The purpose of this thesis is two fold: first, to focus attention on the problems of urban expansion and the trend towards suburban living and secondly, to investigate a technique which could be used by semi-rural municipalities to control one of the problems of suburbanization, that of premature conversion of farm land to non-farm uses. Many techniques are presently used to control land use and urban development in municipalities in transition from a rural to an urban character, but generally, these techniques have failed to protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. The technique examined in this thesis is that of financial control as exercised through property taxation. After substantiating the increasing demand for land for urban uses, a brief examination of the forces which regulate the supply and demand of land is presented to aid the understanding of the principle of highest and best use as applied to competing land uses. This illustrates the cause for the premature conversion of farm land to non-farm uses. An examination is made of the conversion of farm land to non-farm uses with emphasis on premature conversion and the economic and social costs which arise from this conversion. In view of the increasing rate of conversion of farm land to non-farm uses and the costs which can be attributed to premature conversion of farm land, it becomes evident that a technique which will protect farm land from premature conversion should be implemented. By studying the ways and means currently available for the control of land use and land development by a public agency, it is found that the regulations do not protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. Since financial control of land use exercised through taxation is not used to any appreciable degree by municipal governments, the relationship of land use and property tax is studied. In this evaluation, particular attention is placed on the effect of property taxes on farm land. This leads to the conclusion that high property taxes can force land into a more intensive use. As a result of this conclusion, it is proposed that a reduction in farm property taxes would protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. Rather than use an arbitrary tax rate to lower farm taxes, the tax rate is related to the cost of services provided for farm property. Using 1961 data collected from The Corporation of The Township of Richmond, a 'rural-urban' municipality adjacent to the City of Vancouver in British Columbia, it is shown by apportioning the municipal revenues and expenditures to farm and non-farm property that a tax rate related to the cost of services provided for farm land would reduce the farm taxes. The reduction in taxes is then related to the farm land income, which is measured by farm land rental values, to determine the effect it would have in protecting farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. An analysis of the farm land income shows that the net return to farm land is comprised of tangible and intangible elements. The tangible or monetary return to the farm land is low when compared with the return available from other low risk investments. Thus, it appears that the intangible returns such as the value as a homesite, the possibility of a capital gain and the prestige of land ownership are greater than the economic returns. From this it is concluded that a reduction in farm taxes arising from relating the tax rate to the cost of services provided for farm property may, depending upon the taxation system, encourage farm land owners to keep their land in farm use, but would not protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The aim of this study was to show how Flanagan’s Critical Incident Technique may be used to conduct a systematic and objective study of training needs in the field of Real Estate selling. The data were gathered from 86 volunteer registered salesmen whose names had been randomly selected from a master file containing approximately 990 names of registered real estate salesmen. A total of 314 useable reports yielding 327 actual incidents and 88 items of general information were gathered and reclassified according to standard Critical Incident Technique methods. Agreement by two judges served as a check on the validity of the sorting and classification of each incident and item of information. It was found that more failures in selling may be ascribed to inadequate dealings involving property than to those involving people or monetary considerations. Within the limitations of the present study, the gathering of items of general information proved to be a valuable adjunct to Flanagan's Critical Incident Technique. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis presents a framework for automatic recognition of human actions in un- controlled, realistic video data with fixed cameras, such as surveillance videos. In this thesis, we divide human action recognition into three steps: description, representation, and classification of local spatio-temporal features. The bag-of-features model was used to build the classifier. Fisher Vectors were also studied. We focus on the potential of the methods, with the joint optimization of two constraints: the classification precision and its efficiency. On the performance side, a new local descriptor, called Gradient Boundary Histograms (GBH), is adopted. It is built on simple spatio-temporal gradients, which can be computed quickly. We demonstrate that GBH can better represent local structure and motion than other gradient-based descriptors, and significantly outperforms them on large datasets. Our evaluation shows that compared to HOG descriptors, which are based solely on spatial gradient, GBH descriptor preserves the recognition precision even in difficult situation. Since surveillance video captured with fixed cameras is the emphasis of our study, removing the background before action recognition is helpful for improving efficiency. We first preprocess the video data by applying HOG to detect humans. GBH descriptor is then used at reduced spatial resolutions, which yields both high efficiency and low memory usage; in addition, we apply PCA to reduce the feature dimensions, which results in fast matching and an accelerated classification process. Experiments our methods achieved good performance in recognizing precision, while simultaneously highlighting effectiveness and efficiency.

The tax on real property continues to be a major factor in the fiscal structure of municipal governments. Therefore, justice dictates that the impact of this tax be distributed equitably, however "equitable" may be defined by the legislative authority. This is an administrative problem. In many jurisdictions the administration is directed to distribute the tax impact on an ad valorem basis of current market value. Statistical measures have been devised in order to measure the uniformity of the assessment of current market values. The random variable is defined as the ratio of assessed value to actual sale price, and the sample is the result of property sales which occur under conditions which are circumscribed by the definition of market value. The estimated parameters are then used to make direct statistical inferences regarding the level and uniformity of assessment. These parameters are then compared to pre-selected standard parameters in order to judge the relative uniformity of the assessment roll. First, market generated sales do not produce a random sample of the assessment roll. Therefore, direct statistical inferences from the sample do not apply to the assessment roll. Second, it is demonstrated that the standard parameters are implicitly based on an assumption that the universe of assessment-sale price ratios is normally distributed. The results of empirical investigation upon the Vancouver assessment roll indicate that the normality assumption cannot be justified. Therefore, the pre-selected standards are useless as measures by which to judge the relative uniformity of an assessment roll. Two alternative measures of assessment quality are proposed. First, a binomial model based on correct and incorrect valuation is examined. Though this has some practicable possibilities, it cannot, without some important value judgements, be used to measure degrees of quality or uniformity. A second alternative is proposed in order to overcome the above limitation. The alternative suggests that a good assessment roll have assessment-market value ratios which are normally distributed, and that the actual distribution of assessment-sale price ratios be tested for "goodness-of-fit" to the ideal distribution. The test parameters can be transformed to probability levels which would measure the quality or uniformity of the assessment roll. This measure may indicate that a highly uniform assessment roll on which most of the properties are under-assessed is of lower quality than an assessment roll on which more properties are correctly assessed, but less uniformly assessed. Though it is unlikely that uniformity of assessment can be achieved without correct valuation, it cannot be held that an assessment roll on which more properties are correctly assessed is of higher quality of assessments than a roll on which most properties are under-assessed, if the uniformity of assessment on the former roll is not at least as high as the uniformity of assessment on the latter roll. Since the measures of assessment quality and uniformity examined are not satisfactory, it is concluded that statistical analysis in assessment administration may be more usefully applied to the analysis of the causes of assessment errors than to the measurement of the number and size of the errors. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The trend in house prices is of importance to governments, financial institutions and households. However, currently no proven reliable indicator of house prices exists. The lack of an accurate house price series is due to two major factors. First convenient and accurate data on house prices are not readily available and data collection from the Land Registry Office is both time consuming and costly. The second factor relates to the problem of changes in the quality of the series through time. This quality problem has two basic aspects. First, the quality of the index may be influenced by shifts in the distribution of sales between different values of homes. The second problem arises from the unique nature of real estate as to its’ location, age, condition, etc. Unlike other indices, there is no standardized unit of housing to which price quotations may, be reduced, thus the quality of the housing sold in each year will be different. In this study, the problems encountered in sampling and constructing a price index for the single family housing stock are identified and analyzed both conceptually and empirically. The conceptual examination involves a review of the literature as well as an analysis of the methodologies employed in the construction of the major housing indicies in use today. The empirical analysis is done through the construction of a price series for the eight rapidly growing cities and municipalities of the Greater Vancouver Regional District for the years 1949 to 1976. The indicies are based upon data obtained from the Land Registry Offices in British Columbia and are designed to be statistically representative of all sales for those areas during the study period. The analysis forms a basis for future research into housing indicies and in particular, provides a reliable benchmark series against which alternative measures of price changes can be tested. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This study surveys commercial real estate agents on their use of trade area (location) analysis in the marketing (leasing and selling) of retail space. Throughout the study, the broad definition of the broker as an information agent on all facets of real estate is narrowed in order to isolate the purpose, type and scope of the trade area (location) information he processes. As such, the primary objective of the study is to determine the extent to which realtors practice trade area (location) analysis in their marketing of retail space. Real estate literature emphasizes two points that together serve as the basis for the study: (1) brokers should strive to become advisors to their clients and customers and (2) the importance of trade area (location) data for identifying a retail property's most beneficial use(s) and determining its value. Yet, even though these two points are well recognized, some question remains about the extent of trade area (location) information realtors are processing. For example, one large corporate real estate buyer has remarked that out of the many investment proposals he received from brokers, few contain sufficient market data to allow prudent investment decisionmaking. In addition, real estate practitioner literature, while noting the importance of trade area, offers few if any procedures that could be followed to develop a trade area analysis. Based on these observations, this study attempts to gain an insight into the realtors practices of trade area analysis. To accomplish this objective, trade area literature was reviewed to identify trade area characteristics, techniques of analysis, and data sources. From this information a set of questions was developed and used to survey realtors on their practices of trade area analysis. Data from the survey show: (1) the type of analyses developed, (2) the content of the analyses, and (3) the purpose of the analyses. Interpretation of the survey data indicates that there is a discrepancy between the trade area analyses that are currently being developed and the "state of the art" as evidenced by trade area literature. Recommendations are that real estate practitioner literature could devote more attention to including procedures that realtors might follow to develop a trade area analysis and that realtors could increase their use of real estate literature. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The objective of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the process by which residential land prices are determined and change over time. A special concern is also shown for the causal relationship between the prices of building lots and the selling prices of new single-detached housing built on those lots. In the introductory chapter, the upward climb over the years in the average price of building lots relative to the increase in new house prices is identified as a matter in need of closer study. The significance of this subject for planning practice is seen to lie in the power of planning authorities to intervene in the operation of property markets, and in the role of planning authorities implied in many proposals for solving the land price problem. In Chapter Two, numerous theoretical analyses and empirical studies of the determination and inter-temporal variation in residential land prices are surveyed. A critical assessment of the literature made in the first part of Chapter Three identifies several shortcomings. A static rather than dynamic approach, the assumption of market equilibrium and perfect competition, inadequate treatment of supply-demand interaction, and a limited behavioral content, characterize most of the works surveyed. A theoretical model is subsequently developed to explain the process by which residential lot prices are determined and change over time. Its fundamental hypothesis is that the level of new house prices and their changes over time are a prime determinant of lot prices and their intertemporal variation, while the profit-maximizing behavior of lot sellers and housebuilders generates the process by which lot prices increase over time. In Chapter Four, an empirical investigation is proposed for testing the theoretical model. Data on residential construction in Canada over the 1951-1977 period and financed under the provisions of the National Housing Act are selected for the investigation. Since the data pertain to a portion rather than the whole of the lot market, the theoretical model is reformulated in light of this and other empirical conditions. The Chapter is concluded with an outline of the statistical procedures to be used in the investigation. The results of the study are presented in Chapter Five. They are found to be generally consistent with the hypotheses of the empirical model, and the postulates of the theoretical model. It is concluded, among other things , that lot sellers and housebuilders behave in the manner proposed by the models, and that lot price increases are determined by house price increases. However, the validity of the model and wider application of the empirical findings are judged to be limited by the characteristics of the data used in the study. The concluding chapter offers several suggestions for future research on land prices and some implications for planning and public policy. The need for an improved economic understanding in urban planning is identified. A potential role is identified for planners in the provision of information in a market where imperfect information is a major source of observed market failure. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Orientador: Mauricio Ferreira Magalhães / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-19T09:54:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SilvaJunior_AlfredoFranciscoda_M.pdf: 5599087 bytes, checksum: ff38a33c7aecfe4670a43e7d20c8a1d6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1994 / Resumo: Neste trabalho é proposto um depurador de sistemas de tempo real denominado DEBUGMOSI. O ambiente de depuração prevê duas formas de operação: a) Utilização de duas máquinas distintas, uma "rodando" o depurador e outra a aplicação, interligadas por linha serial para tratar os níveis iniciais de desenvolvimento ou testes, onde o objetivo é verificar a existência de erros graves de projeto e validar algoritmos, nestas fases o fator tempo pode ser relegado a um segundo plano. Normalmente; b) Uso de uma única máquina contendo o depurador. A entrada deste último é um arquivo de eventos gerado pelo próprio núcleo de tempo real quando da execução da aplicação em uma sessão anterior, sem a participação do depurador. Dessa forma, é possível conseguir-se um "replay" da execução do aplicativo sob teste. A vantagem do uso desta técnica é a possibilidade de se repetir a execução do arquivo de eventos diversas vezes, garantindo sempre o mesmo comportamento, assim como da não influência do depurador nos resultados obtidos possibilitando seu uso em casos em que as restrições de tempo sejam severas / Abstract: Not informed. / Mestrado / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Restrictive covenants (RCs) consist of legal language that is put in a land parcel deed by the subdivider of a subdivision at the time it is platted. The restrictions usually limit land use and require that the house constructed on the lot be of a certain cost. This thesis addresses four research questions: 1. Is the restrictive covenant (RC) minimum house cost amount directly related to the size of the housing? 2. Do differences in housing size translate into social status differences? 3. Do RCs create homogeneous areas of social status? 4. Are subdivisions with RCs less likely to decline in social status over time than subdivisions without RCs? The goal is to establish whether development limitations placed on residential land translate into a differentiated built environment and then into a differentiated social structure. I chose the area of SE Portland, Oregon from SE 20th-39th Avenues, SE Hawthorne Blvd to Harrison Street to test my hypothesis. First Multnomah County deed records were used to find out which subdivisions in the study area have Res and what their restrictions are. After that was completed I grouped the subdivisions or their respective blocks into five RC groups based on the range of minimum house costs found in their deeds. Data was collected once every ten years during the 1940- 80 period from the US Census was used to get the mean owner estimated value of houses and the percent owner occupied. The Polk Portland City Directory was also used to get the percent owner occupied as well as to get the occupation of each household sampled in the same years as the census. The occupation of each household head sampled was converted to a Duncan SES index score which was then compiled by RC group for every sample year. Finally data from the Multnomah County Assessor's office assessment roll was obtained for every house in the study area for such things as house size, year built, and the assessed value. Sales data from the study area over the last year was also analyzed to see how the different RC areas were priced. The results of the analysis of the study area support my basic hypothesis that RCs affect the built environment of residential areas which in turn influences social status. The size of the houses followed the anticipated pattern (the High RC group had the largest houses, the Low the smallest, etc.) as well as the assessed valuation, the estimated value from the census, and the sales data. The percent owner occupied was lower in the lower RC groups although the percentages stayed relatively constant over time. This indicates that, at least in this study area, RCs do not effect neighborhood decline by stabilizing owner occupancy rates. The final and most important indicator, social status, showed the same pattern as the other data did. Social status does indeed get less as the minimum cost requirements in the did so RCs influence the social structure of residential areas. Other residential areas need to be studied in Portland and other cities to see if these findings can be applied elsewhere. The methods I used in this thesis can provide, along with an examination of the actors involved in the subdivision process, important insights into the social differentiation of urban space.