Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-118). / This thesis recognizes the social costs created by privately driven urban development while also acknowledging cities' fiscal dependence on local property taxes. This study is based on the premise that equitable spatial distribution of affordable housing can alter existing social perceptions and norms while providing a better quality of life to residents with less income capacity. Using as case studies the linkage and inclusionary policies in Boston, this thesis advocates for the need to include spatial emphasis in policies related to urban development. This proposal derives from an analysis and findings that show the concentration of affordable housing in some of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. Based on the goals of income integration and poverty deconcentration as framed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and by the Mayor's agenda for the City of Boston, I examine income integration patterns in the city through time and analyze how affordable housing created with the assistance of linkage funds and though the inclusionary policy has supported or refuted prevailing spatial income patterns in the city. Although this thesis ultimately questions whether income integration is the appropriate goal for fostering spatial equity, it offers policy reform suggestions that could support a greater "geography of opportunity" for the city's lower and middle- income residents. The recommended policy reforms extend beyond these two policies in order to question the larger urban development regime and the role of local level government interventions. / by Aspasia Xypolia. / M.C.P.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-80). / The state-owned electric utility, Korea Electricity Power Cooperation (KEPCO), privatization has been a key word in South Korea since 1997, when the government received $55 billion from the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a tough economic restructuring that included massive privatization. The Korean government separated KEPCO's six generation subsidiaries from KEPCO in 2001 in the initial process of the privatization. However, the government has not taken any further action since then. While there have been debates about the privatization of KEPCO, the debates were political rather than economic. This thesis will investigate whether or not Korea should continue to privatize KEPCO. First, it will examine how much revenue the government can make by selling its shares of KEPCO. Second, this thesis will study how much investment a privatized electricity industry will attract after privatization. Third, it will identify whether the electricity price will go down if the government privatizes KEPCO. Fourth, it will assess how the relationship between the government and the industry will change after privatization. Finally, it will identify how much does the government and people have to pay for the transition, which is caused by the change from a monopoly to a competitive market. By comparing the advantages and the disadvantages, this thesis will decide whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. This thesis will discuss only economic aspects; it will not examine the political, social and cultural aspects which are difficult to measure objectively. / by Sungmin Lim. / S.M.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. Thesis. 1973. M.C.P. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-108). / Since the onset of the current U.S. foreclosure crisis, a variety of strategies have been developed at the federal, state, and local levels to respond to the negative effects of foreclosures on households and neighborhoods. To date, the impact of these prevention and mitigation programs has been small compared to the scale of the problem, presenting a substantial opportunity for new models for addressing foreclosures. In 2009, Boston Community Capital (BCC), a non-profit community development financial institution, established the Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods (SUN) Initiative, a $50 million pilot program targeted at distressed homeowners in Boston and Revere, Massachusetts who are at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. In partnership with several Boston-area community organizations, BCC acquires occupied homes at discounted prices, often after foreclosure, and resells them to their existing occupants, providing residents with fixed-rate mortgages that enable them to keep their homes at affordable prices. In its short history, the SUN Initiative, which is funded almost entirely by private capital, has shown promise as an innovative model for preventing resident displacement in the wake of the foreclosure crisis; consequently, groups across the country have expressed interest in establishing similar programs in their own communities. In light of this attention, this thesis seeks to identify the critical factors that enable the SUN Initiative to work. Through interviews with SUN Initiative staff and other key stakeholders, as well as archival research, I argue that five organizational factors (fundraising ability; a strong balance sheet; an understanding of low-income borrowers and communities; effective community organizing and legal defense; and trust among partner organizations) and five structural and market factors (local presence; adequate loan loss reserves; a significant decline in housing prices; flexible capital; and management of moral hazard) are integral to the program's ability to keep residents in their homes. Based on these findings, I explore how BCC could replicate the program in other locations. Given that replication depends heavily on BCC's ability to sell a portfolio of seasoned SUN Initiative mortgages, I suggest ways that government entities can support such a transaction. While the SUN Initiative may not be a panacea for the mortgage crisis, I conclude that it is an important model that shows how private capital can be leveraged to address the foreclosure problem in the U.S. / by Brian P. Valle. / M.C.P.

Allston, considered Boston’s student neighborhood, has a historical trajectory that has been understudied, in that the neighborhood has not followed a linear path of either ascent or descent. Given Allston’s status as a hybrid neighborhood, displaying durable trends of both ascent and decline, residents and other neighborhood actors utilize cultural narratives to orient Allston’s history and future, which, in turn, reify certain aspects of the neighborhood. Based on ethnographic observations for two years and interviews with over 60 residents, students, business owners, real estate agents, and workers in Allston, this study extends previous literature on urban change in demonstrating Allston’s understudied hybridity, as well as locals’ use of cultural narratives to navigate this context. In so doing, neighborhood actors have perpetuated cultural narratives of Allston that embrace Allston’s gritty nature as the root of Allston’s legitimacy. The perception of Allston as a relatively disinvested and student neighborhood have allowed two distinct cohorts to see themselves as early stage gentrifiers, investing in the area. Nostalgia for the past also shapes residents’ cultural narratives of Allston, specifically for lifelong residents and other longtime residents. Tensions persist between the two groups, as an imagined past informs each groups distinct orientation to Allston’s future. Real estate agents and students perpetuate Allston’s student narrative by engaging in ritual interactions specifically related to “Allston Christmas,” or the September 1st moving day. Combined with Allston’s gritty nature, these rituals and interactions perpetuate an exploitative housing market characterized by poor housing conditions. This study demonstrates how neighborhood actors utilize cultural understandings to make sense of their surroundings and how these narratives reify existing conditions and perpetuate neighborhood inequality in the context of non-linear neighborhood change. This study contributes to literature on cultural understandings of place by examining how neighborhood hybridity facilitates specific neighborhood narratives, and how different cohorts utilize the same narrative frame, but with distinct orientations.

<p> This thesis connects the lived experience of displacement to the greater paradigm of neoliberalism. The presence of neoliberalism is insidious and ubiquitous and yet even its existence is disputed in the literature. Neoliberalism is not only capitalism on steroids, bigger and in more places, but a new regime of logic that reduces human relations to profit, naturalizes competition and pushes responsibility onto the individual. Urban space in America and especially the process of gentrification, the reshaping of the built environment to facilitate profit, is a powerful space of expression of neoliberal policies in everyday life. Displacement is a violent and dehumanizing realization of the commodification of land. This research follows the lived experience of families displaced from a mobile home park in Flagstaff, Arizona. Residents received a letter of eviction a week before Thanksgiving of 2017 and the mobile home park was boarded up by July of the following year. Through in-depth interviews with the residents and participant observation in the ensuing movement to keep these families in their homes, this research compiles the lived experience of these individuals and provides an analysis of their situation. Paulo Freire argued that every person has the ability to understand and build solutions to their reality in them. This research hopes to illuminate the lived experience of neoliberalism, gentrification, and offer a powerful message of generative solidarity collaboratively distilled from the experience of the displaced residents.</p><p>

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 62). / The condominium has become a popular form of ownership in Cambridge as it provides attractive benefits of homeownership without the physical responsibilities of maintaining a detached single-family home. Furthermore, as it is often a less expensive form of homeownership than single-family housing, it enables moderate income, first-time home buyers to have comparatively easier access to homeownership. During the time when much of the rental housing was under the rent control, condominium conversions were a means of releasing housing from the controls. Many of the landlords sought to convert their housing to condominium units even after strict ordinances were passed to limit the sales of such condominiums. This study seeks to investigate and explain the condominium conversion market after the termination of rent control, during the years of 1995 through 1998. The first objective of this study is to investigate the spatial pattern of Cambridge and its neighborhoods with regard to distributions of rentcontrolled housing, converted condominium units, rent-controlled units that were converted to condominiums and the median sales prices of condominium units. The second objective is to examine further the neighborhoods and better understand the condominium market of each neighborhood. Using the data on rent controlled residential units in 1994 and residential condominium units assessed for the fiscal year 2000, we employed Geographic Information System to visually present the spatial housing patterns in Cambridge. Most importantly, we analyzed the phenomenon of condominium conversions after rent deregulation and the findings indicate that less than 2 percent of the rent controlled units in 1994 were converted to condominiums during the period of 1995 through 1998. Most of the conversions and new construction of condominiums were in five of the neighborhoods whose residents have relatively high income levels, and in which there are greater number of non-family households, young professionals, and owner-occupied dwellings. The pattern of sales price by neighborhood is also examined during the 1995-1998 period. / by Yoon-jung Kim. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007. / Some pages folded. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-182). / Since the 1920s, participatory approaches to urban upgrading in developing nations have demonstrated that involving the urban poor in the physical, social, and economic development of their settlements could improve their living conditions. These housing policies and projects have since been central to urban poverty reduction. Yet, while participatory upgrading is still used on a limited scale, it has failed to become a mainstream component of urban development. This dissertation analyzes some reasons for that failure by investigating the trajectory of an urban poverty reduction program that had much potential for success in Cambodia, but whose results yet surprisingly fell short of expectations. It connects the results to a critical analysis of international experience with policies and programs for urban poverty reduction. It explores the issue in two steps: First it analyzes the historical evolution of the policies and practices of urban poverty reduction in developing nations. This highlights the apparently weak link between lessons from experience, international policy recommendations, and the programs actually implemented by governments. Second, it presents a narrative analysis of how a participatory urban poverty reduction policy originated, was implemented, and evolved in Phnom Penh from 1996 to 2004. That story provides a micro-level understanding of the shape and constraints of the evolution of policies and practices, complementing the macro-historical analysis. The findings illustrate that three main issues have prevented international and local agencies from promoting urban development assistance, using lessons learned from concrete experience over time, and thus kept them from adopting a more continuous use of proven practices. / (cont.) First, a conflict of frames between agencies over the meaning of development as human-centered versus growth-led, and of the meaning of participation as an end of development vs. a means to implement centrally-decided projects at a low-cost. Second, the lack of consideration for local institutions and politics in helping them understand why and how new approaches could be absorbed, or instead resisted. And third, an apparently lack of consistency in policy directions over time, with the abandonment of proven participatory practices, and the adoption of single-sided market-based approaches to development, when history had shown that both were needed together. / by Pierre Fallavier. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-54). / by Robert A. Brown. / M.S.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-44). / In 1920, the state of New York enacted the first rent control laws in the nation. Leading up to these laws were three years of tenant agitation and activism during a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. Tenants worked collectively, employed the techniques of labor unions, and lobbied their state legislature, governor, and even the president for relief. This thesis examines in more detail the tenant activism of this period, through informal groups of tenants, city-wide associations, action in court and in front of city bodies, and on the state and federal level. / by Sara Katherine Copeland. / M.C.P.