I am interested in erasing the disparity between the body and the automobile by allowing both to participate in a new and common public space simultaneously. This new public space incorporates various diverse models of trade; bazaar, market, ATMs, drive through restaurant etc...into a series of striated zones or bands having to do with the deceleration of the automobile. The car by virtue of its speed becomes the pedestrian and its space becomes a market. By annexing a portion of the set back off the street for slow traffic the first transition zone is established for the automobile. This allows motorists visual access to the business and amenities. The second zone is compromised of a series of drive through booths for the businesses on the lot. Within this band are permanent stalls for temporary or seasonal venders. The last zone farthest off the street is reserved for the traditional store restaurant and businesses.

<p> I begin this dissertation with a historical overview of the demographic, economic, and political trends that have helped shape existing urban form, transportation infrastructure, and travel behavior in Mexico City. Despite an uptick in car ownership and use, most households&mdash;both urban and suburban&mdash;continue to rely on public transportation. Furthermore, suburban Mexico City has lower rates of car ownership and use than its central areas. In subsequent chapters, I frame, pose, and investigate three interrelated questions about Mexico City's evolving suburban landscape, the nature of households' travel decisions, and the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. Together, these inquiries tell a story that differs significantly from narratives about US suburbs, and provide insight into the future transportation needs and likely effects of land and transportation policy in these communities and others like them in Mexico and throughout the developing world.</p><p> First, how has the influence of the built environment on travel behavior changed as more households have moved into the suburbs and aggregate car use has increased? Using two large metropolitan household travel surveys from 1994 and 2007, I model two related-but-distinct household travel decisions: whether to drive on an average weekday, and if so, how far to drive. After controlling for income and other household attributes, I find that the influence of population and job density on whether a household undertakes any daily car trips is strong and has increased marginally over time. By contrast, high job and population densities have a much smaller influence on the total distance of weekday car travel that a household generates. For the subset of households whose members drive on a given weekday, job and population densities have no statistical effect at all. Contrary to expectations, a household's distance from the urban center is strongly correlated with a lower probability of driving, even after controlling for income. This effect, however, appears to be diminishing over time, and when members of a household drive, they drive significantly more if they live farther from the urban center. The combination of informal transit, public buses, and the Metro has provided sufficient transit service to constrain car use in the densely populated suburban environments of Mexico City. Once suburban residents drive, however, they tend to drive a lot regardless of transit or the features of the built environment.</p><p> Second, how much are the recent trends of increased suburbanization, rising car-ownership, and the proliferation of massive commercially-built peripheral housing developments interrelated? To investigate this question, I first disentangle urban growth and car ownership trends by geographic area. The fastest-growing areas tend to be poorer and have had a much smaller impact on the size of the metropolitan car fleet than wealthier, more established neighborhoods in the center and western half of the metropolis. I then zoom in to examine several recent commercial housing developments. These developments, supported by publicly-subsidized mortgages, contain thousands of densely-packed, small, and modestly-priced housing units. Their residents remain highly reliant on public transportation, particularly informal transit, and the neighborhoods become less homogenous over time as homeowners convert units and parking spaces to shops and offices. Finally, I use the 2007 household travel survey to model households' intertwined decisions of where to live and whether to own a car. If housing policy and production cannot adapt to provide more centrally-located housing, growing incomes will tend to increase car ownership but concentrate more of it in areas where car-owning households drive much farther.</p><p> Third, how has the Metro's Line B, one of the first and only suburban high-capacity transit investments, influenced local and regional travel behavior and land use? To explore this question, I compare travel behavior and land use measures at six geographic scales, including the investment's immediate catchment area, across two time periods: six years before and seven years after the investment opened. Line B, which opened in stages in 1999 and 2000, significantly expanded Metro coverage into the densely populated and fast-growing suburban municipality of Ecatepec. While the investment sparked a significant increase in local Metro use, most of this increase came from people relying on informal transit, rather than cars. While this shift reduced transit fares and increased transit speeds for local residents, it also increased government subsidies for the Metro and had no apparent effect on road speeds. Furthermore, the Metro remains highly dependent on informal transit to provide feeder service even within Ecatepec. In terms of land use, the investment increased density around the stations but appears to have had little to no effect on downtown commercial development. In short, the effects of Line B demonstrate much of the promise and problem with expanding high capacity transit service into the suburbs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

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The current state of the 4th ward is one of atrophy and gentrification. The existing housing stock, as well as existing demographic and community structures are being replaced block by block with a drastically different, homogeneous housing type and demographic. Considering its place in the city, this new housing stock is very understanding of the density necessary for the future of this area, but has no reference to the existing housing types or demographic. The desire to maintain and rebuild what is left of the 4th ward, and its community, is faced with the necessity of densification and diversification. And to do this, we have to resist the urge to replicate the aesthetic icons of the past, such as the shotgun house. Through analysis, we see that the housing types of the 4th ward, rather than being defined by stylistic choices, are actually defined by their form in relation to use and proximity, and on a larger scale, by their varied, incremental patterns of development. It is these quantitative aspects of the 4th ward, at the scale of the city lot & the urban block, that can be preserved and incorporated into the inevitable densification of the area.

An inquiry into the loss of urbanity in the contemporary city initiated a historical study of public space. The public space of today's mall is introverted and isolated from its environment--the disintegrated, decaying city. The political implications of this transformation are the tendency towards privatization of public space and increasing segregation of society. Public space and public services are more and more taken over by profit-oriented private businesses and no longer available to everybody, e.g. the 'central business district' demonstrates the replacement of the public realm by the corporate realm. The Houston tunnel system exemplifies this tendency: it is owned by private corporations, accessible to the public only from their buildings. The Design Thesis attempts to return this part of the urban infrastructure to the public realm. Entrances from the street are intended to make the pedestrian tunnels more easily accessible to the individual.

The lack of zoning in Houston weakens typological identity in the architecture of the city and precipitate new morphologies in urban form. A formal analysis of commercial development in the residential area of Montrose shows the mixed fabric of the city, both in scale and type. This analysis is the basis of an alternate strategy of suture in the development of the block in the fabric of the city and is applied to housing design. In conclusion, such a strategy is by necessity ad hoc if it is to be responsive to unforeseen growth patterns in a city without zoning.

In the next 25 years, la Democracia, a town of 4000 people in the Pacific coastal plains of Guatemala, Central America, will double in population if current population growth trends continue. In this thesis, the author investigates the current state of infrastructure; waste disposal, streets, education, health, and housing and proposes solutions for the town's future infrastructure needs.

Our relationship with the land is defined in the myth of American pastoralism. The founding and development of rural communities and towns throughout America has been strongly affected by the pastoral ideal. Complex pastoralism as defined by Leo Marx highlights the conflict between progress and this pastoral myth. This thesis is a proposal for the situating of a little league baseball/softball field along the commercial strip of a rural town in Texas. Using the exploration of complex pastoralism in this context, I am developing a strategy for the "architect" to operate in the context of rural America.

Houston is the rebellious younger sibling of the traditional city, a product of the tug-of-war between the amorphous historic past and the open field of future possibilities; this dichotomy contributes to the form of the experimental city which is direct challenge to the traditional city as applied urban model. In the traditional city urban meaning and architectural form are innately linked, in the experimental city it is not building which embodies the urban iconology, but instead the Between Spaces, the direct, although inadvertent, spatial results of Houston's construction processes. Thus, architecture and urban meaning are disassociated, and through this schism meaning is physically relocated outside of architecture in the Between Space of the experimental city. Through the analysis of two case studies, Transco Tower/Lamar Terrace, and Sam Houston Tollway/Memorial Bend, an alternative experiential and perceptual framework through which Houston's urban forms are assessed is determined.

The thesis originates out of a concern for communities regrouping after dispersal, questioning what vital components of architecture can make a meaningful contribution to communal identity. It explores the role architecture can play in revitalization efforts, gaining insights by participating with community groups and intensely examining the physical neighborhood. An effort is made to go beyond mere contextualism by exploring the differences and similarities between the terms "community" and "public", and their translation to architecture. Dialogue is relocated from popular architectural discourse to strategies that will allow a culture with a rich building tradition freedom of expression, while continuing to engage theoretical issues beyond cosmetics, such as spatial relationships. A seminal conclusion of the thesis is that an architecture of space which structure public activities gives at least as much meaning to communal identity as an architecture of images with which people identify.