The purpose of this dissertation was to explore, through a social ecological framework, the multifaceted effects of the neighborhood environment by investigating how dimensions of both the built environment and the neighborhood social context may interact to influence walking. Aesthetics, land use mix, crime, and pedestrian infrastructure were considered with respect to built environment walkability, and the neighborhood social context was conceptualized using measures of both social cohesion and social interaction with neighbors. This research used data from an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded study of 748 adults (18 years of age and older) residing in the Lents neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Through a series of both multiple linear and logistic regression models, the analyses examined the specific pathways by which social interaction with neighbors, social cohesion, and age influenced the relationship between the built environment and walking behavior. Results suggest that both social interaction and social cohesion but not age moderate the effects of the built environment on walking. There was evidence of mediation, as well, for both social interaction and social cohesion. The implications of these findings for future research and policy are discussed.

This study examines the role of local churches in neighborhood change, analyzing the relationship between Christian churches and changes in household median incomes from 1990 to 2010 in the census tract in which each church is located. Based on a nationally representative sample of churches from 2006 and 2012, the study uses hierarchical linear modeling and statistical matching techniques to analyze how key church characteristics such as social service involvement, social capital generation, residential patterns of attendees, and demographic composition are related to changes in neighborhoods. Two primary research questions were addressed: 1) How have patterns of church location changed with respect to neighborhood types, and 2) How do churches impact neighborhood change? Findings indicate an overrepresentation of churches in gentrifying neighborhoods. A "back to the city" movement is occurring as church locational preferences have shifted from up-and-coming higher income neighborhoods in the 1980s to lower-income neighborhoods in the 2000s, reinforcing the overrepresentation in gentrifying neighborhoods. Churches on average are 1.6 times more segregated than our neighborhoods, with 87% of churches being less diverse than the neighborhood in which they are located, a figure that has not changed substantially from 1998 to 2012. This study finds that churches impact their neighborhoods' socioeconomic trajectory, sometimes positively, other times negatively. Highlights include: 1) a higher percentage of whites in churches in non-white neighborhoods is associated with more neighborhood gentrification, 2) on average white churches in low-income neighborhoods are responsible for about 10% of the relative income growth required for gentrification, 3) church social services do not reverse neighborhood decline but instead slow down the effects of gentrification by helping low-income residents stay in place, and 4) more geographically dispersed white congregations are associated with less white influx into neighborhoods. While commuter-style churches may not be contributing to gentrification, neither are they helping declining neighborhoods to become healthy.

This research project seeks to lay the groundwork for future studies on the interaction of the Majestic Star Casino and the Pittsburgh communities. The introduction of gambling into a society has long been seen as the gateway for the introduction of other social evils and the degradation of the community; however, some recent evidence suggests that communities and casinos can cohabitate for the mutual benefit of all parties involved. Considering the animosity between these strongly held opinions, this project was predicated on the concept of journalistic objectivity attempting to neutrally collect and catalogue a body of evidence for the future use of researchers on either side of the debate. Beyond the need for universality, to form conclusions which claim to know the exact effect of an un-built casino on Pittsburghs neighborhoods would be a contrived effort at best and academic heresy at worst; thus, the focus of this project is to gather data on the physical condition, community life and general health of the neighborhoods surrounding the proposed site before casino construction is completed. The physical condition of the neighborhoods has been documented by the creation of a thorough photographical catalogue of Allegheny West and Lower Manchester the two neighborhoods which most directly adjoin the casino site. The catalogue gives a street-level view of the community from a pedestrians prospective. The roughly 4,000 photos collected for this thesis will give future researchers tangible evidence of the current condition of the housing stock, street layout, and residential conditions present in the neighborhoods. Supplementing this catalogue are digitally recorded interviews with neighborhood leaders, government officials, and experts. These interviews not only elaborate on the current state of the neighborhoods, but also detail the interviewees thoughts on the coming casino and what potential effect it may have on Pittsburgh. These two catalogues are enhanced by a neighborhood statistical analysis, essential background information on the casino selection process, and a brief overview of the Majestic Stars construction plans. The entirety of this thesis is dedicated to helping future researchers better understand one of the most controversial issues of our time: gambling.

This policy paper recommends that Pittsburgh develop a small-scale pilot Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program. My research examines the local dynamics of poverty in Pittsburgh, and critics the poverty reduction strategies currently utilized. An analysis of the political barriers facing a proposed CCT program in Pittsburgh is included, and a political strategy concerning the development of a local CCT program is presented.

Electricity disruptions are a common feature of cities of the global south. However, not much is known of how households cope, and strategize around these electricity disruptions. In this thesis, I focus on middle-class households in Lilongwe, who are connected to the formal electricity grid but experience frequent power cuts. I examine this space of disrupted electricity, paying attention to household's experiences. I explore the varied ways in which households cope with and navigate around disruptions, by piecing together an array of technologies and infrastructures. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observation, I argue that households build assemblages of infrastructures, bringing into their energy sources a mix of older technologies, as well as new ones, to ensure an uninterrupted flow of energy even during an electricity disruption. Households find alternative ways to link to power, by reorganising themselves, their energy choices and food choices. In this piecing together, households themselves constitute a critical infrastructure that makes the alternative technologies work. It takes their agency, knowledge, and creativity to piece the multiple technologies together, bridge them, and make them work. In short, I demonstrate that in the event of a power disruption, households do not sit back and wait passively for electricity to come back on. They plan and strategize, making do using any resources within their capacities. A form of infrastructural citizenship, making do around electricity disruptions has the potential to reconfigure citizenship.

Analysis of access to water in the global South tends to disproportionately focus on the presence of water infrastructure such as the piped network to estimate the proportion of population that have access to water. While interest in access to water has advanced considerably, less research has focused on practices, strategies and experiences of everyday water access. This study engages with this issue in two neighborhoods, Kpanvo and Katariga, in Tamale, Ghana, exploring the ways in which residents negotiate to access water services in practice. Through participant observations and in-depth interviews, the study sets out to address three specific objectives, namely to understand how households experience and describe water access; to explore the various strategies and infrastructures households mobilise to gain and maintain access to water; and to examine the factors that mediate households’ water access. Water infrastructure in the study neighbourhoods includes pipes, but critically also other sources of water (dams, boreholes and wells) and storage infrastructure (underground reservoirs, poly tanks, plastic drums, metal drums, earthen ware pots, aluminium pots and jerry cans) where residents store water for use during periods of interruptions of supplies. Also given that water is not always readily available in the private homes of residents, vehicles such as tanker trucks, bicycles, motorbikes and motorised tricycles are used to haul water from various sources, making them part of water infrastructure that make water flow in and to the neighbourhoods. Similarly, humans themselves, particularly women and girls, are a part of the infrastructure that make water flow as they carry water from both improved and unimproved sources to meet households water needs. Findings from the study demonstrate that continuous access to water, even if a household is directly connected to a piped water system, is impossible due to practices of water rationing, contrary to a normative assumption of universal and reliable water service provisioning associated with networked water supply. Household access to water is constructed through multiple strategies and infrastructures, mediated as much by access to financial resources as by networks of social relationships. Affluent households are able to acquire household connections, and some, a priori rejected connections to the pipe network due to erratic supply, in favour of the more expensive options of installation of mechanised boreholes and buying water from tanker operators. In contrast, poor households leveraged networks of social relationships to enter into tap sharing arrangements with neighbours on agreed conditions of payment of monthly service bills or gifts of water from owners of private water sources. Building on Anand (2011) and Peloso and Morinville (2014) this thesis therefore concludes that the way in which access to water needs to be understood is not simply in terms of access to pipes - as critical as they are - but also in terms of the strategies and negotiations that structure and are embedded in practices through which access to water is gained, maintained and potentially controlled at the household and neighbourhood level. Analysing access to water in this way makes visible the various ways that humans shape water infrastructure and water access.

No description available.

Since its introduction in 2009, ride-hailing has been at the centre of many critical discussions concerning the disruption of the (public) transportation sector, labour issues and tax matters. Missing voices in this discourse have notably been the employees of ride-hailing companies, specifically in the Global South. Setting out to inquire about the living and working conditions of ride-hailing drivers, this study employed a qualitative research framework and ethnographic methods in a case study of Uber drivers in Cape Town, South Africa. Semi-structured and in depth interviews were used as leading method to find out more about the drivers' hopes, troubles, aspirations and coping mechanisms. Particularly in the Global South, the growing informalisation and commodification of labour pose a threat to workers. Drivers in need of income are subject to unstable short-term employment that is low pay, does not offer social security, exhibits highly uneven employment relationships, includes large financial risks and predominantly serves customer and corporate interests. Yet, countering fatalistic narratives that frame drivers as helpless and exposed, this thesis offers accounts of creative rule-bending, mitigation strategies and community organisation used to mitigate precarity. I argue that ride hailing work is located at least partially in a grey zone as the everyday struggle for opportunity forces workers to search for alternative spaces on the fringes between the formal and informal and the legal and illegal. In a comparable manner, ride-hailing companies use legal grey zones and loopholes to advance their business and become the benefactors of the precarious hustle of thousands of mostly migrant drivers in South Africa. This study adds in-depth and original ethnographic research and critical theorisation to the literature on ride-hailing and the living and working conditions of marginalised workers. It illustrates the urgent need to further inquire about the proliferating commodification and informalisation that ride-hailing and the gig economy entails in the Global South.

Spatial layout and structure deeply influence how people interact with the urban environment. The physical complexity of the growing urban built environment holds significant information of transdisciplinary interest to better understand the implications for many societal problems. However, many researchers continue to rely on discontinuous data or simplistic geographic measures to simplify their analyses. These studies fail to quantify and fully capture structural impacts on urban function. To address this gap, this dissertation examines the current state of urban accessibility studies that use graph-theoretic methods to study the function of the urban environment providing more accurate measurement outcomes. Evidence-based research shows the importance of accurate road network models and rigorous graph-theoretic analysis. To support the power of this approach, methods leveraging graph theory are used to better understand observed behaviors through trajectory analysis on an urban street network. A method for defining continuous metropolitan regions is presented along with the resulting graphs representing the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States. A comparative analysis illustrates the drastic structural differences beyond traditional city boundaries caused by urban sprawl. Following, several methodological approaches are explored to measure areas of low food access to better understand practical applications of how urban structure can create regions where residents lack access to affordable and healthy food. Ultimately, the USDA-ERS Food Access Research Atlas, a widely accepted food access classification system, has many methodological shortcomings. This dissertation dissects the USDA-ERS food access measurement methodology, demonstrating the impact of using more precise, graph-theoretic measurement methods, consistent scales of measurement, and continuous urban data.

This thesis focus on the topic of gentrification and how the youth have been impacted by this movement in the neighborhood of Church Hill. Given that there are many youths in the community, this thesis specifically focuses on how students have been impacted in regards to their sense of place and their new mentoring relationships with the new residents in the community. Through open-ended interviews with both high school students and post high school graduate students and mentors to the youth, this study focuses on how the students have altered where they spend their time and how they are affected by their mentoring relationships. The interviews have been analyzed to find common themes on how the youth are impacted by gentrification and from this analysis, suggestions are given for how to incorporate the youth in future planning and redevelopment decisions.