Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [79]-80). / by Carissa Gizelle Climaco. / M.C.P.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-63). / In the past, international real estate investment has consisted of direct equity investment in foreign countries. Such investments have traditionally been considered to provide diversification benefits given that it was assumed that such properties were affected predominately by their respective domestic economies. Of course another benefit of international investment is the ability to seek out the best risk adjusted returns, wherever they may be. Due to the recent globalization and securitization trends, today investors are finding that they have another investment option, international real estate public markets. This thesis addresses several of the issues related to the emergence of these markets in four countries: Germany, Australia, France, and Japan. For each of these countries extensive data was obtained for both the private and public markets in order to statistically examine various related relationships. Specifically, this thesis attempts to find answers to the three following questions: 1. Are GDP, rents, private, and public prices following a random walk or a trend-reverting pattern? 2. How does the local economy affect the real estate markets? 3. How do the public and private real estate markets relate with each other? It is important to note that the purpose of this thesis was to systematically examine the data, and then to present the results. An in-depth analysis of the results was not the intent. For Question one it was found that the majority of the public prices were random whereas the results for rents and private prices were predominately persistent. Also, an absence of any significant trends was found for the real estate data. These results would tend to indicate that for all of the countries studied the public market was much more volatile, and presumably efficient, than the private market. Question two related directly to the issue of diversification. A significant contemporaneous relationship was found to exist between GDP and the private market. And an even stronger contemporaneous linkage between GDP and public prices was also found. It was thus concluded that shifting from direct investment to public market investment would not likely increase diversification benefits. The results for Question three indicated a strong contemporaneous relationship between rents and private prices. The lagged relationships for the rents-public was found to be stronger than the contemporaneous in all the cases. The results for the private-public relationship were not consistent. For all the countries, except Germany public prices were found to lead private prices. / by C. Randall Speck. / S.M.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. Thesis. 1972. M.C.P. / Bibliography: leaves 244-248. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1990. / Title as it appears in the Sept. 1990 M.I.T. Graduate List: Enterprising community development corporations--non-profit housing innovation in metropolitan Washington, D.C. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-150). / by Hershel S. Lipow. / M.S.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 108-111). / Land use classification is important as a standard for land use description and management. However, current land use classification systems are problematic. Labels such as "residential use" and "commercial use" do not fully reveal how the land use is used in terms of function, mix use and changes over time. As a result, land use planning is often a natural prompt of segregation; Land use is poorly connected with other fields of urban studies such as transportation and energy consumption. The problems of land use are partly because land use classification has been an expediency rather than of rigorous thought. However, recent researches about land use classification have mainly focused on the methods of estimating land use types, without challenging the conventional instructional definition of land use typology itself. In contrast, this thesis aims to ask a more fundamental question: what are the elements, the principles, and the process to build the land use typology for given purposes. This thesis accordingly proposes the syntax of developing a land use typology, where five basic elements compose the framework of land use description: land use function, land use intensity, land use connectivity, probability and scale. While the elements are abstract concepts, when developing a land use typology, each of them could be defined with specific measures for purposes such as land use planning, land use management, energy analysis, transportation study. After the land use typology is composed with the defined elements, it can be applied to examine land mixed use, land use conflict, land use change and estimation. The syntax then proposes the basic principles and process to develop a satisfied land use typology, with respect to the reliability and validity, the significance and necessity, the measurability and operability, and the adaptability and flexibility. With that, this thesis argues that beyond the theoretical definition, the practical context, such as data availability or planning schema will influence the feasibility of a land use typology. While the scope of the syntax could be limited by practical tools and availability of data, the coming age of big data provides a changing context of land use typology. The followed case study illustrates such a process of developing land use typology with geo-social network data. The case develops a social media based land use typology, collects data for two example cities: Boston, U.S and Shenzhen, China, and applies the defined land use typology to classify their uses of land. As a result, Boston's land use I classified by its function, intensity and the level of mix use; Shenzhen land use is classified by its intensity, connectivity and the level of mix use. Compared with the conventional land use classification systems, the social media based typology provides a more comprehensive description of land use, with its focuses on human activities of the city and multiple dimensions of urban land use. It also has advantages with the flexibility and efficiency of data collection. In conclusion, the syntax of land use typology highlights the process of building land use typology, by defining the basic components of land use typology. It enables many possibilities of land use description with the help of big data, and reserves enough space to go beyond the existing tools and techniques. At last, the thesis proposes for future studies on the different interpretations of the syntax, its application on planning tools and systems, and potential for new types of land use. / by Liqun Chen. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-96). / Targeting project areas and defining the objectives are the most important procedures to plan neighborhood economic development, such as the Boston Main Street Program. Which shopping district is to be encouraged and how? However, this has not been an easy task, especially when the neighborhood is in the inner city, because the inner city is so diversified that planners can not find clear spatial patterns on which to base their decisions. This paper attempts to extract patterns of socioeconomic phenomena relevant to economic development and map them. The advancing technology of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has made it easier to apply raster (grid cell or bit pattern) analysis to studying urban spatial patterns. A map that shows socioeconomic phenomena via rasterization and smoothing processing is called "socioeconomic topography" here. Just as conventional topography shows us geographical features, socioeconomic topography illustrates the spatial pattern and clustering of socioeconomic features of a given area. The following maps are created as socioeconomic topography to support planning of inner city economic development: (1) land use allocation, (2) land value, (3) business variation, (4) shopping convenience, and (5) leading industrial clusters. On each map, spatial patterns stand out clearly from the chaos of Boston's inner city. Socioeconomic topography offers a new way of understanding the inner city and illuminates the need of made-to-order projects for each shopping district. / by Hideo Sakamoto. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-298). / by Ramón Borges-Méndez. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-81). / by Buckley Ken Yung. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-120). / by Kristin Dawkins. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-118). / In September 1991, the Massachusetts State Legislature passed an Act that placed the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts under state receivership. Though the State justified receivership as a response to the City's bankruptcy, they acknowledged that the fiscal problems could not be solved without overcoming a corrupt local political structure. A staff of state-appointed receivers took control of the City for an ensuing five-year period with the charge of regaining fiscal solvency and writing a new city charter. During this time, the receivers initiated a consensus process with the residents to engage them in rewriting their city charter. The receivers were offering a unique opportunity for a state intervention to facilitate a local bottom up process to consider new possibilities for a local government structure. This held the potential to institutionalize greater public participation in local governance and redevelopment. However, I argue that the receivership primarily facilitated metropolitan planning agendas at the expense of public participation in local planning. Chelsea, less than two miles from both downtown Boston and the Logan International Airport, is geographically critical to metropolitan growth and transportation planning. In Chelsea, the tensions between local and metropolitan planning are critical. Given the City's value in the Boston metropolitan area, a significant portion of Chelsea's land is allocated to uses that serve metropolitan needs. The formulation of planning processes that allow the local community to reconcile their demands with the metropolitan authorities remains critical. In this thesis I explore the receivership and redevelopment of Chelsea, Massachusetts, during the early 1990's. I consider the similarities between the "reform" of Chelsea and the reforms advocated during the Progressive Era (1890-1920). I turn to the literature regarding the Progressive movement to understand the implications of the reform initiatives on planning outcomes. Though academic analyses of the Progressive movement do not offer insight into the planning outcomes of the Progressive Era reforms, an analysis of the reform of Chelsea lends insight into rethinking the Progressive Era. Throughout the chapters, I have placed photographs of Chelsea taken in spring 2002. The titles are not listed with the photographs to allow the reader to reflect freely upon the photographs in relation to the text. The themes and the intention of the photo essay are provided after the conclusion of the thesis. / by Asha Ghosh Rao. / M.C.P.