<p> Traditional avenues of influencing planning decisions are not intuitive for diverse, historically underrepresented community residents in many neighborhoods and many immigrant residents come from societies where engaging in public discourse is discouraged or dangerous. The focus of this study, the Planning Outreach and Engagement Liaison (POEL) program, was designed to address these discrepancies, yet whether the program was successful is unknown. Using participatory democracy as the theoretical framework, the purpose of this case study was to explore whether the POEL program brought diverse residents together to participate in the neighborhood planning process. Data were collected through semi structured interviews with planners, community coordinators, public outreach and engagement liaisons, and members of non-governmental organizations (<i>n</i> = 10) and official government records and documents. All data were deductively coded and then analyzed using a thematic analysis procedure. Six themes emerged from the study including (a) measures of program success, (b) outreach and communication, (c) collaboration, (d) intimidation and fear, (e) time limitation, and (f) building relationships. POELs identified and understood that barriers such as lack of time, lack of child care, persistent fear of government intentions, and religious and cultural norms inhabit the process, but found that using outreach and communication promotes interest in and participation in neighborhood planning. When neighborhood residents are empowered and given information about the process, they make informed choices. The study promotes positive social change by showing that mitigating some of the barriers to participation supports greater inclusion of underrepresented persons in the neighborhood planning process.</p><p>

<p> Forests are essential to the livelihoods of billions of people worldwide. In addition to furnishing valuable resources for both subsistence and commercial uses, they provide critical environmental services, including soil conservation, water supply, recreational opportunities, biodiversity preservation, and carbon sequestration and storage. A new market-based paradigm for forest conservation based on payments for ecosystem services (PES) has emerged alongside state-led and community-based models. Various PES schemes have been introduced in order to harness the potential of regional and global markets to provide financial incentives to communities, private landowners and governments to protect and plant forests.</p><p> This doctoral dissertation examines the impacts of two international market-based responses to the pressing global environmental problems of deforestation and climate change&mdash;sustainable forest management certification and forest carbon trading (REDD+)&mdash;on the governance and wellbeing of the forests and communities that rely on them. Are these market-based conservation schemes compatible with local forest management priorities and needs? Do they exacerbate or alleviate existing governance issues and inequities? Do they promote inclusive and deliberative policymaking processes? In other words, can they fit into national and local contexts in ways that reinforce effective decentralized forest governance, especially the autonomy, rights, and livelihoods of forest communities? Focusing on Nepal, a country with a strong tradition of community-based forest management, this research probes these questions using two complementary empirical cases: (1) a study of SFM certification and REDD+ projects in Dolakha District; and (2) an assessment of national policymaking processes for REDD+. This facilitates an assessment of the implications of these globalized PES schemes for the future of decentralized forest governance in Nepal and other countries with community forestry initiatives.</p>

<p> By the year 2050, about three quarters of the world&rsquo;s population will live in cities. Most cities are developed by state or federal governments; however, some cities are developed for the purpose of private interests that plan the city. While the concept of private companies planning and sometimes even owning cities is not a new development, there seems to currently be a rise in this trend, with communication corporations such as IBM, Google, Intel, and Cisco now taking advantage of this growing market. </p><p> Known as &ldquo;smart&rdquo; or &ldquo;wired&rdquo; cities, this new privatized way of planning communities allows major communication corporations to play an important role in shaping the future of our communities. Google, IBM, and Intel are all playing a role in planning the future of Portland, Oregon. By analyzing documents such as planning ordinances, financial reports, and government transcripts, as well as conducting interviews with city planners and corporate employees, this study found that many of the &ldquo;smart&rdquo; city efforts being undertaken by these communication corporations are intimately tied to their efforts to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) to fruition. Ultimately, the main goal of these efforts is to utilize urban communication technologies (UCTs) to gather data about community members by tracking their activities. In this emerging personal data economy, identities are the main commodity being fetishized.</p>

<p> Previous policy studies have demonstrated that affordable housing residents who live in neighborhoods with racial and economic integration, community investment, and access to amenities are more likely to experience improved well-being. The Moving To Opportunity (MTO), Gautreaux, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programs have best practices to increase neighborhood opportunity at affordable housing sites. This thesis analyzes primary policy documents to compare national best practices with those presented by an advocacy report and a Housing Element for Long Beach, California. The potential outcomes of applying such best practices in Long Beach are compared using GIS. The study finds policies conflict and converge in both guidelines and spatial outcomes. Finally, modifiable area unit problems may affect demographic-based guidelines. More research on amenities quality and neighborhood integration is needed.</p>

<p> This master&rsquo;s thesis investigates the economic factors that are affecting the financial decision-making of educated, middle to upper class Millennials in Los Angeles, California. This thesis explores how economic factors, preferences, and self-efficacy interact to determine housing pathways. This thesis also asks whether Millennials in Los Angeles will be able to afford homes and how the cultural narrative of the American Dream affects preferences. In order to answer these questions, twenty in person interviews are conducted with residents of Los Angeles in which they are asked about their values and preferences regarding housing, and the economic factors they are currently facing. This thesis finds that participants are struggling to navigate through economic factors such as student loans, a changing labor market, urbanization, high cost of living, stagnating wages, and high housing prices. This thesis finds that participants are experiencing low self-efficacy when it comes to finances, which seems to be a proportional reaction to the current economic climate. This thesis also finds that most participants want to own homes, however, in reality very few will be able to afford to buy homes in Los Angeles and will have to rent indefinitely. Lastly, this thesis finds that participants are rejecting the old American dream and that their preferences and values are different from baby boomers', however the housing market has not yet evolved to meet the demand of those changing preferences.</p><p>

<p> In the early 2000s, Chicago emerged as an archetypal city in the broader movement to remake public housing. Chicago&rsquo;s Plan for Transformation committed upwards of $1.5 billion to demolish high-rise buildings, rehabilitate a portion of existing stock, and create 12 new mixed-income developments on the footprint of public housing sites. Policy incentives&mdash;such as financing for capital development, long-term rental subsidies, and public land transfers&mdash;aimed to encourage public-private partnerships. During the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath, however, the promised transformation proved financially difficult&mdash;if not impossible in certain geographic areas&mdash;to complete at the scale intended. That shift in the economic context, along with subsequent political responses, thoroughly altered the policy strategy. To date few empirical investigations have analyzed how these changes restructured the very nature of public housing reforms, and what this restructuring means for policies that require market intervention for the provision of public goods. This dissertation performs just that empirical analysis. </p><p> <i>Privatizing Chicago</i> examines the city&rsquo;s public housing reforms as an example of &ldquo;actually existing&rdquo; (Brenner &amp; Theodore, 2002) neoliberal urbanism and explains how specific political actors, processes, and institutions altered market-based policies intended to reshape urban poor neighborhoods. Viewing Chicago as a neoliberal city requires both recognizing its political landscape as one where the primary aim of municipal government is to promote an entrepreneurial agenda that positions the economic success of the city above all other interests, as well as viewing the potential for progressive movements to contest this agenda. Prior to this study, Chicago&rsquo;s reforms had not been examined across time or geographic areas using critiques of neoliberal urbanism, nor through qualitative methods. This study fills that gap and uses the case of Chicago to improve the empirical understanding of neoliberal urbanism more generally. </p><p> The study accomplishes this through a case study of Chicago&rsquo;s public housing reforms between 2000 to 2016. It shows how government officials, real estate developers, bankers, lawyers, planners, grassroots activists, and others pursued policy strategies favorable to their interests over a 16-year period&mdash;a time marked by the economic recession. My methodological approach is a theory-driven form of ethnography, and my analysis draws from 61 in-depth interviews, field observations over 22 months, archival research of over 500 documents, and the analysis of financial data. This approach brought to light the multiple and contradictory visions at work within the neoliberal framework: competing ideas of the proper partnerships between the public and private sectors, shifting authority among local and national government agencies, and struggles for community redevelopment on the land where high-rises once stood. </p><p> In probing these conflicts and contradictions, I argue that the overall effect of the reforms was to burnish Chicago&rsquo;s status as a &ldquo;global city,&rdquo; but it also contributed to land appropriation, capital accumulation, and the displacement of thousands of low-income African-American residents. The cycle of government intervention into market failure will continue as long as the role of the state remains dominated by an agenda of capital expansion, rather than of equitable urban development that ensures a place for low-income, predominately racial minority communities to live. Theoretical contributions related to neoliberal urbanism align around four themes: (a) political agency and resistance; (b) privatization and financialization; (c) local state control, federal devolution, and global processes; and (d) the relevance of race. A set of policy implications drives towards recommendations regarding affordable housing policy, democratic governance arrangements, collective action focused on social justice, and market-based policy strategies.</p>

<p> In the last twenty years, anchor institutions such as universities and academic medical centers have been addressing societal problems in building a more democratic, just, and equitable society (Taylor, 2013). Anchor institutions are those nonprofit or corporate entities that, by reason of mission, invested capital, or relationships to customers or employees, are geographically tied to a certain location (Porter, 2002; Taylor, 2013).</p><p> This study sought to understand what organizational capacity is needed by urban universities in order to undertake large-scale neighborhood revitalization efforts. This study used qualitative research methods to examine the University of Chicago&rsquo;s Washington Park Incubator project, established in 2011, and Johns Hopkins University&rsquo;s East Baltimore Development Initiative, established in 2001. Through 22 interviews with executive and senior university officials, leaders of community-based organizations and neighborhood residents, this study sought to answer two research questions: What strategies do anchor institutions use to seed, support and sustain their anchor initiatives? What are the barriers or complexities to forming sustainable agreements and cohesion around partnership collaboration?</p><p> This study found that IHE anchors use three critical strategies to sustain their work: the role and actions of a university&rsquo;s president, the role of the board of trustees, and the use of community boundary spanners as leaders of partnerships. A major barrier to sustainability and a primary challenge to achieving cohesive partnership agreements with partners is historical mistrust. The findings were situated within a university real estate investment model (Austrian &amp; Norton, 2005), an engaged institutions leadership model (Sandmann &amp; Plater, 2009), and a framework for community boundary spanners (Weerts &amp; Sandmann, 2010) to explain how these models impact the sustainability of IHE anchor initiatives.</p><p> Conclusions drawn from this study will equip urban college and university executive and senior leaders and operational administrators as well as community leaders with insight into how to sustain anchor institution partnerships. </p>

<p>Rapid global urbanization over the last few decades has intensified the challenge of providing adequate water and sanitation services to urban residents. Meeting this challenge has been the focus of domestic and international development efforts, including Millennium Development Goal 7.C. This research studies three institutional and governance attributes theorized to improve government service outcomes, testing hypotheses that the attributes are associated with greater country progress on providing urban water and sanitation access. The attributes are: a) decentralized services; b) sector-wide strategy and investment coordination; and c) civil society engagement. Country-level experience is analyzed using a series of ordered logistic regression models for a sample of 75 low- and middle-income countries. UN GLAAS survey data is used to derive country-specific variables for the three attributes. These, along with control variables representing country background conditions, are analyzed relative to four country progress outcome variables, two each for water and sanitation. The outcome variables, (covering the 2000 to 2012 time period), are derived from the UN JMP dataset that tracks urban access rates by country. Based on results from these models, four country case studies look in-depth at implementation of the attributes and highlight aspects that can help or impede country progress. Overall, findings show that decentralization is helpful to sanitation progress, but not water progress, likely due limitations of capacity and funding faced by sub-national levels of government. Three explanations are proposed for why decentralization may impact water and sanitation differently. Results for sector planning were mostly inconclusive, except that it was shown helpful to water progress over the 12-year period. Study of this attribute would benefit from additional wide-scale data collection. Civil society engagement was consistently shown to help country progress in both water and sanitation, and several examples of engagement are profiled to demonstrate how it can improve service outcomes. The last chapter relates findings to theories about government provision of public goods. The extent to which the three attributes help achieve efficiency, supply, equity, and social welfare goals is discussed. Finally, practical recommendations for strengthening sector institutions and governance are presented with application to governments and international aid donors.

The Massachusetts model illustrates the latest approach to smart growth—the incentive based program. This study examines the reasons for and actual outcomes of local smart growth efforts through one of the Massachusetts' smart growth incentives—the Commonwealth Capital (CC) Program. The main objectives of this research are built on two conceptual models through a mixed approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method is mainly utilized to evaluate the implementation of the CC program. The results indicate that the program is a good measure of municipal smart growth efforts representative of goals of the state. Communities with diverse land bases have some advantage, as a variety of zoning methods can be employed. It is not obvious that communities have changed their own zoning in response to the stimuli of the CC program. The first model is applied through various statistical tests to investigate the relationships among the towns' characteristics and CC data. Homeownership, education and access to the highway system are significant factors related to municipal smart growth efforts in Massachusetts. Wealth, population and quantity of open spaces are only significant for certain type of communities (e.g. maturing suburbs, developing towns etc). Municipal political preferences (e.g. forms of municipal governance, DEM/GOP preference etc) and municipal planners' efforts have some influence on the adoptions of smart growth policies, though the specific outcomes might vary case by case. The second model tests the statistical relationships between CC data and the Urban Sprawl in Massachusetts. The urban sprawl are defined by Urban Sprawl Indicator (USI) as the amount of residential land consumed per building permit in the five past years per community in Massachusetts. The CC scores and USIs negatively fit the regression line well, indicating that local smart growth efforts have generally controlled land consumption in the past. In particular, the USIs in developing suburbs appear more responsive to the CC data. The spatial lag model shows sprawl is a net-effect phenomena and the cluster of sprawl in a region might weaken the effectiveness of particular municipal smart growth efforts. Lastly, this research suggests that the design of state land use policies ought to follow the nature of geographic segmentation of municipal smart growth preferences.

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