<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>

acase@tulane.edu / 1 / Peyton Jones

Urban planning in Sweden goes back to a prolonged tradition, and even since the beginning of the 16th century there´s been general plans for urban planning for cities in Sweden. Nowadays every municipality has a directive from the government to establish or re-new the general master plan covering the whole municipality every 4th year. The aim of this paper is to illustrate and shed light on the extent for the planning document and guidelines, and how they change from every active period and in what extent the provisional planning reaches its visions regarding the outcome of the actual city growth. This study was completed by studying the position of every apartment building that’s been constructed for the chosen area over the years of 2000 - 2014 and draw comparisons between the current master plan main visions regarding constructions – and comparing the two separate visions to pin out the differences in the same subject. The result shows that there are some deviations from the plans but not as much as one would have thought in the city growth, and some deviations from the different planning documents. Some of the deviations was greater than others but overall the visions was about the same.

The purpose of this project is to create a simplifiedtool for urban planning, to illustrate how differentparameters affect each other. The municipality ofUppsala and the company Atkins have investigatedthe possibility to implement several themes andaspects in a digital tool. Since urban planning has acomplex structure, only a few aspects are selectedin this report. This is a case study which examineshow an implementation of a carpool in a residentialarea affects the parameters ground use, carbondioxide emissions and social aspects such asridesharing and car ownership. A model has beencreated in MATLAB to visualize the environmentalimpact of a carpool compared to traditional parking.The results show that the environmental impactdecreases as the number of cars in the areadecreases. Further, the sensitivity analysis showsthat social factors may have a great impact on theenvironmental aspects. A decreased car usage andincreased ridesharing, where only traditional parkingis used, can result in an environmental improvementalmost corresponding to an area with only a carpoolsolution with the current car usage and ridesharing.

<p> A rating system known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development, LEED-ND, was developed in 2007 to assess sustainability at the neighborhood scale. Although at this time LEED for buildings is a well-known and well-established program in the United States, LEED for Neighborhood Development is less widely recognized since it was developed in 2007 as compared to LEED for buildings. LEED-ND requires that certified developments meet credit areas in three main categories: a) smart location and linkage (SLL), b) neighborhood pattern and design (NPD), and c) green infrastructure and buildings (GIB). LEED-ND goes above and beyond singularly requiring sustainable mobility, traditional neighborhood design, or green building; rather, it incorporates the above three categories into a single rating system. To date, prior LEED rating systems (New Construction and Existing Buildings) have focused on the building scale, as have most critiques of such metrics. Few authors have ventured to analyze the neighborhood rating system with the exception of Garde (2009) and Ewing et al. (2013) and Sharifi and Murayama (2013), who have only used only secondary scorecard data and other aggregated data to assess the success or predict outcomes of LEED-ND neighborhoods. No post-occupancy studies have been conducted to date that take into consideration the resident&rsquo;s perception and stated preferences. Additionally, no studies have examined in detail the provision of affordable housing within LEED-ND developments. </p><p> LEED-ND has been rapidly adopted as the de-facto green neighborhood standard and is now used to measure the sustainability of neighborhood design around the world. Like the previous LEED green building rating systems, LEED-ND is heavily reliant on physical &amp; environmental design criteria (measures such as compact urban form and transit accessibility), and is based on an expert-generated point system. LEED-ND thus excels in measuring &lsquo;environmental sustainability&rsquo; through its stringent environmental performance criteria. However, it fails to critically address important livability factors&mdash;namely social and economic factors&mdash;and there has not been a critical examination of how to properly weigh the various factors in response to user preferences. Scholars have emphasized that the major weakness of sustainable development agendas, emphasizing that although assessment of <i>environmental</i> sustainability is quite thorough, often sustainable development projects fail to adequately address or operationalize social and economic sustainability. Ultimately, creating metrics for <i>social</i> and <i>economic </i> sustainability is more complicated than developing metrics for environmental sustainability, which can be reduced to direct built environment performance measures. At the neighborhood scale, socio-cultural and socio-economic concerns&mdash;such as affordable housing&mdash;become magnified for residents. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that socio-cultural and socio-economic factors and user preferences require a more significant foothold in neighborhood scale rating systems, if such systems purport to fully support all three tiers of sustainability: social, economic and environmental (Wheeler 2004). Specifically, this study examines affordable housing as a proxy for social equity and social sustainability in LEED-ND neighborhoods, and determines the extent to which principles of social sustainability are being upheld. </p><p> This dissertation advances the emerging field of sustainable neighborhood rating systems, by illustrating and evaluating a significant gap in current sustainable neighborhood evaluation systems. Cutting across planning, landscape architecture, architecture, psychology and sociology in both Canada and the US, the study critically questions the LEED-ND rating system as the epitome of sustainable development. This dissertation illustrates that in order to be truly sustainable, developments must consider social-cultural and socio-economic livability factors alongside environmental factors, including post-occupancy evaluation. This dissertation also asks the question if social equity and affordability issues can be singularly addressed by a voluntary, market-based rating system, or if a broader range of strategies is needed to ensure the provision of affordable housing in new sustainable developments. Ultimately, this study provides recommendations to improve the rating system, with a specific focus on affordable housing.</p>

<p> Political protest is an increasingly frequent occurrence in urban public space. During times of protest, the use of urban space transforms according to special regulatory circumstances and dictates. The reorganization of economic relationships under neoliberalism carries with it changes in the regulation of urban space. Environmental design is part of the toolkit of protest control. </p><p> Existing literature on the interrelation of protest, policing, and urban space can be broken down into four general categories: radical politics, criminological, technocratic, and technicalprofessional. Each of these bodies of literature problematizes core ideas of crowds, space, and protest differently. This leads to entirely different philosophical and methodological approaches to protests from different parties and agencies. </p><p> This paper approaches protest, policing, and urban space using a critical-theoretical methodology coupled with person-environment relations methods. This paper examines political protest at American Presidential National Conventions. Using genealogical-historical analysis and discourse analysis, this paper examines two historical protest event-sites to develop baselines for comparison: Chicago 1968 and Dallas 1984. Two contemporary protest event-sites are examined using direct observation and discourse analysis: Denver 2008 and St. Paul 2008. </p><p> Results show that modes of protest policing are products of dominant socioeconomic models of society, influenced by local policing culture and historical context. Each of the protest event-sites studied represents a crisis in policing and the beginning of a transformation in modes of protest policing. Central to protest policing is the concept of territorial control; means to achieve this control vary by mode of protest policing, which varies according to dominant socioeconomic model. Protesters used a variety of spatial strategies at varying degrees of organization. Both protesters and police developed innovations in spatial practice in order to make their activities more effective. </p><p> This has significant consequences for professionalized urban design. Both protester and policing spatial innovation involves the tactical reorganization and occupation of urban space. As urban space plays a constituent role in protest and policing, environmental designers must be aware of the political consequences of their designs.</p>

<p> A growing body of research emphasizes the development of an understanding of the relationship between older adults and their physical and social environments (Wahl &amp; Weisman, 2003). Researchers, planners, policymakers, and community residents have been increasingly interested in shaping urban environments as places that foster active aging and independence among older adults. Senior centers have served a critical role in their communities as focal points for older adults, as individuals or in groups, to participate in services and activities that support their independence and encourage their involvement in and with the community (NCOA, 1979). The aging of the population and influx of baby boomers into the older demographic, along with declines in participation rates and funding, are challenging senior center staff to be innovative and adaptive in order to demonstrate senior centers&rsquo; relevance to future older adults while maintaining the programming and services for their current participants. This research is a multiple-case study of five unique senior centers located throughout the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon. Different types and models of senior centers are represented by the selected cases, as they operate under different governance structures and vary in aspects such as administration, funding, participant characteristics, community partnerships, transportation options, physical environments, and range of services and programs offered. This study aims to better understand challenges, strengths, and future directions for different types of senior centers serving a metropolitan area. Data collection at each site included interviews with staff as well as focus groups with senior center participants. Interviews with key informants enriched the findings and provided outside perspectives of senior center experiences. Data analysis revealed challenges and strengths that were common across and unique to the different senior centers in this study. This research contributes to the literature in urban studies, community development, and gerontology by exploring potential opportunities for urban senior centers to adapt and continue to serve older adults. Recommendations were developed for how senior centers might capitalize on these opportunities and for how their communities might provide mechanisms of support to facilitate the continuation and contributions of senior centers in metropolitan areas.</p>

Broadening our Classroom is organized into two parts. Part One deals with a theoretical discussion about the meaning and motivations of planning education in contemporary societies and times. From here, planning education can be both contextualized and understood within the wider discourse of what planning education should be in the 21st century. This study then works to illuminates areas of planning education that must be critiqued and challenged based on the way they are currently taught and engaged. Here, the ideas of ‘skills’ and ‘competencies’ are teased in an attempt to fruitfully grapple with planning education from the standpoint of its students. This points towards the need for 21st century planners to observe values, utilize skills and employ took-kits which include the ability to work in cross-cultural settings effectively (at home and abroad), an area of planning education which is to an extent lacking in practice. The merger of planning education and cross-cultural learning experience is proposed as a mechanism to address some of the challenges associated with this endeavor. Part Two transports the theoretical discussion into practice through an evaluation of the Naga City Studio Course offered by the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia (SCARP UBC). In May and June 2007, 20 UBC students participated in a ‘Planning Studio’ course in Naga City, Philippines. The Naga City Studio course serves as a case study in operationalizing a direction for planning education. The course is evaluated and analyzed primarily through participant’s experiences and reflections on the course. It becomes clear that the Naga City Studio Course serves as a creative and ultimately profound example of new directions in planning education, providing students the opportunity to gain cross-cultural exposure and to better understand and enhance their planning related skills within a cross-cultural context. The opportunity for students to both develop and better understand the (cultural) competencies necessary as practicing professionals is a key outcome of the course and serves as the key finding of Broadening our Classroom.

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