Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason Brody / The use of partnerships between the public and private realm have become increasingly popular. This is due to today’s challenges of declining public resources to fulfill the social and physical needs of urban environments. This dilemma has placed a heightened emphasis on executing creative and collaborative redevelopment projects. Downtown Kansas City has an opportunity for such a project. Washington Square Park in downtown Kansas City, Missouri has a unique opportunity to stand as a catalyst project that would reconnect the urban fabric of the city, increase the population within downtown, and create an unsurpassed gateway into the greater downtown area. The public realm alone cannot accomplish this undertaking. Therefore, implementing the redevelopment of the park through public private partnerships is a natural choice. This study explores the intricacies of implementing the proposed Washington Square Park redevelopment project through the use of public private partnerships. It draws from a body of literature and precedents to provide background material, context and principles that are applied to the Washington Square Park project. The study employs site, market, and stakeholder analyses to assess the current economic environment, property ownership, power relationships and influences relating to the redevelopment project. These methods determined that as the value of Washington Square Park increases so will adjacent property; existing economic incentives are critical for project implementation; multi-family and retail real estate markets are strong while office trends are improving; current zoning allows for very high density with no height limitations; and several “key players” hold the attributes for establishing a conservancy for Washington Square Park. These findings reveal the symbiotic relationships between Washington Square Park and the surrounding context which provides the rational basis for project implementation through public private partnerships. Overall, this document informs the various stakeholders and decision-makers of pertinent information pertaining to the Washington Square Park redevelopment project and propositions a scenario for project implementation through the use of public private partnerships.

This study attempts to find a correlation between commuting modes in Washington DC and characteristics of the city and the people that they serve. It investigates why some census tracts have experienced increases in the commuting share of alternative transportation, such as public transit, walking, and bicycling, while others haven't. Findings demonstrate that demographic variables such as percent Hispanic and foreign born were the strongest predictors of change in commute mode share followed by distance to train station. Land use variables demonstrated weak correlations with variations in mode share due most likely to a lack of density gradient within the study area. The creation of variables to determine land use mix by census tract posed technical challenges as well. Recommendations include policy addressing rising demand for more diverse transportation systems be implemented and further research be conducted on creating more accurate land use variables to include in the model.

Plowing by Moonlight is a creative nonfiction exploration of the relationship between the people of Bainbridge Island, Washington, and the food they grow, eat, and share.

"Beyond the Veil of the Secret City: New Negro Representation in Washington, D.C., 1919-1935" examines Black Washingtonians' multiple, and often competing, articulations of the New Negro. In addition to addressing the New Negro as a cultural trope that reinforces ideas about black progress, my dissertation also analyzes the term's material manifestation in the nation's capital. My dissertation builds on recent New Negro era scholarship including Chicago's New Negroes (2007) by Davarian Baldwin and Prove It On Me (2012) by Erin Chapman. These studies have conceptually decentered Harlem as the primary site in which New Negro identity flourished. These studies have also foregrounded the significance of black consumerism and leisure to New Negro identity. My study situates Washington, D.C. within this discussion by demonstrating how Black Washington used New Negro ideology as a warrant for social policing, an impetus for remaking literary and theatrical representation; and an economic activist ideology. Utilizing a rich assemblage of archival sources, I examine Black Washington's negotiation of New Negro identity in a 1919 obscenity trial, Edward Christopher Williams' epistolary novel "Letters of Davy Carr" (now published as When Washington Was in Vogue), Georgia Douglas Johnson's play William and Ellen Craft (1935), and the New Negro Alliance's newspaper New Negro Opinion. "Beyond the Veil of the Secret City" ultimately presents the New Negro was more than a literary trope used to combat racist representations. It was the ideological imperative animating Black Washington's ongoing struggle to realize racial progress in the public sphere.

In 2014, Colorado and Washington legalized the cultivation, sale, and consumption of recreational marijuana for anyone over the age of 21. In doing so, the two states presented the first opportunities for marijuana-specific tourism in the United States. Direct benefits of legalization to these first movers, namely tax revenues generated through the sale of marijuana, have been quantified, but the indirect benefits in the tourism sector are as of yet unquantified. Although there is a large body of informal literature and popular media on marijuana tourism, academic study of the subject is scant. Working with a panel composed of 47 of the contiguous United States over the years 2005-2016, this study utilizes a synthetic control methodology to construct hypothetical time series for various tourism indicators for the cases of non-legalization in Colorado and Washington. Comparison of these hypothetical time series to the actual time series reveals the effects of legalization. A similar methodology is applied to all states to find the “placebo effects” and to establish significance. In traveler expenditures, traveler-generated taxes, tourism industry employment, and tourism industry payroll, Washington shows effects of legalization of greater magnitude and significance than those in Colorado. Only 8% of other states show an effect on tourism revenues as large as that of Washington. Additionally this study finds that each state can be approximated with a weighted average of a small group of peers and that weather, price, and an interacted migration and political orientation variable have low predictive power on tourism indicators. Lastly, this study suggests possible causes and policy implications of the discrepancy between the states.

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the market potential for a proposed micro-malt house in eastern Washington State through the development of a business plan. This plan looks at the history of the malted products industry, specifically barley. The industry is examined from a world, or macro view, down to a local (Tri-cities, WA) or micro view. The plan explains why there is currently a shift away from mass produced malted products in favor of a locally sourced malted cereal grain and how this shift can be capitalized on my aspiring maltsters and business owners. This plan includes all of the elements traditionally found in a modern business plan including startup costs, web plan summary, proposed product line, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of competitors and of the proposed business, management and ownership summaries, exit strategy, and perhaps most importantly, a full 5 year pro forma financial analysis. The researcher chose Tri-cities Washington (Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick) based on an existing relationship with a farmer local to that area. The farmer approached the researcher in the fall of 2013 and asked to partner in the research and development of the business plan. Should the business plan prove viable, it may be implemented to create the proposed micro-malt house as early as the spring of 2015.

Widely differing theoretical expectations exist concerning the economic performance of labor-managed firms or producer cooperatives (PCs). While a good number of theoretical studies of these firms by economists have been undertaken, there remain considerable gaps in the empirical record. This is especially true in the case of American PCs. In general, theoretical controversies have not been tempered by enough empirical analysis. While some expect good performance from PCs, others are much less sanguine. This study compares the economic performance of a group of eight worker-owned producer co-op plants with that of eight conventional mills in the Pacific Northwest softwood plywood industry. The purpose is to test the validity of several propositions that are typically maintained in the analysis of PCs suggesting that this type of organization basically lacks the incentive to utilize labor inputs efficiently, and is therefore less productive when compared to conventionally organized producing units. Using secondary data, pooled time-series cross-section equations are estimated. Results indicate that growth in annual output per employee per year is 18 percent greater in the co-ops than in their conventional counterparts. The study provides strong evidence that the two groups of plants differ significantly in their behavior. The major conclusion that emerges is that worker-owned co-ops are a viable and productive form of economic organization that utilize labor inputs efficiently and in doing so can achieve higher worker productivity than their conventional counterparts. In a public policy context, government support of employee ownership and establishment of worker-owned co-ops is viewed as a viable policy option to plant closings.

The heavy precipitation event of November 3-8, 2006 dropped over 60 cm of rain onto the bare southern slopes of Mount St. Helens and generated debris flows in eight of the sixteen drainages outside the 1980 debris avalanche zone. Debris flows occurred on the upper catchments of the Muddy River, Shoestring Glacier, Pine Creek, June Lake, Butte Camp Dome, Blue Lake, Sheep Creek, and South Fork Toutle River. Debris flows were clustered on the west and south-east sides of the mountain. Of the eight debris flows, three were initiated by landslides, while five were initiated by headward or channel erosion. Six debris flows were initiated in deposits mapped as Holocene volcaniclastic deposits, while two were in 1980 pyroclastics on andesite flows. The largest (~975,000 m2) and longest (~8,900 m) debris flow was initiated by landslides in the upper South Fork Toutle River Drainage. The average debris flow initiation zone elevation was 1,750 m, with clusters around 1,700 m and 2,000 m elevation. The lower cluster is associated with basins that host modern or historic glaciers, while the upper is possibly associated with recent pyroclastic deposits. Upper drainages with debris flows averaged 41% slopes steeper than 33 degrees, while those without debris flows averaged 34%. The upper basins with debris flows averaged 6% snow and ice cover, 21% consolidated bedrock, and 74% unconsolidated deposits. Basins without debris flows averaged 3% snow and ice cover, 27% bedrock, and 67% unconsolidated deposits. Drainages with debris flows averaged an 89% loss of glacier area between 1998 and 2009, while those without debris flows lost 68%. Further comparing glacier coverage during that period found that only five of ten glaciers still existed in 2009. On average, the glaciers had reduced in area by 67%, decreased in length by 36%, and retreated by an average of 471 m during that period. Basin attributes were measured or calculated in order to construct a predictive debris flow model based on that of Pirot (2010) using multiple logistic regression. The most significant factors were the percentage of slopes steeper than 33 degrees, unconsolidated deposits in the upper basin, and average annual rainfall. These factors predicted the 2006 debris flows with an accuracy of 94% in a debris flow susceptibility map for Mount St. Helens.

Eighteen lakes around Mt. St. Helens (MSH) were sampled for zooplankton from September '92 until September '94. Samples were enumerated and identified to the species level in most cases. Standard deviation and t-tests were performed to determine the precision of enumeration methods and replication of duplicate tows. Palatability indexes based upon predator preferences were developed and coupled with length-frequency analyses as indicators of predation pressure. The weighted means of the summer samples were then subjected to cluster analysis in an attempt to categorize lakes with respect to zooplankton community structure. Lastly, the community compositions and abundances of MSH lakes were compared to those in lakes on Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood in an attempt to assess recovery of MSH lakes from the 1980 eruption. Results of analyses indicate the presence of three distinct groups of lakes: 1) A group of lakes with heavy predation resulting in simplified zooplankton communities dominated by Keratella, Ke/licottia, and sometimes cyclopoid species. Predation in these instances can be attributed to extremely high fish or Chaoborus abundance. 2) A second group of lakes characterized by great depth, high transparency, significant abundances of Diaptomus kenai, and moderate to light fish predation. These lakes support balanced zooplankton communities with substantial proportions of Daphnid and calanoid specimens attaining large size. Significant indications of size-specific niche differentiation among the cladocerans are notably absent from these first two groups. 3) A third group consists of lakes which appear to be more productive than the other two groups. This group has higher biovolumes of zooplankton in general, coexistence of several different sized cladoceran species, the highest diversity indices of all the lakes sampled, and moderate predation as indicated by length-frequency analysis. Two conclusions are drawn from the data. First, it appears that predation and primary productivity are both significant factors affecting the abundance and composition of MSH zooplankton communities. Additionally, these data document a significant overlap in zooplankton species in lakes near Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood, suggesting that the zooplankton communities in lakes around MSH have recovered from the effects of the 1980 eruption.

Degree awarded (2003): MA, Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, George Washington University / This thesis focuses on the issue of dissonance in the interpretation of atrocity at museums and other cultural heritage sites. The existing debates in the field are outlined in an extensive literature review encompassing general and specific references. The basic conceptual framework of the dark tourism phenomenon is elaborated through case studies in Washington D.C., illustrating the variety of interpretative dilemmas faced by museum directors and curators. The cases include the permanent exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Enola Gay exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. The identified controversies are analyzed, and recommendations for mitigating existing conflicts and suggestions for future research are offered. / Advisory Committee: Prof. Donald E. Hawkins (Chair)