Urban plazas, together with streets, and parks, constitute the remaining public realm of our cities. Their function, as facilitators of social interaction, is most evident in areas where urban structure still prevails in relation to pedestrian use. Since pedestrians represent the majority of potential users, use of these spaces is intimately related to surrounding population and activities, and may be affected by how the immediate context is configured. This study examined two urban plazas in downtown Tucson, with their context, to develop methods of analysis and evaluation of potential effects of contextual elements in their use. Overall, this study found that combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches was useful in the generation of data, as well as analytical tools. Although this study's results are limited to the spaces analyzed, potential relationships are suggested between aspects of plaza use and specific elements of the human and physical context.

Research has shown that women perceive, use, and experience space differently than men, in part, because of gender issues and fear of victimization for violent crimes. Recent research has focused on the built environment, violence against women, and the social context of a university. The research study described here investigated women's perception of and actual safety from assault and rape on The University of Arizona campus. Sites perceived as safe and unsafe were identified from responses of 100 women students and administrators. Police reports of 132 campus assaults of women were used to identify sites of past rapes and assaults. Two outdoor sites were assessed in a preliminary study of two environmental audit methods. Findings from this study indicated that respondents perceived the campus as being very safe during the day but unsafe at night. Sites of previous assaults on women overlapped little with the areas women associated with fear.

This research, denoted MILOS (Multi-objective Integrated Large-scale Optimized ramp metering System) is a hierarchical structure for solution of the large-scale freeway management problem to address the key features of this problem (dynamic state changes, stochasticity, multi-dimensionality, unpredictability, partial-observability, and existence of multiple objectives). MILOS decomposes the freeway control problem into subproblems along temporal/spatial boundaries and is composed of three primary components: SPC-based anomaly detection and optimization scheduling, area-wide coordination layer, and predictive-cooperative real-time (PC-RT) optimization layer. The area-wide coordination component of the hierarchical control system considers the impact of queue growth on the adjacent interchanges in a quadratic programming optimization model with a multi-criterion objective function. The formulation of the area-wide optimization problem is augmented with overflow variables to guarantee a feasible solution. The nominal solution of the areawide coordination problem is then modified in real-time by the locally traffic-reactive, PC-RT algorithm based on a linear-program using a linearized dynamic difference equation implementation of the macroscopic FREFLO model. The PC-RT formulation pro-actively plans to utilize opportunities to disperse queues or hold back additional vehicles when freeway and ramp demand conditions are appropriate. The cost coefficients of this optimization problem is linked to the solution of the area-wide coordination problem by using information on the dual of the solution to the area-wide coordination problem. The optimization runs of the area-wide coordination problem and the PC-RT optimization problems at each ramp are scheduled by a demand/flow monitoring system based on statistical process control. A simulation experiment is executed to evaluate the MILOS hierarchical system against "no control", ADOT's current ramp metering policy, and an area-wide LP optimization problem resolved in 5-minute intervals on a small freeway network in the metropolitan Phoenix, AZ area. Three test cases are presented for a short "burst" of heavy-volume flows to all ramps, a 3-hour commuting peak, and a 3-hour commuting peak with a 30-minute incident occurring in the middle of the network. The performance results indicate that MILOS is able to reduce freeway travel time, increase freeway average speed, and improve recovery performance of the system when flow conditions become congested.

Over the past 25 years, long-term trends in population and employment change for the US have been dramatically altered. At the regional level, areas like the Rocky Mountain West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, and WY) have seen the century-long decline in nonmetropolitan population reversed to some degree. Scholars from across the US have proposed several broad theories to explain these shifts; however, researchers based in the RMW have argued that any general theory of growth and development must be adapted to take into account the region's unique geography and history. For example, population and employment change in RMW has been more volatile and extreme due to the region's reliance on extractive industries. The purpose of this dissertation is to present preliminary findings of an investigation of population and employment change in the RMW in general, and to test the claims of regional researchers on the processes behind these changes. The ideas of these researchers are embodied in the quality-of-life model, which claims that changing residential preferences, demographic changes, and economic restructuring will benefit areas like the nonmetropolitan RMW, an area rich in amenities. Using a wide variety of tools ranging from descriptive statistics, to classification techniques, to multivariate regression models, this research measures how factors theorized to be associated with growth have increased (decreased) in importance over the 25 year span of this study. The results show that regionally-based ideas on growth have a place in helping scholars understand regional growth processes in a more reliable manner. More importantly, there is significant support for the quality-of-life model, especially the role of service industries and environmental amenities in driving regional growth. Answers to these questions will help scholars understand the extent to which national events are being restructured in regional contexts. Additionally, until these ideas are fully tested and shown to explain some of the events and underlying processes driving population and employment growth in the RMW, long-term policies designed to help plan for the continued growth of the region may be misguided and wasteful.

This dissertation uses the urban regime theory to study the influence of bi-national public-private coalitions over the land development patterns of the US/Mexico border cities. In the El Paso del Norte region, the development of the bi-national land market has been contingent on the presence of land investors with local roots and on the concentration of urban land in a few investors. In this region, local groups become dominant and influential by accumulating land properties. On the Mexican Paso del Norte, there are two types of partisan public-private coalitions influencing the process of land development. On the US Paso del Norte, the limited vacant land to promote large urban projects in Texas has consolidated the emergence of a dominant public-private coalition in Sundland Park, New Mexico. Evidences in this dissertation show that bi-national cooperation is not attainable by the majority of local public and private actors. However, the San Geronimo - Santa Teresa case study shows that public-private cooperation among the most powerful local landholders has transcended national political boundaries to promote industrial development. Bi-national urban regimes exhibit the informal integration of various scales of governments and local urban regimes to produce simultaneous outcomes from policies implemented in two different and contiguous land markets. In the El Paso del Norte region, the economic and political inter-dependency of the Mexican and American urban contexts has created the conditions to move urban regime theory into a more global scope in explaining the processes of transboundary public-private cooperation and policy elaboration.

Conservation partnerships are working throughout the United States to address natural resource problems in watersheds. These projects have levels of complexity that challenge successful accomplishments. This study investigates what constitutes success in watershed partnerships and what measures may define success. Characteristics are identified from a literature search to create a success model. Characteristics of three partnerships led by the U. S. D. A. Natural Resources Conservation Service, Conservation Districts, and Resource Conservation and Development councils are compared to the model. Analyses address frequencies of occurrence of characteristics and differences between public and private responses. The results do not support the success model. Eight common characteristics of success are found in the case studies. Six of these characteristics are of a qualitative nature indicating a need to include qualitative measures with quantitative measures of success. The development of an effective guide for successful conservation partnerships is based on the eight characteristics.

This thesis reviews the case of Plan 6 cost-sharing to explore the nature of policy reform and the political factors which can hinder or coax change. Plan 6 comprises regulatory storage components of the Central Arizona Project and dam safety components of the Salt River Project in Arizona. Arizona entities responded to the cost-sharing reform movement by developing an agreement reflecting increased an "up-front" local contributions to Plan 6 and CAP construction. The Plan 6 case is analyzed by linking observed political responses to proposed reform with operative policy arenas. Shifts within or between arenas indicate a degree of policy incrementalism or innovation, respectively. The analysis found a coincidence of moderate levels of innovation and strong incrementalism. The strength of a traditional water development network and the absence of direct in put from reformers at critical points in the agreement development were primary factors hindering full reform.

In some cases, preservation priorities and recommendations are based on specific vegetation communities. One example is Fremont Cottonwood-Goodding Willow forests within Pima County, Arizona, which are regarded as critical habitat and protected by the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. However, a prioritized system based on conditions within Fremont Cottonwood-Goodding Willow patches may afford greater flexibility to land managers, including selective or incremental preservation, which could accommodate funding challenges. This investigation assessed patches in three watercourses within Tucson, Arizona, and addressed the following questions: Are Fremont Cottonwood-Goodding Willow patches exhibiting characteristics related to vigor or decline? Are there significant relationships between patch vigor and channel variables? On-site assessment addressed Fremont Cottonwood-Goodding Willow patch characteristics and channel variables. Significant relationships were found between vigor and proximity of primary flow, channel width, and bank treatment. Vigor results were employed to develop recommendations designed to facilitate preservation decisions.

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