Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014. / Page 62 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 60-61). / Power Centrality, a measure of node importance within a network, is borrowed from the field of Social Network Analysis and applied to the assessment of Urban Hierarchy. Based on the overlaps of human activity between places, Power Centrality is tried as a method for measuring a particular feedback property: How well connected are places to other well connected places. In this research Power Centrality is used to assess a recent model of Urban Structure: The Splintering Urbanism Theory of Graham and Marvin (2001). This theory posits that the contemporary city is a fragmented agglomeration of isolated urban pieces, where distant but valuable fragments are highly connected between them, bypassing their less valuable surroundings. The causal explanation provided by Graham and Marvin is centered on their concept of premium networks: Networks customized for valuable (users in terms of income or power). The reach of this theory is assessed by studying the case of a mass transit system in a developing country: The Metro or subway of Santiago de Chile. The spatial hypothesis of Graham and Marvin is tested empirically through the use of the Power Centrality Measure, applied to a dataset of 242.000 twitter statuses generated by Metro users, while the causal explanation is evaluated by comparing the results with an unbiased sample of 110,000 statuses. Power Centrality allowed the identification of central locations that by standard measures of spatial concentration would have remained undetected. Furthermore, the results evidenced how Metro could be acting as a mass public bypass that connects these emergent centralities, challenging the concept of premium networks posited by Graham and Marvin. / by Francisco J. Humeres M. / M.C.P.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation investigates practices of participatory infrastructure monitoring and their implications for the governance of urban infrastructure services. By introducing the concept of infrastructure legibility, the three essays of this dissertation investigate ways to make waste systems and their governance more legible: its formal structure, its informal practices, interactions between the user and the provider, the individual and the system. The first essay presents an analysis of the collection and transportation of Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling based on the electronic tracking of individual garbage items. It estimates the extent to which transportation diminishes the benefits of recycling and investigates how predictable the final fate of a discarded object is depending on its material characteristics and the place where it was thrown away. The findings show that the impact of transportation is under-estimated especially in the case of electronic and household hazardous waste. Furthermore, the collection mechanism assumes a decisive role in this respect. The essay concludes with discussing potentials and limits of active location sensing for making waste systems more legible and accountable. The second essay investigates data collection methodologies for recycling cooperatives in Brazil, answering the following questions: how do waste picker cooperatives and associations respond to data reporting requirements from local governments and companies? In addition, how can available location-based technologies support data management and organization of these recycling cooperatives and associations? Based on the methodology of Participatory Design, the study evaluates technologies for data reporting and the organization of waste picker cooperatives. Using data from citizen feedback systems operating in the larger Boston area, the third essay investigates the role of design in shaping the interaction between the citizens and the city. It investigates the following questions: Which assumptions about the users are embedded in design of existing feedback systems? What motivates users to participate, and how do the systems' design choices correspond with these motivations? By what mechanisms do these systems facilitate and constrain the interaction between citizen and city? The results show that the design differences of feedback systems are associated with different subjects and stated motivations in citizen reports. / by Dietmar Offenhuber. / Ph. D.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2015. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 148-152). / Design is both a mode of communication and a collaborative process. It is a powerful tool with which to convey ideas about the built environment and unlock creativity. Yet urban planning has not harnessed design's potential to engage communities in participatory processes. Urban design has been guarded as an exclusive realm for experts rather than a shared process that utilizes the knowledge of both professionals and community members. Urban planning has long struggled to successfully involve the public in its processes, and this thesis argues that participatory design is the key to meaningful community engagement in planning. Participatory design is particularly important when planning in marginalized communities. It provides participants with a sense of ownership over their communities and exposes the manifestation of oppression in the built environment. Using Paolo Freire's idea of "consciencizacion," this thesis tests participatory design's ability to allow both designers and community members to gain critical consciousness and work towards social change together. The research for this project focuses on marginalized unincorporated communities that have been systematically excluded from city annexation practices because of their racial and socioeconomic makeup. These communities have been left under the jurisdiction of counties, lacking infrastructure, adequate emergency services, public open spaces, and sufficient political representation. This thesis also explores the impact of participatory design processes on teenagers in unincorporated communities who often bear the brunt of their communities' oppression, and are rarely consulted in planning decisions. My research concentrates on a participatory design process I conducted with high school students in a predominantly Latino unincorporated community outside of Santa Rosa, California. This community suffered a tragedy in 2013, when a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed by a Sonoma County Sheriff in a vacant lot along Moorland Avenue. The incident spurred community protests and organizing for change, and led to my involvement with the neighborhood. My work with the Santa Rosa teenagers revealed the importance of design in participatory processes. The physical act of designing unlocked students' creativity, built their capacity to think spatially and feasibly, and showed them the power of young people's voices in creating neighborhood change. / by Lillian Ring Jacobson. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Osafran O. Okundaye. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2018. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 94-100). / There is increased interest in flood resilience around U.S. cities, especially following devastating flooding from recent intense storms. These events have demonstrated challenges associated with both riverine and coastal flooding, involving surface drainage and storm surge. Climate change is anticipated to exacerbate these types of events due to observed and projected sea level rise and increased frequency and intensity of precipitation events. With that context, flood resilience projects are often categorized as either following an engineering approach with hardened, 'gray' infrastructure like berms that seek to keep water out, thus blocking floods, or an ecological approach with soft, 'green' infrastructure around natural systems, like wetlands, that allow water in, absorbing floods and buffering adjacent communities. However, terms such as these, as well resilience itself, often have varying and overlapping definitions in different disciplines. Further, while engineering approaches and ecological approaches may seem at odds with one another, with associated tradeoffs, in reality, projects often integrate elements of both approaches, especially in urban settings. This paper reviews these approaches by comparing case studies around three U.S. urban rivers and understanding the ways ecological and engineering approaches have been integrated into flood resilience projects. Because of the differences between ecological and engineering approaches, this paper first presents a review and comparison of the existing literature on flood resilience and ecological and engineering approaches, along with associated terminologies, utilizing that literature to understand the approaches presented in the case studies. Further, this paper incorporates commentary from existing practitioners involved in these topics and cases to analyze and understand their perspectives. In particular, the paper's focus is on approaches and processes, as project elements most relevant to planners, arguing that the key lessons learned and common features from these projects are the integration of ecological and engineering approaches, collaboration across disciplines, the importance of political and social contexts, the role of non-governmental actors, implementation challenges and strategies, opportunities and limitations presented by reacting to flooding disasters, and sources of funding. Such key common features and lessons learned particularly highlight the critical role of planners in these types of projects. / by Nicholas E. Cohen. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72). / This thesis explores the barriers to participation in the 1199 Home Care Industry Bill Michelson Education Fund (Home Care Education Fund). The Home Care Education Fund is structured as a Taft-Hartley, joint labor-management training fund to provide skills upgrading opportunities to unionized home care workers. It is the only such fun in the United States devoted exclusively to home care workers. Home care is a growing sector of the health care industry, and home attendants and home health aides are projected to be among the fastest-growing occupations in the following decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Home care workers are also some of the most economically disadvantaged workers in the health care sector, earning poverty-level wages and, with the exception of 1199/SEIU members, lacking health insurance and pension benefits. Three sets of stakeholder groups were interviewed for this thesis: home care workers, who participated in a series of focus group meetings and personal interviews; home care agency employers; and Home Care Education Fund and ETJSP staff members. A written survey instrument was implemented to home care agency employers regarding their staffing levels and training benefits to supplement personal interviews. Each group articulated a coherent set of barriers facing home care workers, with unique challenges facing the agency employers and Education Fund staff in meeting the workers' needs. It is argued that shared interests bind these groups together and that a considerable overlap exists between the provision of quality medical care, welfare and job training policies. Further, there is an urgent need to support a frontline, marginalized workforce that is caring for thousands of disabled and elderly clients on a daily basis. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to identify those key barriers that prevent participation in the Home Care Education Fund so that staff and trustees may work together to tailor their services to meet their unique needs. It concludes with supporting recommendations for workforce development policy. / by Hilary Sharpless Chapman. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101). / This research aims to examine the impacts of transfers since transfer activities have significant implications not only for the daily operation of a transit system, but also the integration and coordination between transit lines. Transfers affect transit system performance in at least two respects. On the one hand, the use of transfers in the design of transit services provides more options for the transit operator in terms of area coverage, resource allocation, and flexibility. These factors result in better overall service. On the other hand, transit users do not seek to make transfers on their trips unless there is no alternative or the transfer offers a compelling performance advantage for a given trip. Exploring this trade off associated with transfers helps in understanding passenger dissatisfaction with the transfer, or the transfer penalty. A trade off between making a transfer and extra walking time is explored using a binary logit choice model to review the existence of the transfer penalty, the components inside the penalty, the effects of the urban environment outside the transit system, and the variation of the penalty across trip and personal characteristics. The MBTA subway system in Downtown Boston is used for the analysis, and GIS techniques are used extensively for data processing and results display. The study shows that there is indeed a perceived transfer penalty among MBTA subway riders. Transfer walking time, transfer waiting time, the change of level, and the existence of concession capture the majority of the penalty. The remaining part is explained by the general condition of the subway transfer station, and the in-vehicle travel time spent on making a transfer. The study also shows there is a variation of the transfer penalty across different transfer stations. The urban environment in Downtown Boston as explained by measures, such as sidewalk width, land use, open space, and topology, also has a significant impact on the transfer penalty. In particular pedestrian friendly Downtown area encourage riders to leave the subway system early and walk further. The penalty is found to be largely independent on the trip and demographic characteristics though this finding may be affected by the population being limited to those who already choose the subway system to reach their final destinations in Downtown Boston. / by Zhan Guo. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-105). / by Paul M. Lambert. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. "September 2013." / Includes bibliographical references (pages 36-38). / In the past decade humanitarian crises have been occurring with increasing frequency. As of 2013 the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) is involved in 27 countries, monitoring the response to natural disasters or violent conflict (Where we work n.d.). Over the same period the internet has seen a deluge of new, interactive website and tools. Social media sites that allow users to share their own content with a digital community have led to an explosion of user-generated content online. Meanwhile, internet-based mapping tools, such as Google Maps, make it easy for almost anyone to make maps online. These developments converge in the form of a recent trend: volunteer crisis mapping. Since 2008 individuals have started making maps and collecting spatial data related to humanitarian crises -both violent conflicts and natural disasters. While the role of social media and web-mapping in humanitarian responses has been praised for creating a participatory space in humanitarian responses, the people volunteering to do the crisis mapping remain largely unexplored. Drawing from the neogeography literature which explores the impact amateur mappers in general, this paper seeks to define who the volunteer crisis mappers are, and how they are forming institutional connections to the 'formal' humanitarian sector. / by Elizabeth Resor. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 281-295). / by Peggy J. Levitt. / Ph.D.