For most of the 20th century transportation planning goals were almost entirely mobility-based; transportation systems were primarily seen as a means to efficiently, safely, and quickly connect people and freight to desired destinations. However, as the century progressed, cultural, societal and ecological movements had major impacts on how planners perceive transportation networks and public transit more specifically. Several overlapping concerns have altered the role that planners and policy-makers see for transportation and land use planning. Environmental degradation, air pollution, traffic congestion, an unsure energy future, and global climate change, for example, have drastically redefined priorities for planners and policy-makers. These concerns have led to an increasing interest in public transit and active transportation—walking and cycling—as potential solutions to many environmental problems. Concurrent to these shifts, concerns of social equity and environmental justice have also entered the transportation planning framework. However, while transportation planning goals have shifted in recent decades to encompass social justice and environmental goals, many of these aims do not have clear indicators or accepted ways of measuring progress. In addition, while these diverse values and ideals do often underlie policy, they can have contradictory influence on transportation planning decisions. Transportation benefits include, what might be termed "tangible" or easily measured outcomes, however, many goals that address issues of social equity have "intangible" outcomes. Not only are the former easier to measure and to present to the public, but they often have more political capital than more socially progressive goals. While a rich body of research has explored these issues, most current planning documents do not make explicit that these conflicts of value exist. The concern from an equity planning standpoint is that very real and important environmental concerns will lead away from the other important roles that transportation systems can play in providing equitable outcomes. In light of these concerns, this dissertation sets out to address four research questions: •How do municipalities and transit agencies balance economic, social, and environmental goals and objectives in transportation plans? •How do these decisions affect outcomes, particularly with regards to social equity? •How can current methods of measuring and understanding active transportation and neighbourhood walkability be improved to better capture these wide ranging objectives? •How can these findings be used to improve decision-making in the future?This dissertation highlights the importance of adopting a multi-dimensional and mixed methods approach to examining complex urban issues and processes, and contributes to knowledge in three ways:•Identifies a set of indicators that capture elements of social equity in transportation planning and decision-making;•Develops methodologies to measure outcomes of transportation infrastructure using accessibility measures that focus on the desired destinations of residents; and•Deepens the understanding of how people and households of different socio-economic status “respond” to measures of local and regional accessibility. While most—if not all—studies do "control for" socio-economic factors, my work makes these factors the primary focus.In doing so, this research brings awareness of important transportation-related social equity goals and increases the role that these goals may play in decision-making processes. / La planification des transports au 20e siècle a été principalement fondée sur l'objectif de la mobilité : les systèmes de transport ont été vus avant tout comme un moyen sécuritaire, rapide et efficace de mettre en réseau des personnes et de transporter des marchandises. Cependant, au fil du siècle, les mouvements culturels, sociétaux et écologiques ont peu à peu changé la façon dont les planificateurs perçoivent le transport en général et le transport en commun spécifiquement. Plusieurs préoccupations se chevauchant ont profondément modifié le rôle que les urbanistes et les élus attribuent au transport et à l'aménagement du territoire. La dégradation de l'environnement, la pollution atmosphérique, la congestion routière, l'avenir énergétique, et les changements climatiques, ont radicalement redéfini les priorités du transport. Ces préoccupations ont conduit à un intérêt croissant pour le transport en commun et pour le transport actif, la marche et le vélo, apparaissant de plus en plus comme des solutions potentielles aux problèmes environnementaux.Cependant, en dehors de ces préoccupations environnementales, des questions importantes se posent en matière de redistribution et de justice sociale. Les nouvelles infrastructures de transport offrent des avantages évidents tels que l'accès facilité a une destination voulue, la stimulation du développement économique ou la réduction des temps de déplacement. En outre, bien que diverses valeurs et idéaux sous-tendent une politique, ceux-ci peuvent influencer de manière contradictoire les décisions prises en matière de planification des . Cependant, de nombreux objectifs ayant trait aux questions d'équité sociale sont «intangibles» en matière de résultats quantifiables. Cela les rend difficiles à présenter à la population, ce qui conduit à des décisions aux gains potentiels plus grands en terme de capital politique que ne le sont des objectifs de progrès social difficilement mesurables.À la lumière de ces préoccupations, cette thèse vise à répondre à quatre questions de recherche: •Comment les municipalités et les organismes de planification du transport équilibrent le traitement des objectifs économiques, sociaux et environnementaux dans les plans de transport?•Comment ces décisions influencent les résultats, en particulier en ce qui concerne l'équité sociale?•Comment les méthodes de mesure actuelles, la compréhension du transport actif et le potentiel piétonnier d'un quartier peuvent être améliorés afin de mieux en saisir les des objectifs généraux?•Comment ces résultats seront utilisés à l'avenir pour améliorer la prise de décision? Cette thèse met en évidence l'importance d'adopter des méthodes multidimensionnelles et des approches mixtes lors de l'examen des questions complexes et des processus urbains ; elle contribue à l'enrichissement de la connaissance de trois façons:•Par l'identification d'un ensemble d'indicateurs qui rendent compte des facteurs d'équité sociale dans la planification des transports et dans la prise de décision;•Par l'élaboration des méthodes permettant d'évaluer une infrastructure de transport en utilisant des mesures d'accessibilité qui se concentrent sur les destinations souhaitées par les résidents;•Par une meilleure compréhension de la façon dont les gens et les ménages de différentes catégories socio-économiques «répondent» à des paramètres d'accessibilité locale et régionale. Alors que la plupart, sinon toutes les études ne font qu'utiliser les facteurs socio-économiques, mon travail se concentre directement sur ces facteurs, avec pour objectif principal de les mettre au premier plan.Ce faisant, cette recherche participe à une prise de conscience de l'importance des objectifs d'équité sociale reliés au transport et souligne le rôle que ces objectifs peuvent jouer dans les processus décisionnels.

While Havana's status as the 'Pearl of the Caribbean' dissipated in 1959, Cuba and its capital survived the subsequent 30 years as a relatively prosperous Caribbean nation under communist control. Soviet communism's dissolution in 1989 left Cuba's international and economic support structure in tatters. Extreme rationing returned, imports and exports fell, and life as usual came to a grinding halt. To save its economy and future, Cuba turned back its clock to a former source of international attention: tourism. But what form can tourism take in this remaining communist stronghold? How can Havana embrace a new economic engine without decimating its most enticing features and avoid turning itself into a Caribbean tourist ghetto? As the fragility of Castro's hold on the island becomes ever more apparent, how will the changing power structure of Cuba's government affect relations on the world stage? When greenbacks enter red cities, what happens next?

Ambitious road building projects are underway all over the world. Despite critiques of car infrastructure and its effects on urban morphology, the environment, rising gas prices, etc., these projects have already begun and are unstoppable. Expected to finish within the next twelve years and integrate with existing road networks, these projects will make the ability to drive around the world real. This world infrastructure will undoubtedly spawn scenarios of cultures, subcultures, and road appropriations that can not be predicted but can be projected---making clear the necessity for reconceptualizing road accommodation for both leisure and non leisure occupations. This design thesis proposes a road accommodation strategy using the gesture of highway exit and deceleration to create auto campsite infrastructures that will work to connect the global roadtrip experience directly into global/local landscapes.

'66°N' is the design for a large-scale ecotourism hotel that takes advantage of dynamic and shifting environmental conditions of Greenland to visually and physically register the changes in the fragile arctic environment. Located on the Western coast of Greenland near one of the largest potential sources of direct sea-level rise, the Ilulissat Ice-Fjord, the design explores the intersection of two global trends: the effects of global climate change and the increase in popularity of ecotourism in the arctic. The techniques of building in an extreme and remote environment to provide infrastructure for ecotourist activities result in a permanent structure that is subjected to the continuously shifting site conditions of water and landscape. The relationship between rigid and responsive forms is used as an architectural register to these conditions that change the patterns and use of the hotel over time.

A lack of non-commodified public space in Galveston was revealed through a series of analysis. The current state of a town that is undergoing a transformation from an agro-industrial economy to a tourist based economy is fertile ground for urban hypotheses. Responding to this need, a site was identified: a fringe area of downtown Galveston, left vacant because of the demise of the agro-industrial economy. Seeing potential for this site to perform as a public landscape for Galveston I use a process of abstraction to develop an architectural transformation strategy. The abstract nature of the proposed design is rooted in a very real comparison to the existing condition of the city tissue.

The effects of localization and urbanization economies, and firm specific factors on local industrial growth were tested for the electronic components industry (SIC 367) in Texas for the 6-year period, 1988 to 1994. The data source is the Texas Manufacturer's Register. Growth is observed on the plant level, the economic environment is the city a plant is located in. For plants that remain in the sample, firm specific variables are most important; younger smaller plants grow faster. Localization and urbanization economies are found to be out important. Localization effects vary in sign for effects of the four and three digit industry. Evidence that lower average firm size enhances local competition and growth could not be found. Urbanization effects are positive but a distinction between density and population effects was not possible.

In a privatized city, open land is wasted land. Houston suffers from a lack of public open space. What it does have is a glut of wasted space. I propose to restore Houston's blighted, abandoned, and underutilized sites to productive, public use as cultural parks. Bayous, railroads, pipelines, and electric lines string/stitch everything together. Brownfields and other abandoned industrial sites, along with parks, are points/mats along these lines. This is the network; the parks stitch and bulge, like a snake that swallowed an egg.

In architecture, a theoretical concept can be either applied to a project or derived from it. In my case, I choose to use the video-construction as the concept, which will be applied to an architectural proposition. Such a distinction cannot be made so clearly when, for example, an architectural intuition is supported by a certain aspect of film and painting theory, and in the process of the development of a project is transformed into a general concept for architecture. Without in anyway trying to fuse the intuitive process of the video-construction with the certainties of scientific thought the documentation attempts to point out the essential direction of an unfinished experimentation. This is an experimentation into the methodology of urban design involving the temporal aspect of the urban environment under the condition of the radical spatial and social changes. In the process of the semester long research, a working method is made gradually clear by constructing together the space, event, and movement, thus explore the strong links between memory and the city, its buildings and its people.

The metropolis is governed by a certain internal logic, an ' operating system' that we are often blind; initiated at the command line and materialized through mass mobility. The code for this operating system is realized through both very specific and more esoteric social rules and practices, conventions (local code restrictions, signs and semantics) which encode our motive environment, directing our movement, allowing or more often determining our personal inertia. This operating system has more to do with timing and the interactivity of planned coincidences than with built form. While speculative, this thesis preemptively explores a potential amendment to the jurisdictional constraints between architects and developers, planners and policymakers; seeking a collaborative and comprehensive approach to reconditioning the metropolis by up-cycling our highways for alternate occupation, multiplicity and intermodality. This thesis is both a speculation into one area of the metropolitan 'operating system'---it functions as a precursor to a larger manifesto, an initial attempt to decipher, decode and recode the metropolis. Mobilization of the multi-tasking machine.

One of the most visionary landscape projects ever realized, the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 449-mile linear unit of the National Park Service, roughly follows and memorializes the old Natchez Trace, an historic Indian trail and then colonial settlement and trading route running from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. Intimately coupled with the varying contours of the land, the parkway offers a driving experience phenomenologically subtle and complex in addition to its clear historic significance. Despite its importance, this unique piece of terrestrial infrastructure is under constant pressure to normalize it which would, of course, ruin it. In response, the project becomes a series of nine rest areas/'stopping-points' each composed of two, small prototype buildings (repeated nine times in nine different configurations). As quantifiable anchors, these stops combine as an attempt to hold a large and slippery landscape, to make it even more uncommon and easily appreciated and thus to aid in its resistance to those who would undermine it.