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This thesis focus on the topic of gentrification and how the youth have been impacted by this movement in the neighborhood of Church Hill. Given that there are many youths in the community, this thesis specifically focuses on how students have been impacted in regards to their sense of place and their new mentoring relationships with the new residents in the community. Through open-ended interviews with both high school students and post high school graduate students and mentors to the youth, this study focuses on how the students have altered where they spend their time and how they are affected by their mentoring relationships. The interviews have been analyzed to find common themes on how the youth are impacted by gentrification and from this analysis, suggestions are given for how to incorporate the youth in future planning and redevelopment decisions.

This thesis reports on the results of a survey sent by the author to 148 local and regional planning agencies in Virginia. The mail survey of all Virginia county, city, town, and regional planning agencies showed that computers have been widely accepted and integrated into the planning workplace. Smaller agencies, and those with greater budgetary constraints have yet to realize the computer's full potential, however. The survey yielded an %84.5 total response rate, and covered hardware, software, organization and personnel, and effectiveness issues. It was based upon a similar survey administered in Arizona, New Mexico, and California five years ago. A mere 13.6% of the 125 responding agencies reported no access to computers, far lower than any other previously surveyed state. The use of different platforms and software applications was widely reported, with inadequate training and funding problems cited as the most common difficulties with computers. Overall, most Virginia planning agencies found their computer systems as somewhat effective. The survey results showed that a higher annual budget increased computer access potential, resulting in a higher feeling of overall effectiveness. The survey showed the tremendous growth in the use of computers in planning agencies over the past five years, a trend that shows no signs of waning. With many different types of computers and applications, future planners need to be familiar with as many as possible to effectively perform their duties. At the very least, planners must know basic applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, and databases. The growing importance of other applications suggest the need for an even wider range of skills. Since most agencies reported little or no technical support, planners must have the knowledge to function on their own in a computer environment.

An insufficient amount of evaluation research has been conducted on Virginia's annexations. This study helps to fill that void by evaluating the Danville - Pittsylvania County annexation. The thesis attempts to determine if the city of Danville benefited from the annexation and if Pittsylvania County was able to recover from the loss that it suffered as a result of the annexation. In order to evaluate the annexation, data was collected and analyzed for seven research categories: urban services, planning, demographics, community leadership, local government cooperation, economic development, and public finance. In addition, government documents were reviewed to collect information that indicated the economic health of both jurisdictions and interviews were conducted to collect additional data. The annexation was beneficial for both Danville and the annexed area. It offered Danville the chance to expand its boundaries and to extend urban services into the annexed area which improved the quality of life for many annexed residents. Although Pittsylvania County lost $238,000,000 in tax base as a result of the annexation, by 1996, it surpassed its pre-annexation tax base, and housing subdivisions, commercial shopping centers, and small businesses were developing throughout the County.

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The purpose of this thesis is to provide a clear and cohesive plan to assist the City of New Orleans in rehabilitating historic homes and neighborhoods. One of the main attractions for visitors to New Orleans is the charm of its architecture. A larger portion of the architecture is in disrepair. Most of the neighborhoods that are suffering from blight are homes in low-income communities. These families have little help in maintaining these historic structures because of the increased costs. The administration of Mayor Marc Morial has decided that revitalizing the City's neighborhoods is of primary concern. This administration has developed a plan to help all residents of New Orleans by eliminating the blight. Each administration before this has attempted to develop a plan to meet this objective. All of these attempts have fallen short of meeting its goal. The only way to successfully address the housing environment in any urban setting is through partnerships. Resources have become scarce at all levels of government. The private sector cannot shoulder the entire responsibility of providing for everyone's housing needs. Thus the clear answer is the creation of partnerships between the public and private sectors. Chapter One introduces the scope and methodology of this thesis. In Chapter Two, the current housing environment is assessed. Housing studies conducted over the past decade are reviewed. Programs to assist families in securing decent and affordable housing are examined. The federal, state, local and non-profit programs are defined in this chapter. Chapter Three outlines a strategic plan to provide the framework to help revitalize blighted neighborhoods and increase home ownership. Home ownership is an important component for the partnership to utilize. This chapter defines the roles each entity needs to play in the partnership created. Examples of two successful programs are outlined. Partnerships are the primary vehicle for cities and towns to provide resources that neither the public nor private sectors can shoulder alone. Whether it is a literacy program, feeding th homeless or providing affordable housing, partnerships can help each of these issues. The expertise of each partner and their resources can benefit the entire community.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 180-188). / Large-scale real estate developments present unique regulatory challenges for local governments, prompting them to employ non-traditional, negotiation-based zoning approaches that offer flexibility unattainable via conventional zoning. Existing planning literature falls short of answering at least three broad areas of inquiry that can help local governments navigate this challenge. First, there is a general lack of understanding of if, when, and how local governments use negotiation-based zoning. Second, little empirical research thus has examined the negotiated outputs. Last, the politics of negotiated developments-who participates and influences these negotiations and under what conditions-also remains largely unknown. Each of these research areas is taken up in the three papers that comprise this dissertation. / The first paper surveys the current state of zoning practices; I investigate the experiences of Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle to explore if, when, and how they have negotiated zoning on a project-by-project basis. The second paper identifies the gains and losses of using a negotiation-based approach vis-a-vis zoning that closely adheres to the rule of law. I compare the experience of Boston and Seattle in more detail to explore this subject. The third and final paper delves deep into the micro-politics of negotiations for the largest private development in Boston to expose who actually influenced the negotiations and whether public participation mattered in the process. I find that all five cities employed negotiation-based zoning approach for large-scale developments, but their attitude towards negotiation varied widely city-by-city and even within a city. / I further establish that cities are likely to obtain more substantial public benefit packages when they negotiate zoning, but that there may be profound structural consequences for pursuing a regulatory regime heavily based on negotiations. Moreover, I provide empirical evidence that the process of negotiation can in fact accommodate meaningful public participation. Negotiated developments can become valuable opportunities for local governments to implement important planning objectives when they are used selectively and when the negotiation process is administered in a transparent and communicative manner. / by Minjee Kim. / Ph. D. / Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 48-49). / With New York City in the throes of a severe affordable housing crisis, the City government and housing advocates have worked tirelessly towards the identification of landlords whose profit model is based on fraudulent deregulation of the rent-regulated housing stock. The problem is that these bad actors are not so easy to identify. With the refusal of the controlling agency, the New York State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), to release data on units lost from the market, along the widespread use of limited liability companies (LLCs) to obscure ownership, it's difficult to both track changes in the market and to associate those changes with problematic actors. / The role of this thesis is to explore the creation of a methodology incorporating pre-existing work at the city and civilian level ("civic tech") to identify suspect patterns of behavior, recognizing that improved access to ownership data is key to identifying spatial and temporal patterns of change in the classification and pricing of rent-stabilized units. By leveraging tax data scraped by civic tech activists and cross-referencing it with property data, a relational database and associated SQL queries can make possible the identification of concentrated patterns of behavior occurring on properties by owners who have otherwise proven to be particularly adept at staying hidden. Look-up tables have been incorporated to create a method of analysis which is systematic and can be maintained and augmented as new information on ownership and management is accumulated over time. / This work is split into three parts: The first part of this work will begin with an initial exploration into the academic literature on rent-regulated housing, as well as the role of civic tech to supplement that literature. The second part of this work will outline the data integration methodology, using one census tract as a case study to test the feasibility of this approach. Finally, the work will explore ways in which this work could be implemented on a larger scale and the potential impacts of a successful execution of this methodology on legislation and prosecution targeting predatory landlords. / by Meagan Cherita Patrick. / M.C.P. / M.C.P. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Thesis advisor: Diana Pullin / It is widely accepted that school leadership has both a direct and indirect impact on student achievement. Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) Unified Leadership framework summarized a decade of work by numerous researchers identifying the five most effective leadership domains that influence student learning. Using that work as a conceptual framework, this qualitative case study analyzed one of the five interdependent leadership domains in an urban elementary school that succeeded in educating traditionally marginalized students and outperformed other schools with similar demographics in the district. This study identified and explored the actions that a principal in a high performing, urban school that served a historically marginalized population took to facilitate high-quality learning experience for students. This study reviewed documents and interviewed school and district level personnel to learn whether or not the school leader engaged in certain practices. The study found that the school leader engaged in many practices that facilitate a high-quality learning experience including monitoring instruction, assessment and curriculum, as well as maintaining a safe and orderly environment. Recommendations from this study include considering the diversity of students’ backgrounds as a source of strength and not something to be ignored. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture and Planning, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117). / by Kevin McGee. / Ph.D.