Thesis: Ph. D. in Urban and Regional Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation investigates how location tracking technologies can transform municipal solid waste management in smart cities. While waste is often tracked in aggregate as it flows between and through handling facilities, there have been few attempts to follow individual trash items geographically using GPS and web-based mapping. Such data change the interaction between citizens, local government, and service providers, by revealing inefficiencies or fraud in disposal practices, or building trust between stakeholders and enabling alternative approaches for contracting waste services. Five essays demonstrate various designs and evaluations of real-time waste tracking systems, identify challenges and opportunities for incorporating these tools, and show how developed and developing cities can learn from each other. The first essay presents a system where individuals electronically tag a trash item, and view its movements in real-time. By surveying volunteers who participated in this experiment, it shows how this feedback can significantly improve their knowledge of how waste systems operate and where different types end up. The second essay extends this method for tracking hazardous electronic waste, such as CRT monitors, when illegally exported from high- to low-income countries. This information allows activist groups to investigate smuggling routes and support public agencies in enforcing international law. The third and fourth essays implement waste tracking in Brazil and Kenya, where many cities rely on informal workers to collect and recycle trash. By carrying smartphones tracking their location, waste pickers can map their own movements, waste generation, and material flow across the city. This allows them to organize more efficient routes, coordinate actions in real-time, and negotiate more favorable partnerships with government and private clients. Planners also benefit from crowdsourced data in informal areas. Looking to the future, the fifth essay considers how formal waste collection services could be made transparent, and how this supports crowdsourcing efforts to improve their efficiency and better meet resident needs. Doing so requires design of both real-time urban dashboards and citizen feedback mobile applications. The result transforms how cities benchmark effective municipal services and strive for high quality urban environments. / by David Lee. / Ph. D. in Urban and Regional Planning

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1991. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-80). / by Daniel Anthony Acosta. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-235). / by Evangeline Kim Leano Cuenco. / Ph.D.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 74-78). / Cooperation projects rooted in cultural ties, such as South-South cooperation, are contemporarily receiving unprecedented attention from the international development community. This focus on specific types of partnerships points to an increasing concern that who a development actor partners with matters. One reason behind the comparative advantage of South-South cooperation is that countries from the global South have similar social and cultural situations. Yet when and how culture practically matters to development has not been thoroughly explored within urban planning. This thesis examines whether, when, and how cultural affinities matter for the successful design, management, and implementation of urban planning projects in the global South with international partnerships. By exploring the experiences of urban professionals working on collaborative projects in Maputo, Mozambique, this thesis argues that broadly speaking, culture does matter for cooperation and urban development, but whether cultural affinities and differences matter or not for a project largely depends on the project's context. Simply speaking, national culture does not always matter. Consideration of culture beyond the national level to a subcultural level, such as employment and organization-type, often specifies when, how, and how much cultural affinities matter with cross-cultural urban planning cooperation projects. Ultimately, culture is a factor that needs to be more explicitly explored at a nuanced level and included in the design and management of collaborative urban planning projects. Further, culture should be a topic of conversation in promoting reflective practice and the goal of learning in development, such that cross-cultural exchange can be more enabling for urban development. / by Laura Andreae Martin. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70). / by Rebecca A. Mattson. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-155). / This dissertation analyzes the conditions under which growers have effectively resolved collective good problems associated with the rise of supermarkets. It answers two questions: What institutional arrangements have growers used to resolve collective problems and what explains the differences in these arrangements in terms of what they achieve and whom they benefit. Brazilian fresh fruit growers have turned to a variety of institutional arrangements in resolving collective good problems, including growers's associations, cooperatives, trade groups; closer ties with public sector agricultural research and extension agencies; and closer ties with their buyers and input suppliers. Economic incentives and constraints are at the basis of which strategy growers pursue and its effectiveness. Yet findings suggest that growers' responsiveness to the rise of supermarkets are also a function of incentives and constraints embedded in 1) the form of government support in the 1970s and 1980s which led to varying structures of production and government-grower relations that still predominate today, 2) crop characteristics that affect how growers organize, where more complex crops (costlier, riskier) are associated with greater collaborative efforts, and 3) Japanese-Brazilian ethnic ties that have facilitated the resolution of collective good problems among groups of medium growers. Interpreting the recent development of fruit production across these cases as a reflection of these locally-embedded factors suggests that developing country governments often have greater margin for action than that which is often portrayed. / by Raquel Silva Gomes. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-148). / The Beirut Central District was destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War which extended from 1975 to 1990. Unable to reconstruct the center itself, the Lebanese government turned to a private Real Estate Holding Company (REHCO), known by the acronym Solidere, to take over the task of rebuilding. In 1991 Solidere was granted expropriation rights over the Beirut Central District area, a space of approximately 150 hectares. The government's decision to mandate such a large private-to-private transfer was a controversial one that was unprecedented in Lebanese development history. Solidere has been characterized by two very different views. The company's proponents attributed the reconstruction of the city center solely to Solidere. The opposition denounced the firm as an illegal assault on property rights. This thesis traces the company's history. Its survival strategies, in terms of securing government endorsement and gaining public approval, are discussed. Solidere is examined through the lens of secular property rights, evaluating the firm in terms of the two conditions of contribution to the "public benefit," and the compensation provided to the original property owners. Solidere's case is also explored in the context of Islamic property rights, focusing on the concept of waqf. The thesis concludes by abstracting from Solidere to the broader concept of a REHCO, and begins to ask the necessary questions to develop a framework for the successful implementation of this development model. / by Tamam Mango. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006. / Page 264 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-255). / This study is about the impact of decentralization in metropolitan areas. Studies of fiscal decentralization have largely centered on the formal tiers of government, without looking at the effects of this process on the recipient jurisdictions in metropolitan areas. This is an important omission, considering that more than 50 percent of the world's population lives in urban areas that often extend beyond formal jurisdictional boundaries. As a response, in this study I incorporate the metropolitan dimension into the study of fiscal decentralization. After integrating a database with information on the public finances of the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM), I test the hypothesis that the policies of fiscal decentralization in Mexico have exacerbated the level of fiscal disparity in this metropolitan area. My results show that fiscal disparity in the ZMVM increased during the 1990s. Fiscal decentralization had two different and opposite effects on fiscal disparities in the ZMVM. On one hand, fiscal decentralization mitigated fiscal disparities through the use of a system of redistributive transfers. On the other, and in contrast to this equalizing effect, decentralization has exacerbated the level of fiscal disparity by accentuating the differences of the jurisdictions' expenditure needs and their capacity to collect local taxes. / (cont.) In particular, this research shows that despite state intervention through a system of redistributive transfers, the increase in fiscal disparities was due to three primary factors: the indirect effect of transfers on local fiscal effort, the uneven distribution of services and infrastructure in the metropolitan space, and differing governance structures in the ZMVM's jurisdictions. Due to the negative effects of fiscal disparities on urban segregation and poverty, I recommend two policy alternatives to mitigate fiscal fragmentation in the ZMVM: the creation of a metropolitan fund and the formation of a special authority for the transportation sector. / by Uri Raich. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, February 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / In 1996, when Brazil was well-underway to privatising and liberalising its electric power industry, few would have predicted that within five years the reforms would be a shambles. Like its neighbors Argentina and Chile, Brazil based its electricity reforms on the orthodox therapies of privatisation and liberalisation. The industry was well-positioned to benefit from the reforms: it was technically sophisticated, relatively efficient, and attractive to both domestic and foreign investors. Electricity rates had been suppressed for a long time, but they were not populist and it was the residential customer who cross-subsidised industry. As such, political backlash to increasing electricity prices was unlikely and, in fact, Brazil had successfully begun to raise electricity rates as early as 1993. Despite these fortuitous circumstances, the reforms did not induce sufficient investment and Brazil suffered a massive electricity rationing in 2001. For ten months all classes of consumers had to cut consumption by 20%. By 2002, the electricity reforms were politically dead and none of the candidates in Brazil's presidential elections that year, not even the incumbent administration's nominee, favoured continuing with them. / (cont.) My dissertation explains why the reforms failed, approaching the issue from three different perspectives-the policy, the economic and the industrial. Collectively, these essays explain why sectoral neoliberal reforms had a short shelf-life. / by Sunil Tankha. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-110). / by Michael F. Gray. / M.C.P.