Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-223). / by Leticia Rivera-Torres. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-128). / by Carlyn E. Wood. / M.C.P.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. / Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) were established in 1960 by Congress to open real estate investing to the small investor, in the same way that mutual funds have allowed small investors access to a diversified portfolio of stocks. As is the case with mutual funds, REITs enjoy a conduit status, allowing them to avoid corporate level taxation as long as they meet certain requirements. These requirements have been designed and legislated to ensure that REITs remains passive owners of real estate. As a passive owner of real estate, the traditional REIT vehicle is not ideally suited for an operationally intensive business, even those with a large real estate component (notably hotels, casinos, health care centers, and parking garages). Accordingly, variations of the REIT structure have emerged over time in an effort to benefit from the active business income generated through the operations of real estate holdings. One such variation is the Paired Share REIT. Conceived in 1977, and later banned from further formation in 1984, the structure has once again come under fire. Citing tax avoidance business practices that result in unfair competitive advantage, the Clinton Administration proposes to curb the use of the Paired Share structure on any new acquisitions by the five grandfathered Paired Share REITs that today still exist today. This thesis examines the Paired Share REIT structure and its perceived tax advantage. It concludes that while the Paired Share REIT structure can enjoy a tax advantage relative to a subchapter "C" corporation legislated REIT restrictions limit its financial flexibility. In addition, there are financial tactics available to the "C" corporation that can do much to mitigate these advantages. Two notable tactics are the use of the tax-shielding value of debt and the ability to retain earnings to fund growth. Further, it is concluded that the combined tax expense of the business entity and its shareholders does not differ significantly from the Paired Share REIT and the "C" corporation. / by Julie D. Walpole. / S.M.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1985. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / by Ira Haironson. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 138-140). / Building Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) is an in-situ slum housing up-gradation policy that was initiated in 2005 by the Central Government of India under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). It is one of the few housing policies in the long history of slum housing policies in India where housing provision for the poor is linked to governance reform (i.e., governance building at the city level). Today (2015) the first phase of the program is complete and the second phase more than 50% complete. A study of the BSUP phase-1 projects offers a unique opportunity to understand the impact of governance building on policy implementation, one of the areas of policy analysis that has been relatively less studied in India. This thesis develops a comparative study of two projects recently completed under the BSUP program in Yerwada in Pune city in Maharashtra. The thesis expands the notion of governance from the community (the governed) and the government (the governing) binary to all the co-governance actors involved in the multi-agency implementation system: the private for-profit agents, the civil society agencies, the community, the local political actors, technical consultants and the administrators. The research demonstrates that a governance building process that allows for transparency, efficiency, representation, responsiveness, accountability and equity can support successful policy implementation. To support these values defining the implementation "process" is as important as establishing the "structure", wherein structure defines the architecture of institutions that support implementation and process defines the mechanism of decision making, the strategy for shaping attitudes and methods of norm creation. In conclusion the case demonstrates that governance building can accomplish successful implementation of public policy in marginal conditions with marginal institutional and stakeholder capacities. / by Smita Rawoot. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-86). / In number of formerly industrial urban centers in the Midwest, networks of private and public stakeholders are working to cultivate clusters of water-related technology innovation. Advocates of these cluster-based strategies strive to increase local and regional competitiveness by building links among relevant companies and local institutions, while also upgrading the conditions of the business environment that raise productivity and innovation. This study examines the trajectory of two water technology cluster initiatives from their initiation in the mid-to-late 2000s to the present: The Water Council, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Confluence, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite the central importance of geographic concentration and infrastructure inputs to the economic rationale behind clustering, processes of spatial planning and urban development have generally received limited attention in the study of cluster programs. In these two cases, I trace how abstract visions of cluster dynamics were translated into interventions through the planning and regulatory mechanisms-and their associated politics-governing the built environment in each location. Using interviews and qualitative analysis of planning and administrative documents, I find that each cluster development program evolved in relation to the land and infrastructure assets accessible to key institutional partners. In Milwaukee, the process of identifying cluster priorities among levels of state and regional institutions produced a regionally driven initiative closely tied to redevelopment powers at the level of the City of Milwaukee. The result was that the cluster program developed toward an eco-industrial park and innovation district model that supported quality of life and attraction goals for both city and industry leaders. In Cincinnati, water innovation efforts were not translated into land redevelopment planning yet ultimately found a niche in the needs of regional utilities. The resulting strategy and set of spatial interventions evolved toward a network of test beds and sites along water bodies impacted by contamination, a geography corresponding to the assets of regional utilities and environmental resource management entities. / by Zachary E. Postone. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / This paper analyzes the process of civic environmentalism in brownfield redevelopment. A single "best case" scenario, the Empire Laundry project in Lynn, Massachusetts, illustrates key features of a citizen-led cleanup and redevelopment effort. The in-depth analysis traces key events and milestones of the community-based process and evaluates the important decisions that led to a successful result: the development of five single-family houses. This research revealed two main factors that were important in creating a successful outcome: strong civic leaders and neighborhood stability. These two factors were pivotal in fostering community involvement, but raise important questions regarding the balancing of community desires with environmental protection. / by Abigail Harrison Emison. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006. / "June 2006." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-84). / There is a slow-motion disaster underway below the city of Boston. The levels of groundwater have been steadily decreasing over the past eighty years and the structural integrity of the city's older buildings is in jeopardy. Buildings located on Boston's made land that were constructed prior to 1900 were supported with wood pilings. Wood pilings remain strong so long as they are submerged in groundwater. When exposed to air, the wood decays and buildings can eventually collapse. Repairing rotted wood pilings is a substantial financial burden and is currently shouldered entirely by homeowners. State and local governments ignored the city's pilings problem for decades, but in the last eighteen months the city's groundwater issues have surfaced prominently on political agendas. The city, state and community members are now working collaboratively to implement solutions that will increase the level of groundwater throughout the city, and a window of opportunity has opened in which lasting policies can be passed that protect buildings from further damage. The solutions to the city's groundwater problem are theoretically simple: more water must enter the ground and stay there, and rotted pilings must be repaired. / (cont.) However, in addressing this challenge, some very difficult obstacles to planning must be overcome. The piling decay and mitigation efforts all occur below ground thus are unseen. The effects of lowered groundwater levels have been stretched out over decades and residents and politicians have frequently underestimated the problem. Most importantly, the key stakeholders all have strong disincentives to address the issue of rotted pilings. This thesis examines the relationship between groundwater and pilings and addresses how three key stakeholder groups - the city, state, and community organizations - can pool their resources to prevent further damage to pilings and permanently increase groundwater levels in the city. / by Tamar Shoham. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. / This paper examines a grassroots effort undertaken by local residents of the communities of Nora and Warren in northwest Illinois in their attempt to prohibit the construction of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) in their county. In particular, it is an attempt to understand and document the process by which a sparsely-populated rural community organizes itself in an attempt to disallow this type of facility from being sited in their area. Like poor urban communities, poor rural communities have found themselves the recipients of the wastes that are unwanted by larger, wealthier, politically powerful communities. Unique to rural communities, however, are the environmental and social impacts which transpire as a result of agricultural industrialization and specifically the siting of CAFOs. The objective of this research is to: 1) identify various members of the community who are working to oppose or support the dairy, 2) determine in what way these individuals have responded to this proposal, 3) construct a narrative of their individual viewpoints and concerns pertaining to the dairy, 4) explore their motivation for supporting or opposing the facility, and 5) investigate the political underpinnings and the state and federal agricultural regulations which despite successful community organizing to oppose the dairy, disallow any meaningful political voice for these residents. / by Kathryn J. Thomas. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-123). / Recently, the pedestrian environment has been recognized as an important factor for sustainable urban development movements such as the New Urbanism (NU) movement and Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Consequently, many pedestrian initiatives have been implemented throughout the US while the necessity for measuring the existing pedestrian environment has increased. Despite the increased attention to the pedestrian environment, little effort has been made to evaluate its performance. Level of Service (LOS) models have been developed and widely used, but these provide insufficient information about the pedestrian environment of an area. In this study, a grid-based GIS model proposed for measuring pedestrian friendliness of an area is developed and applied to the City of Boston. The proposed method uses already existing data to measure performance with respect to the condition of pedestrian facilities and their attractiveness to walkers. Unlike other pedestrian models, it evaluates the performance of street segments by considering not only the characteristics of the immediate vicinity but also those of adjacent road segments within a certain distance. The approach also avoids the problem of defining arbitrary spatial areas and boundaries, which may generate a false sense of precision by arbitrarily dissecting the urban pattern into zones. By distinguishing between ease of pedestrian movement and abundance of desirable destinations, we are able to differentiate between the potential for and reality of pedestrian friendliness. The results for Boston indicate the relevance of quantifying multiple dimensions of pedestrian friendliness. They also highlight the importance of land use context in calibrating meaningful measures of accessibility and level of service. While much sensitivity analysis and model tuning remains to be done, the prototype suggests that these types of models can be useful in shaping local policy decisions and contributing to a better understanding of pedestrian environments in the urban scale. This understanding will aid planners in evaluating, designing, and implementing pedestrian-friendly projects that enhance the sustainability of the urban environment. / by Jee-seong Chung. / M.C.P.