This study is designed to examine how much of an impact crisis or the perception of a crisis might have on Congressional policy making for private electric utilities and how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reacts to Congressional action or inaction in such cases. Also, where appropriate the influence and impact of other actors in the different crises are mentioned. The first set of findings came from the era running from 1977 to 1986 as FERC was created by Congress in 1977 to address in part the stagflationary crisis of the 1970s of which electric utilities played an important role. Next, the Congressional response to the Gulf War and FERC's reaction to it is analyzed as in that case legislators were reacting to the perception that another energy driven economic crisis in the U.S. might occur as happened after the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. Finally, the study examines the Congressional response and FERC's reaction to the Midwest price spike, the California electricity crisis, the Northeast blackout of 2003, and the financial decline of electric utilities nationally due to the failures of wholesale electricity market restructuring. Modern technology driven societies like the U.S. need access to vast supplies of cheap reliable electricity to run everything from computer systems to public sanitation systems. Most of that electricity in the U.S. is provided by private electric utilities. As a result, this study focuses primarily on federal public policies, created by Congress and implemented by FERC, related to private utilities. Yet, despite the importance of electricity to contemporary societies, public affairs scholarship has generally not addressed this issue. In order to probe the impact of Congress and FERC, I examine interconnected events and actions that take place at different points in time to determine what influence, if any, these organizations have had. Crisis seems to be the primary causal mechanism pushing Congress to act in this area of public policy. Indicators of Congressional action include hearings, proposed federal legislation, and statutes, while indicators of a response from FERC include the issuance of orders, opinions, and formal docketed decisions. / Ph. D.

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Mixed-use development is one of the canonical elements of modern urban planning theory and practice. The principles of this approach to development are applied throughout the world and have seen a resurgence in the last several decades as part of the rise of populist movements such as smart growth and new urbanism. At the same time, cities across the industrialized world have been reshaped within the broader context of fundamental restructuring in the labour market over the past several decades. The urban core of the post-industrial city has increasingly become the site of residential development amongst various complementary land uses, marketed to an upwardly mobile professional class. Who benefits from this kind of mixed-use development in the housing market? Despite its popularity, mixed-use development is not often examined with regard to the affordability of housing. This study explores the affordability of housing in areas zoned as mixed-use in the old City of Toronto in relation to shifts in the occupational structure of the city’s workforce between 1991 and 2006. Using census data and spatial analysis methods, the cartographic and analytical outputs of this study demonstrate two major findings: first, that housing in mixed-use areas was more expensive than the rest of the city over the study period; and second, that socioeconomic polarization between classes of occupations is not only evident in mixed-use areas, but in some ways more pronounced than in the rest of the city. Based on these findings, the study concludes with a realistic assessment of why and how academics, practitioners and policymakers active in urban planning should step up efforts to couple the revitalization of Toronto’s urban core with gains to the affordability of housing.