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This dissertation contributes to the literature on urban development politics. It takes a normative ideal, democratic urban governance, out of the esoteric realm of academic debate and applies it to a critical case study which concerns the most financially consequential area of urban policy, that of urban economic development. The principal elements of democratic urban governance are described, examined, and reconstructed as a framework for evaluating the policy making potentials in the present case. Beyond its academic contribution, this dissertation provides developmental policy makers with an intellectually sound basis for considering, more candidly and more directly, issues concerning democracy and governance. / Ph. D.

This study examines the impact of Christian religiosity on attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades in the US. The study used data from the General Social Survey on social safety-net policy preferences and levels of Christian religiosity. Simple cross tabulations, correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the data. Contrary to previous related research, the results of this study indicate that Christian religiosity has a very weak association with opposition to social safety-net policies. At the national level, the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social protection policies was largely mediated by other factors such as race, gender, education, family income, and political ideology. These results indicate that Christian religiosity per se does not independently influence social spending preferences. Instead, these results suggest that social divisions in socioeconomic standing and in political ideology, which in turn are closely related to differences in support for social protection policies, permeate American Christianity. The study also examined the relationship between Christian religiosity and social protection policy preferences among Hispanic and Black Americans separately. Although Hispanics and Blacks are generally more supportive of social spending in comparison to White Americans, Christian religiosity was not found to have a strong independent effect on support for social safety-net policies among these two groups. The study did find, however, a markedly different level of support for social safety-net policies among identifiable Christian groups at the national level and in the Hispanic-American population. / Those who self-identified as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" Christians were much less supportive of social safety-net policies in comparison to "mainline" or "liberal" Christians. Among Hispanics, Catholics were more supp in comparison to Evangelical Protestants. Moreover, the results of this study indicate that religious American Christians have had a tendency to give precedence to moral issues over concerns about social safety-net policies thus facilitating an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition. Lastly, the present work proposes a broad framework through which to interpret the aforementioned findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within American Christianity. / by Emmanuel Alvarado. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

David Rusk claims in Cities Without Suburbs that elastic American cities are less segregated than other American cities. I demonstrate through statistical analyses that there is a strong correlation between Rusk's elasticity (an index comprised of a central city's annexation history since 1950 and its population density) and his income segregation index. The statistical correlation between these two variables is stronger than between Rusk's segregation index and any other variable I test, including city age, size, regional location, and black population percentage. I then consider several hypotheses that may explain these correlations and propose that the continuous annexation of peripheral, developing land by a central city prevents the incorporation of affluent suburbs. Suburban boundaries, especially those of affluent suburbs, function as population sorting mechanisms, which segregate migrant households by socioeconomic status and life-style. I ascertain that only rapidly growing, unbounded central cities prevent or ameliorate segregation by being elastic. / Department of Urban Planning

Challenging a long-held attachment to the medical model, this research develops a cultural model placing local governments at the center of policy making and refocusing policy attention on mobility, housing, the built environment and services. To examine the phenomenon of age friendly policy adoption by cities and the magnitude of adoption, a 21-question web-based survey was administered to a sample of 1,050 cities from the U.S. Census having a population over 10,000 and having at least 14% of their population aged 65 years and over. The goal of the questionnaire was to help identify what kind of policy objectives cities establish to facilitate the opportunity for older adults to live healthy and independent lives in their communities as they age. Multiple linear and ordinal regression models examined the likelihood of policy action by cities and provide evidence as to why some cities support more age friendly policy actions than others. Evidence illustrates theoretical advancement providing support for a cultural model of aging. The cultural model includes multiple factors including bureaucratic responsiveness reflected in the management values of the administration. Findings show variation in the integration of a cultural awareness of aging in the municipality's needs assessment, strategic goals, citizen engagement strategies, and budgetary principles. Cities with a cultural awareness of aging are more likely to adopt age friendly policies. Findings also provide support for the argument that the public administrator is not the driving sole factor in decision making. A shared spaced with mobilized citizen need of individuals 65 and over is identified.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Performing arts centers have been touted as a strategy for revitalizing downtowns by increasing activities that bring in residents with higher incomes, tourists, arts employees, educated workers, and housing. Despite their popularity, civic leaders have encountered complexity in these projects, from financial challenges, to delayed openings and operating deficits. Previous downtown studies examine public facilities, such as stadiums and cultural institutions, through essays, surveys, case studies, or by quantifying transactions exchanged between the public and the facility. This dissertation focuses solely on performing arts centers, excluding all other forms of public facilities and cultural venues, by examining self-collected data on literature-based characteristics of 218 downtowns with and without performing arts centers, all over a seven-year period of time. It was hypothesized that the presence of a performing arts center would contribute to increases in the values of all downtown revitalization characteristics, and community characteristics, as well as organizational attributes of the performing arts center itself (age, size, and revenue types) would in turn, increase the values of the overall health of the performing arts center. Through the use of multiple linear regressions, this research shows that performing arts centers can play a role in revitalizing downtowns. This research also shows that a single characteristic is not solely responsible for revitalizing downtowns; rather, the increased vitality results from a confluence of the characteristics. Endogeneity tests show that a performing arts center is less likely to enter a deserted downtown bereft of vitality. Instead, performing arts centers serve as harbingers of revitalization, confirming the presence of downtown vitality, before they proceed to activate vitality further. Finally, through the use of binary logistic regressions, community characteristics are identified in order to determine the conditions of downtowns that would be most equipped to open a performing arts center, as compared with downtowns that could not.

This dissertation investigates the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate change policies. Although most theoretical frameworks on policy adoption highlight the roles of extreme events as exogenous factors influencing policy change, most studies tend to focus on the effects of extreme events on policy change at the national level. Additionally, the existing theoretical frameworks explaining local policy adoption and public service provision do not pay attention to the roles of extreme events in local governments' policy choices. To fill those gaps, this dissertation explores the roles of natural disasters and political institutions on municipal governments' climate change policies. It does this by applying the theory of focusing events to local climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Based on the policy change framework, the political market model, and the institutional collective action frameworks, this dissertation develops and tests hypotheses to examine the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate mitigation and adaptation policies. The dissertation uses 2010 National League of Cities (NLC) sustainability surveys and the 2010 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) sustainability survey to test the hypotheses. Analytical results show that floods and droughts influence local climate change policies and suggest that local governments can take advantage of extreme events when initiating a policy change. The results also suggest that political institutions can shape the effects of natural disasters on municipalities' climate mitigation and adaptation actions.