Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-156). / At the close of 2016, the United States finds itself deeply fractured, caught between clinging to a nostalgic past and pushing for progressive possibility. As we stand divided, a set of emerging great challenges threaten to rapidly change the world as we know. At such a juncture, I argue that the practice of imagination can help us to break out of habitual thinking and routine practice to see our challenges, and ourselves within them, more fully and clearly. By imagining alternative futures, and communicating them to a broader audience through fiction, I propose we may better understand, collectively, how to enact our agency in the present to address these challenges head-on. In this thesis, I argue for the practice of imagination through the lenses of three great challenges that we face as a nation: politics, the Anthropocene, and a culture of white supremacy. In an effort to identify and bridge the divides that exist within our current political and cultural moment, I propose a 'rural futurism' that centers the experiences, settings, and lives of rural America in imagined futures. I then operationalize the concept of 'rural futurism' on two levels; 1) the realizable potential of local democratic institutions, the rural electric cooperatives, as sites for democratic discourse and self-determination, and 2) speculative futures, communicated through fictional narratives, as a tool for developing critical consciousness in addressing the three great challenges imperative to re-imagining America. I present eight speculative fiction stories of alternative rural futures set in the American south to 'test' the concept of 'rural futurism' as a tool for addressing these challenges. The stories were reviewed by a focus group of southern writers and organizers, who provide the analysis, as well as my personal evaluation, of the stories effectiveness in addressing the challenges described and their resonance with the experience and context of the rural American south. / by Grant Tank Williams. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 105 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-88). / Since the foreclosure crisis, a handful of private-equity backed real estate companies have purchased over 200,000 single-family rental homes throughout the nation. Originally, these companies planned to hold the properties until the real estate market improved and then sell the homes to individual buyers. However, they soon realized that they could generate higher returns for investors by operating the units as rentals, issuing debt securities backed by the rental incomes, and selling equity securities (stocks) in the global exchanges. As a result, the previously "mom and pop" industry of single-family rental housing is now, for the first time, financialized within the global market and institutionalized by an emerging oligopoly of large-scale rental companies. This research examines the rise of single-family rental housing as an asset class, with a particular focus on the construction, mitigation, and management of "risk." By analyzing investor disclosure documents, interviews with industry actors, quarterly earnings calls, and market reports, I show how the financial industry constructed a dominant discourse of financial risk focused on maximizing rental yields and home price appreciation, minimizing maintenance costs, and reducing political opposition. I argue that the ability of the financial industry to "self-regulate" access to capital through internally negotiated legal structures, disclosure requirements, and agreed upon norms of "trust", shifted the burden of risk from investors onto tenants, prospective homebuyers, and local communities. To contest the financial industry's dominant risk discourse, I use quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial analyses to propose alternative risk assessment tools and strategies that redefine whose risks should be mitigated and who should do the mitigating. Using Los Angeles County as a case study, I found that middle-income neighborhoods with higher percentages of African-American residents and lower home values are disproportionately impacted by the increasing institutionalization and financialization of single-family rental housing. Additionally, tenants renting from the largest single-family rental companies face aggressive rent increases and greater maintenance responsibilities. Reframing "risk" not only better protects tenants and prospective homebuyers, it also interrogates the intersection of financial regulation and community development, recognizes the contradictions of planning communities without attempting to plan economies, and helps advance a more proactive vision of economic justice and economic democracy. / by Meredith Abood. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-176). / Home is where the heart is, the saying goes. The quest for home is ever-present. When looking at the destructive nature of urban planning history - urban renewal, redlining, block busting, etc. - it is imperative to see urban planning's historical impact on the communities vulnerable populations, particularly communities of color, have fought to call home. Understanding the sense of home is crucial to begin humanizing the lived experiences city-dwellers have in places. These places move beyond being just places into being home. Using visual and narrative-based methods, this thesis investigates how residents of one neighborhood define home. Ascribing importance of the home and sense of home can lead to better understandings of the emotional impact processes of displacement have had on vulnerable communities, equipping planning and design practitioners with the capacity to sensitively approach the potential impacts on people's homes. The community of Watts in South Central, Los Angeles, California serves as a case study in understanding what meaningful content collecting narratives about home can reveal. As a study in my own home, the thesis also operates as a journey of self-discovery in rethinking preconceived understandings of this concept. This research is both a personal and political statement about the power of maintaining quality of life for vulnerable populations through sustaining the home. As an act to fight against displacement, the collected narratives reveal the important complexities of how individuals define home, ranging from individualistic, to relational, to spatial and beyond. / by Alexis A. Harrison. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-90). / by Tunna E. Thrash. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-104). / With the post-modern turn in planning theory, the public's input is now required in a wider variety of areas. Nevertheless, the discourse about planning has remained too technically oriented, depriving the general public from a real understanding of the issues at stake. The development of multi-media, web-based tools could provide the public with common concepts and a common vocabulary to discuss and elaborate a shared vision on planning-related issues. This thesis develops such a tool to educate the public about urban transportation auditory impacts. By combining movies, sounds and simulations, we offer multiple representations of sound in an interactive and interpretative way which could augment the social knowledge about those issues. Furthermore, the same framework could easily be expanded to encompass other technical elements. This tool prefigures one of the multiple ways by which information technologies will impact the planning practice. This thesis will also suggest some of the possible evolutions in the planner's role within this new technology-enhanced environment. / by Nicolas A. Ferrand. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-99). / by Laurence David Rosoff. / M.S.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-74). / Operational efficiency has remained elusive despite the potential for 10-20% savings from low and no cost measures in many office buildings. This is because office building energy performance is shaped by the actions of multiple stakeholders, including the owner, facility staff, occupant organizations and office workers. These stakeholders control different aspects of energy use and have different interests. But they all face social barriers such as information feedback, process assistance, and the need for social endorsement. Smart Energy Now@, a new advanced metering and community-based social marketing pilot in Charlotte NC, is one of the first programs to focus exclusively on operational efficiency in office buildings across an entire downtown. A preliminary evaluation reveals that the pilot has been successful in many of its activities, including gaining almost 100% owner participation, providing interval meter data and professional development for facility staff, and training more than 450 Energy Champions. Several other programs, including the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Corps, the Building Owners and Managers Association's Kilowatt Crackdown, and the Chicago Green Office Challenge are also testing ways to deliver education, assistance and recognition tailored to building stakeholders. These programs reveal that stakeholder-based social interventions can directly result in energy saving behaviors and increase the likelihood of capital investment. However, efficiency potential varies depending on each building's technical characteristics and organizational structure. Therefore, many successful programs are using flexible frameworks that establish a process for participation, but allow stakeholders to select the efficiency activities that make sense for them. Implementing these programs requires working with new partners, such as organizational leaders, professional networks and civic organizations. / by Elena F. Alschuler. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-72 ). / The term "shrinking" is often considered a death sentence for Small Town America. Public officials, planners and residents often try to "solve" the condition of shrinking, applying the same tool kit used for growth, with little success. A widespread assumption is that shrinking is the opposite of growth and synonymous with decline, and therefore common practice in planning and design practice has been to try and reverse the trend of population loss, often with last-ditch efforts such as free land offers, problematic industrial recruitment or unrealistic visioning exercises. If growth, even in its most destructive forms, can be made smart, can shrinking be made graceful, and if so what approach is needed to achieve it? This thesis argues that shrinking is not the opposite of growth but rather requires a much more complex and nuanced understanding, and that the condition of shrinking does not have to be a terminal diagnosis for a small town. Those communities that identify, adapt, and reuse existing human and physical assets can in fact shrink gracefully, especially given that shrinking is seldom a rapid process, but rather one that plays out over generations, providing the luxury of time to be purposeful about the planning and design process. / (cont.) The stories of two very different communities are told here. Each, in response to generations of shrinking, has recently engaged in asset-based planning processes. These two approaches lead to suggestions of a planning approach that diverges from the traditional rural development model, which relies heavily on physical infrastructure investment. Rather, by engaging the realities of the shrinking condition, being deliberate in the planning process, and linking the creation of social capacity to the tools of physical planning and design most likely to be utilized when faced with limited resources--in particular: adaptive reuse of community icons, consolidation of redundant programs, multi-purpose physical infrastructure--a community can meet the challenge of shrinking gracefully. / Jeffrey Neil Fugate. / S.M. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-181). / by John D. Evans. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1986. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Bibliography: leaves 103-105. / by James O. Hexter. / M.C.P.