fishlake National Forest and Bureau of Land Management, Richfield District, Sevier and Emery Counties, Utah. The road proposal involved upgrading a jeep trail located in Quitchupah Canyon. Modifications of this four-wheel drive dirt road would involve extensive environmental engineering, bridges culverts for side canyon intermittent streams and paving of approximately 9.2 miles. A team of ethnographers from the University of Arizona interviewed members of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (PITU) to understand cultural meaning, traditional use, and potential impacts to Native American resources in the study area.

No description available.

These presentations were designed to provide orientation information for the Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.