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Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / William P. Winslow III / MDI Superfund is an abandoned 36 acre metal casting foundry site in the Fifth Ward Houston, TX. The site was recently remediated and cleared of nearly all industrial remnants including more than 16,000 cubic yards of lead contaminated soil. Completion of the remedial action allows the removal of fences that have been separating this tract of land and the community for nearly ten years. Proximity to downtown Houston makes this a desirable location for new development, which has threatened to displace the poor and elderly in recent years. This project explores design alternatives that facilitate affordable housing without isolating it from new development. The integration of affordable housing with community needs is necessary to improve the dynamic in a mixed use, mixed income development. This research is intended to shape redevelopment of MDI Superfund, while providing community needs, minimizing gentrification, and improving quality of life of its inhabitants. The achievement of these goals relies upon the application of specific design principles that minimize conflict and increase success in similar communities.

Design has played a complicated role in affordable housing in both the U.S. and the UK. These two countries have had fairly different approaches towards their affordable housing policy in the past, but now have both converged to using mixed income housing as a primary method of delivering affordable housing. This report will investigate the role that design plays in the ways that each of these countries administers its mixed income housing programs. Specifically, it will look at how design is used to achieve the goals behind mixed income housing, as well as specific decisions regarding exterior treatment and siting of the units in a mixed income housing development. I will use a case study approach in my research process, focusing on two case studies in the UK, and two case studies in the U.S. In order to obtain my findings, I used key informant interviews, key policy and program documents, and on-site observations. Ultimately, I found that design factors need to be carefully balanced between social equity goals and financial feasibility, and it is important to recognize the limitations of what mixed income housing can achieve for social goals. / text

With the concentration of poverty increasing throughout the United States (Kneebone, 2014) there has been a recent emphasis on mixed-income housing as a means to alleviate this issue. By creating housing in one area with pricing for different income levels it is assumed that the burden imposed by concentrated poverty will be lowered. Many years and many dollars later however, the results of mixed-income housing projects on low-income residents seem to be mixed – while some projects have found success, others seem to suggest that it has little to no effect. The federal program HOPE VI is one example of efforts to increase the availability of mixed-income housing. It is the purpose of this study to decipher whether the administration of HOPE VI federal grant money has had an effect on certain economic outcomes within the selected metropolitan areas.

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"Looked into the streets - the glaring lights and the tall buildings - and there I conceived Metropolis" exclaimed the Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang at the sight of New York. This visit inspired him while creating the sets and background for the radical movie Metropolis released in 1927. Taken right after World War I, the movie set in 2026 was heavily symbolic with German expressionism and it captured a projected socio-economic condition which was a direct result of the fears of the people at that time. The working class lived in subterranean spaces distraught with mundane labor while the affluent lived in skyscrapers and exotic terraced gardens and drove around in elevated highways. The city seemed to be this well-oiled machine existing only to cater to the needs of the upper class. The poor eventually try to overthrow the rich. The movie finally ends with the message of hope, that the mediator would create harmony among the classes and create peaceful coexistence. The city of Mumbai in 2018 is in many ways - the Metropolis. When a city develops, it does not seem to cater to all sects of people. In fact, there seems to be a parallel relationship between the size of the city and its level of socio-economic disparity: the larger the city the less equal it tends to be. More often than not, the true soul of the city lies within that lower stratum of society who often live in slum-like settlements. Can architecture play the Mediator and bring about a connect? / Master of Architecture / At the time of Indian Independence in 1947, Gandhi said that “India is to be found not in its few cities but in its 700,000 villages. Villages were self-sustaining units which were rich in culture and tradition. He believed that the revival of the villages and all its cottage industries, handicrafts and agriculture was India’s answer to development. However in 2018, there are only about 597,464 census villages . At this rate, within a few centuries, India would loose its identity and will look like every other country in the world. Anybody who could afford to travel. moved to the cities. Villages are constantly abandoned and some get engulfed or morphed into cities. Cities grow at such rapid rates with the latest building technologies usually ignoring the needs of the people its supposed to serve. Is the city developed only for the rich and affluent? Can architecture support social inclusion and break down spatial segregation within a megacity? Can we capitalize on a city’s history and rich traditions without destroying them? Can a village survive a city? My thesis attempts to answer some of these questions through case studies, research and finally applying some of these theories and concepts on to a project that involves the redevelopment of a fishing village in the heart of Mumbai, India.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2015 / One of the fundamental challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa’s urban settlement planning has been the requirement for social cohesion. For this reason, urban transformation interventions involved the construction of mixed-income housing, wherein social cohesion among low- and middle-income households could be enforced. Far from rhetoric and the drift of middle-income households into cities that were previously the preserves for white people, urban South Africa remains deeply segregated. It is against this background that the study assessed the determinants of the manifestation of social cohesion in the Serala View residential area, which consists of diverse races and different socio-economic classes. The study is in a form of a case study, and has adopted the normative together with the historical research design. The study used both primary and secondary data to complement each other. These data is both qualitative and quantitative. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the purposively sampled respondents, and an interview schedule was used to solicit data from the key informants. The International Business Machine-Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM-SPSS) version 22 software was use for analysis, with which a non-parametric t-test was conducted to determine the intensity of the respondents on the different dimensions of social cohesion. Analysis results reveal there are three typologies of mixed-income housing, which are generally recognized in urban areas of many countries, and that the Serala View is a Gated Townhouse Complex typology. Importantly, this typology is mainly identified by six physical characteristics, which are central in determining the manifestations of social cohesion in the gated townhouse complex typology. Importantly, target hardening, which refers to security measures, is considered to be the most important aspect in Serala View residential development. From the analyses and interpretation of the theoretical and empirical evidence, the dissertation concludes that the contributions of mixed-income housing towards social cohesion are mixed and non-straightforward. However, there is theoretical validity of the notion that such an approach could cultivate social cohesion among different socio-economic classes. Results from Serala View Residential area largely confirm this theoretical positioning. This dissertation concedes that implementation discrepancies could be the real elephant in the room, rather than the fault of the idea itself. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

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