Theses (City and Regional Planning)
The Master of City Planning (MCP) is a two-year professional degree in which students have the option of completing either a group studio or an independent thesis as their capstone project. Those who choose the thesis path spend a year working on their scholarly project with the support of an individual thesis advisor and the instructors of the fall Urban Research Methods course and spring Planning Thesis Studio course. This collection includes the capstone theses. The City & Regional Planning Department began digitally archiving these theses in the 2020-21 academic year. Prior theses are available in hard copy by request from the departmental administrator.
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Publication To Whom Does Philadelphia Belong? Exploring and Defining "Institutional Investment" in Single Family Rentals in Philadelphia(2023-04-01) Underwood, Cade WarnerSince the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, single-family rentals have dramatically risen to prominence as a uniquely profitable asset class for institutional investors, especially in the United States. Made possible by a combination of three primary factors – the post-crisis inexpensive Real Estate Owned (REO) homes surplus, the decline in working-class wealth and ability to purchase homes, and the emergence of new property management technology – institutional investors are, for the first time, rapidly acquiring hundreds of thousands of single-family homes. The resulting single-family rental portfolios have also inspired novel investment profiteering strategies, which researchers increasingly argue profit at the direct expense of tenants and prospective owner-occupants. However, at the heart of these arguments, there exist critical unanswered questions around how “institutional investment” is defined and understood. As a result, public interpretations of important research frequently misunderstand its gravity. Journalists and policymakers tend to mitigate researchers’ claims, either arguing that “all home buyers are investors” or reducing all institutional investment to a handful of prominent players. This thesis seeks to empower existing and forthcoming research by clarifying how and why institutional investment should be understood, distinctly, in the modern day. The thesis first traces the historical development of institutional investors, then explores new methods for analyzing under-studied, smaller-scale institutional investment strategies. Most existing research has focused heavily on specific, large-scale investors and the cities where they generally operate. Instead, this research pilots methods to examine under-studied investor behavior in Philadelphia, the largest US city that has thus far received almost no research attention. The thesis then forwards the argument that, without a developed understanding of institutional investment, Philadelphia forfeits power over to whom its homes belong and who profits from those homes.Publication Data-Based Urban Heritage Policy Assessment: Evaluating Tel Aviv’s Preservation Plan(2021-05-01) Feiglin, IlilUrban heritage policies are rarely assessed on a regular or continuous basis. Formal indicator guidelines and scholarly work address some possible evaluation methods for urban heritage policies, but a gap exists between the generalized work and limited on-site implementation. Spatial and non-spatial datasets should contribute to our understanding and refinement of such policies. Yet, in practice, data and the proper assessment mechanisms are often lacking. This research presents Tel Aviv’s 2650b preservation plan as a case study to explore possible assessment methods of policy effectiveness. Tel Aviv is the second-largest city in Israel. In 2003 UNESCO declared the White City of Tel Aviv, the center-city area, a World Heritage Site (WHS). UNESCO based the designation on an outstanding synthesis of the Modern architecture movement and an outstanding example of new town planning of the 20th century. Municipal plan 2650b was enacted in 2008 and is linked to the WHS, protecting modern architecture and mainly focusing on the center-city area. The Plan classifies properties into two preservation levels and three architectural styles. The city’s online building archive facilitates analysis and evaluation of plan 2650b. The Plan has been in place for over a decade, during which no data-driven comprehensive evaluation or monitoring processes occurred. Relying upon Kitchin’s definition of effectiveness, in the context of urban indicators, as “whether goals and objectives are being met – doing the right things,” this research asks: what factors correlate with the effectiveness of Tel Aviv’s preservation plan? Three sub-questions lead the research: Are the Plan’s goals being met? Are they being met in the same way throughout the Plan area? And, how, if at all, are pre-existing characteristics of the properties addressed by the Plan? The study assesses the outlined goals and presents a roadmap for constructing indicators and spatial analysis for a specific policy. The study approach uses an author-created property-level database to assess proposed customized indicators and run spatial analysis. It finds that the prevalence of preservation varies across space, among architectural types, and between the two preservation-restriction levels. In particular, the Plan is relatively less effective at preserving Modernist buildings. These findings reveal the inconsistency of the Plan at protecting the Modernist architecture at the core of the global designation. The results stress the need for data collection, setting numeric objectives, monitoring plan outcomes, and potential future research to realign incentives with preservation goals.Publication Does COVID-19 Mark a New Era for Bike Share? A Study on Indego Bike Share Usage Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak(2021-05-01) Qiao, HanBike share usage patterns and its impact on people’s travel behavior have been widely studied in recent years. In the past, researchers have focused on understanding spatial and temporal patterns of bike share usage, differences of bike share usage among different demographic and socio-economic groups and factors influencing bike share ridership. However, since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, people have changed their lifestyles and travel needs significantly with the start of working from home, reducing recreational activities and avoiding taking public transit. Therefore, this research looks into the change of bike share usage before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, using Philadelphia Indego bike share as a study context. This study adopted a multilevel mixed-effect linear regression model that incorporates demographic, built environment, meteorological and temporal factors to compare the effects of these factors before and after the COVID-19 outbreak in determining bike share ridership. Three key results were found in this study: 1) trip purpose and spatial distribution have shifted from commuting to residential recreational trips, 2) bike share gained more popularity during warm weather, and 3) bike friendly infrastructure became more important than before in determining bike share ridership. Findings of this study are useful to bike share providers, urban planners, and local officials for understanding the differences in recreational biking and utilitarian biking and how bike share programs can better address the needs of residents during the pandemic and in a post-pandemic world.Publication “Citizens with a Special Training”: Henry Stern Churchill and Democratic Ideals in Planning and Urban Renewal(2022-05-01) Johnson, MaxwellThe story of American urban renewal is frequently reduced to a struggle between autocratic supporters of mass urban clearance and the admirable individuals and communities who resisted. Henry Stern Churchill (1893-1962), the focus of this thesis, was an early advocate and practitioner of urban renewal, who, by the end of his career, became a staunch critic of the practice. Churchill, therefore, upsets the dominant narrative of renewal, showing that it is not purely a story of good vs. evil, but rather one with dynamic figures who evolved over their careers. Churchill demonstrated a lifelong commitment to planning as a democratic practice. This manifested itself in numerous ways, from his work for the Roosevelt Administration’s Greenbelt Towns program to his housing reform advocacy with New York’s Housing Study Guild to, in the late 1950s, advising a community planning effort in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood. Throughout Churchill’s career, he was in close contact with important figures in planning. Henry Mayer, Albert Wright, and Churchill were founding members of the Housing Study Guild, and they served in the same Greenbelt project. In New York, Churchill engaged in a public dispute with Robert Moses, accusing the latter of racial prejudice in the pages of The New York Times. In Philadelphia, to which he moved in the early 1950s, Churchill was the chief planner for the Eastwick renewal project. Finally, he corresponded with Jane Jacobs, offering advice and support as she fought against urban renewal in the West Village. Churchill, despite his liberalism, had a perspective that was, at times, exclusionary. In his community planning, he considered the community’s interest to be that which was represented by the leaders of its institutions, such as private schools, giving no place to the common resident. Moreover, Churchill, in his renewal consulting, exhibited racial bias in the identification of sites that he thought should be cleared. Henry Stern Churchill embodies the complexity of planning past and present. As such, his story provides instruction and caution to a discipline in continual evolution.Publication University Expansion in the Post-World War II Era: A Case Study on the University of Virginia(2021-05-01) Ghazzawi, AdamThis thesis explores the University of Virginia’s (UVa) rapid enrollment growth and physical expansion between 1945 and 1980. Despite the university’s contentious and increasing presence in Charlottesville, this time period at UVa remains largely unstudied by scholars. Expanding upon existing research on universities in the postwar era, this study uses a range of quantitative, qualitative, and spatial methods to examine university intent and impacts on the surrounding community. UVa’s post-World War II expansion emerged from a period where university leadership sought to maintain the insularity of Jefferson’s academical village through the exploitation of Black labor. To grow the university and increase its national standing, Colgate Darden, Jr., UVa’s new president in 1947, pursued a series of calculated building investments that departed from prewar development patterns. As student enrollment increased at an unprecedented rate, UVa leadership became increasingly reliant on the private housing market, resulting in the studentification of the surrounding area. Community members became increasingly resentful of the university as it transformed Charlottesville’s built environment and encroached upon their neighborhoods. Although UVa largely grew its footprint within the confines of its existing land holdings, the university’s prioritization of prestige and the mixed socioeconomic outcomes that resulted is consistent with broader themes in the literature on postwar university expansion. This thesis lays the groundwork for future mixed-methods research and discussions of equity with regard to universities and anchor institutions more broadly.Publication Plights of a Pandemic: The Disconnect Between Migration, Policy, and Practice in Kuwait(2021-05-01) Jafar, NourLabor laws within the State of Kuwait are in need of reform. The country’s labor and residency policies create legal loopholes for exploitation, abuse, and human trafficking. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened living conditions for low-income migrant communities, exacerbating these and related problems. Lockdowns forced migrants to stay at home for long periods of time with no income, food shortages, constant threats of eviction from landlords, and higher infection rates. This research uses semi-structured interviews and policy analysis to trace how labor and residency policies within Kuwait impact migrant communities, particularly in the context of the pandemic. Interviews are conducted with experts from different governmental agencies, while policy examination highlights what discrepancies exist. What effects have policies and governance in Kuwait had on human rights relating to workforce development within migrant communities during the covid 19 pandemic? How does the kafala system function to provide basic social services to migrant workers? How do Kuwait’s policies influence the actions of labor brokers? How do labor policies function between the private and public sector? What social services has the government introduced to protect the migrant community during the pandemic? This paper identifies the flaws of labor policies that have allowed for visa trafficking and exploitation to occur, such as the lack of protection of private sector workers, as well as corruption leading to senior officials within different governmental entities engaging as visa traffickers.Publication Mapping Urban Infrastructure: Temporal Metropolitan Geographies of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations(2022-05-01) Massey, Sarah NicoleAcross the United States, planning for human services relies largely upon public-private partnerships with nonprofit organizations as the result of decades of federal retrenchment. The locational patterns of nonprofit human services organizations (NHSOs) have been studied in the nonprofit literature, but there is little scholarship on this topic in the realm of city planning. This research connects these two disciplines while answering two questions: 1) Where do NHSOs cluster over time within metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)? 2) Are NHSOs locating in response to community needs, resources, or conditions? In order to establish generalizable results across space and time, this study used a multi-site analysis of eight MSAs in 2010 and 2018: Austin, TX; Buffalo, NY; Cleveland, OH; Indianapolis, IN; Philadelphia, PA; Research Triangle, NC; Sacramento, CA; and Seattle, WA. Two quantitative methods explored these questions. First, a spatial analysis used density-based clustering to identify clusters of NHSOs throughout each MSA. Then linear regression modeling revealed relationships between the NHSO landscape and various socioeconomic and built environment variables. The results of this analysis demonstrated evidence of NHSO clustering that warrants further investigation. Furthermore, the evidence confirmed previous findings that NHSO patterns are more related to resources and community conditions than need. While this study contributes to a growing body of research in the nonprofit field, there are theoretical frameworks, practical tools, and policy solutions that should prompt city planners to take interest in this subject as well.Publication Evaluating Accessibility of Female Caregivers in Philadelphia from a Safety Perspective(2021-06-01) Boggan, CamilleTransportation networks in major U.S. cities are built and managed around a very narrow subset of transit riders: able-bodied, solo men traveling to and from a white-collar job in the city center. Despite the evidence of women as primary users of public transportation, the U.S. planning field has lagged in incorporating this knowledge into practice. This thesis attempts to address this gap in transportation accessibility planning by evaluating the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) public transportation network in Philadelphia in terms of personal safety. The study employs a geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to illustrate how safety metrics could be incorporated into accessibility measurements as a practical method of evaluating transit networks from a female-centered perspective.Publication How Does the Built Environment Influence Car and Motorcycle Ownership and Use in Metro Manila?(2022-05-01) Uy, WesleneMetro Manila is the Philippines’ political and economic capital. With 20 million inhabitants and a land area of only 550 sq. miles, it is Southeast Asia’s most densely populated megacity. In many ways, Metro Manila’s urban development mirrors the challenges faced by rapidly urbanizing cities: economic opportunities are disproportionately concentrated in the capital, rising land values in the urban core have pushed residents towards the fringes, weak planning and enforcement have resulted in unchecked development, and unreliable public transportation coupled with a growing middle class have increased motorization rates. To address these challenges, cities have turned to land use strategies, which have the potential to influence travel and ownership behavior. While several studies have explored this relationship, research on how the built environment’s effect varies across private motorized modes remains limited. To fill this gap, I sought to answer the following research questions: What is the relationship between the built environment and car ownership and use in Metro Manila? How does this relationship differ for motorcycle ownership and use? Using data from the 2015 Metro Manila Urban Transportation Integration Study Home Interview Survey, I find that the built environment influences vehicle ownership and use differently. Population, job, and intersection densities as well as the land use mix influence car ownership, while population and job densities and distance to the central business district are correlated with motorcycle ownership and use. Proximity to a railway station and diverse land uses influence both motorcycle and car use. These findings could help inform strategies for reducing motorization rates and shifting towards more sustainable transportation in Metro Manila.Publication Public Transportation in Ski Towns: An Analysis for the Ski Town Workforce and Visiting Populations(2021-05-01) Schaffner, PerrySkiing has grown rapidly in popularity within the past six decades as resorts have recorded record numbers of visitors. Ski towns are now flooded with additional residents and visitors. Ski towns are now busy year-round as resorts have transitioned to four-season operations. Public transit in ski towns currently struggles to meet the needs of all population groups, but mainly the needs of service industry workers. Public transportation alternatives must be considered as a viable option to support the transportation needs of local year-round residents and transient populations. This study seeks to address the questions: What are the main transportation challenges that ski towns face? How is planning for ski town transportation systems different from those in other recreation areas? What role do the ski resorts play in public transportation systems? What are some of the most necessary transportation interventions for ski towns in the Western United States? This study will examine whether and how a ski town can successfully implement public transportation options that serve local residents, the workforce and visitors. This is a comparative case study analysis that examines public transportation systems in the three ski towns of Park City, Utah, Vail, Colorado, and Truckee, California. This study’s methods include a survey of public perceptions regarding transportation in ski towns, interviews with transportation planning professionals, and an analysis of transportation plans. These three methods support final recommendations for ways these towns might seek to improve their public transportation offerings to better serve both the environmental and financial wellbeing of their towns. Public transportation has been a hot topic in the planning world, and planning for niche transportation systems, such as those in tourism-based destinations presents a set of challenges that needs to be better addressed and researched. Extensive research exists on tourism-based transportation and the funding of transportation systems, but few studies have focused on ski towns and those aspects that make this type of tourism transportation different. Getting visitors out of their cars solves many problems like driving accidents, reducing the often-gridlocked traffic, and navigating in the snow.