Public transportation projects are some of the most complex and costly components of urban development. While urban sites may develop naturally through the combined and only partially coordinated efforts of countless private groups, they inevitably reach a critical mass which requires the development of a shared infrastructure. While this problem is not unique to the modern era, the size, density, and intensity of modern urban uses demands a level of advanced and extensive transportation infrastructure that is unprecedented. The extreme costliness and impact of this infrastructure makes its design and implementation a difficult and controversial matter, particularly when divergent strategies are possible. Mass transit is not the predominant mode of travel for most twenty first century Americans. Before the automobile era, however, transit modes of all types graced the country’s cities, providing a level of service unmatched by most modern transit systems through high frequency and dense routes. This research investigates the transportation history of Seattle, a prominent but relatively young American city, to determine the critical cultural, political and social factors which led that city to redevelop its transit systems successfully after their initial dismantlement during the early car era. The research will focus on the unique trends which allowed Seattle to avoid the transit stagnation of other cities in the mid to late twenty-first century. Seattle’s contemporary transit conditions are summarized through the use of spatial and survey data and compared to transit conditions from the peak of the historic streetcar era. Contemporary transportation planning documents and processes are considered to yield insight into the unique transportation planning culture of the Seattle region. Finally, the region’s urban and transportation history is reviewed to identify and track the processes most responsible for the city’s relative success in developing modern transit when compared to similar cities.

xiii, 302 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This study examines the role of narrative in racial integration politics in the Seattle Public Schools between 1954 and 1991. In 1978, the Seattle School District in coalition with civic actors implemented a mandatory student assignment desegregation policy, "The Seattle Plan," without a court order. A decade later, another similar coalition of actors came together to shift desegregation policy towards a "controlled choice" method of student movement. In 1991, with the support of the newly elected Democratic mayor, the foundation of desegregation was dismantled. In Seattle, the shifts in desegregation conflicts can be explained as the transposition of certain arrangements of ideas into policy and the concurrent shift in the arrangement produced by new alignments of actors able to find enough common ground to coalesce and make policy. This dissertation explores the complexity of ideas about racial equality and the oftentimes-surprising arrangements actors created. I analyze the way elected, elite, and non-elite actors at the local level talked about, interpreted, and re-interpreted questions of racial segregation, equality, and the role of the public schools and explore the amalgamations of ideas about race and schools that explain the unique development of policy in Seattle with a way to account for change relying on micro-political developments. I examine the discursive arrangements generated within these conflicts, the coalitions built around these ideas, and how the ideas were implemented as policy. I analyze a broad range of archival materials, newspaper accounts, and interviews with actors who were involved in these events. / Committee in charge: Gerald Berk, Chairperson, Political Science; Julie Novkov, Member, Political Science; Joseph Lowndes, Member, Political Science; James Mohr, Outside Member, History

The studio glass movement first arose in the United States in the early 1950s, and was characterized by practitioners who wanted to divorce glass from its industrial associations and promote it as a fine arts medium. This movement began in a few cities in the eastern part of the country, and in Los Angeles, but gradually emerged as an art form strongly associated with the city of Seattle and the Puget Sound region. This research studies the emergence and growth of the studio glass movement in the Puget Sound region from 1970 to 2003. It examines how glass artists and Seattle's urban elites interacted and worked separately to build the support structures and "art world" that provided learning and mentoring opportunities, workspaces, artistic validation, audience development, critical and financial support, which helped make glass a signature Puget Sound art form, and the role that artist social networks, social capital, cultural capital and cultural policy played in sustaining this community. In particular, the research seeks to explore the factors that nourish a new art form and artist community in second-tier cities that do not have the substantial cultural and economic support structures found in the "arts super cities" such as Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. This study contributes to the growing literature on artist communities, and the roles played by social capital, cultural capital, urban growth coalitions and policy at different stages of community development. Results can assist policymakers in formulating policies that incorporate the arts as a form of community development.