Proposal for New Commuter Rail Service and TOD Master Plan Along Guangzhou Shenzhen Railway

This thesis will focus on the corridor of GuangzhouShenzhen Railway (GSR) as an urban design challenge and explore the possibility of adapting commuter rail service to complement the current high speed rail service. After closer look at the current rail network, evaluating the outstanding challenges and improvement opportunities, the main part of the thesis is to propose a commuter rail service with masterplan around the existing and newly proposed stations. By resume local services along GSR, this new commuter network aims to reconnect smaller towns and subcenters to further enhance economic and development integration of cities in the Greater Bay Area.

Akrisht Pandey Thesis Advisors: Siqi Zheng, Juan Francisco Palacios

Decarbonizing Metropolises: Analyzing New York’s LL97 and Boston’s BERDO Net Zero Policies

Carbon neutrality and net zero have emerged as critical goals in global climate governance, seeking to address human activities annvironmental and social implicasocial Earth. This thesis provides a captivating exploration of urban decarbonization by critically examining New York’s Local Law 97 (LL97) and Boston’s Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) through the lens of system thinking. The study assesses the impact of these pioneering net zero policies on office spaces, residential conversions, and renewable energy integration while highlighting their heterogeneous influence on different segments of the built environment Real Estate Market.

The narrative unfolds by analyzing the challenges faced by pre-1985 office buildings in Manhattan. It employs system thinking to decipher developers’ decision-making prowhen choosing choose between renovation and demolition in pursuit of more sustainable buildings. Using this framework, the study also explores the potential of repurposing aging office spaces into residential units, considering the complex dynamics at play.

Focusing on Boston’s BERDO, the research investigates the effectiveness of green retrofits on existing residential buildings and spotlights developers’ experiences using system thinking. The analysis portrays BERDO’s influence on older facilities at the neighborhood level, illustrating the unintended consequences of a one-size-fits-all policy approach.

The study examines federal and state-level policies across the United States, investigating their potential to bolster decarbonization efforts in New York and Boston. It unravels the economics of sustainable construction, contemplating ripple effects on housing prices and exploring pioneering practices of developers embracing circular building materials.

This thesis synthesizes the effectiveness of LL97 and BERDO policies in driving urban decarbonization while acknowledging their good intentions and the pressures they exert on big players. However, the research also emphasizes the need for policy refinement to address unintended consequences and better cater to diverse segments of the built environment. By highlighting areas for policy enhancement and future research, the study contributes to understanding net zero policies as catalysts for a greener, more sustainable urban built environment.

Ana María Pérez Carrillo

Thesis Advisor: Garnette Cadogan

Hacer la vida en Ciudad Verde: Bringing Participatory Action Research to Colombia’s Affordable Housing Macro-projects

Housing macro-projects have been central to Colombia’s urbanization tradition over the past century. The past decade has seen a new wave of affordable housing macro-projects built through public and private cooperation that are characterized by their immensity. Located on the outskirts of Bogotá, Ciudad Verde, an affordable housing complex that houses over 53.000 households, exemplifies the complexity of these new macro-projects. Vastness and complexity are fertile ground for an anonymity that can feed loneliness and disconnection. In this urban-suburban immensity, how, then, do the stories, experiences, and voices of residents get heard as they try to contribute to a heated national debate about the future of the housing and urbanization policies that made these macro-projects possible? How do we make room for community-planning and resident self-determination in these spaces?

This thesis suggests a framework to challenge immensity through bottom-up, participatory, and action-focused research processes, as attentive to time as they are to space, that can help us understand this multiplying new urban form, so big in scale it threatens to overwhelm. It tells the story of how we put into place a Participatory Action Research approach to create the Resident Researcher Group of Ciudad Verde with the resident researchers who over four months collected qualitative data around the experiences of habitation, coexistence, community, belonging and governance that take place for residents of Ciudad Verde, as well as their joys, pains, hopes, and fears. Our hope is that these stories and testimonies will inform decision making for the future of Ciudad Verde, future affordable housing macro-projects in Colombia and the overall Housing Policy scheme that made these projects possible in the first place, and that this Resident Researcher group, through the connections and practices of maintenance and kinship that we have built, will continue to exemplify community-based action research and planning over time.

Pratiwi Prameswari

Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Vale