This study investigates the phenomenon of faith-motivated actors in blighted inner-city neighborhoods on the west side of Atlanta, Georgia. In merging community development literature with a framework of place, this research explores the role of faith in neighborhood transformation efforts. In particular, it examines the motivations and values of these actors that shape how they conceptualize their neighborhoods and in turn how these values are then inscribed into place. Fewer than 40 strategic neighbors are known to be active in Atlanta’s west side; of these 32 participated in the research through in-depth interviews, surveys, diaries and other qualitative research methods. Through this extensive qualitative investigation, this thesis explores the middle-class identity struggles experienced by participants as they reconfigure the social and material spaces of their neighborhoods as they live out their faith.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Clifford Kuhn, committee chair; Jacqueline A. Rouse, committee member. Electronic text (104 [i.e. 103] p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Sept. 25, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-103).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Sociology, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This paper investigates how transit-oriented development can protect and enhance community sustainability. This study explores literature on community capacity, social capital, and neighborhood change to generate a definition of community sustainability appropriate for urban neighborhoods in transition. It then looks at current models proposed in the literature for assessing transit-oriented development (TOD), and finds little of relevance for the concerns of social sustainability. The study then draws sustainability indicators from other social science literature and assesses their usefulness for transit-oriented development. Finally, it develops a set of indicators appropriate for measuring the performance of TOD in protecting or enhancing community sustainability in these neighborhoods. These indicators can be used as a starting point for agencies and local groups to develop outcome-oriented measures of success for the local sustainability of future transit-oriented developments. / text

Despite the close proximity to downtown, East Austin is one of the more underprivileged and under-developed communities in the city of Austin, Texas. A lack of access exacerbates the lack of resources of the poor. It is essential to identify the current accessibility of urban facilities for East Austin’s residents in order to understand how the location of key support services serves to maintain East Austin’s underprivileged and under-developed status. The objectives of this study are 1) to evaluate the accessibility of residents in East Austin neighborhoods to urban facilities using spatial data analysis in geographical information systems (GIS), 2) to compare accessibility in East Austin with other Austin communities, including West Austin and North Austin, and, finally, this study will allow me to measure whether the more underprivileged populations of East Austin do indeed have equal access to urban facilities and, if not, to identify which neighborhoods in East Austin offer the best access. In shortly, I can see that many public owned facilities, such as Sports and Recreational, Educational, Health, and some of Community Service facilities are relatively dispersed in poor neighborhoods in the City of Austin. It should be noted that public authorities have made deliberate choices to distribute facilities in poorer neighborhoods. / text

The social and neurosciences are moving toward a conceptualization of the psychological construct of sense of place in relation with spatial cognition, place imageability, and meaning. To help advance progress, this dissertation proposes a conceptual framework of sense of place that includes variables of spatial navigational strategy (i.e., egocentric and allocentric) and place imageability using notions of edges, paths, landmarks, districts, nodes. Three studies using different methods tested the proposed framework. Study 1 used a questionnaire and an interview-based protocol analysis to examine whether navigational strategy associated with participants’ levels of sense of place for recalled urban neighbourhoods. Preliminary work investigating whether sense of place and spatial navigation varied with place imageability was also done using qualitative analyses. Participants used more egocentric and allocentric strategies during cognitive map navigation when sense of place was stronger compared to when they recalled places for which they felt weak or neutral levels of sense of place. Seven categories were revealed from participants’ qualitative descriptions of urban place visualizations after completing three sense of place scales (i.e., home-sense, compactness, environment, safety, vibrancy, design, and aesthetics) and differed depending on sense of place condition. Study 2 enabled participants to articulate recollections of settings for which they felt different strengths of sense of place via a cognitive mapping task. Results reinforced the notion that individuals who experience a strong level of sense of place for an urban environment also recall more of the physical features that make it imageable. Existing literature was confirmed by this study’s results that paths and landmarks are integral to urban place imageability. Study 3 gathered information about community members’ current representations of their urban neighbourhood. Results supported hypotheses based on results of Studies 1 and 2. Nodes, edges, and landmarks were found to be particularly meaningful to residents’ spatial understanding of their neighbourhood. The fact that more allocentric strategies than egocentric strategies were used in each of the three place imageability conditions (compared to non-significant differences in sense of place conditions in Study 1) highlights compelling future research questions concerning the three variables of the proposed conceptual framework of sense of place. Similar to Study 1, qualitative analyses in Study 3 revealed paths as the predominant meaningful place imageable feature noted by residents. Thematic information about the features in each area reported to have meaning for residents indicate the categories of environment, aesthetics, and design as most prevalent. As a whole, this dissertation can inform future environmental psychology research, as well as the practices of urban planners, as they consider spatial navigation and place imageable attributes in relation to the psychological construct of sense of place in urban environments. Planners and researchers alike may benefit from this dissertation as they respond to human spatial needs while facilitating a sense of attachment and identity toward, and compatibility with, city spaces. Finally, findings may assist social scientists in clarifying how sense of place develops in urban neighbourhoods, and how it is experienced over time. / Graduate

Since the mid-1970s, subsidized housing policy in the U.S. has shifted from providing aid through public housing projects to providing aid through vouchers to be used in the private market and through smaller-scale, often mixed-income developments. These policy shifts are guided by a deconcentration ideology drawn from social science research on the deleterious effects of the concentration of poverty on individuals and neighborhoods. These changes in subsidized housing policy have led to a major geographic redistribution of the urban poor, which has implications for neighborhoods and cities that are not yet fully understood. This dissertation investigates the extent to which the changing location of subsidized housing units accounts for changes in neighborhood poverty and metropolitan poverty concentration. My findings show that while the subsidized housing policies adopted since the 1970s successfully deconcentrated subsidized housing units, they did not deconcentrate poverty in neighborhoods or metropolitan areas. I find that neighborhood poverty rates increase when neighborhoods either gain or lose subsidized housing units. Neighborhoods that gain more subsidized units see larger increases in poverty rates, and because these neighborhoods already have many poor residents, there is a risk of creating new neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Surprisingly, neighborhoods that lose subsidized units also become poorer, suggesting an enduring legacy of subsidized housing for neighborhood poverty. At the metropolitan level, reducing the concentration of subsidized housing in high subsidy neighborhoods leads to only very small declines in the concentration of poor residents in high poverty neighborhoods. My results suggest that subsidized housing policy may maintain, rather than break, the cycle of neighborhood inequality. Subsidized housing policy is implemented in a context of neighborhood inequality, and as the policies increasingly rely on the private rental market, higher-SES neighborhoods’ interests in keeping low-income subsidized renters out may shape how the policy is implemented, leaving lower-SES neighborhoods to receive more subsidized low-income tenants and thus experience larger increases in poverty rates.

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Research on organizational commitment in work settings is unclear about its generalization to broader environments; sense of place is typically measured to capture belonging and identification in communities. Whether the constructs of organizational commitment and sense of place are perceived distinctly by neighbourhood residents was investigated. Based on associations between natural design content and prosocial outcomes, it was hypothesized that individuals living in neighbourhoods with numerous green attributes would experience more organizational commitment to their community, as well as a stronger sense of place. Although participants did not perceive organizational commitment and sense of place distinctly, organizational commitment significantly correlated with the number of green features in a neighbourhood. However, sense of place and the degree of greenness in a neighbourhood were not related. This may be because these two constructs are closely related but not identical. Findings highlight the value of studying organizational commitment and sense of place when addressing neighbourhood research. / Graduate

What are the essential characteristics that constitute historic American neighbor- hoods? Do current regulations promote developments that exhibit these essential characteristics? In this thesis I analyze two historic neighborhoods in an effort to un- cover their architectonic principles. By identifying the key components that comprise these places, we can critically analyze whether regulations, such as Historic Preserva- tion Ordinances and the SmartCode, are adequately designed to govern development practices of residential neighborhoods.