Browsing by Subject "Urban planning"

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Age of Concrete: Housing and the Imagination in Mozambique's Capital, c. 1950 to Recent Times
(2015-05) Morton, David Simon
This thesis is about what historically has been one of the greatest preoccupations for residents of Maputo, Mozambique: the securing of a place to live. For most, this has meant the construction of a house in the flood-prone informal areas of the city, known as the subúrbios, and the maintenance of that house over successive generations. To consider where people have lived is to explore how they have lived, what they have cared about, and what they have worked for, and so ultimately this thesis is about how housing has long embodied not just the “making do” of urban living – the emphasis of much of the scholarship on African cities – but also some of people’s most keenly felt aspirations. The period studied embraces the colonial and postcolonial eras in roughly equal measure, beginning in the late 1940s when Maputo, now a metropolis of some two million, was a small port city called Lourenço Marques. Because Maputo was one of the relatively few cities in Africa where explosive growth took place for a full generation while still under colonial rule, the city’s built landscape offers a window onto the changing dynamics of everyday life at very different historical moments. My research rests on a rigorous project of oral history, with interviews with approximately 100 individuals in Mozambique and Portugal over several years. Addressed are how people responded in the past to the ever-looming threat of removal; how they negotiated with landowners; and how they contended with neighbors with whom they shared an all-too-elastic boundary line. I investigate the myriad unwritten rules that governed space, how such rules were enforced, and how disputes were resolved, or not resolved. The result is to demonstrate how, through the medium of housing, urban Mozambicans not only gave specific content to their visions of modernity, but also to authority, governance, and the state – conceptions that took on a new relevance in the years after independence from Portugal in 1975. As a new state struggled into being, and focused on rural issues, the nature of urban citizenship was being shaped considerably from below.
Alternatives to the Automobile: Transport for Livable Cities
(1990-01) Lowe, Marcia D.
The problems created by overreliance on the car are outweighing its benefits. A new, more rational approach to transportation is needed, one that puts the automobile in its rightful place as one among many options. Making drivers pay more of the true costs of automobile use would hasten the shift to public transportation, cycling and walking. In both industrial and developing countries, careful urban planning can help meet future transportation needs by minimizing the demand for travel. But creating sustainable transportation requires bold policy moves.
Assessing the reality—Transport and land use planning to achieve sustainability
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2012) Banister, David
This paper takes a historical perspective on how cities have become less sustainable in terms of transport, but it will argue that many positive changes have taken place even before the current concerns over CO2 and oil. There seem to be many more opportunities for further change through the encouragement of high-quality city-based lifestyles that do not require high levels of carbon-based mobility. But it is in the newly emerging “megacities” that the main problems occur, as there is a discontinuity between the slow growing, stable, and well-structured cities of the west and the rapidly growing, unstable, and unstructured cities of the east.
Book Review: Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Good, Max; Derrible, Sybil
The authors review the book Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser (Penguin Press, 2011).
Can Transit-Oriented Development Enhance Social Equity: Current State and Active Promotion of Equitable Transit-Oriented Development
(2018-07) Guthrie, Andrew
Promoting social equity is an important part of the purpose of public transit. However, social equity has historically played a much more minor role in transit-oriented development. High quality transit has been shown to increase station area property values and cause concerns about the displacement of low-income residents by high-income residents when the desirability of a neighborhood increases. In combination, these dynamics of transportation and real estate economics mean that transit-oriented development is often not a natural social equity promoter. This thesis examines equity implications of social and economic change in the areas surrounding newly implemented transit stations, as well as public sector efforts to promote equitable transit-oriented development. I employ a mixed-methods approach including quantitative and qualitative components. Building from the bid-rent and rent gap theories, I examine change in station area low-, medium- and high-wage working population and jobs as a function of transit mode and difference in accessibility in a national, longitudinal analysis. I also explore public efforts to promote equitable transit-oriented development in the context of Harvey’s concept of entrepreneurial urbanism though a series of in-depth interviews with senior program staff, taking an interpretivist approach focused on interviewees’ shared understandings of their work and current limitations to it. In the national, longitudinal analysis, I find significant in-migration of high-wage workers to station areas, but not of low- or medium-wage workers, significant gains of high-wage jobs and losses of low- and medium-wage jobs. In the interpretivist analysis, I find process of equitable transit-oriented development promotion to be sharply constrained by current urban governance structures and relationships to the private sector. I close by recommending a focus on both preservation and production of affordable housing and entry-level, living wage jobs in station areas, careful consideration of the appropriate roles of mixed-income and all-affordable development, as well as critical consideration of when the entrepreneurial model of urban governance is at least benign and when alternatives to it ought to be considered.
Children and youth transport in different urban morphological types
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2016) Sarjala, Satu; Broberg, Anna; Hynynen, Ari
As demonstrated in many earlier studies, the qualities of physical environment have great impacts on physical activity (PA) behavior. However, studying individual built-environment variables often produces contradictory effects between studies. To overcome this, we composed multivariate environment types using principal component analysis that takes notice of the inter-correlations between physical-environment variables. To get a realistic view of the places children and adolescents visit in their daily life, we used mapping methodology in which children themselves deﬁned their important places. Based on 16 built-environment variables, six built-environment types were composed around these places. We found that walking and cycling were most prominent in residential environments and least common in mixed-use business districts. Areas with big commercial buildings as well as green environments had the highest proportions of car use. Most places, in general, were visited with friends, but most typically areas with big commercial buildings and mixed-use business districts were reached in the company of friends. Relatively many places were visited alone in residential areas.
Constructing Tiananmen Square as a realm of memory: national salvation, revolutionary tradition, and political modernity in twentieth-century China.
(2011-04) Pan, Tsung-Yi
To study the history of Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) Square is to study the history of Chinese political modernity from the late nineteenth century to the present. While exploring the on-going process through which Tiananmen Square has been constructed as the symbolic center of twentieth-century China, this dissertation offers alternative theoretical discourses on the materiality and spatiality of Chinese modernity and the political uses of memory and history at the place. This dissertation is a study on how Tiananmen Square has been constructed as the symbolic center of national events in twentieth-century China from the perspective of the politics of historical memory. Applying insights from scholarship on the materiality and spatiality of memory, it analyzes the on-going process through which Tiananmen Square has been constructed as a memorial site to store, recall, and manipulate the past in the present and thus became the symbolic center of national events in China's evolving political modernity in the twentieth century. It argues that state-sponsored commemorative architecture and practices at Tiananmen Square after the founding of the PRC have materialized Chinese cultural memory of national salvation and revolutionary tradition. As a consequence, Tiananmen Square has constituted the material and spatial framework by which both state power and grassroots activists used to manipulate that cultural memory to justify their different political agendas of modernity.
Creating Bicycle Transportation Networks: A Guidebook
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 1996-07) Sykes, Robert D.; Driscoll, Trina Wicklatz
This guide presents a practical planning model for bicycle transportation in cities, suburbs and small towns. It focuses on the use of networks of specialized bicycle facilities and bicycle friendly zones to support and promote the use of bicycles for transportation. The potential of using bicycle roadway networks in relationship to land use is discussed in terms of using them to make a civic contribution to the form of the city beyond transportation function. A model classification system for bicycle facilities is presented that is similar to the "functional classification of streets" for motor vehicle roadways. Bicycle Expressways, Bicycle Boulevards and Bicycle Byways are introduced and discussed as specific types of bicycle roadways. Detailed planning parameters are recommended for assembling the different types of bicycle facilities into integrated systems to support bicycle use for utilitarian transportation. Planning guidelines for bicycle friendly zones are presented, along with a step-by-step process that describes how communities can plan for bicycle transportation. Planning and design considerations that are important to the success of a bicycle transportation system are also discussed. These considerations include the needs of cyclists, skill levels, personal safety issues, system legibility and traffic calming techniques. This guidebook is intended for use by professional planners, designers and engineers, neighborhood groups, bicycle advocates and community decision makers.
"Down in the Treme": media's spatial practices and the (re)birth of a neighborhood after Katrina
(2012-08) Morgan Parmett, Helen
In this project, I take the HBO series Treme (2010-present) as a case study for theorizing contemporary relationships between media, urban space, and raced and classed geographies. I argue that textual analyses of media's representations of city space and place, which comprise the bulk of contemporary scholarship on media and urban space especially as it relates to New Orleans and questions of race, are not sufficient in understanding the work of media in contemporary cities, and in post-Katrina New Orleans, in particular. Treme does not just represent race and place in New Orleans, it participates directly and materially in the rebuilding of the city and its marginalized neighborhoods by soliciting practices of community and neighborhood engagement, city branding, tourism, employment, and historic preservation. HBO also enjoins viewers to participate in the rebuilding and revitalization of the city by eliciting the spatial practices of viewers in the form of tourism, ethical consumption, and utilizing online interactivities to create emplaced material communities. Moreover, city and cultural policy, as well as HBO branding efforts, are aimed at fostering these kinds of interactions and spatial practices. Treme is therefore literally helping to drive, create, and intervene into the city that it represents, putting the spatial practices of media production and its viewers to work in ways that present solutions to racial, class, and spatial antagonisms made manifest in the Katrina event. This project therefore aims to contribute to media studies of city space by theorizing Treme as a spatial practice in the neighborhood. Treme provides a poignant case study that enjoins scholars to go beyond the text to consider the broader and more material aspects of HBO's original programming as well as in how media intervenes into particular city sites. It thus brings into focus the innovative ways in which both media and cities are increasingly articulating themselves to each other in the neoliberal city and provides some possible tools for media scholars to analyze those articulations. Theorizing media as a spatial practice, I consider how Treme participates materially in the production, governing, regulation, and organizing of urban and media space at the present conjuncture. I query how the series provides a vehicle for both cultural and economic revitalization and renewal in post-Katrina New Orleans, and I ask what this means for media scholarship on cities when the media industry takes up a role in the transformation of lived, material, and vernacular urban space?
Impact of land use on bicycle usage: A big data-based spatial approach to inform transport planning
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2020) Zhao, Yi; Lin, Qiaowen; Ke, Shangan; Yu, Yanghang
Bicycling is an alternative of urban transport mode, which is significantly influenced by land use. This paper makes an effort to quantify the magnitude and direction of the impact. We first develop a theoretical framework to establish links between land use and bicycle usage. Then, trip data is crawled from Mobike, one of the largest newly emerging, free-floating bike sharing operators in Shenzhen (China), for a total of more than 7.8 million records over 191 consecutive days. And bicycling frequency, travel duration, and riding distance are obtained to be proxies of bicycle usage. Land-use characteristics regarding bicycling are comprehensively indicated by a set of standardized variables including three dimensions, land-use type, land-use mix, land-use connections, and 12 concrete indices. Panel spatial model is applied to quantify the associations at the district level with socioeconomics controlled. Results show that the percentage of green land has a remarkable impact on bicycle usage outcomes and land-use mix is positively associated with bicycling frequency. Density of intersections contributes to longer trip duration. Bicycle lane is a positive facilitator on workdays, while the number of stations is positively related to bicycle usage, especially frequency and distance. These findings provide insight into land use-transport interaction and could be of value to policymakers, planers and practitioners for transport planning while incorporating bicycling-friendly principles.
Integrated land use and transportation modelling and planning: A South African journey
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2020) Waldeck, Louis; van Heerden, Quintin; Holloway, Jenny
Confronted by poverty, income disparities and mounting demands for basic services such as clean water, sanitation and health care, urban planners in developing countries like South Africa, face daunting challenges. This paper explores the role of Integrated land use and transportation modelling in metropolitan planning processes aimed at improving the spatial efficiency of urban form and ensuring that public sector investments in social and economic infrastructure contribute to economic growth and the reduction of persistent poverty and inequality. The value of such models is not in accurately predicting the future but in providing participants in the (often adversarial) planning process with a better understanding of cause and effect between different components of the urban system and in discovering common ground that could lead to compromise. This paper describes how an Urban Simulation Model was developed by adapting one of the leading microsimulation models (UrbanSim) originating from the developed world to South African conditions and how the requirements for microscopic data about the base year of a simulation were satisfied in a sparse data environment by introducing various typologies. A sample of results from three case studies in the cities of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay between 2013 and 2017 are then presented to illustrate how modelling supports the planning process by adding elements of rational analysis and hypothesis testing to the evaluation of proposed policies.
Integrating activity-based travel-demand models with land-use and other long-term lifestyle decisions
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Katoshevski-Cavari, Rachel; Glickman, Inbal; Ishaq, Robert; Shiftan, Yoram
This paper extends and integrates the general activity-based model framework to present the complex relationship between long-term individual decisions, such as residential location, and daily activity and travel-behavior decisions. More specifically, it demonstrates the use of an activity-based accessibility (ABA) measure as an important variable in residential zone choice, thus serving as the link between short-term activity and travel decisions and long-term residential choice decisions. We develop a partial activity-based model accounting for the interrelationship of the main activity type, travel destination and mode choice. The log-sum at the top of the hierarchy of this model is the ABA measure capturing the overall utility of all travel alternatives. The results show that this measure is a highly significant variable in the residential-choice model, clearly indicating the great influence of activity accessibility, short-term opportunities, and travel decisions on residential area choice. All other log-sums were also significant, showing the interrelationships of all choices. Specifically, the destination-choice log-sum in the main activity-choice model demonstrates that as accessibility increases, people are more likely to participate in out-of-home activities.
Iron Range Community Profile: Community Assessment - Things to Consider
(2007) St. Louis County Planning Department
This is essentially a checklist of questions suggested for discussion during the comprehensive land use planning process. Several of the questions relate to water resources, septic and sewage systems, wetlands, tourism, parks, trails and recreation.
Land-Use Annual Report 2005
(2005) St. Louis County Planning Department
This document summarizes actions taken by St. Louis County on a variety of land use issues in 2005. These include permits, variances, licenses, and Planning Commission decisions. The report observes an increase in shoreland actions and decisions relative to other activities for the year.
Land-Use Annual Report 2006
(2006) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2006. Of the total approved permits in 2006, 49% were lakeshore related and 51% were non-lakeshore. In 2006, there were 512 approved lakeshore permits. From 1997-2005, St. Louis County averaged 5 approved lakeshore permits per year in county administered areas. Lake Vermilion had the most permit activity in 2006 with 65 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 1997-2006 with 696 approved permits. Burntside Lake had the second most permit activity in 2006 with 26 approved permits, and from 1998-2006 Island Lake Reservoir had the second most permit activity with 376 approved permits. The remaining lake permit activity in 2006 was Whiteface Reservoir (22), Island Lake Reservoir (23), Tributaries (23), Fish Lake Flowage (9) Pelican (14) Bear Island (18), Ely (20) Kabetogama (6) and Birch (3).
Land-Use Annual Report 2007
(2007) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2007. Of the total approved permits in 2008, 57% were lakeshore-related and 43% were nonlakeshore. In 2008, there were 454 approved lakeshore permits. From 2006-2008, St. Louis County averaged 464 approved lakeshore permits per year in county administered areas. Lake Vermilion had the most permit activity in 2008 with 73 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 2006-2008 with 201 approved permits. Burntside Lake had the second most permit activity in 2008 with 26 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 2006-2008 with 78 approved permits. The remaining lake permit activity in 2008 was Island Lake Reservoir (25), Whiteface Reservoir (15), Ely (11), Pelican (9) Bear Island (5), Fish Lake Flowage (7), Kabetogama (6), Birch (5), Eagles Nest (14), White Iron (5), and Sturgeon (4).
Land-Use Annual Report 2008
(2008) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2008. This document summarizes actions taken by St. Louis County on a variety of land use issues since 2005. These include permits, variances, licenses, and Planning Commission decisions. “In comprehensive land use planning provisions must be made for the protection of the quality and quantity of groundwater used for public water supplies, and the plan must address surface water (i.e., drainage, flooding, and storm water run-off).” The document lists the number of water-related variances, permits and other actions granted in 2007. Of the total approved permits in 2006, 49% were lakeshore related and 51% were non-lakeshore. In 2006, there were 512 approved lakeshore permits. From 1997-2005, St. Louis County averaged 5 approved lakeshore permits per year in county administered areas.
Land-Use Annual Report 2009
(2009) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2009. Of the total approved permits in 2009, 51% were lakeshore-related and 49% were nonlakeshore. In 2009, there were 328 approved lakeshore permits. From 2007-2009, St. Louis County averaged 413 approved lakeshore permits per year in county administered areas. Lake Vermilion had the most permit activity in 2009 with 38 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 2007-2009 with 174 approved permits. Burntside Lake had the second most permit activity in 2009 with 12 approved permits, and the second most permit activity from 2007-2009 with 64 approved permits.
Land-Use Annual Report 2010
(2010) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2009. Of the total approved permits in 2009, 51% were lakeshore-related and 49% were nonlakeshore. In 2009, there were 328 approved lakeshore permits. From 2007-2009, St. Louis County averaged 413 approved lakeshore permits per year in county administered areas. Lake Vermilion had the most permit activity in 2009 with 38 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 2007-2009 with 174 approved permits. Burntside Lake had the second most permit activity in 2009 with 12 approved permits, and the second most permit activity from 2007-2009 with 64 approved permits.
Land-Use Annual Report 2011
(2011) St. Louis County Planning Department
This report summarizes planning and zoning actions carried out in St. Louis County in 2010. Of the total approved permits in 2010, 53% were shoreland-related and 47% were non-shoreland. In 2010, there were 339 approved shoreland permits. From 2008-2010, St. Louis County averaged 373 approved shoreland permits per year in county administered areas. Recreational Development lakes had the most permit activity in 2010 with 190 approved permits, and the most permit activity from 2008-2010 with 612 approved permits. General Development lakes had the second most permit activity in 2010 with 75 approved permits, and the second most permit activity from 2008-2010 with 262 approved permits. Natural Environment lakes had 41 approved permits in 2010 and a 2008-2010 total of 103 approved permits.

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