No description available.

As energy cost and climate change become increasingly prevalent concerns in the planning world, more and more jurisdictions are creating energy efficiency and climate action plans. As of 2011, over 120 cities and counties around the United States had already completed climate action plans (Boswell, Greve, & Seale, 2012, p. 24). A major factor in reducing energy use, and subsequently greenhouse gas emissions, is in making buildings more energy efficient. According to the EPA, buildings account for 36 percent of overall energy use in the United States (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2013). Although many of these plans set target energy reduction levels for buildings, the process for actually meeting these goal levels is often disorganized, cost-prohibited, and behind schedule. In order to meet energy reduction goals, a jurisdiction must first establish a system for tracking and monitoring energy use, pinpointing areas in needs of improvements, and sharing this information with decision makers. Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager benchmarking system provides a tool for public workers and building managers to meet these needs. The County of San Luis Obispo’s climate action and energy reduction plan, titled the EnergyWise Plan (2011), sets a goal for the County’s municipal buildings to reduce their energy use by 20 percent from 2006 levels by the year 2020 (pg. 171). This report uses the Portfolio Manager Tool to analyze the current energy use of the County’s municipal buildings, pinpointing the areas most in need of further examination in order to meet the EnergyWise Plan’s goal. The report concludes with an audit and retrofit implementation plan for the County’s top energy users, as well as a set of recommendations to improve the County’s overall energy use which include: 1. Organization and collaboration between departments should be encouraged, in order to more efficiently share data. 2. Yearly reports should be produced as a measure of progress towards meeting 2020 reduction levels. 3. Efforts should be focused on audits and retrofits of the twelve selected buildings first, followed by analysis and audits in the remaining County buildings. 4. The Public Protection Department’s energy use levels should be monitored and improved when feasible. 5. Those buildings that are Energy Star qualified should apply for certification. 6. The County should continue to seek funding sources for implementing audits and retrofits.

Although tabernacles do not hold the sacred meaning of Mormon temples, they are symbolic landmarks of the culture of the early Mormon Saints. Tabernacles were once an integral part of each community in which they were located. They were often the main buildings in the community, reflecting the coherent, orderly nature of a Mormon town. Today, many of the original tabernacles have been torn down and others are under the threat of destruction.The first tabernacles built in the Mormon Culture Region were constructed in the 1850s. They were large meetinghouses built for the purpose of holding large general meetings. They were preacher centered houses of worship with few classrooms or recreational facilities. Over time the tabernacles became larger and often more ornate. Because of the growth of the Church, change in Church programs and technological advancement tabernacles are no longer built. Those remaining are threatened with destruction because of high maintenance costs, and low practicality.

This Master’s Project is separated into two parts: the introduction and background informing an affordable senior housing market study, and a market study prepared for People’s Self Help Housing (PSHH). The introduction begins by providing current and future trends for seniors at the national and state levels. This includes discussion of the “Baby Boomer” age cohort and their rapid growth and potential impact to the housing market. The introduction then describes challenges facing developers of affordable senior housing. These challenges include the type, location, and funding sources for future senior housing projects. All federal funding sources for affordable senior housing projects are then briefly presented and their applicability to the proposed project is explained. The introduction sets the stage for a market study created to determine the feasibility of an affordable senior housing project in the Santa Maria/Orcutt market area.

ABSTRACT Specific Plans: An Implementation Tool for Downtown Revitalization A Specific Plan Proposal for Downtown Delano, California Emily Suzanne Henderson This study builds off the assumption that downtowns are socially and economically important to cities and the people who live, work, and visit them. For these reasons, many suffering downtowns are pursuing revitalization strategies. The strategies summarized in this paper represent mainstream revitalization techniques currently practiced by cities, planners, and developers. The strategies and techniques presented in this paper are supported by two case study specific plans. The case studies serve as model specific plans that were able to successfully utilize multiple of the proposed revitalization strategies. This paper demonstrates the potential for specific plans to be used as an implementation tool for downtown revitalization. These comprehensive documents are able to combine multiple regulatory processes in order to achieve the overarching goals of a city’s general plan and the detailed community goals generated through public outreach and participation. The case studies exhibit how cities have been able to complete revitalization projects in their downtowns through the use of specific plans. The proposed strategies and case study findings were used in the creation of a Specific Plan Proposal for Downtown Delano, California. In early 2008 the City of Delano underwent a community participation planning process to improve their downtown. The resulting Downtown Delano Concept Plan urged the City of Delano and the Community Development Department to produce a Downtown Specific Plan as soon as possible. The Downtown Delano Specific Plan Proposal contains a summary of the Concept Plan’s findings and recommendations. The plan begins with a vision statement and a set of goals created from community input received during public meetings. The plan includes proposed land uses for the downtown project area. A circulation concept is presented for the major downtown streets and thoroughfares. Form Based Codes include design guidelines for new development and redevelopment projects. The proposal concludes with project cost estimates and suggested financing mechanisms. The attached Downtown Delano Specific Plan Proposal is a guide for the future completion of a Specific Plan for Downtown Delano.

Lack of access to information on the cost and timeframe for the permitting and interconnection of distributed renewable energy generation facilities may hinder renewable energy capacity development. This issue is examined within the specific context of solar photovoltaic systems developed for participation in the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program hosted by the Marin Energy Authority (MEA). A guide on the permitting and interconnection of solar PV generators for participation in the program was produced for the host agency. This guide seeks to assist property owners and solar developers in overcoming existing informational challenges. By providing an overview of the procedural requirements and process, as well as reference tools that highlights helpful resources and documents, the guide provides readers with an introductory tool for overcoming existing non-market barriers to participation in the MEA FIT program. In addition, a Recommendations Report has also been produced to provide the MEA with a discussion of existing procedural challenges faced by program participants. This report, which details the issues identified by those stakeholders that participated in the development of the guide, concludes with a series of recommended actions that the MEA may take to enhance the ability of potential FIT participants to accurately estimate and plan for the costs and timeframes associated with permitting a solar PV facility.

This research investigates the demographic and local government permit characteristics of communities with high levels of solar adoption in the San Diego Region. Utilizing a statistical model, this research illustrates which communities have been able to benefit from the current solar incentive programs in a robust market with an abundant solar resource. In San Diego, zip codes with large proportions of people over 65 have the highest correlation with high levels of residential solar adoption. This potentially illustrates that the life changes associated with retiring, including accumulated wealth, stable homeownership, and a fixed income, make residential solar systems accessible and appealing. Moving forward solar policy should expand to better facilitate installations for renters, sharing between neighbors, and clear pathways to retrofit older homes.

The urban waterfront areas of the United States have grown increasingly neglected and derelict due to changes in traditional industrial uses and their physical severance from the downtown core. A revived interest in urban living has brought downtown property values up, including waterfront areas, and has jump-started a movement towards waterfront revitalization. In an effort to understand the specific characteristics that make some waterfront revitalization projects more sustainable over time than others, this paper employed a case study approach. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, San Francisco, and Seattle’s Central Waterfront were selected for analysis based on three specific perspectives: recreation; development; and tourism. Using criteria determined from the literature review in conjunction with key player interviews and documentary evidence, the three case study waterfronts were analyzed for their ability to sustain revitalization. The results indicate that waterfronts must provide a balance and mix of uses, assimilate with the surrounding city, provide connections between attractions and with the city and region, continuously reinvent themselves, provide attractions that draw both locals and tourists, and have a clear identity. These findings, while quite broad, are intended to provide a foundation that will be relevant to any city undertaking new waterfront revitalization projects.

Over the past twenty years bicycle use as a mode of transportation has grown considerably in the United States. Other studies have examined the individual bicyclist’s risk in proportion to the growth in cycling across cities, a phenomenon referred to as ‘safety in numbers.’ This study expands from that research and examines the effect of cyclists on road safety for all road users. The study examines the roles of bicycle modal split, a city wide analysis, and bicycle infrastructure, a site based analysis, in road safety outcomes. For the city based analysis, twenty years of crash data in 12 California cities were analyzed over a 20 year period. This study primarily used census data and State wide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) data. This study concludes that as bicycle modal split increases in a city, the traffic fatalities tend to decrease and the relationship is an exponential function. The site based analysis focuses on the effects of installing a bicycle lane on a street and examined its effect on injury crashes. 20 sites in San Francisco, CA that had bike lanes installed on them were compared to 25 control group sites, also in San Francisco, that did not have any bike lanes or other significant changes. An Empirical Bayes method of analysis was done to test its effects and determined that the effects were statistically significant.

Climate migration has been identified as an urgent issue that will likely add greater complexity to existing climate change planning efforts (Black, 2011; Ahsan, 2011). Existing climate migration literature has primarily focused on international migration and the Global South, offering limited applicability to internal conditions in developed countries due to the issue’s high context dependency (Hoffman, 2020). Local and municipal planners have a responsibility to pursue evidence-based climate adaptation strategies (Mitchell, 2020). Yet, planners lack reliable data to forecast potential changes to regional migration based on repeated exposure to climate stressors. To date, research has been primarily qualitative in nature, leaving a need for quantitative, spatial studies to detect larger patterns in comparison to survey and interview-based findings (Piguet et al., 2018). Within developed countries, research that integrates environmental factors into typical migration estimation methods used by community development and economic planners is needed to determine the extent that rapid environment change may alter existing migration trends. In beginning to address this gap, this study tests the relationship between wildfire displacement events (i.e. evacuation events) and household out-migration rates amid a host of competing socioeconomic factors for all western US counties during years 2016-2019. Wildfire displacement data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) is combined with out-migration estimates from the IRS SOI program in a times series, then joined to cross-sectional census data on county demographics to form a panel dataset for investigation. Modeling results show an expected 1.5% decrease in household out-migration rates for county-years experiencing repeated wildfire displacement events in comparison to non-treatment county-years. These results suggest a potential lowering of mobility capacity or desire within impacted communities for areas experiencing repeated wildfire. Whether this is linked to impacts on economic resources, i.e. exaggeration of underlying vulnerabilities, or suppressed desire to move is unclear. Direct implications for planners depend on greater understanding of causality. The study suggests that climate-related wildfire migration in the US warrants continued research, especially with focus on equity implications of unequal access to migration as a method of climate adaptation.