Browsing by Subject "Urban and Regional Planning"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Comprehensive Green Infrastructure Planning: The Way Forward for Ecological and Environmental Justice
    (2012-05-30) Stewart, Paula
    Green infrastructure planning is an alternative concept that takes a long-term strategic and holistic approach to urban and regional development. It focuses on limiting sprawl, preserving or reclaiming natural areas of high environmental significance, and reconnecting fragmented landscapes. It includes highly dense, highly energy and resource efficient, racially and socially mixed built environments with urban agriculture as a necessary component. It balances the needs of humans and nature, economic interests, and ecosystem health while furthering environmental justice for all.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The CREATE Initiative Policy Toolkit: Sharing In the Benefits of a Greening City
    (2020) Swift, Kaleigh; Klein, Mira
    "What are ways that we can envision greening as a way to create a more equitable and just world?" The CREATE Initiative, an interdisciplinary group of scholars, community leaders, and engaged researchers funded by the University of Minnesota's Grand Challenges Research Initiative, works to tackle issues at the intersection of environment and equity. In this video, research associate Mira Klein and program coordinator Kaleigh Swift of the CREATE Initiative describe the scope and purpose of the initiative's policy toolkit. The toolkit aims to redesign existing anti-displacement policy tools to provide guidance for institutions and organizations working with communities of color and low-income communities who face displacement as a result of green gentrification, housing crisis, and historic inequities. Klein and Swift discuss the process of creating the toolkit, explain its goals and strategies, and share their hopes for its implementation: "There's a clear relationship between environmental justice types of work and housing work. If people are able to make that connection, that's really important." Listen to Humphrey School assistant professor Bonnie Keeler discuss the CREATE Initiative in more detail in this Civios podcast: https://hdl.handle.net/11299/218236
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Evaluating Urban Food Systems
    (2018) Boyer, Dana
    It is projected that about two thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. Making sure that cities can handle the influx of people means considering more than transportation, energy, and water systems."Looking at urban food systems becomes really important when you want to sustain a global population,” explains Dana Boyer, a researcher in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy area at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. "A perspective shift is necessary to think about food systems as we would a transportation system or a water system." As food demands continue to shape our cities, Boyer says it is important to take into account environmental and health impacts as well as issues of equity. Her research focuses on developing metrics and methods to measure the energy, greenhouse gas, water, and land resources that a city needs to support their food system. "When a city wants to work on their food supply the first question is—how much food does our city need and where is it coming from?"
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Happy Cities: The Role of Transportation
    (2017) Fan, Yingling
    Psychology research increasingly suggests that emotional well-being contributes to human development in significant ways. Happier people often are more productive and creative, have better family and social relationships, and in general are more successful. For urban planners, it is important to understand people’s daily emotional experiences as they move through cities, according to research by Yingling Fan, Associate Professor in the Regional Planning and Policy Area at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Are we creating neighborhoods and cities with emotional intelligence, capable of evoking positive emotions and reducing negative emotions?
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Policy and Planning Opportunities of Self-Driving Vehicles
    (2017-09) Douma, Frank
    The "future" of self-driving vehicles is quickly becoming reality. As these technologies make their way into the vehicles that get us from point A to point B, they are beginning to disrupt not only the way we think about transportation, but the way we relate to the built environment and organize the way we live. As planners and policymakers, we need to consider how to best take advantage of these changes: can we eliminate distracted driving, traffic congestion, and expensive parking? Will we be able to maintain an independent lifestyle later into life? Will we feel the need to own our own car? Can we adapt our land use to allow these changes to happen? Frank Douma, Director of the State and Local Policy Program at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, considers these questions.