2018-2019 DUSP Thesis/Dissertation Abstracts by MIT DUSP

DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING

THESIS/DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS DUSP GRADUATES 2018/2019

MCPs: Alexander Acuña Ali Al-Sammarraie Bernard Maxwell Arnell Morgan M. Augillard Apaar Bansal Rounaq Basu Mercedes Bidart Alex Bob Joshua Brooks Sarah Brown Chelsea S. Bruck Jonas Brunschwig Robert Cain Collyn S. Chan Kun Cheng Lafayette Cruise Pierre D’Souza Micah Davison Jay Dev Hannah Diaz Margaret Dunne Katie Fisher Misael Galdamez Nour Maher Ghadanfar Scott Gilman Yazmin Y Guzman Elizabeth O. Haney Yu Hu Aarthi Janakiraman

Angie Jo Dasjon Jordan Kadeem Khan Tamara Garfield Knox Jacob Kohn Sanjay Kumar Karthikeyan Kuppu Graham Lazar Sara Li Xinhui Li Jinghong Lyu Jeremia Sir Nindyo Mamola Alexander Meeks Haley Meisenholder Amy Meyer Azka Mohyuddin Joshua I.H. Morrison Antonio Moya-Latorre Xuenan Ni Yael Nidam Ari Ofsevit Charlotte Ong Gonzalo Ortega Sánchez de Lerín Rushil Palavajjhala Daniel Heriberto Palencia Arreola Meagan Cherita Patrick Michael A. Pearce Ayrlea Porter Benjamin Preis

Bella Purdy Jessica Quezada Medina Saritha Ramakrishna Marissa Reilly Ayushi Roy Alan Sage Kathleen Schwind Ellen Shakespear Azka Shoaib Xudong Sun Marian Swain Fiona Tanuwidjaja Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Yanisa Techagumthorn Haily Tran Benjamin Turpin Kavya Vaghul Tia M. Vice Carrie Watkins Maia Woluchem Angela Wong Daphne Xu Zixiao Yin Richard Yoo

SM: Adham Kalila

PhDs: John C. Arroyo Parrish Bergquist Sarah Cordero Minjee Kim Zachary Lamb

Brittany Montgomery Miguel Paredes Roberto Ponce-Lopez Jason Spicer Hannah M. Teicher

Michael Wilson Hongmou Zhang

Alexander Acuña Thesis Advisor: Devin Bunten

Power, Planning, and the Right to the Post-Disaster City: Exploring opportunities for long-term housing affordability and resilience in earthquake recovery The San Francisco Bay Area is in the midst of a housing crisis, which has been exacerbated by the growth of high-income earners, slow housing construction, and a historic transfer of property ownership facilitated by the foreclosure crisis. This has resulted in the rapid displacement of low- and moderate-income communities, particularly those of color. The displacement of these communities is set to accelerate with “the Big One,” an inevitable massive earthquake expected to hit California. Investments in hazard mitigation and disaster response will help to lessen impact, but the reality is that large-scale disasters will cause devastation, especially on low-income communities of color, no matter how much preparation. Knowing that natural disasters are increasing, and that central cities will move to rebuild, what opportunities do disasters present to reshape the post-disaster city

of the future, and where do these opportunities create space to advance affordable housing? Through the lens of the “Right to the City” and the “Shock Doctrine,” I explore the political, spatial, and economic opportunities that disasters create within the housing market, the tensions in recovery, and the power dynamics that determine who benefits from disaster resilience. By creating a “blank canvas” on which to develop new uses, facilitating changes in land ownership, and drawing on an influx of institutional funding for development projects, disasters can be catalysts to catalysts for reshaping the city. I introduce the community land trust (CLT) model as a strategy uniquely suited to use these opportunities to address displacement and encourage wealth building, both today and in post-disaster scenarios. Using cases from CLTs in New Orleans, Houston, and the Florida Keys, I examine the opportunities and challenges of CLT post-disaster expansion. I conclude by recommending planning processes for Bay Area cities and communities to pursue in preparation for advancing the right to the post-disaster city.

Ali Al-Sammarraie Thesis Advisor: Alan Berger

Planning Autonomous Evacuation for Access and Flood Resilience With scarce research on the overlap between technological advancements and mobility with resilience thinking, there is a need to re-examine the integration of technological feats in mobility with evacuation in times of disasters. An analysis of the overlap between mobility, evacuation, and resilience is explored which uses ecological understanding of landscape as a key element in concluding boundaries. The notion of what a resilience district is hence explored and integrated onto the larger Boston area to derive effective evacuation methodologies using Autonomous Vehicle Clouds (AVCs) and Boss-system independent AVs. The earlier technology is a surgical implementation on a fully autonomous transportation route using a central cloud command center with prompt response-rate as a fleet, whereas the latter AV system integrates into existing interstate roads and highways and can navigate independently.

event. The potential application of AV connection systems exposed development opportunities for otherwise-car-occupied land uses bringing significant benefits for the city, public officials, and private developers. On the larger Boston area, the magnifying impacts of the framework can be estimated to benefit over 26,700 households, providing quick means to shelter for over 292,000 individuals. This thesis provides pragmatic analysis of the possible AVCs and AVs evacuation application, and looks at the immediate land uses with high impacts by AV implementation. The goal of this research is to aid in the advancement and integration of technology, evacuation, and resilience planning in order to achieve a better understanding of truly resilient towns and cities

The thesis proposed an integrated 5-step framework on the Everett-Malden resilience district that provided 10-minute access to evacuation to over 8,000 individuals that are otherwise disconnected in a flood

Bernard Maxwell Arnell Thesis Advisor: Jinhua Zhao

Shared Electric Scooters and Transportation Equity: A multivariate spatial regression analysis of impacts of environmental factors on revealed travel behavior and mode shift potential The past year has seen the emergence of the shared electric scooter: a new form of micro-mobility in the United States. Electric scooters embody many of the historic trends and contradictions endemic to innovation and marginalization in the transportation space. Researchers and policy-makers are faced with a number of unanswered questions about who travels on scooters and what factors might influence when and how they are used. Hexagonal spatial binning feeds a series of spatial lag models to identify explanatory environmental and demographic vvables for trip characteristics. These models reveal that employment density and the location of rebalance points are among the strongest indicators of scooter activity overall, but show significant variation when models are subsetted by time of day. The Communities of Concern framework, adapted from the Association of Bay Area Governments, provides a

regionally-sensitive index of relative marginalization to undergird the analysis. These findings are placed in context with transportation justice and broad outlines of current e-scooter policy. Additionally, a framework for examining mode shift potential using Open Trip Planner is discussed, and preliminary results are described. Additionally, use patterns are analyzed by time and in relation to contemporaneous weather.v

John C. Arroyo Dissertation Advisor: Brent Ryan

Shadow Suburbanism: Mexican everyday life, fear, and space in Greater Atlanta Historical, traditional patterns of U.S. migration locate Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans in dense urban centers, but recent, rapid demographic shifts reveal suburbs and exurbs – specifically in the South – as the new host destinations for Mexican settlement. This critical “Latinization” phenomenon is evident by highly visible changes to the built environment, as well as in the ways municipal planning and law enforcement agencies adjust their policies to either accommodate or discriminate against Mexican immigrant land uses. My dissertation broadly examines how fear and invisibility influence Mexicans’ spatial coping mechanisms and agentic strategies in suburban Atlanta (Gwinnett County) – one of the fastest developing and multiethnic metropolitan counties in the country. I ask what constraints and/ or opportunities do Mexican populations encounter when attempting to reshape transportation networks, housing, and retail centers and in recent highgrowth U.S. immigrant gateways to fit their needs? Where is this transformation occurring, and why? How do they hold meaning, and what is that meaning to Mexican populations in a culture of anti-immigrant

fear and tension? A case-study approach is supplemented with data triangulated from 145 in-depth interviews; participant observation; and longitudinal (1996-2018) content analysis of material from English and Spanish-language news media, community organizations, and federal, state, and municipal policy documents. My project provides an empirical basis to analyze the culture of fear and resulting interiorization through the lens of Latino Urbanism scholarship while simultaneously situating migration theory across multiple spaces, based on the experiences of the largest Latino/a minority group in the U.S. In a 21st century America defined by exponential Latino/a growth and evolving debates about immigration federalism, the case of Gwinnett County illustrates the role of the built environment as both agent and flexible canvas for Latino/a expressions of cultural self.v

Morgan M. Augillard Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

Let Me Learn You Something! Tools for black selfdetermination in a swampy school system There are times when New Orleans seems like the epicenter of America. Maybe only proud residents and natives feel this way, but in the last ten years it has surely become the epicenter of educational debate. The same catalyst of such debates, Hurricane Katrina, has also ushered in a new world of urban development in the city. This work is centered at these two buzz topics—education and urban development—and seeks to draw connections between them, while positioning uncovered public histories as the primary tool through which New Orleans’ Black community may be self-determinate in these two fields. I present two tools, an adaptable timeline and a corresponding curriculum, and employ design to widen public discourse around education and urban planning. These tools are intended to support action and activism towards the righting of historic and presently persistent wrongs.

Apaar Bansal Thesis Advisor: Jinhua Zhao

Bundled Mobility Passes: A framework for partnership between public transit and new mobility The emergence and proliferation of “new” mobility has the potential to fundamentally disrupt urban mobility in the 21st century. This includes bikesharing, carsharing, or on-demand vehicles that can be summoned from a smartphone through transportation network companies (TNCs) and microtransit. Competition provided by these services to public transit has often soured the relationship between public authorities and new mobility. However, in the absence of a blanket ban on these services, the public sector needs to find a way to coexist with newer mobility forms, while still upholding system-wide benefits and values of urban transportation. This thesis proposes bundled mobility passes between public transit, bikesharing, and TNCs as a potential framework in which the popularity of new mobility can be tapped to strengthen public transit revenue and ridership, while at the same time enabling public institutions to regulate these services more effectively. In particular, Chicago is used as a case study for this concept. Enclosed within are the results of an

engagement process with employers and employees in the Chicago area, to whom surveys were administered to gauge preferences towards a hypothetical bundled “Superpass” offered by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). The surveys found widespread support among employers for such a pass. A discrete choice model was made from the employee survey results to simulate the choices of employees under different pass scenarios. A scenario analysis found that from this integrated mobility pass, the CTA, bikeshare operator, and TNC operator can all at least increase either the number of passes they sell or the number of rides they provide to the market. This thesis also presents an implementation framework for such a pass that could bring together the city public transit system, the regional commuter rail, the bikeshare operator, the TNC operator, employers, and employees to ensure the success of this program.

Rounaq Basu Thesis Advisor: Joseph Ferreira

Reinterpreting Vehicle Ownership in the Era of Shared and Smart Mobility Emerging transportation technologies like AVs and shared MoD are casting their shadows over the traditional paradigm of vehicle ownership. Several countries are witnessing stagnation in overall car use due to the proliferation of access-based services and changing attitudes of millennials. Therefore, it becomes necessary to revisit this paradigm, and reconsider strategies for modeling vehicle availability and use in this new era. This thesis attempts to do that through three studies that contribute to the methodological, conceptual, and praxis literatures. The first study proposes a hybrid modeling methodology that leverages machine learning techniques to enhance traditional discrete choice models used in practice. The usefulness of this model to predict market shares of unforeseen choices like new mobility services is illustrated through an application to the off-peak car in Singapore. Our model significantly improves upon the market shares predicted by traditional models through an average reduction of 60% in RMSE.

The second study shifts the focus from vehicle ownership to vehicle availability in the form of mobility bundles. We leverage Singaporeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique policy environment to empirically model householdsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; preferences for unique mobility bundles that are constructed in an ordinal fashion. This is followed by an examination of car usage within the household. Significant intra-household interaction effects are found with respect to job location, in addition to the observation of gender biases in the decision-making process. The third study evaluates the effectiveness of car-lite policies that seek to replace private vehicle usage with smart mobility. Behavioral responses to the policy and associated market effects are modeled using an ILUT simulator calibrated for Singapore. Initially favorable aggregate outcomes tend to disappear as short-term market effects set in. Although outcomes stabilize to a certain extent over the long-term, the initial characteristics of the study area are found to strongly influence the success of such policies.

Parrish Bergquist Dissertation Advisors: Justin Steil and Andrea Campbell

Environmental Politics in a Polarized America: Public mood and policy consequences As the American political parties have polarized and nationalized, what are the implications for environmental policy? This question is particularly important at the state and local levels, where many environmental policy decisions are made and implemented, but about which scholars have drawn mixed conclusions. I expand understanding of the parties’ role in state-level regulatory enforcement; describe and assess changing public attitudes about environmental protection; and deeply explore local perceptions of an important type of environmental disruption: energy infrastructure. In paper one, I explore the public basis for environmental protection. I estimate state-level public support for environmental protection from the late 1970s through 2016. I show that regional differences in public views about environmental protection have declined, the public has sorted into partisan camps in every state, and Americans increasingly consider environment-economy tradeoffs. These data open opportunities for exploring the elite rhetoric that has contributed to these shifts. In the second paper, I ask how partisan politics influences

regulatory enforcement. Despite growing evidence for the parties’ influence across the slate of policy issues, scholars have drawn divergent conclusions regarding the parties’ impact on state environmental policy. I apply a regression discontinuity design and find that narrowly elected Republican governors and legislative majorities reduce enforcement effort, and that the two branches’ influence differs according to their distinct mechanisms of political control over the bureaucracy. Paper three moves beyond public attitudes about environmental topics in the abstract to assess local views of one particularly salient environmental topic: energy. Public engagement is critical to the US energy future, but party and ideology do not explain Americans’ views of the energy system. I explore how sense of place shapes residents’ interpretations and evaluations of energy transmission infrastructure.

Mercedes Bidart Thesis Advisor: Gabriella Carolini

Situated Technologies: A radical planning tool for popular economies A massive expansion of social exclusion in cities induced by neoliberal models crystalized in Latin America through the privatization of the public sector, reduction of the welfare-state, financial speculation and abusive extraction of natural resources. The aspiration of solidarity economies emerged in part as a counterproposal, challenging the institutions, norms, values and practices that organize the current economic process of urban production and consumption. The main objective of a solidarity economy is to generate the material foundation to fulfil community-level needs by creating a discreet, territorialized economy which recognizes and prioritizes the social and use-value of local transactions. In this thesis, I explore how a situated knowledge of marginalized communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; problems, and assets as they understand it, might be leveraged and strengthened by technologies which enable them to actually gain a consciousness of themselves and their economic strength within the urban socioeconomic system. In 2017, I built a team that works with micro-business owners in Villas de San Pablo

(VSP), Barranquilla, Colombia, to develop a platform called QUIPU. QUIPU builds on the Inca knotted strings record-keeping devices of census data, transactions, and narratives such as royal histories, myths, and songs. Adopting a Participatory Action Research method, I use the design of a digital technology platform to strengthen community economic ties and local wealth and inspire radical planning for social-economic transformation. The result of the design process detailed in this thesis is a digital market-place that supports the development of thriving place-based economies in low-income communities. QUIPU maps and connects local â&#x20AC;&#x153;prosumersâ&#x20AC;? and creates a trading system that promotes shared wealth creation and wealth retention in place. This thesis argues that co-designing technological platforms in the services of local solidarity economies can help build a pathway for change and equitable urban development. www.quipumarket.com

Alex Bob Dissertation Advisor: Devin Bunten

Older Adult Homeowners, Gentrification, and Aging in the Right Place: Challenges and opportunities in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, Massachusetts Studies have shown that older adult homeowners living in urban neighborhoods prefer to age in their existing homes and benefit from the familiarity, attachment, and sense of belonging that comes from living in one place for an extended period. However, increases in cost of living and major changes to physical, cultural, and social character of neighborhoods may challenge older adults’ desires to age in place. This study investigates whether the effects of gentrification push older adult homeowners to reconsider their decisions to age in their existing homes through interviews of 20 older adult homeowners, ages 61-91, aging in place in the Boston area – 10 from neighborhoods at an early stage of gentrification and 10 from neighborhoods experiencing more prolonged and intense gentrification. I focus on the financial, physical, and social implications of gentrification to understand whether these factors weaken older adults’ desires to age in their

existing homes. Financially, the burdens of gentrification for homeowners interviewed are surprisingly minimal, and there are also benefits. Changes in the physical and social characteristics of their long-term homes have negative impacts on older adult homeowners’ attachment to their neighborhoods, but the convenience of dense urban neighborhoods, which provide easy access to amenities, and the support offered by community organizations, which help many older adults make up for lost social connections, mitigate these negative effects. More generally, these findings confirm that homeownership can mitigate the negative economic impacts of gentrification and that policies aimed at mitigating social isolation are especially important for older adults living in rapidly changing neighborhoods.the role that housing type (project-based vs. tenant-based), neighborhood characteristics, and social networks play on participants’ community integration.

Joshua Brooks Thesis Advisor: Eran Ben-Joseph

Grounded Aerial Futures | Humanism + The City in the Aerial Age New technologies directly related, and tangentially connected to airport services and functions will drastically change the current airport infrastructure typology including city connectivity, space allocation, and security. With this change, there will be a need for cities to redefine their relationships with airports. Particularly in urban context like Boston, there is an opportunity for the development of a new hybrid urban typology, one that includes new forms of aviation services while creating new centers for growth, greater open space, increased regional connectivity, and places for people. Due to its size and proximity, the current legacy urban airports of the 20th century demonstrate an urban asset with tremendous potential for change. This thesis explores a speculative future for the current Logan Airport site, almost 2,000 acres in the Center of the Boston metropolitan region. The first half of this thesis utilizes research on technology, precedent places, current physical, social, and economic issues, and theories of city development as

starting point for how cities might conceive a new future for legacy urban airports. The second half of the thesis presents a framework vision for how a new urban typology might unfold. In concert with this vision specific urban design issues related to humanism, ecological resiliency, and city connectivity are explored. Additionally, a discussion of implementation policy frames a project of this magnitude within its larger social and urban construct. Finally, this particular vision is presented as a prototype for other cities and legacy urban airport sites of similar condition.

Sarah Brown Thesis Advisor: Marie Law Adams

Hybrid-Industrial Zoning: A case study in downtown Los Angeles Historically, land use planning has treated industrial land uses either antagonistically or ambivalently. Traditional zoning approaches have restricted, regulated, spatially isolated, and pushed industrial land to the periphery of cities, resulting in a significant loss of urban industrial land across American cities. But as the United States experiences a manufacturing renaissance and cities begin to recognize the value of centrally located industrial land in its contribution to the regional economy, planners are grappling with the issue of how best to secure these viable but vulnerable sites of employment and production. Advanced technologies that are changing the nature of manufacturing and logistics present an exciting opportunity and potential solution: the industrial mixed-use zone. This thesis explores the emerging land use tool of industrial-mixed use zoning, using Los Angeles as a case study. The intent of the industrial mixed-use zone, which permits non-industrial uses, to varying degrees of intensities, in otherwise industrial districts, is to protect central locations for industrial operations when

market forces might otherwise price them out. On the one hand, the zone can impede industrial business displacement through offering protection to compatible lighter industrial uses in transitioning neighborhoods. In doing so, it aims to create a live/ work urban district in which several planning agendas are met and balanced, providing for industrial employment alongside affordable housing and public realm improvements. On the other hand, without strict use definitions, mix requirements or consistent regulation, the industrial mixed-use zone risks both accelerating the land use conversion process, operating as residential and commercial upzoning, and gentrifying industrial districts toward more artisanal and boutique industrial operations. In 2019, the Los Angeles Department of City Planning will rezone industrial land in Downtown Los Angeles under a new zoning classification: hybrid-industrial. Through an exploration of Los Angelesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; industrial land use policies, a process tracing of the evolution of hybrid-industrial zoning, and a dissection of the zoning ordinanceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s text, this thesis demonstrates the trade-offs associated with a mixed-use district and the potential challenges and pitfalls of implementation.

Chelsea S. Bruck Thesis Advisors: Amy Glasmeier and Marie Law Adams

Historic Mills and Cultural Industries: A two-pronged approach to revitalization Decades past deindustrialization, former industrial centers across Massachusetts are committed to preserving and transforming historic mills. A variety of adaptive reuse projects spearheaded by cities and redevelopers alike have contribute anew to the areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diminished economy. Yet many mill towns and cities are still grappling with the question of how, exactly, to reanimate these massive buildings. At the same time, arts and culture-related strategies for economic development have continued to gain ground both locally and abroad. While artists have been known to gravitate towards deteriorating industrial building stock for its relative affordability and unique physical characteristics, planners and policy makers can also strategically support the development and sustainability of cultural facilities in historic mills as part of culture-led regeneration efforts.

This thesis addresses the relationship between historic preservation and the cultivation of cultural industries. Consisting of six case studies of arts and culture-focused adaptive reuse in Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, this study explores the variety of challenges that different types of mill redevelopers face in the process of creating cultural facilities, and the range of strategies they deploy to achieve success. It also addresses the role of local government in supporting these types of projects, and derives lessons for city officials, developers, and other local stakeholders on how to advance the complementary goals of historic preservation, support of cultural industries, and economic and community revitalization. This paper argues that the adaptive reuse of historic mills and cultural industry development are complementary strategies for economic and community revitalization that city officials should actively pursue by establishing plans, policies, and programs to facilitate the redevelopment of these industrial and historic landmarks.

Jonas Brunschwig Thesis Advisor: Liz Reynolds

Understanding and Accelerating Innovation Driven Ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a research and technology organization for North-South cooperations

many high- and middle-income countries whose mission is to harness science and technology in the service of innovation. It concludes by suggesting a new model of RTO for North-South Cooperation, linking emerging ecosystems in the Global South, such as those found in Accra, Nairobi, and Freetown, with established ones in the Global North.

According to the African Unionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy, Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) are to play a central role in accelerating Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transition to an innovation-led, knowledge-based economy. Member countries are to build and upgrade research infrastructures, enhance professional and technical competencies, promote entrepreneurship and innovation, and generally provide an enabling environment for STI. Over the last ten years, innovation-driven ecosystems have emerged in numerous African cities, often developing around tech hubs and incubators. Using an analytical framework developed at MIT, this thesis assesses the innovation-driven ecosystems of Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya; and Freetown, Sierra Leone. It then explores if Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) could be introduced as innovation intermediaries in the context of nascent African innovation ecosystems. RTOs are a category of organizations present in

Robert Cain Thesis Advisors: Karilyn Crockett and Andrew Altman

Creating Games Worth Bidding For Until recently a heavily contested process, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has run into difficulty attracting qualified cities willing to host the Olympic Games. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, twelves cities have withdrawn bids due to local referendums or pressure from local groups over the rising costs of hosting the Games or a desire to spend public funds elsewhere. This has left only two candidates remaining by the time the vote was held in the last three award cycles, and three candidates the two cycles prior. In response, the IOC has created a new process focused on working with cities, regions, and even nations to develop host bids which are in line with ongoing policy and development goals, and which will leave a positive legacy after the Games. Using the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London as a model, I examine whether these changes will be sufficient to deliver the IOC the host cities it is looking for; in short whether such cities are likely to find the new process worth their time and money.

Collyn S. Chan Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Vale

Should We Stay or Should We Go? Managing justice and retreat in the resilient city In recent years, scholars and planning practitioners have turned to managed retreat as an adaptation response to climate change. This provokes questions about how equity and justice are addressed in the relocation of people because historic planning practice has led to the marginalization of already vulnerable populations to environmentally risky areas. Through a review of the existing definitions of managed retreat and its purported benefits, this thesis asserts that the language of â&#x20AC;&#x153;managed retreatâ&#x20AC;? is inherently at odds with the language of justice as understood through movement building and advocacy. Managed retreat focuses on outcomes and strategies for the removal of assets from risk rather than developing processes of transformational change for the relocation of people. Managed retreat does not focus on power building and creating recognitional, procedural and distributional justice in the face of climate impacts.

Using this review and case study analysis, this thesis outlines the critical components of retreat that current planning practice fails to meet in regards to both the benefits of retreat and outcomes of a just process. Through a speculative spatial analysis, this thesis also outlines a sample method for planners and policy makers to apply the process of managing retreat, a reconceptualization of managed retreat with the focus on a just and deeply democratic process. The result a proposed relocation suitability index that identifies the potential areas communities may move to, in order to understand the opportunities, challenges and constraints of relocation. The analysis reaffirms that a communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collective ownership over place is central to the role of planning practice in conveying and creating a life-enhancing, equitable and legitimate future that meets the needs of all people.

Kun Cheng Thesis Advisor: Siqi Zheng

Understanding Special Economic Zone Policy in China: A conceptual framework and two cases As a predominant place-based policy (PBP) in China, special economic zone (SEZ) is contributing a substantial portion of GDP using very little land. Similar practices—enterprise zones, industrial parks, and business districts—widely exist in other part of the world. However, the studies of such PBP’s effect in U.S. and Europe are quite mixed. Recent studies on China’s SEZs and industrial parks are showing a positive agglomeration and spillover effect, while some studies are also showing a problem of over-investment, spatial misallocation in China’s SEZs. Given statistic evidence of the outcome, a conceptual framework and a nuanced examine over specific cases can complement the perspective. In this framework, I offered three aspects to examine a SEZ, including the formation of the central coordinator, the industry selection mechanism and outcome, and a cash flow model. Two sectors are discussed in the central coordinator’s formation—the local government and the potential private collaborator. After the Economic Reform in 1978, instead of being just central government’s

agent, local government in China was transferred great level of authority on many affairs. The situation started to change since 1990s, when central government carried out a series of reforms in tax system and land policies. The local government has been faced with tremendous constrains from fiscal revenue, simultaneously equipped with land monopoly and motivated by local leader’s political incentives. Urbanizing as much land as this growth machine could, regardless the population urbanization, has been “the” goal. On the other side, private developers are actively seeking new development path reacting to a changing market from policy shock and scarcity of land—by collaborating with local government on city-wide development and operations. Tow SEZs are examined using this framework, Bazhong New Economic Zone in Sichuan Province, and Gu’an Hightech Economic Zone in Hebei Province.

Sarah Cordero Dissertation Advisor: Janelle Knox-Hayes

Local Regulatory and Economic Instruments to Encourage Tropical Forestry Conservation: An analysis of the policy process in Costa Rica and Mexico Forests are the most biologically diverse land ecosystems, providing shelter, jobs, and security to people who depend on them. However, global deforestation continues alarmingly; for decades, people destroyed approximately 13 million hectares (32 million acres) annually, largely in tropical countries. Today, the world loses about 3 million hectares per year - an equivalent of 11,500 soccer fields - daily, that is still a tremendous amount. This study reviews theories and evidence concerning the process of formulating and adopting forest policies. It examines the theory on dynamics of policy processes, analyzing the process that Mexico and Costa Rica follow to slow and even reverse deforestation. This study provides empirical evidence by presenting the results of interviews conducted with policymakers who participated in the forest policy process in both nations, reporting on their motivations, obstacles, and other criteria relevant

in a policy process. Among the public policies and policy instruments analyzed in the case studies, it reviews new forest laws, regulations, and the use of economic instruments, particularly the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme, as part of each countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effort to more effectively maintain forest cover. As this thesis shows, leadership from high-ranking people is a key element in a successful policy process. Direct participation from those involved is also a positive step in the process. The introduction of certain economic instruments has enabled regional planners and policymakers to halt deforestation and, in the case of Costa Rica, even to increase forest cover. However, it is necessary to highlight that those instruments came to exist as part of a new law that includes incentives and sanctions, eliminates perverse incentives, and dictates measures regarding land tenure and land-use change.

Lafayette Cruise Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

Musings from the Margins of a Polychrome Future “The only form of fiction that I know of that is truly revolutionary is science fiction and speculative fiction… not only is it revolutionary to mean to say it overthrows a way of thinking; it also puts pressure eon you to figure out what are you going to do now that you’re here” – Walter Mosley I decided to create MMPF mostly for my own process of self-discovery around my beliefs around the relationship between planning and speculative fiction. As a thesis project my initial desire was to hold a convening of futurists, artist, planners, and architects to discuss how we meld our fields to imagine futures that are inclusive not just in physicality but in the values, interests, and needs that hold primacy with which we imagine them. Then the conference down-sized to pairing artists/futurists with planners/architects/urbanists to engage in world-building exercises. That was still too much for me to bite-off for this thesis process, and I was not comfortable asking artists and creative to contribute to this process for free – goodwill and gratitude doesn’t buy groceries. Then in late January early February I spent a lot of time reflecting on what it is that I wanted from this project, separate from the

requirements of my master’s thesis, and started looking back at old idea notebooks that I’ve kept over the years. I decided to begin a similar process with this thesis – just collect notes as I interacted with people, ideas came into my head, I encountered people whose experiences I’d never considered. It was in the midst of this journaling, reflecting and re-centering that the name for the project emerged: Musings from the Margins of a Polychrome Future. A project convening futurist and planners to expand our collective imagination of who belongs in cities of the present and future.

Pierre D’Souza Thesis Advisor: Karl Seidman

Doing What Works: An exploratory analysis on Toronto’s Strong Neighbourhood Strategy 2020’s impact on crime in Kingsview Village-The Westway

achieve positive results and suggested methods TSNS 2020 could use to enhance their success rate as they look to learn from their past mistakes and build for the strategy’s future. It is important to note that my exploratory analysis was conducted with a very small sample size and dataset and therefore should be taken a launching point for a more robust future evaluations of TSNS 2020 successes and shortcomings in the field of crime prevention and mitigation.

The Strong Neighbourhood Strategy 2020 (TSNS 2020) is an initiative started by the City of Toronto in 2014. The strategy’s intention was to engage neighbourhood residents, city services, and local non-profits in community and economic development to generate tailored solutions that would result in heightened are prosperity, vibrancy, and safety in 31 of the city’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods. My exploratory analysis focused on how the strategy attempted to address violent crime prevention and mitigation in one of these neighbourhoods (Kingsview Village-The Westway). Employing a combination of comparative violent crime data analysis, stakeholder interviews, and literature reviews from academic sources as well as my background in law enforcement, I could not find any evidence that TSNS 2020 had led to reductions in violent crime in Kingsview Village-The Westway. Furthermore, I elaborated on a series of fundamental strategic and implementational flaws in TSNS 2020 has halted its ability to

Micah Davison Thesis Advisor: Terry Szold

Integrative or Insulative? Making the Most of Urban Industrial Spaces Faced with the considerable challenge of preserving industrial land in major cities, local governments tend to respond either by safeguarding the land for core industrial purposes, or by broadening its use range to include other nonindustrial activities in an effort to transform it into a more attractive, vibrant place. These two approaches can be thought of as insulative and integrative, respectively. This thesis examines the tensions and tradeoffs that planners face when addressing these two seemingly divergent industrial redevelopment approaches. It examines Vancouver, a city that has received justifiable credit for creating a livable, sustainable urban realm, but in the process has released a large amount of its industrial land to other uses, and is under continual pressure to do so with its remaining industrial land.

The thesis first reviews the historical conception of industry as nuisance and how this has led to reflexive assumptions that all industry must be separated from other uses, even as the nature of production has evolved to make many forms of industry much more tolerable to be around. The thesis then defines a set of parameters common to integrative industrial planning - which is arguably newer and less well-recognized than the insulative approach - noting current examples in North American cities. It moves the focus to Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s False Creek Flats industrial district, where a recent area plan is evaluated for how it selectively uses both integrative and insulative strategies to transform the False Creek Flats into a vibrant employment district while also safeguarding much-needed local industries that are vulnerable to displacement. I conclude by highlighting some important conflicts cities face when addressing the integrative-insulative question for their inner city industrial districts. I argue that the Vancouver case demonstrates promising possible resolutions for some, but not all, of these conflicts, and the latter require further study.

Jay Dev Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

See Yourself in Data: Building a framework for data-based community engagement events Over the past decade or so, government data has been released through open data portals to improve efficiency, enable data-driven policy research and decision-making, increase transparency, and open a new avenue by which citizens may engage with the public sector. While open data has been a boon for researchers, journalists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, benefits from their publication have not necessarily flowed down to community organizations and residents. As unequal access to open data threatens to widen information gaps, models of citizen participation in the data-driven city have not fully developed.

This thesis reviews possibilities and barriers of several forms of data-based participation, focusing particularly on participatory data interpretation as a liberating process and its pre-requisites of data awareness and literacy. It synthesizes a general framework for community-based data events based on insights from Public Participatory GIS, Data Feminism, Data Activism, and Data and Digital Justice, and compares that framework to open data awareness and literacy-raising events in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. Compared to the choices and achievements of these two cases, the framework holds as a guide for meaningful considerations that future community-based data events may take into account.

Hannah Diaz Thesis Advisor: Devin Bunten

Bidding AD(ie)U to Homelessness? Are small, backyard units an answer to Los Angelesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; housing affordability and homeless crises? In the last two years, four pilot programs have emerged to answer this question. With accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as the common feature, these programs test various financial incentives to house individuals transitioning out of homelessness and/or Section 8 voucher-holders. Although in the early stages, these pilot programs seem to defy NIMBY expectations and offer a window into possible strategies for creating low-income housing. Simultaneously, the pilots raise questions around shifting responsibility towards individual homeowners, combatting longstanding stigma, and increasing access â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both to constructing and living in ADUs. Largely informed by stakeholder interviews, this thesis provides a close examination of the four programs in order to understand the profiles of the envisioned tenant and homeowner participants. Additionally, this thesis explores the ways in which the pilot programs are shifting the conversation around homelessness and affordable housing in Los Angeles.

Margaret Dunne Thesis Advisor: Amy Glasmeier

Tribal Economic Development Bonds: Lessons learned and implications for nation-building Pursuant to the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which the United States signed in 2009, “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Despite the premise of this commitment, Tribal Governments face limitations on their ability to issue tax free debt – limitations that are not applied to State or Local governments. Tribal government leaders say these restrictions unjustly limit their economic sovereignty and prohibit their ability to offer favorable conditions for financing economic development when compared to offerings made by State and Local governments. This research evaluates the Tribal Economic Development Bond Program (TEDB Program), a policy intervention aimed to address the root cause of this issue by temporarily expanding Tribal municipal bonding authority and other forms of tax free debt service.

I used Bloomberg professional terminal, EMMA and CBXMarkets to construct a data set that identifies TEDB securities and evaluates the success rate of the TEDB program in its initial form. I interviewed Freshman House Representative Sharice Davids, Tribal Government Leaders, Tribal Finance Partners at Holland & Knight LLP and Orrick, and Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP to further illustrate these findings and inform recommendations for reform. Ultimately, I recommend that the TEDB Program be reauthorized or that the IRC § 7871 sub sections (b) and (e) be eliminated, thus granting equality to Native Nations on this particular provision for tax free debt issuance.

Katie Fisher Thesis Advisor: Eric Klopfer

It Takes a Village to Teach a Child: Community partnerships and their role in Boston public school reform In America, a child’s socioeconomic level is one of the most significant predictors of educational success. Low-income students face various problems, such as a lack of consistent healthcare and nutrition, neighborhood violence, and unstable home environments. This can affect them physically, socially and emotionally, which interferes with learning. As a response, some schools that serve high-needs populations have embraced the “community schools” model of education, in which schools act as a hub connecting the community and resources. These schools operate under the principle that only when a student’s basic needs are met can they begin learning. This thesis examines three formerly underperforming Boston K-8 Schools with large concentrations of low-income students: the Orchard Gardens Pilot School, the William Trotter School, and the Sarah Greenwood School. Analysis of these case studies seeks to determine the role that community partnerships and extracurricular opportunities play in school

reform. By tracing these schools’ paths to improvement and highlighting the community partnerships and external opportunities introduced, a review of the best practices is identified, as well as a discussion of the challenges that still lie ahead for reforming community schools.

Misael Galdamez Thesis Advisor: Amy Glasmeier

¡El Salario es de Quién Trabaja! A methodology for living wage estimations in Mexico City In September of 2018, a research team from the Observatorio de Salarios at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City approached Dr. Amy Glasmeier for help in systematizing and scaling living wage estimates in Mexico. The goal was to emulate the MIT Living Wage Calculator, which Dr. Glasmeier created as a source for living wage estimates across the U.S., in order to establish a similar calculator for Mexico, beginning with a pilot study in Mexico City.

This thesis pilots an integrated methodology for systematizing and scaling living wage estimates in Mexico City, using the MIT Living Wage Calculator and the Observatorio’s work as bases. Results from this living wage estimation are comparable to the work already conducted by the University, but with greater efficiency and scalability. Overall, I find that only about 17 percent of three- and four-person households in Mexico City earn a living wage.

Nour Maher Ghadanfar Thesis Advisor: P. Christopher Zegras

Waiting for the Bus: A strategy for approaching the regulation of public transportation in Kuwait There is an increasing concern about the growth of car dependence in the Middle East and its associated negative impacts on cities, including economic and environmental factors, urban form, and lifestyle. Kuwait, having undergone massive infrastructure developments after the discovery of oil, is considered a prime example of an automobile-dependent city state in the region. Public transportation is irregular and limited and has been traditionally aimed at the lower-class migrant population rather than the residents of the country as a whole. Planning and regulating for the existing public transportation is minimal and siloed.

Against this background, this thesis evaluates the current state of public transportation in Kuwait and develops a framework to assess industry structure models for the regulation of public transportation. It also provides a recommended strategy on how to build a capable public transit authority for KuwaitCommute, a local social initiative intent on bringing awareness to Kuwaitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public transportation system and the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s traffic epidemic.

Scott Gilman Thesis Advisor: Dayna Cunningham

Playing with Planning: Evaluating games as a form of participatory planning and policymaking IIn recent years, many city governments and advocacy organizations have turned to engagement games as a way to involve citizens in planning and policy decisions. These games are meant to address perceived problems in traditional engagement techniques by providing facilitating learning and dialogue on technical issues, providing better data to planners and policymakers on citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; preferences, and attracting a wider swatch of citizens by making participatory planning fun.

The first section of this thesis investigates the unique contributions that games can make to participatory processes by situating engagement games in the history and theory of participatory planning techniques. The second section examines two online engagement games used to inform budget policy in New Orleans, LA, and San Jose, CA. Interviews with game designers, facilitators, and participants reveal how game design contributes to the goals of participatory planning. Finally, a synthesis provides recommendations for how planners can use games in participatory planning processes for current planning issues.

Yazmin Y Guzman Thesis Advisor: Justin Steil

Crossing Educational Borders: The effects of state financial aid on undocumented studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; pursuit of higher education Currently there are twenty-two states (and the District of Columbia) that offer in-state resident tuition (ISRT) rates to undocumented youth who meet set residential criteria. As of January 2019, ten states (and the District of Columbia) have passed legislation allowing undocumented students to access state financial aid. While previous research focuses on how ISRT policies affect college entry, this study examines the effect state financial aid policies have on college enrollment. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups (MORG) data from 1998-2017, I exploit the time variation in the passage of the laws to evaluate the effects of state financial aid has on undocumented studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; decision to attend college.

In my preferred specification, I find that state financial aid causes a statistically significant 2.7 percentage point increase in the proportion of undocumented youth enrolled in college. Additionally, men aged 2124 experience the largest increase in college enrollment at a 5.5 percentage point increase.

Elizabeth O. Haney Thesis Advisor: Karl Seidman

Advancing Equitable Transit Oriented Development in Massachusetts: A framework and lessons from four gateway cities

four of the thirteen Gateway Cities with commuter rail access (Fitchburg Lawrence, Salem and Lynn), this client based thesis for MassINC proposes an equitable development plan framework for Gateway City station areas, as well as recommendations for supportive state actions.

Transit-oriented development (TOD) in Massachusetts’ Gateway Cities offers a chance for the Commonwealth to channel projected population growth into strategic locations—a multi-pronged solution that helps meet climate goals and chart a more sustainable future. At the same time, indicators of equity reveal that residents of today’s Gateway City station areas are already facing an affordable housing and opportunity crisis. Many are burdened by rents high enough to prevent asset building, but too low to encourage development for the cities outside the high-priced Boston market. Bringing transit oriented development into these communities risks exacerbating low income households’ tenuous financial and housing situation. Without an explicit and intentional strategy to achieve equitable outcomes, TOD may not benefit low income residents and could even exacerbate inequalities. Using interviews, data analysis and a survey of municipal planning documents related to housing, business and workforce development from

Yu Hu Thesis Advisor: Dennis Frenchman

The Human-Centered City: Technological implications for future design The first two Industrial Revolutions, together with modern economic and political systems, gave birth to modern cities, which became the prototype of cities as we live in today. Modern economyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pursuit of specialization and agglomeration lead to the separation of different urban functions. Meanwhile, efficient construction technique (characterized by steel and reinforced concrete) and modern transportation network strengthen such separation. However, this model of urban development prioritizes economic efficiencies, therefore it is fundamentally in conflict with humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biological needs. In other words, modern cities are not human-centered. Through a reflection on the rising new technologies of the fourth Industrial Revolution, such as Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicle, this thesis argues that if the next generation of cities can harness these technologies well, urban life can be more human-centered. One of the most significant realm in the fourth Industrial Revolution is the merging of Info-tech and Bio-tech, its breakthrough will overturn existing modes of living and production, creating new economic opportunities and subsequently,

new spatial needs. Urban and architectural designers must keenly realize these trends and needs, actively embrace new technologies, and design spaces that truly prioritize the needs of human beings. The thesis proposes six future design principles that are more physical form related: 1) Small-scale; 2) Live/ work Mix; 3) Permeable Public Space; 4) Interwoven Nature; 5) Attraction-driven; 6) Dispersion. These principles are formal manifestations of the spirits of the fourth Industrial Revolution. In the last chapter, they are applied on a chosen site near Central Square (Cambridge, MA) to create a productive live/ work neighborhood.

Aarthi Janakiraman Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Vale

The Local Identity Politics of World Heritage: Lessons from Galle Fort in Sri Lanka Institutionalized heritage protection has become a global phenomenon, and the UNESCO World Heritage program is perhaps the most well-known of these efforts. Although the List is intended to be concerned only with heritage, in reality it also serves as a global stage for broadcasting geopolitics, national agendas, and sub-national motives. Given these hidden functions driving the World Heritage List, I interrogate what the implications of listing really are through the living heritage site of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Old Town of Galle and its fortificationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in Sri Lanka. I consider the tensions between different scales of identity-building associated with the site, explore the politics of conservation and its motivating forces, and probe the impacts of tourism alongside the mechanisms supporting its imbalances. Drawing from the findings at this site, I consider broader applications to other potential World Heritage sites and discuss directions that demand further attention in global planning and heritage practice.

Angie Jo Thesis Advisor: Siqi Zheng

Coordination vs. Control: The private planning of new cities as new economic engines in China Over the past twenty years, there appears to have been a resurgence of “new cities” that have been master-planned, built, and populated “from scratch” throughout the global South—particularly in China, where over 600 are estimated to be under construction or in conception. Departing from historical precedents, many contemporary planned cities are intended to serve as new economic engines, by which governments seek to “upgrade” their local industrial base, trigger new agglomerations, and cherry pick desirable new sectors, firms, and workers. In many projects, master-planning practices have thus intensified not just in the domain of urban design, but also in industrial policy, and weak, lowcapacity governments have hired strong, private sector planners who can undertake this work on their behalf. For example, the county of Gu’an transformed from being the poorest to the richest county in Hebei province within a span of 15 years, after a private real estate developer called China Fortune Land Development created a “new industry city” in the service of the local government—in exchange for fifty years of “ownership,” shared

revenue, and near complete control over its planning. While scholars in critical urban studies and geography have heavily critiqued these new cities as topdown, privatized, commodified, and homogenized products of corporate profit-seeking, there has been little scholarship on the logic of these publicprivate investments from an economic development perspective. In this thesis, I offer a conceptual framework that describes how new planned cities can theoretically create long-term, positive-sum economic value—rather than short-term, zero-sum spoils—and investigate how private planners may contribute to this value creation. Drawing from interviews with real estate developers in China, as well as the case study of CFLD in Gu’an, I examine both the opportunities and risks posed by the rise of these private planners and these new, deeply intertwined modes of urban and industrial masterplanning.

Dasjon Jordan Thesis Advisor: Karilyn Crocket

More Than Money: Defining black business success From the beginning of the post-Reconstruction era, Black communities in America have sought to survive and thrive using entrepreneurship for economical, socially, and political gain. However, Black entrepreneurship has been misunderstood and misused. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth has been subject to contested meanings. Dominant literature posits Black business at best a modest attempt of American entrepreneurship, unable to change the collective economic status of Black Americans. Researchers cite the lack of business acumen and institutionalized racism as coupled barriers to business class formation and success. These perspectives essentialize Black business existence from deficit-based paradigms of illegitimacy and underperformance. Similarly, small business support organizations see the value of Black business through a narrow lens as supporting local hiring and increasing economic vitality of the city. Regardless of intention; to grow the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy, create social impact, or reinvest in the built environment, they each are unable to assess business success outside of economic gain.

But what if the assumed definition of business success is limited in defining Black entrepreneurial success? Black businesses have served as spaces of safety, economic exchange, cultural solidarity, public discourse, and innovation for their Black consumers. Using oral histories, discourse analysis and archival documents, this thesis investigates how Black business owners define their own success and challenges, articulate their other forms of value to the city, and how small business support organizations are empowering these business owners to reach their self-defined notions of success.

Adham Kalila Thesis Advisor: Sarah Williams

Accessibility Impact Analysis of New Pubkic Transit Projects in Cairo, Egypt The New Urban Communities (NUC) around Cairo, developed to relieve congestion and pull away residents from the crowded core, have not successfully attracted a significant number of residents. Since NUCs are not well connected by official public transport to the inner city, they have a higher than average population of car drivers. Low income residents that have moved to the NUCs were largely relocated from demolished informal housing in the inner core. We believe that these NUCs, which represent a significant investment in infrastructure, can be viable and attractive to a diverse socio-economic group if their accessibility to jobs and points of interest were improved. The World Bank has commissioned a study for the recommendation of 3 Key Bus routes to improve the public transit network in the Greater Cairo Region.

These recommendations are made based on the results of an accessibility impact analysis using various sources of data. To implement such an analysis with missing official data on job locations and numbers, a novel approach was used to build such a dataset using a combination of scraped online directory data and official census and survey sources. The resulting recommendation of key bus routes is based on a robust method of analysis.

Kadeem Khan Thesis Advisors: Gabriella Carolini and Sarah Williams

Decoding Urban Inequality: The applications of machine learning for mapping inequality in cities of the global south According to the United Nations, by the year 2050, 68% of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population will live in cities. However, the UN also estimates that 1 in 8 people in the world currently live in slums; furthermore, slum populations are growing at a rate of 4.5% per year. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is known for having large slum settlements and a high degree of spatial inequality. While slums are expanding at a rapid rate, cities in the Global South lack the crucial data to monitor deepening spatial inequalities. Current urban poverty assessments rely on census data, poverty maps or slum demarcation maps, however, for city planning, these are subject to limitations. It is important to note that while the world is undergoing this immense change in its ecology, we are also experiencing a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;data revolutionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; which is characterized by a rapid growth in data availability as well as a growing interest in data science techniques such as machine learning (ML). Acknowledging these significant trends, this thesis applies ML to generate useful

insights on spatial inequality in Nairobi. The research incorporates data from multiple sources including: census, satellite imagery and data derived from calculations in GIS. The research will explore two ML methods. The first method attempts to map living conditions for small areas in the city. Moreover, the second method will generate residential typologies or zones for equitable investment and land management in the city. One of the overall aims of the research is to contribute to the wider conversation on how ML may be applied in the realms of policy and city planning in the Global South.

Minjee Kim Dissertation Advisor: Eran Ben-Joseph

Negotiated Developments: Exploring the trends, efficacy, and politics of negotiating zoning on a project-by-project basis Large-scale real estate developments present unique regulatory challenges for local governments, prompting them to employ non-traditional, negotiation-based zoning approaches that offer flexibility unattainable via conventional zoning. Existing planning literature falls short of answering at least three broad areas of inquiry that can help local governments navigate this challenge. First, there is a general lack of understanding of if, when, and how local governments use negotiation-based zoning. Second, little empirical research thus has examined the negotiated outputs. Last, the politics of negotiated developmentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who participates and influences these negotiations and under what conditionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;also remains largely unknown.

Each of these research areas is taken up in the three papers that comprise this dissertation. The first paper surveys the current state of zoning practices; I investigate the experiences of Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle to explore if, when, and how they have negotiated zoning on a project-by-project basis. The second paper identifies the gains and losses of using a negotiation-based approach vis-Ă -vis zoning that closely adheres to the rule of law. I compare the experience of Boston and Seattle in more detail to explore this subject. The third and final paper delves deep into the micro-politics of negotiations for the largest private development in Boston to expose who actually influenced the negotiations and whether public participation mattered in the process.

Tamara Knox Thesis Advisor: Dennis Frenchman

The Frolic Model: Transforming single-family homes into urban cohousing We founded the development firm Frolic to respond to the following questions: Can we introduce the benefits of density to urban America without displacing the people who live there? Can we bring the comfort of permanence and planting roots to the non-wealthy? Can we build places that make daily life easier, more affordable, and more enjoyable? This thesis articulates the Frolic Model developed through the DesignX incubator at MIT with input from over 40 developers and city staff working in major cities across the U.S. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Frolicâ&#x20AC;? is an Amish term referring shared labor and common vision, used to describe joyous festivals in which over 100 families would come together and raise a barn in one week. In our research, we found that there are several potential mutual gains lost in the current housing development paradigm - between property owners, investors, future residents, developers and community members. By restructuring the development process around mutual gains, the Frolic Model brings the benefits of home ownership to a broader population, while allowing smaller, more intimate

development projects to become viable. The three principles of the Frolic Model are cooperative financing, codevelopment, and cohousing. The cooperative financing structure enables crowd-investing and a decoupling of share ownership and tenancy. This allows residents to act as long-term tenants of a project without requiring a large down payment or a personal mortgage. It also allows others in the neighborhood to buy shares in the project and invest in a tangible, low-risk, low-return community asset. Over time, low wealth residents can purchase more shares and build additional equity in their home. Partnering with land owners to co-develop their property, we allow them to avoid displacement and financially benefit from redevelopment. Through elements of cohousing, we create infrastructure for community and improve affordability through shared amenities.

Jacob Kohn Thesis Advisor: Sarah Williams

Towards an Integrated Recycling System: Analyzing two scenarios of informal recycling sector performance in Mumbai, India Waste management in the Global South is often performed through informal means, causing differences in service provision. Many cities around the world are experimenting with ways to address these dynamics by developing formal systems known as Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Scholars and practitioners are positive about the potential of these decentralized recycling processing facilities for improving the sorting of recyclable materials in urban areas. However, the effects of particular arrangements of these facilities on informal-sector recyclers are less well known. In Mumbai, India, the municipal government has proposed introducing MRFs in each ward of the city, and hopes to integrate informal recyclers into the MRF system. I focus on the effect of these MRFs on kabadiwalas, small-scale aggregators in the informal sector. Using economic and geospatial data for three wards of the city, I compare the proposed decentralized MRF system with the current hierarchical system of informal recycling to understand the economic benefits to the kabadiwala within each system.

Specifically, how would the new system change the profit margins for kabadiwalas, distances traveled by collectors at each level, and material flow rates? I find ward-wise variations in collectorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; travel times, distances covered, and weekly economic profits, underlining the role of the geographic placement of an MRF on its ability to compete with current systems and positively affect kabadiwala livelihoods. This comparison helps shed light on an essential but poorly understood sector of urban infrastructure. It explores whether this formalization effort truly benefits informal workers, and reveals potential differences in policy implementation at a more granular level.

Sanjay Kumar Thesis Advisor: Bish Sanyal

Accuracy or Approximation? Measurement strategy for successful land reforms in Rwanda The recent land tenure reforms in Rwanda have the potential to permanently influence the debate around land titling and clear property rights. In 2005, Rwanda decided to abandon traditional property rights and to embrace formal rights, least did it know it would transform itself by moving from no land records to one of the most advanced and formalized land records in less than two decades. Rwanda climbed to 2nd rank in 2018 in World Bank’s ranking of ‘Ease of Registering Property’ from to 137th rank in 2008. Rwanda created its cadastre at a reasonably low cost and in a relatively shorter time period as it adopted the ‘general boundaries’ or visible boundaries such as road, fence, or hedge over more accurate ‘fixed boundaries’. International agencies recommended Rwanda’s approach in the form of implementation guidelines to other developing countries within a theoretical framework - Fit-for-Purpose (FFP) land Administration.

According to the recommended guidelines, the developing countries should adopt FFP as their initial goal, and thereafter they may aim for an ‘ultimate solution’ that developed countries have adopted. This view presents FFP as cheaper and low-tech solution similar to that of Rwanda, but sub-par as compared to developed countries. This thesis questions the correctness of this sub-par view. However, despite the high rankings is ease of registering property and the 6th lowest transaction fee in the world, people are still transacting property informally. This raises three questions - Is it ever possible (or efficient enough) to completely formalise all property transactions? As a proposed solution, the thesis presents voluntary titling as a middle ground between the binary debate ‘ in favour of’ or ‘against’ land titling. This thesis is an attempt to analyse the land tenure reforms in Rwanda to deduce the important learnings for implementation of titling projects elsewhere.

Karthikeyan Kuppueilani Thesis Advisor: Jinhua Zhao

Travel Based Multitasking on the Mumbai Local and Metro: Measurement, classification and variation Review of travel based multitasking (TBM) behavior has shown that activities performed during travel is of growing interest in the field of transportation planning and mobility behavior. There is a lack of literature looking at this subject in cities in developing countries. This thesis examines TBM activities occurring on mass transit modes in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. It takes the Western Line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway and the upcoming Line II and III of the Mumbai Metro as case studies to understand TBM activities in the Indian context. Firstly, this thesis calculates the influence of socioeconomic and trip-related variables on the occurrence of ICT-related and social TBM activities through a framework of Positive Utility of Travel (PUT). Secondly, it identifies the possible causes of variation of TBM among different socio-economic groups. Thirdly, it charts how policy and infrastructure decisions on the Mumbai Suburban Railway and the Mumbai Metro can be informed by ICT-related and social TBM activities performed by riders during on-board travel time. An

on-board intercept survey of 196 riders conducted in August 2018 on the Western line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway was used to analyze revealed and stated preferences of TBM activities. Results of choice models were further deconstructed with insights from unstructured interviews. Age and willingness to pay per minute were the strongest predictors of TBM activities. Riders younger than 34 years of age on the Mumbai Suburban Railway and younger than 29 years of age on the Mumbai Metro were more inclined to engage in ICTrelated TBM activities. Female riders displayed a higher tendency to socialize on mass transit when compared to male riders and frequently perceived general compartments on the Mumbai Suburban Railway as unsafe to perform ICT-related activities.

Zachary Lamb Dissertation Advisor: Lawrence Vale

Making and Unmaking the Dry City: The design-politics of flood mitigation from infrastructural modernization to climate adaptation Advocates of new climate change-linked flood mitigation projects around the world often frame their proposals as qualitatively different from past ‘gray’ infrastructures. Though new ‘green’ infrastructure projects have gained widespread favor, questions remain: Will these new efforts address the problems of previous mega-projects? How are the tools of design enabling and constraining transformative adaptation? This study addresses these questions by analyzing the evolving politics of flood mitigation in Dhaka and New Orleans, two levee-dependent cities considering sweeping changes to their flood mitigation strategies. It uses a range of data, including: archival research; field observations; and interviews with residents, experts, and participants in recent planning processes.

Considering contemporary climate adaptation efforts in the context of historical flood mitigation, the study finds that, while emerging practices hold promise, there is reason for caution. The development of levee and pump infrastructure in both Dhaka and New Orleans was uneven, crisis-driven, and contested. Critics in both cities increasingly regard levee-enabled growth as unwise and unjust. Though levee boosters promised modernization and orderly growth, their efforts created distinctly different patterns of uneven urbanization and vulnerability in each city. The case studies suggest that contemporary projects may fail to deliver their promised new paradigm because: existing infrastructure configurations are highly resistant to change; path-dependent dynamics are biased towards ‘big engineering solutions’; and even proposals that depart from previous practices are constrained by the same material interests and epistemologies that created the unwise and unjust patterns of the past. While the tools of design offer potential improvements for flood mitigation projects, designers often do not grapple with the political contestations that come with such projects, using their tools to ignore, obscure, or rush past distributional impacts.

Graham Lazar Thesis Advisor: Marie Law Adams

Sighting Public History: A re-education on race and space in Chicago Sighting Public History is an effort to see Chicago, a city which I have always called home, and to see it with fresh eyes. The project takes as its focus sites of black public history: locations in the built environment where history is put to work in the public realm. It is an effort to re-educate one’s self using the visual grammar of the city. The project uses the concept of sights — authored photographs, maps, and written reflections — to offer a subjective view of public history at work in Chicago’s historically black South and West Sides.

Where and how are histories of the black experience put to work here? How do public parks and boulevards, streetscapes and thresholds of private homes, and collections and exhibitions of storied black cultural organizations compose an urban constellation of black public history? How does this constellation perform a powerful pedagogic function by teaching individuals and communities about the history of race in the city (including the systemic injustices borne by Chicago’s black communities, and the way these communities have responded through politics, art, cultural programming, and community organizing)? Ultimately, Sighting Public History asks, what kinds of history do Chicago’s black communities carry, and how are these histories carried?

Sara Li Thesis Advisor: Kairos Shen

How Developers Negotiate Zoning Reliefs and Public Benefits: Two cases in downtown Boston Large-scale real estate developments present unique challenges for planners to determine the optimal provision of public benefits. This thesis seeks to unpack how developers and city planning officials negotiate zoning amendments and determine how much public benefits matter throughout the review process. Given the differing viewpoints between planners and developers, I hope to provide clarity on the considerations of both sides. My thesis recognizes that the negotiation between the city and developers to reach the development agreements and determine public benefits is a complex, crucial planning process which lacks sufficient scholarly attention to bridge theory and practice.

I look to two case studies in Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s downtown: the Ritz-Carlton Complex and One Lincoln Street. I found that despite substantial risk and other obstacles, both development teams showed willingness and commitment to embrace the public benefit obligations. The projects resulted in significant public benefits provided to the city; furthermore, to the developer, the quantified price tag of those public benefits had more influence on the success of the project than the numbers might suggest. I argue that although public benefits are often treated as project costs, they create long term value to both the developer and the city. Developers and planners who can understand the full spectrum of issues will likely be more successful in negotiating future agreements for zoning reliefs and public benefits.

Xinhui Li Thesis Advisor: P. Christopher Zegras

Collaborative Accessibilitybased Public Engagement for Bus Rapid Transit in Pretoria, South Africa Tools that make use of new technologies and new media to facilitate conversations for dispute-resolution have been studied and tested in various formats in recent years. As a field constantly involved with resolving conflicting interests and seeking collaborative problem-solving, urban planning could benefit greatly from the development and deployment of such tools. CoAXs (Collaborative Accessibility-based Stakeholder Engagement) is an interactive planning tool intended to enhance public participation in planning public transport systems. It has been implemented in different contexts in the United States and in Chile. This thesis presents adaptation and deployment of the tool in a context with distinct political, cultural, and economic characteristics â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pretoria, South Africa. With an ambitious plan to expand its Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, but facing constrained road space, Pretoria is two years behind its BRT development plan because of unresolved conflicts between private vehicle users and public transport riders. Using an adapted version of CoAXs that allows users to create

scenarios by selecting BRT route options, four public engagement workshops were conducted in July 2018 in Pretoria. The workshops were designed to help learn about the suitability of the tool in a new context, as well as its effectiveness in changing participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perceptions and attitudes, fostering empathy between interest groups, and supporting meaningful conversations among stakeholders. Using a survey of participants and observations during the workshops, this study finds that CoAXs moderately broadened usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; scope of expected impacts and prompted different user groups, especially private vehicle users, to empathize with users of other transport modes. CoAXs was effective in facilitating and supporting public engagement conversations, although more understanding and consideration of the specific cultural context will be helpful in the future.

Jinghong Lyu Thesis Advisor: Siqi Zheng

Will Dockless Bike Sharing System Alter the Subway Price Premium in Rental Market? Evidence from Beijing Empirical studies have found that the entry of dockless bikes can flatten the rent price gradient for subway accessibility for 10 Chinese cities on average, yet havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t discussed if this effect also exists in a single city in which subway accessibility varies across locations. This study uses difference-in-differences (DID) empirical design to analyze the impact of dockless bike-sharing on Beijingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rental market, and further explores the spatial heterogeneity of such impact. Results show that the rental price gradient flattens slightly for apartments within the 3km radius from a subway station in Beijing. Taking the heterogeneity of development in Beijing into account, the study further finds that the rental price gradient becomes slightly steeper in more developed areas such as North Beijing or Beijing within the 4th Ring Road, and flattened by up to 16% in less developed areas such as South Beijing and Beijing outside the 4th Ring Road. Such impact on rental price gradient change is not linear within the 3km radius, where in more developed areas the largest reduction in gradient happens at 1000-2000m, and in less developed

areas at 0-500m. The entry of dockless bike-sharing system can generate great social benefits by saving commuting time and allowing more housing supplies for tenants to choose from. Switching from walking to biking from homes to subway stations saves about 8.3 minutes of commuting time per trip on average in Beijing, where the most developed area saves 7.24 minutes and the least developed saves 11.8 minutes. This study contributes to the nascent literature on dockless bike-sharing systems and its impacts on housing rental market, and also yields policy implications for better integrating the bike-sharing system and the existing public transit systems, and the resulted benefit of enhancing housing supply in public transit accessible locations.

Jeremia Sir Nindyo Mamola Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind

Towards the Integration of Terrestrial and Marine Spatial Planning in Indonesia: A case study of Bali Indonesia is the largest archipelagic state in the world. It holds very important marine resources and some of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems. Marine spatial planning, a tool that can be used to control development and maintain ecosystem services, is vital to the future of the marine environment in Indonesia. Since 2007, the national government has required each province to create a Marine Spatial Plan (MSP). These are supposed to mesh with the already long-standing Terrestrial Spatial Plans (TSP). Together, these plans are meant to provide the underpinning for a range of government programs as well as permitting and licensing systems. The marine and terrestrial spatial plans must be synchronized to avoid conflicts and achieve the anticipated ecological and socio-economic objectives. In Bali, one of the provinces that is currently working on a new MSP and a revised TSP, the MSP appears to be driven almost entirely by the existing TSP. This could lead to future conflicts and a failure to achieve important

environmental and social objectives because of lack of cross-realm consideration in the two plans. In this thesis, I look at the current barriers to the integration of MSP and TSP in Bali and Indonesia. In my view, it is necessary for the government, in particular, the ministries that are responsible for spatial planning, to require both types of plans to be prepared at the same time. To do so, they need new procedures to ensure harmonization of land-sea considerations and improve local government capacities and commitment. In the long term, it may be necessary for the government to amend the existing legislation (Laws Number 26 and 27 Year 2007) to accommodate a more integrative approach to spatial planning of the land and the sea.

Alexander Meeks Thesis Advisor: Karl Seidman

Accounting for Disaster: Small Business Recovery in North Carolina after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence In 2016, Hurricane Matthew flooded much of North Carolina’s southeastern region, inundating thousands of homes and businesses. Two years later, Hurricane Florence precipitated even greater damage. Little academic work focuses on the state’s recovery from the two storms, and none tracks the recovery of its small businesses. These businesses are important sources of employment and wages, yet compared to households and public facilities, they qualify for fewer sources of economic relief, and almost all of that relief consists of debt. These businesses already suffer ongoing negative trends: increasing economic stratification between small and large firms nationwide as well as sustained rates of rural depopulation and divestment.

recovery programs geared toward small businesses. These contrast with the sophisticated and efficient system of capital absorption at the state level, which pivots around a network of community-based small business development centers and lending intermediaries. On the capital “demand side,” I theorize the vulnerability of small businesses and seek to understand their financial and operational decisions through interviews. Small businesses are expected to recover on their own merits through insurance, debt financing, and savings. But their recovery also hinges on factors beyond their control: the availability of affordable and rapid debt capital, the quick resurgence of local spending after a disaster, and the public resolution of market failures through limited grant funding. Absent significant improvements in insurance uptake, disaster credit, and hazard mitigation, these businesses will continue to face rising fixed costs, diminished access to credit, tighter operating margins, and a higher probability of failure.

I focus on the supply and use of small business capital post-disaster in order to diagnose unmet need and make recommendations to foster business recovery. On the capital “supply side,” I describe slow, sometimes arbitrary, occasionally risky federal disaster

Haley Meisenholder Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Vale

Not in My Back Nine: An examination of land use disputes over golf course redevelopments in America Golf courses in America delineate and identify landscapes of luxury, exclusion and abundance. Originally located in upper-class neighborhoods, golf course communities value the appearance of wealth and the cultural ties to golf and its elite past. Golf courses in the Southwest are part of an invented tradition of golf urbanism and are the product of land speculation that occurred after the initial wave of post-World War II suburbanization. Since 2000, golf has seen a decline in membership and cultural standing, resulting in dead and dying golf courses dotting middle-class suburban landscapes. These now defunct courses have become the object of desire for speculative land developers seeking to turn a profit by developing on these newly open parcels. Through interviews, site visits, archival and media research, I sought to understand how and why three communities in the Southwest, located in Palm Desert, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, were fighting plans for redevelopment. The questions of who has a say in the redevelopment process and what the â&#x20AC;&#x153;highest and bestâ&#x20AC;? use remain

unanswered in these communities. Through calls for open space preservation, legal restrictions and strong social and political ties, neighborhoods fight to preserve this exclusive open space.

Amy Meyer Thesis Advisor: Mariana Arcaya

Corporate Political Responsibility and Climate Change: Exploring barriers to strategy alignment among major U.S. food and beverage companies

and non-private sectors, I identify eight barriers that influence company decision-making and complicate calls for alignment. I balance these barriers with a discussion of strategies, including recommendations for companies and institutions operating in this space.

Over the past several decades, our society has experienced an evolution in its expectations of the corporate sector. The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged to encompass not just what companies do with their profit, but how they make it. Responsibility towards climate change is a central pillar. While companies are increasingly taking steps to address their contributions to climate change, their political activities are not necessarily aligned with this goal. Many companies continue to directly and indirectly engage in political activities that deter climate change policy, such as lobbying or belonging to trade associations who seek to prevent climate action. Amidst growing calls for corporations to take greater responsibility for their political contributions, this thesis examines the barriers climate-leading companies face in aligning their CSR strategies with their political engagement strategies. Focusing on the Food and Beverage industry and drawing on stakeholder interviews with key players in the private

Azka Mohyuddin Thesis Advisor: Mary Anne Ocampo

Displaced to a Place: Interventions for refugee integration in cities In recent years, conflict and climate change around the world are not only displacing people at an unprecedented rate but also increasing the years of their displacement. With over 25.4 million refugees globally, the highest number in history, countries are forced to change how they respond to this crisis. In most cases, housing refugees in temporary camps is not sustainable over a long, and a majority of the global refugees end up living in urban areas. Since cities are starting to play an essential role in welcoming this new population, it is imperative for the planning field to understand how the built environment impacts refugee integration. Successful integration into host society is not the sole responsibility of a refugee but rather a process that involves both the refugee and the host community.

This thesis investigates factors that affect refugee integration and examines how they play out spatially on a local scale through a case study of the Roxbury neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. The research analysis and case study affirm the influence of place in the refugee experience of community and belonging. Just as displacement is a place-based trauma, refugee resettlement must be approached as a place-based intervention. This thesis highlights the role of planners by outlining the spatial implications of successful integration in addition to introducing a multidisciplinary approach that can empower refugees to not only successfully integrate but to have agency in their new homes.

Brittany Montgomery Dissertation Advisor: Gabriella Carolini

Delivering Urban Projects: Contracting, voice, and anti-corruption in infrastructure When Enrique Peñalosa won his second term as Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia in 2015, 15 years after leaving the same office, he aimed to repeat the model of development used in his first administration to deliver internationally renowned infrastructure. He would advance his goal of “urban democracy” through the delivery of infrastructure projects. Based on more than a year managing transportation infrastructure projects during Peñalosa’s second administration, I use an analytic ethnographic approach to explain why it is now so much harder to “get things done.” In the interim between Peñalosa’s terms, the organizational environment of projects was reshaped by the evolution of popular development reforms adopted in the 1990’s and 2000’s. Reforms interacted in unanticipated ways, catalyzing changes to the everyday practices of public sector employees. Together, they create three forces that constrain infrastructure delivery: the increased use of contract workers within the public administration, the rise in public voice on projects, and the predation of Colombia’s administrative oversight agencies. The new public sector contracting

regime rests on individual contract workers and the division of labor between employees. I show how it fosters conflict within public agencies and affects projects through low organizational learning, reduced legitimacy, and management difficulties. The public administration responds in surprising ways to the growth of formal and alternative expressions of the voice of project stakeholders. By criminalizing administrative law and presuming the flawless delivery of infrastructure projects, the oversight agencies motivate perverse routines within the public administration. Fear leads to decisions that public leaders admit are suboptimal, an inability to resolve project stakeholder demands, and stymied organizational learning. The policies that provoke the forces impeding infrastructure project delivery in Bogotá remain recommended to countries in the Global South. Yet their unexpected effects on organizational practices and projects can yield undesirable results.

Joshua I.H. Morrison Thesis Advisor: Dennis Frenchman

The Frolic Model: Transforming single-family homes into urban cohousing We founded the development firm Frolic to respond to the following questions: Can we introduce the benefits of density to urban America without displacing the people who live there? Can we bring the comfort of permanence and planting roots to the nonwealthy? Can we build places that make daily life easier, more affordable, and more enjoyable? This thesis articulates the Frolic Model developed through the DesignX incubator at MIT with input from over 40 developers and city staff working in major cities across the U.S. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Frolicâ&#x20AC;? is an Amish term referring shared labor and common vision, used to describe joyous festivals in which over 100 families would come together and raise a barn in one week. In our research, we found that there are several potential mutual gains lost in the current housing development paradigm - between property owners, investors, future residents, developers and community members. By restructuring the development process around mutual gains, the Frolic Model brings the benefits of homeownership to a broader population, while allowing smaller, more intimate development projects to become viable.

The three principles of the Frolic Model are cooperative financing, codevelopment, and cohousing. The cooperative financing structure enables crowd-investing and a decoupling of share ownership and tenancy. This allows residents to act as long-term tenants of a project without requiring a large down payment or a personal mortgage. It also allows others in the neighborhood to buy shares in the project and invest in a tangible, low-risk, low-return community asset. Over time, low wealth residents can purchase more shares and build additional equity in their home. Partnering with land owners to co-develop their property, we allow them to avoid displacement and financially benefit from redevelopment. Through elements of cohousing, we create infrastructure for community and improve affordability through shared amenities.

Antonio Moya-Latorre Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

The Sparking Cycle. A CultureOriented Approach to System Change in Oppressed Communities “Planners, facilitators, community leaders and activists committed to building fairer societies need to cultivate profound sensitivity to perceive the complexity of the communities they work with and envision strategic actions that unleash incremental transformative cultural processes. The Sparking Cycle explores how culture-oriented projects can catalyze community-inspired change in contexts of oppression. This thesis argues that such projects can be designed to leverage a traumatic experience in order to spark the collective capacity of a community to pursue the lives its individuals have reason to value. Practitioners can conceive sparking projects to support oppressed communities in creating efforts with the potential for scaling up and engendering deeper transformations.

from the art world, I delve into the idea of contemplation as a necessary first step that informs our actions. The second movement grounds the theory in the story of an inspiring project I became involved in, in the community of Jardim Colombo, São Paulo, that is overcoming structural oppression through a culture-oriented process. In the third movement, I apply systems thinking to theorize about how the process of transforming oppressed communities into systems of capabilities could look if we start building an infrastructure of change at initial stages of a sparking project. This thesis is an act of contemplation in itself conceived to inspire practitioners seeking to advance wellbeing among the communities they work with and help them design more meaningful actions. Similar to the stories I share here, which are sparking profound changes among the people involved, it is my wish that this thesis will spark new ideas to plant seeds for more hopeful futures.”

The first movement of this thesis is a conceptual framework that explores how cultural transformation processes built on the interaction between the concepts of conscientização and capabilities can generate a sparking cycle of increasing change. Drawing

Xuenan Ni Thesis Advisor: Jinhua Zhao

Factors Affecting Public Support of Transportation Policies: Using an international survey and hybrid discrete choice modeling What transportation policies do people support? What factors affect peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s policy support? Detangling peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s support of transportation policies is a way to understand public needs, to understand how the public evaluates and envisions the role of government in shaping the current as well as future urban transport system, and to anticipate difficulties of implementing certain types of policies due to public resistance. It is important to study policy support because 1) understanding public opinions can lend legitimacy and responsiveness to policy making processes and outcomes, and 2) profiling people based on their support for different types of mobility policies may help customize policies for different groups so that the municipalities can enhance the effectiveness or equity of implementing certain types of policies.

This thesis models the factors that contribute to stated support of 11 different transportation policies in an international sample of 41,932 individuals in 51 countries using the utility-maximizing approach of hybrid discrete choice. It analyzes transportation policy support expressed by individuals in the survey, with respect to their socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, income, etc.), travel modes, and attitudes. Moreover, by controlling for individual characteristics, a country-level analysis captured differences of policy support resulting from being of different nationalities. The results suggest that many countries share similarity in their policy support with other countries that are geographically adjacent, but there are also unexpected country peers that are far removed geographically, but have similar policy support. Overall, the methods and findings of this thesis may be useful for policymakers working on evaluating policy effectiveness for certain social groups and for researchers looking at what policy paths towards sustainable transportation that different countries might take.

Yael Nidam Thesis Advisor: Brent Ryan

Retrofit for Reseilience This research explores the incentives and barriers to retrofit single-family and small multi-family homes in Boston, to understand why uptake on government incentive programs is low and inconsistent with the rate needed to achieve the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mitigation and adaptation goals by 2050. Recent technological advancements enable the study of these buildings from the ground up, enabling urban scale insights from the study of individual buildings performance. The methodology to develop Urban Building Energy Models (UBEM) was developed at Sustainable Design Lab at MIT in 2016, to estimate citywide energy demand loads down to the individual building level. Utilizing an existing UBEM for two neighborhoods in Boston, this study explores the impact of energy savings and government incentives on householdsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to participate in retrofit programs, to uncover unmet needs and form recommendations to accelerate retrofit implementation.

Results show that while implementation of retrofits is not financially beneficial for every household, there is a substantial gap between the number of households who can potentially benefit from these incentives and the current participation rate. Interviews with policy designers and architects working on retrofit implementation in Boston reveal additional barriers to explain this gap. Recommendations for quick fixes include better visualization tools to communicate the specificity of applicable programs at the individual building scale and in response to the householder needs, investment in programs to bolster communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; organization capacity and expediting and streamlining the process to make it easier to access. This study demonstrates the potential of UBEM to inform public policy and increase citizen access to government benefits, as part of a global effort to enhance the transparency and the efficacy of governance through digital interfaces.

Ari Ofsevit Thesis Advisors: Fred Salvucci and John Attanucci

L or Subway: Estimating the impacts of route changes for Chicago’s rapid transit system The Chicago Transit Authority is the second largest transit agency in the US, and its rail transit system currently serves nearly half of the rides in the system. As ridership has grown, congestion has increased on certain portions of the system, especially on the Loop, where up to 35 trains per hour are run on certain line segments. Yet in the subways below, some tracks see as few as 10 trains per hour during the same time period. This research will investigate means of reducing this congestion, and analyze and recommend several routing alternatives which would reallocate some resources from the Loop ‘L’ to the subways, reducing congestion on the Loop while maintaining or increasing overall throughput through the downtown area.

The analysis breaks down current passenger use to estimate the travel time impacts of various alternatives for passengers and the potential to draw new ridership to the system, the operational impacts (congestion and delay reduction, yard operations, safety, etc.) and cost to the agency, and how these changes may be piloted, implemented and further evaluated in concert with the agency’s planned capital improvements. While the specific details of this case study are particular to the CTA, the process may be applicable to other systems which are able to experiment with different routing structures. The results of this research show that there are benefits to both congestion and passenger travel from running less service around the Loop and more through travel. Congestion is reduced by removing some trains from the most congested portions of the elevated structure and reallocating them to existing capacity in the subway. Passengers benefit as fewer transfers are required between lines, and more locations are accessible via direct, one-seat rides.

Charlotte Ong Thesis Advisor: Eran Ben-Joseph

The Making of an Eco-City: An examination of the SinoSingapore Tainjin eco-city as a new model of transnational new town development New town development remains a significant phenomenon shaping urbanization in the Global South, even as architects, planners engineers and consultants from the Global North continue to play an outsized role in designing these urban developments. However, contemporary practice and references to circulating planning models, ideas and practices are no longer restricted to a unidirectional flow originating in the West as aspirational cities from the formerly colonized world have emerged. In recognition of these emergent centers, I focus on the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC), a government-to-government flagship project between Singapore and China, situated in Tianjin, China, as a case study of a new model of transnational new town development.

Situating the SSTEC in its broader global intellectual heritage and national sociopolitical contexts, I sought to examine the overall structures and planning processes of the SSTEC. Through interviews with Chinese and Singapore planners and actors, I found that it was not a purely state-driven effort, with state and private sector actors taking on different roles and responsibilities at each stage from planning and design, construction and development to operation and management. The SSTEC represents a model of collaboration that is atypical in the supervisory and operational structures set up, length of commitment and its collaborative nature of the planning process. Furthermore, unlike typical transnational eco-city developments, foreign involvement went beyond the mere production of a set of plans and designs or even a design-build model but rather a design-build-operate model where the Singaporean partners were involved at every stage of the project development. Gaining a deeper and more nuanced theoretical and empirical understanding of policy and planning models, ideas and practices emerging from and mutating in the cities of the Global South will prove to be more urgent as the center of urban thought leadership shifts away from the Global North.

Gonzalo Ortega SĂĄnchez de LerĂn Thesis Advisor: Eran Ben-Joseph

Beyond Models: Digital tools for urban design as mechanisms for better planning practices This thesis explores the factors that affect the potential of computational urban design tools as instruments to support the implementation of better urban design practices through more informed and collaborative urban development processes. Contemporary computational tools impact the inception of design ideas; evaluate design outputs objectively at different stages; and assist the further development of the design solutions. These tools streamline the creation of comprehensive and detailed urban design scenarios based on extensive quantitative and qualitative methods which relate to the extensive factors urban design needs to address. The goal is to result in more sustainable, vibrant and equitable developments through urban form, use allocation and other design specifications. However, external factors condition the implementation of these informed urban design practices. Particularly in the case of high-density, mixed-use urban infill projects, regulations and policies determine the possibilities for development and opportunity space within which the negotiation and trade-off between stakeholders takes place. Both regulations and trade-off affect the final definition of

an urban design project and the inclusion of better practices. An analysis of theory, use cases and the in-depth exploration of the various approaches to urban design in the redevelopment of Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts leads to multisided results. I conclude by providing a series of short recommendations for how to potentially address these issues.

Rushil Palavajjhala Thesis Advisor: Siqi Zheng

Understanding and Quantifying Value Capture and the Role of Information in Migration Decisions: A case of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Corridor, India The Thesis attempts to unpack how rural residents across India make decisions to migrate to urban centers in the Ahmedabad -Mumbai corridor and analyze if those decisions are concomitant with helping them achieve their migration intents. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze 52 origin – destination pairs of migration. The qualitative methods, based on 52 field interviews, help understand the nuances of how and why people migrate. In analyzing patterns here, the study also heavily references the existing literature to establish departure points for quantitative studies. Basing itself on the model that these migration decisions are a trade-off between the wage differential and the social cost of being uprooted from one’s native place, it attempts to quantify the gain and see if the gains proportionately increase with increased compromises on the migrant’s social ties to their native place. It relies

on geo-spatial analysis and several regression models to analyze the above mentioned phenomenon and offer a nuanced understanding of where value is captured/ lost in the process of migration. Finding that housing rents significantly offset wage differentials, a key part of understanding the value capture has been achieved through an analysis of housing rental data. The data analysis includes data collected via web-scraping and the gathering of about 25,000 datapoints, as well as rental and income data from 52 field interviews of migrants – primarily working in the informal sector. In concluding its findings and analysis, the Thesis finds that solving information asymmetry , addressing integration of migrants into urban life whilst also maintaining their social ties with their native places, and state subsidies/ policies for cost effective and flexible rental housing may be the most critical pieces to improve the socio-economic mobility of migrants. The Thesis forms a basis for an entrepreneurial venture ‘Bandhu’- by the author.

Daniel Heriberto Palencia Arreola Thesis Advisor: P. Christopher Zegras

Arguments for and Field Experiments in Democratizing Digital Data Collection – The Case of Flocktracker Data is increasingly relevant to urban planning, serving as a key input for many conceptions of a “smart city.” However, most urban data generation results from top-down processes, driven by government agencies or large companies. This provides limited opportunities for citizens to participate in the creation of the data used to affect their communities. Digital community data can give more inputs to city planners and decision makers while also empowering communities. This thesis arguments from the literature about why it would be helpful to increase participation from citizens in data generation and examines digital community mapping as a potential niche for the ”democratization” of digital data collection. I also examine Flocktracker, a smartphone-based technology developed to setup data collection projects with no technical background needed. I define a model where such “democratization” could happen, in which “seed” projects lead to a spreading of Flocktracker’s use across the sociotechnical

landscape, producing self-sustaining networks of data collectors. To test the model, I examine four experiments treated as “seed” projects: one in Tlalnepantla, Mexico and three in Surakarta, Indonesia. They were designed to help understand whether citizen participation in digital community mapping events affect their perceptions about open data and community data collection, also whether this participation entices them to create other datasets, thus starting the “democratization” process. The results reveal the difficulties in motivating community participation in technology-based field data collection. While Flocktracker proved easy enough for the partner organizations to create data collection projects, the technology alone does not guarantee participation. The “democratization” model could not be validated. Each of the experiments had low levels of participation that led to inconclusive findings regarding their effects on participants’ perceptions. Nonetheless, numerous insights emerge for the technology and how it might be better used in the future to improve digital community mapping.

Miguel Paredes Dissertation Advisor: Una-May Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Reilly

Data Science and Advanced Analytics : An integrated framework for creating value from data Fundamental problems in society, such as medical decision support, urban planning and customer management, can be addressed by data-driven modeling. Frequently, the only data available are observational rather than experimental. This precludes causal inference, though it supports quasi-causal inference (or causal approximation) and prediction. With three different studies that are driven by observational data, this thesis compares machine learning and econometric modeling in terms of their purposes, insights, and uses. It proposes a data science methodology that combines both types of modeling to enable experimental designs which would otherwise be impossible to carry out. In the first two studies, we address problems through both a prediction and quasi-causation approach (i.e. machine learning and econometrics), exploring their similarities, differences, benefits, and limitations. These two initial studies serve to demonstrate the need for an end-to-end methodology that combines prediction and causation. Our proposed data science methodology is presented in the third study,

in which an enterprise seeks to address its customer churn. First, it uses observational data and econometrics to approximate the causal determinants of churn (quasi-causal insights). Second, it uses machine learning to predict churn likelihoods of clients, and selects a study group with likelihoods above a threshold of interest. Third, the quasi-causal insights are used to design a stratified randomized controlled trial (i.e. A/B test) where study subjects are randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups. Finally, thanks to the rigorously designed experiment, the causal effects of the interventions are determined, and the cost-effectiveness of the treatments relative to the control group are established.

Meagan Cherita Patrick Thesis Advisor: Joe Ferreira

Data and Decontrol: a civic-tech approach for identification of predatory landlords in the New York City rent-regulated housing market With New York City in the throes of an affordable housing crisis, City government and housing advocates have worked tirelessly towards the identification of landlords with profit models based on fraudulent deregulation of the rent-regulated stock. With the refusal of the controlling agency, the New York State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), to release unit-level data, along the widespread use of limited liability companies (LLCs) to obscure ownership, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s difficult to both track changes in the market and to associate those changes with problematic actors. The role of this thesis is to explore the creation of a methodology incorporating pre-existing work at the city and civilian level (â&#x20AC;&#x153;civic techâ&#x20AC;?) to identify suspect patterns of behavior; recognizing that improved access to ownership data is key to identifying spatial and temporal patterns of change in the classification and pricing of rent-stabilized units. By leveraging tax and property data, a relational database and associated SQL queries can

make possible the identification of concentrated patterns of behavior occurring on properties by owners who have otherwise proven to be particularly adept at staying hidden. Look-up tables have been incorporated to create a method of analysis which is systematic and can be maintained and augmented as new information on ownership and management is accumulated over time. This work is split into three parts: The first part will begin with an initial exploration into the academic literature on rent-regulated housing, as well as the role of civic tech to supplement that literature. The second part will outline the data integration methodology, using one census tract as a case study to test the feasibility of this approach. Finally, the third part explores implementation on a larger scale and the potential impacts of a successful execution of this methodology on legislation and prosecution targeting predatory landlords.

Michael A. Pearce Thesis Advisors: Dennis Frenchman, Andrea Chegut, and Garnette Cadogan

FinTechs and the City: Agglomeration economies of financial services firms in Midtown Manhattan

financial services in Midtown. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to existing agglomeration economics research by specifying, in the same study, agglomeration impacts deriving from a given industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s established businesses as well as its startups.

Although agglomeration is widely studied through wages, industrial output, capital, and innovation, research using real estate rates remains sparse; this is the case even though commercial real estate rents may serve as the most effective measure of agglomeration. To remedy this gap in the literature, this thesis seeks to understand the rental premium associated with the agglomeration of financial services firms and startups in Midtown Manhattan. The research relies upon hedonic regression to calculate the marginal impact of additional financial services firms, employment, annual sales, startup funding, and job postings on the rent paid by financial services firms in Midtown Manhattan. To understand whether the agglomeration effects diminish rapidly over space, I conduct these analyses at three radii: 100 meters, 250 meters, and 500 meters. Ultimately, my research confirms the statistically and substantially significant presence of agglomeration among

Roberto Ponce-Lopez Dissertation Advisor: Joseph Ferreira

An Exploration of Non-Work Destinations in Singapore Non-work destinations refer to the locational choices of people regarding where they go for non-work activity. My exploration focuses on the daily trips with a primary purpose of shopping, entertainment, and dining in Singapore. The uniqueness of non-work trips, compared with home-to-work commuting trips, is that we do not observe the spatial tractability of the alternatives (home and work locations are known). Travelers have flexibility in location and schedule for non-work destination choices, and such selections repeat day after day. The flexibility to choose a non-work destination turns the modeling and forecasting of these trips into a complex task because a combination of factors, including the location of the supply of non-work activities, the activity pattern of the traveler, and the cost of traveling, affects the selection of non-work destination alternatives. This thesis utilizes a spatial-temporal scanning tool on cellphone-locational data to improve the spatial representation of places with high concentration of human activity, and use these places as a proxy of non-work destinations. Then, a clustering algorithm characterizes the spaces at the interior of those previously identified places by the geometry, diversity and density

of the commercial establishments that they contain. Finally, the results of two statistical models that estimate housing price and destination choice indicate that the characterization of places capture additional information, which are useful in identifying the characteristics of neighborhoods (or space) and representing the destination alternatives of non-work activity. The model of destination choice shows the potential of the method to construct richer spatial nested structures of destination choice to what is currently in the literature. The main contribution of this thesis is the systematic development of measures that are useful to urban planners in characterizing places. These measures can help us to improve our understanding of non-work destination travel behavior.

Ayrlea Porter Thesis Advisor: Karilyn Crockett

Lending a Hand: An Exploration of Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Values-Based Lenders, and the Role of Relationships in SME Lending In the financial services industry, especially in the wake of the financial crisis, there has been a call for financial institutions to employ their capital for positive impact. While banks have traditionally worked to maximize value for shareholders, this movement has sparked interest in alternative banking models that incorporate social and environmental values. There are numerous names for this view of banking, among them, values-based, regenerative, ethical, sustainable, social, alternative, development and solidarity banking.

in doing so support the social, environmental, and economic sustainability of local communities. This thesis explores the current state of values-based lending to SMEs in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto financial market is dominated by a handful of large domestic banks; however, there is a gap between the credit requirements of SMEs, and what the traditional banking market is willing and able to supply. The author concludes that values-based lenders serve an important role in the Toronto SME lending market, filling numerous gaps left by traditional banks. These lenders are able to employ more qualitative, subjective and relationship-based methods in credit risk assessment and lending decisions.

Many values-based institutions have smaller, more local footprints when compared to traditional banks, which makes them well-suited to lend to small and medium-sized businesses (â&#x20AC;&#x153;SMEsâ&#x20AC;?). While SMEs are a vital component of any local economy, they often face challenges obtaining credit from traditional banks. There is an opportunity for values-based lenders to provide credit to SME borrowers that are unserved or underserved by traditional lenders, and

Benjamin Preis Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind

A Study on City-University Partnerships for Smart City Technologies On September 14, 2015, the Obama Administration announced the Smart Cities Initiative, a $160 million initiative to invest in a range of programs for the research and development of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Smart Cities.â&#x20AC;? The MetroLab Network, a consortium of partnerships between cities and their universities, was launched as part of that initiative. In order to join the network, university-city pairs agreed to a set of rules and procedures to guide their partnership. My research explores the history, governance, goals, and outcomes of two of these partnerships: Carnegie Mellon University and Pittsburgh, PA; and the University of Chicago, and Chicago, IL. I find that, though these two partnerships exist under the same umbrella of the MetroLab Network, the type and breadth of the activities that are undertaken by the universities on behalf of the cities vary greatly. Within the two cases, I examine the structure of the partnership and partnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; organizations; project selection; deliverables and outcomes; data sharing and ownership; community engagement; funding; and technology transfer. I also examine the impact of the MetroLab Network on the individual partnerships. I find vast differences in the two

partnerships, with varying levels of satisfaction among city partners, protection for citizens, and equity between the city and the university. I ground my analysis in literature that examines historical city-university partnerships and university-community partnerships, in addition to literature about smart cities generally. I conclude with recommendations for cities and universities as they engage in this type of research.v

Bella Purdy Thesis Advisor: Marie Law Adams

Planning and Design Scenarios for Equitable Outcomes in Managed Retreat Superstorm Sandy hit New York City, on October 29, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 24 persons and the destruction of entire neighborhoods in Staten Island. In response, the state of New York founded the NY Rising Buyout Program to purchase the homes of residents desiring to relocate after the disaster. The program offered residents the pre-storm value of their home to facilitate ‘managed retreat,’ with the goal of transitioning the purchased lots into ecologically resilient open space. However, due to program delays, the amount of incentive offered, and the desire for some residents to remain in their neighborhood, not all residents in the buyout area relocated. Today, remaining residents live in neighborhoods with complicated planning challenges, maintenance needs, and climate risks. This thesis analyzes the outcomes of the NY Rising program by evaluating three buyout areas in the East Shore Staten Island based on the criteria of procedural and distributive justice. Because the NY Rising Program was not equitable in terms of efficiency of administration and access to applicants, the program resulted in unintended spatial and social outcomes, or ‘climate shrinkage:’ depopulation of the neighborhood

coupled with non-contiguous vacant lots. Without multi-actor coordination, managed retreat as a form of transformative adaptation undermines the community resilience of those residents for whom retreat is not an option. In response, this thesis proposes policy recommendations that balance the short term goal of housing affordability with the long term goal of incremental retreat over a multi-decade time horizon, and physical design and land management strategies that transition vacant lots into spaces of community and ecological resilience. To promote equitable climate adaptation, managed retreat programs should incorporate democratic decision making at the community level and provide opportunities for selfdetermination for low to moderate income residents for whom negative climate impacts will be the most severe.

Jessica Quezada Medina Thesis Advisor: Gabriella Carolini

Infrastructure, Sustainability and Unevenness: Exploring marginalization in Mexico Approximately 1.5 million Mexicans lack access to electricity, and most of them live in rural and remote areas with high levels of marginalization and poverty. Access to secure, affordable and modern energy is central to poverty reduction as it is a critical enabler of development (IEA, 2017). However, in most cases, rural electrification implementation has not yielded the expected outcomes. This thesis explores under what conditions can electricity help to alleviate poverty and achieve sustainable development in rural areas. I examine these concerns as also central to addressing the root causes of unevenness and marginalization in these areas. Through fieldwork with off-grid providers and semi-structured interviews of beneficiaries in the rural localities of Oaxaca and Chiapas in Southern Mexico, as well as with government officials, I explore how off-grid electrification improves wellness. By examining the implementation of two rural electrification programs, I reflect on what can be done to strengthen these efforts. In particular, I highlight the essential role that context plays when designing and

implementing programs aimed at alleviating poverty. In conclusion, I propose combining systems-level coordination with place-based policies to better address vulnerabilities for the sustainability of rural offgrid programs and coordination challenges revealed in the projects I studied.

Saritha Ramakrishna Thesis Advisor: Anne Spirn

Land, Sea, and Sky: Environmental histories and planning conflicts in East Boston Places are steeped in individual and collective memory. Places and their features become symbols which convey joy, grief, belonging and change: a beautiful park is a bitterly fought victory, a dilapidated playground a symbol of neglect, a looming condominium complex a represented betrayal. In reality, there are no neutral objects. A neighborhood is not simply an artful arrangement of homes, streets, parks, schools or shops. In reality, is composed of the stories and narratives residents tell.

burdens is long, and includes the noise and pollution from Logan Airport, the jet fuel, salt and heating oil stored alongside the Chelsea Creek, and pollution from Expressway 1A. However, the public process by which utility companies site energy infrastructure is highly technical and standardized, and does not leave space for residents to describe these burdens and tell these context-specific stories. I interviewed residents, reviewed public record and media sources in order to characterize the types of histories in the minds of residents. I then produced four short vignettes with accompanying photo essays which describe public process, East Boston and the Massachusetts Port Authority, the industrial history of the Chelsea Creek, and the future of East Boston, luxury development and climate change.

Residents of East Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eagle Hill neighborhood oppose the siting of a proposed electrical substation on the banks of the Chelsea Creek. The site is located next to a childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s playground and waterfront parkland. Residents worry about the potential impacts of flooding on the site and effects of the substation on quality of life. East Boston and Chelsea are both immigrant and working-class communities. Both share deep memories and experiences of industrial and environmental burdens and the ways in which infrastructure siting and planning processes have imperiled them and their communities. The list of these

Marissa Reilly Thesis Advisor: Mary Anne Ocampo

An Exploration of Incremental Architecture as an Affordable Housing Development Typology

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Incremental approaches to housing construction have long been a typology used around the world. In the context of my work, I define incremental housing as a construction methodology that provides dwellers with the essential elements of a house, allowing the resident to rearrange the fundamental parts to fit their needs, desires, and lifestyles. Through my research, I found that this approach is often a response to the scarcity of resources, be it material, monetary, labor or otherwise. In this thesis, I argue that given the current affordable housing crisis in the US, government officials and developer should explore the use of incremental architecture as a housing development typology.

This research uses a case study methodology to examine incremental housing developments in Berlin, Germany; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Hamilton, Canada as precedents for affordable and alternative approaches to residential development. Based on best practices culled from the case studies, I propose an incremental, affordable housing development in Somerville, Massachusetts including architectural diagrams, financial model, and a flexible unit scheme that facilitates the gradual expansion of a given unit. The financial analysis further suggests that incremental housing is a viable and worthwhile typology that developers and cities alike should consider as a new approach to affordable housing development.

Ayushi Roy Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

Who Serves our Public Servants? Centering core administration in Government 2.0 Currently, most literature sees “civic technology” and the digital service units that build them as an answer to the challenge of modernizing governance and delivering social services. My hypothesis is that, contrary to existing literature, greater digitization alone of government services does not strengthen government performance. The reason for this gap between digitization and modernization can be attributed to a variety of conditions – institutional culture, procurement practices, and unresponsive budgeting, among others. But I argue that the underlying problem is rooted in how digital service units have yet to view their own public employees as in need of service. In the move towards making governance more “user-centered,” public interest technologists have forgotten one of government’s biggest users: those on the inside.

digital governance that does not pit our external users against our internal users, particularly when both are seeking the same access to stability and dignity? By recognizing the human qualities of digital transformation, this thesis advocates for digital governance that better engages the administrators, public workers, and “middle management” who remain core to government operations beneath the veil of digitization.

One of the biggest services government provides is a public salary and access to income stability for minorities and women. In addition, improving service delivery requires improving the experience for the person serving. How can we shape a future of

Alan Sage Thesis Advisors: David Geltner and Alex van de Minne

Land of Opportunity: Early indicators of the Opportunity Zone Programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impact on real estate transaction prices In December 2017, the U.S. Congress passed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including provisions for the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, which would offer significant tax benefits for investments in designated low-income census tracts. I specify a repeat sales price index using a Bayesian random walk model in order to compare the transaction prices of properties located in designated and eligible OZ census tracts and determine the premium associated with OZ designation. I find a significant positive impact on price levels associated with OZ designation ranging from 20% to 22%. I then analyze the performance of properties in designated and eligible tracts relative to properties in census tracts that narrowly missed the eligibility requirements, both as a robustness check and to determine any expectation effect from OZ program eligibility. I find that the estimated impact of OZ designation remains relatively consistent (but on the cusp of significance), and that the estimated expectation impact of eligibility was insignificant in

the models with more robust indicators of fit. To interpret different magnitudes of price effects, I offer a framework of likely market causes and the impact on various stakeholders, as well as a case study based on behavior of market participants in New York City. I conclude by placing my work within the broader literature on financialization as an explanatory theoretical framework.

Kathleen Schwind Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind

Restructuring the IsraeliPalestinian Joint Water Committee How can the Israel-Palestine Joint Water Committee (JWC) be restructured as a problem-solving entity and how can this newly structured JWC contribute to mutual water security in the region? While the IsraelPalestine conflict remains unresolved, thousands in the region lack a reliable water source. Climate change and new technologies like desalination are changing the nature of the relationship between the two parties. Political tensions have stalled fruitful water collaboration in recent years and led to greater distrust. Oslo II called for the creation of the IsraelPalestine JWC in 1995, but since then joint efforts have had limited success.

the JWC should seek international support to help financially implement joint-projects outlined by the technical subcommittees under the JWC. Lastly, the JWC should work on reframing water in terms of “water security” not “national security.” A restructured Israel-Palestine JWC could help facilitate collaboration towards actually discussing and carrying out joint-water research and projects, and rekindle trust between the water negotiators and experts on both sides. It cannot be said for certain that water will be an immediate stepping stone towards overall peace in the region. But water is a worthy first step: Israelis and Palestinians should continue to work together to mutually achieve water security, building some amount of trust along the way, and demonstrate that the two sides can work together to provide their people with the water they need without compromising each sides most important interests.

This thesis draws five prescriptive conclusions regarding the best ways to restructure the Israel-Palestine JWC. First, the JWC needs to adopt a long-term perspective and allow itself to evolve over time, establishing a mutually agreed upon conflict resolution and joint-fact finding mechanism. Second, technical decision-making should give a larger role to the JWC. Third, the JWC should shift from a model based on confidentiality to one based on transparency. Fourth,

Ellen Shakespear Thesis Advisors: Azra Aksamija and Marie Law Adams

Instruments of Service Instruments of Service are defined by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) as “representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect.” This thesis argues that the current instruments of service do not provide the scaffolding necessary to realize the ethical obligations as defined by the AIA. As cities change, architecture’s fundamental obligations, as defined by AIA code of ethics, are threatened. To remain ethical, this thesis argues that the instruments of service must expand.

Against this backdrop, we propose a new method and attitude of practice. We tested this proposed practice for a period of nine months on the ground in Boston and Cambridge. Specifically, we converted four unused sites into artist and community space— our involvement spanning from site identification to policy recommendations to daily operations. This thesis documents parts of that practice. Overall, this thesis is a suggestion and a real world test of one way architects can operate as instrumental shapers of the future of their city. This thesis was a dual M.Arch and MCP thesis completed in collaboration with Stephanie Lee, M. Arch 2019.

This thesis explores the gap between architecture’s obligations and its instruments of service against the backdrop of one such changing city: Boston. We begin with an investigation of the Seaport, one of the most rapidly changing neighborhoods within the city. We use this site as an opportunity to understand how a variety of architects and planners have positioned themselves and how they offer their services to a project that champions a new future for the city of Boston.

Azka Shoaib Thesis Advisor: Bish Sanyal

Politics of institutions in urban development: a case study of Lahore Development Authority City development authorities are one of the key institutions in urban development and planning in South Asian cities. Pakistan and India share a history and have experienced the similar trend of Town Improvement Trusts established by the British transforming into Development Authorities. Both these forms of institutions had a similar mandate â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to improve the living standards in the city through planned development. Development authorities, in particular, were envisioned to undertake comprehensive and integrated master planning in the face of rapid urbanization that its predecessor failed to do so because of its institutional set up as a Trust. In this thesis, I focus on one such urban development institution in Lahore, Pakistan, namely the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) which has come under immense criticism in recent years. In order to understand the urban sprawl of Lahore and the complementary planned development, one needs to understand the institutions that are propelling this form of urban planning. I aim to understand the unequal development in Lahore through the lens of an

institutional framework. The premise of my analysis is that even though the forms of institutions that come about and the way they evolve over time are influenced by the broader political and economic trends, it is the urban development institutions that dictate what kind of policies under its purview are produced, hence affecting the urban form. I argue that LDA was a continuation of the Lahore Improvement Trust in many ways, with a more comprehensive approach to planning, however it faced similar challenges as its predecessor and failed to achieve one of its objectives that it set out to achieve: providing housing for the low-income groups. In my analysis, I highlight that political influence on LDA can be its greatest strength if it is leveraged in the right way. In order to understand LDAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s challenges and how these can be overcome, I analyze the following in this thesis: 1) what was the objective of establishing LDA and to what extent has it achieved it? 2) how has LDAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s policies evolved over the years and why, and 3) what are the challenges to achieve the objective that LDA was set out to fulfill and what are the ways in which it can achieve them?

Jason Spicer Dissertation Advisor: J. Phillip Thompson

Exceptionally Un-American? Why Co-operative Enterprises Struggle in the United States, But Scale Elsewhere Global actors are turning to alternative institutions to build a just, sustainable “new economy”, predicated on “economic democracy”. These alternatives include cooperatively owned enterprises, promoted by social movements, urban/regional planners, and state/national policy entrepreneurs. Though this strategy has repeatedly appeared in periods of crisis, little is known about macro socioeconomic or political conditions for success. Do US worker, consumer and producer cooperatives frequently achieve economies of scale? If not, why? This study deploys regression techniques, comparative-historical analysis, and interviews to answer these questions, synthesizing institutionalism and strategic action field theory as a framing device. Large-scale cooperatives are confirmed as less common in the US than other high-income democracies. Accounting for known socioeconomic factors (industry mix, country size/remoteness, social heterogeneity), two political features play a critical role explaining why: the US’ liberal market orientation, and its territorially

federal structure. Early cooperative development was hindered by the way race-based slavery interacted with liberalism and federalism, producing a persistently hostile policy environment. As contrasted with “success” cases (Finland, France, and New Zealand) the US systematically restricted cooperatives from scaling, while enabling competing organizational forms. The US uniquely lacks a comprehensive national cooperative policy and enabling legislative framework. Cooperative businesses have also been limited from accessing city and state-level public-sector economic development planning tools. The US cooperative ecosystem thus remains weak and incomplete. Gains might be achieved through multi-scalar policy/ planning strategies, incremental policy “layering”, and collaboration with complementing organizational types in the emerging US “community wealth building” framework, corollary to France’s “social and solidarity economy.” Theoretical implications include: the mix of ownership types is an understudied driver of inequality; combining institutionalism and field theory may enhance theories of institutional evolution and social change; and the spatial configuration of political opportunity structures varies by type of institution, with implications for urban actors and hybrid-logic organizations.

Xudong Sun Thesis Advisor: Andrea Chegut

Evaluating the Impact of Online Influencers on Retail Property Rent: A case study in New York City This study proposes a framework of analyzing online influencer behavior and evaluating its impact on retail rent using spatial econometric methods, in which we also examined the spatial autocorrelation and heterogeneity in New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retail rent market. We use social media data mining and network analysis techniques to examine influencers and information diffusion and develop metrics to quantify the impact.

Using spatial econometric models, we construct models of retail rents that include the effect of online influencers and traditional hedonic features. The result suggests that online influencer behavior have a significant correlation with effective rents of retail real estate in the case study area of New York. We also examine the spatial spillover effect and spatial heterogeneity of the influencer effect. Our results provide the first analysis to link online behavior to retail real estate, it also proposes a framework to study the real estate by linking online and offline world, which is meaningful for retail real estate challenged by e-commerce and other forms of new economy.

Marian Swain Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind

Managing Stakeholder Conflicts over Energy Infrastructure: Case Studies from New England Large-scale energy infrastructure projects often spark controversy over possible negative impacts on the environment, the local economy, or abutting properties. The transition to clean energy is exacerbating these conflicts, since it requires a substantial build-out of new energy infrastructure. In this thesis, I use a case study analysis of recent electricity transmission and offshore wind projects in New England to examine the key sources of stakeholder opposition and the impact of stakeholder conflicts on project outcomes. My four cases include both successful and failed projects: Hydro-Quebec Phase I/II, Northern Pass, Cape Wind, and Vineyard Wind. Drawing on stakeholder interviews, public records, and media reports, I find that stakeholder conflicts contributed heavily to failed projects and played an important part in the successful cases. The most common triggers of stakeholder resistance are visual and environmental impacts, concerns of competing industries, inter-state tensions, and efforts to exercise financial and political influence. I evaluate all the factors that contribute to successful projects and offer recommendations for energy developers, policymakers, and regulators who want

to improve the energy facility siting process in New England, with the goal of helping the region accelerate its transition to clean energy.

Fiona Tanuwidjaja Thesis Advisor: Erica James

The Role of Smallholder Palm Oil Farmers in Indonesia: Environmental certication, activist organizations, and corporate social responsibility

This thesis provides a summary of the existing literature, highlights gaps in research, and aims to provide policy recommendations. Future research will be conducted in the MCP thesis and will provide a greater examination of the issues through interviews and other ethnographic methods.

The cultivation of palm oil is environmentally destructive and has contributed to thousands of violations in land and human rights conflicts. Palm oil consumption has doubled in the last decade and is projected to increase, creating anxiety about the sustainability of the industry. In an effort to make governments and corporations more responsible for reforming the industry, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) implemented a certification program meant to incentivize farmers to cultivate more sustainably. However, smallholder farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;defined as planters cultivating less than 50 hectaresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are very unlikely to receive certification due to decreased knowledge of the program and a lack of access to greener technologies and agricultural practices. As smallholdersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; percentage of land share in Indonesia is expected to increase, it is important to improve their certification outcomes in order to promote equity in this competitive and harsh industry.

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Thesis Advisor: Mariana Arcaya

Building Strong Community Health Partnerships: Assessing the earliest phases of collaboration between researchers and local representatives Health is a social and environmental phenomenon. An understanding of cities as platforms for the social determinants of health, and the emergence of the Healthy Cities movement, support the characterization of urban planners as stewards of health. One way that cities can seek to understand and plan for the complexities of urban health systems is through community-based research initiatives that pair local figures with health researchers. These Community-Health Partnerships (CHPs) can then provide both information and guidance regarding the health implications of future kinds of development. Little is known however about how these kinds of CHPs emerge. How do collaborations between community stakeholders and health researchers come to be? What makes them strong candidates for successful health research? And how are those relationships mediated by local factors? This thesis interprets the collaborative style and processes adopted within the

earliest phases of one community health partnership (CHP) in a master-planned community, through the lens of Community-Based Participatory Research (CPBR). Before a formal partnership structure had been adopted, researchers reached out to DUSP to assist in articulating the potential opportunities and barriers unique to their intended research context. This thesisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research was conducted for the partnershipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s use (and is therefore kept anonymous), in order to make recommendations for improving their collaborative processes in pursuit of their future goals. Lessons learned within this partnershipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collaborative structure are then reflected upon in terms of how they might inform successful CHPs generally, with particular attention paid to the role of master-planned communities.

Yanisa Techagumthorn Thesis Advisor: Karilyn Crockett

Moving Forward Equitably? Analyzing the impact of transportation changes on Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neighborhoods The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided the funds for Massachusetts to build a system of highways that threatened to cut through various neighborhoods in the greater Boston area. A broad coalition of people put a stop to these plans in 1972, and advocacy at the federal level allowed for highway funds to be shifted to public transportation projects. This thesis explores how changes in public transit stemming from the Boston anti-highway movement impacted nearby neighborhoods and assesses the areas that may still be lacking in access to adequate transit today.

I conducted a demographic analysis of the census tracts surrounding these two corridors and found that the Orange Line moved from an area with relatively lower incomes, lower education levels, and higher African-American population to an area with relatively higher incomes, higher education levels, and higher non-Hispanic White population. The Silver Line, a bus service inferior to the Orange Line trains, was put into the comparatively disadvantaged corridor. Zooming out to the rest of Boston, I conducted a geospatial analysis comparing the supply of transit, with respect to job access, to the demand, measured through a series of demographic indicators, and found the areas where the MBTA does not provide equitable service, especially for transit-dependent populations. Dorchester, in particular, stands out as a neighborhood with a high density of low-income, less-educated, minority populations without adequate public transit to get to economic opportunities.

In 1987, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) used federal transportation funds to close down the old Elevated Orange Line on Washington Street and to build a new Orange Line along the Southwest Corridor nearby. As the replacement for the Washington Street Elevated, the Silver Line opened fifteen years later in the form of a bus route with aspects of bus rapid transit. For this thesis,

Hannah M. Teicher Dissertation Advisor: Brent Ryan

Climate Allies: how urban/military interdependence enables adaptation As climate impacts escalate, U.S. cities and regions have attempted to fill the federal leadership vacuum. In the midst of federal inertia, the Department of Defense (DoD) acknowledges climate risk, while defense experts promote a climate security agenda. However, defense adaptation has been modest. Installations and the communities around them remain vulnerable, but these shared risks surface the potential for joint adaptation planning. Through a relational case study of two regions with large defense complexes and the climate security policy community in DC, I ask: how and why do municipal and military leaders undertake joint adaptation? What impact does this have on barriers to adaptation? How does climate security discourse shape urban/military collaboration? I find that in Hampton Roads, Virginia and San Diego, California, urban leaders leveragethe military presence to reinforce their adaptation efforts and elevate a broader adaptation agenda. This alliance operates through two mutually reinforcing enablers: recognizing interdependence and constructing credibility. As climate impacts compromise infrastructural and

social networks, urban and military stakeholders have adopted interdependence as an operating premise. This challenges expectations of the rise of ecological enclaves and critiques of urban securitization. Amidst the politics of doubt, the military serves as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;credible messenger;â&#x20AC;? climate security advocates deploy this authority to build support for climate action. Both enablers reinforce the centrality of effective framing and multilevel coordination. Benefits include expanded cooperation and access to resources; pitfalls include favoring adaptation over mitigation. Urban leadersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; qualified success in leveraging the military for adaptation suggests implications for other powerful institutions. Conceptualizing military installations as anchor institutions with an embedded local presence and dedicated mission highlights pathways for communities to form additional adaptation alliances.

Haily Tran Thesis Advisor: Bish Sanyal

Linking Inclusive Green Growth and the Informal Economy: Relationship between smallscale farming and informal vending in South Africa With help from international agencies like the World Bank and OECD, the ‘inclusive green growth’ agenda has entered many national development plans since the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. It is difficult to envision a model of an inclusive green economy without some overlapping elements with the informal economy, which supports about two-thirds of the world’s labor. And yet, there has been sparse discussion and empirical evidence on the linkages between the two. In order to investigate some aspects of this relationship and test the hypothesis that informal economic activities can contribute towards achieving inclusive green growth in developing countries, this research combines a literature overview with an exploratory case study on fresh produce vending at Warwick Junction (Durban, South Africa), all with a particular focus on how urban informal markets can provide and expand business opportunities for small-scale farmers in the region.

While the majority of the informal vendors at Warwick Junction rely on formal producers and distribution centers, the purposive stratified sampling methodology in this study was able to find several cases in which vendors work directly with family-operated organic farms or loosely organized community cooperatives in neighboring towns. The results highlight examples of symbiotic linkages in this overlooked local food system that can increase employment opportunities and lower growth barriers for ‘green’ farmers. Lastly, findings are translated into recommendations for the eThekwini Municipality to act within the recently authorized Inner-City Local Area Plan, which offers guidelines for more inclusive and sustainable urban regeneration in the city of Durban.

Benjamin Turpin Thesis Advisor: Anne Spirn

Town For All, Gown For All: A framework for equitable university-led urban development Universities and the cities they are located in often have contentious relationships. As anchor institutions, urban universities provide significant employment and educational benefits, though their success and expansion often leads to rising housing costs and displacement in surrounding communities.

In this project, I set out to understand how two urban universities, the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, balance development and expansion with community needs. Through studying these two universities and their successes and failures within the realms of development, housing, and community engagement, I developed a framework for equitable development that centers university development and investment around the goal of affordable housing and equitable communities. This framework aims to meet the needs of both the university and the community, providing affordable housing and public amenities alongside real estate assets and a return on investment for the university. This framework is then applied to a site in Cambridge, illustrating how the principles outlined in this thesis can drive physical and programmatic development in a way that expands housing affordability, provides public amenities, and meets the spatial and financial needs of the university.

Kavya Vaghul Thesis Advisor: Mariana Arcaya

The Child Care Conundrum: The costs and consequences of unmet early child care needs among parents working at academic institutions across the United States Cities across the United States are saddled with a burgeoning child care conundrum, a mismatch between the skyrocketing need for child care and the fundamental insufficiency of child care infrastructure and policies to address the growing demand. To be sure, the broken child care marketâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;characterized by too few spots, mediocre quality, and exorbitant costsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;forces parents to make tradeoffs in order to fully meet their child care needs. These tradeoffs not only perpetuate deep-seated gender inequalities and compromise family economic security, but they also have broader social and economic consequences. Though research shows that large public investments could go a long way in fixing the child care conundrum and its pernicious effects, current political gridlock has hindered efforts to create universal child care programs and policies. In the absence of large public investments in child care, this thesis builds a

case for local employers and institutions to be held accountable for filling the early child care needs of their workforce. One such employer primed to tackle the child care conundrum is the American academe. I use the results of an original online survey of parents working, teaching, researching, or studying in academia with a child under the age of five to develop a deterministic model that quantifies the total cost of unmet child care needs to academic parents and academic institutions. The findings suggest that a variety of small investments in child care by academic institutions could generate substantial savings for parents and institutions alike, contribute to local economic development, and set the stage for innovative child care policy.

Tia M. Vice Thesis Advisor: Paul Osterman

Can Apprenticeships Alleviate a Regional Skills Gap? A case study of programs at Trident Technical College in Charleston, SC In attempts to address a skills gap, the state of South Carolina established Apprenticeship Carolina in 2007 which helps businesses create federally registered apprenticeships. Apprenticeship Carolina is a newer addition to the longstanding worker-training programs that make up the South Carolina Technical College System’s Division of Economic Development. In the Charleston area, actors in the public and private sectors have partnered with the region’s technical college (Trident Technical College or “Trident Tech”) and leveraged Apprenticeship Carolina to create robust adult and youth apprenticeship programs in addition to leading other new workforce initiatives. At the same time, the local economy is growing and diversifying rapidly in the fields of advanced manufacturing, information technology, and other STEM- related sectors. This makes Trident Technical College’s work in Charleston an attractive case study on apprenticeships as a means for addressing skills gaps. Since 2007, Trident Tech, businesses, and community partners have expanded the

number of adult apprenticeships and created a regional youth apprenticeship program where both programs offer positions in career pathways in diverse sectors. This thesis examines what program administrators, community partners, and participating businesses (“sponsors”) believe is working well and where there could be improvements.

Carrie Watkins Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind

Building a Community of Reflective Practitioners: A reflection-in-action with MIT DUSP In 1983, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Donald Schön published The Reflective Practitioner. In this book, he challenged the prevailing view of professional practice, which he understood as linked to the positivist practice of technical rationality. He called on educational institutions to instead train professionals such as planners, architects, and teachers to be reflective practitioners - to practice reflection-in and on-action. In this thesis, I set out to explore the curious tensions and patterns that shape MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s relationship with reflective practice. This thesis is my reflection-in-action, the pursuit of knowledge through active interventions and observations. I worked with Professor Ceasar McDowell this Spring of 2019 to facilitate reflective sessions for practicum classes, and through observation, surveys, and interviews, I studied the reflections’ effects on class learning and effectiveness and on how students and faculty value and understand reflection. As an international leader, my home institution, and the locus of Schön’s work, MIT

offers an excellent case example to study. I ultimately found that, while successful and innovative reflective practices can be found throughout DUSP, a large gap exists between the high value of reflective practice faculty and students espouse and the efforts individuals and the department as a whole actually take to train and incorporate reflective practice. This process also uncovered insights that I wove into a set of recommendations for students, faculty, and the department to help close this gap between espoused theory and theory-in-use. While my findings and analyses are specific to this location, I hope they will inform and provide energy to the broader conversation in support of reflective practice.

Michael Wilson Dissertation Advisor: Alan Berger

Mapping under Uncertainty: Spatial Politics, Urban Development, and the Future of Coastal Flood Risk Flooding is the most common and single largest source of disaster-caused property damage in the United States. To mitigate these losses, the Federal Emergency Management Agency produces Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) that often provide the most comprehensive and authoritative flood hazard information for a community. Despite reform efforts for greater map accuracy, spatial politics may render the computationally efficient 100-year floodplain delineation of questionable effectiveness, equity, and legitimacy for long-term land use planning. Given changing coastal flooding and sea level rise, how can risk mapping inform and improve future urban development? The dissertation: (1) positions flood mapping in the context of urban risk computation; (2) statistically analyzes the nationwide map adoption process; (3) uses spatial analysis, semi-structured interviews, and grounded theory to document changing flood risk information in Plymouth County, MA and New York City, NY; (4) compiles a novel survey of recent large-scale

development decision-making in Boston, and (5) pilots a probabilistic indicator that models project-level flood risk. I observe that the differences in location, wealth, and race between counties are associated with varying FIRM adoption process durations as well as whether a county may appeal and receive revised maps. I argue that coastal communities with sociopolitical clout can bend the risk assessment process, through either contestation or collaboration over risk classification. I find updated maps, however, are an insufficient signal to change developer behavior. Therefore, I pioneer a decision support tool for developers to understand longterm flood risk and planners to ascertain resilience policy impacts. In conclusion, the dissertation provides policy makers with: (1) new data on how map adoption is not a purely scientific and technical process, (2) further evidence that the current 100-year flood standard is inadequate, and (3) resilience-building tools for land use planning.

Maia Woluchem Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

Paint by Number: A picture of homelessness in the City of Boston

Boston’s Continuum of Care. This thesis contextualizes this system within modern discourse around privacy, surveillance, and agency of marginalized communities, offering a closer look at the opportunities and the unseen risks of applying rigid technical processes to complex social problems.

Each year, several hundred individuals fall into homelessness in the City of Boston, turning to a network of HUD-funded agencies called the Continuum of Care for shelter, services, and access to housing. Since 2012, HUD has mandated a new policy of “coordinated entry” across these agencies, encouraging each to prioritize granting these services to individuals based on vulnerability, instead of by provider discretion. The City of Boston has created a robust technological infrastructure to facilitate this process, relying on a data-driven prioritization and matching engine called the Coordinated Access System (CAS). Though CAS has led to over 600 successful housing matches for Boston’s chronically homeless, this same system has fundamentally changed the work of providers and the nature of the trust-based relationships they have with their clients. Data-driven coordinated entry has also aggravated fears among some critics, who worry about the long-range implications of inviting data and technology into the management of highly vulnerable communities. Through a series of interviews, this study aims to discover coordinated entry’s effect on the agencies and homeless individuals within

Angela Wong Thesis Advisor: Janelle Knox-Hayes

Strategies to Advance Investments in Coastal Resilience Solutions in Boston Coastal flooding due to a combination of sea level rise, high tides, and coastal storm events is a significant risk to Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population, built environment, and economy. The City of Boston is proactively planning for built district-scale resilience solutions along the shoreline to protect vulnerable neighborhoods. The upfront implementation costs are over a billion dollars and annual maintenance costs add to several tens of millions. Recent studies have conducted a review of the menu of funding and financing options to pay for municipal investments in climate resilience. However, cities face barriers to implementing these new options given existing municipal processes and other near-term policy priorities.

In order to advance investments in district-scale resilience solutions in Boston, this study investigates: What is the City of Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s municipal process, key questions that need to be answered, and stakeholders that need to be involved in order to determine viability and to implement new mechanisms to pay for investments in coastal resilience? What are the key barriers and potential solutions for the City to pursue funding and finance for coastal resilience? This is a client-based masters thesis for the Boston Planning and Development Agency.

Daphne Xu Thesis Advisor: Ceasar McDowell

Chinese Speed This media thesis is an exploration of the affective dimensions of top-down modernist planning in the context of contemporary China. It is an investigation into lived experiences of state-funded mega-projects and the cultural impacts of infrastructure. Specifically, I look into the high-speed rail (HSR) as the literal and symbolic connecting feature of the Jing-Jin-Ji megaregion proposed in the 2035 Beijing Master Plan.

This media thesis consists of a collection of multimedia works including a photo book, video installations, and a short film. They are experiments in creating non-linear narratives surrounding the HSR in varied forms, and translating research findings into accessible modes of engagement. Documentation of completed visual work is contained in a website within Beijing22 (www.beijing22.org), a curatorial project funded by the Goethe Institute that sets out to be a “living archive” of Beijing’s urban development before the 2022 Winter Olympics.

I study the high-speed rail (HSR) in China utilizing ethnographic methods in the train, in HSR stations, and in place-based communities on sites around new and proposed HSR stations. I am interested in the meaning of the HSR as a cultural artifact, a semiotic and aesthetic vehicle towards China’s current national project. I am also interested in the changing sense of place and time in rural villages and towns along new and proposed HSR stations within the context of rapid development.

Zixiao Yin Thesis Advisor: David Geltner

A Comparative Analysis of Apartment REITs in United States and China: An examination of challenges and opportunities During the past 2 years, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and the push to develop more rental housing in China have drawn lots of attention. REITs are expected to provide multiple capital channels for the development of rental apartments without continuously leveraging up the real estate industry, as traditional financing methods did. The mechanism of equity REIT can help cultivate and accelerate the formation of a sustainable rental housing market in China. This thesis explores the opportunities and obstacles for REITs to work in the rental housing market in China by exploring the reasons for introducing REITs in the Chinese real estate market from a macro and historical perspective; by examining some cases of the newly issued REIT-like companies in China; and by reviewing the framework and system of REITs in US markets so as to draw lessons for China from a comparative perspective.

This thesis finds that equity REITs are still very immature and are not widely accepted by mass investors in China. The thesis puts forward three suggestions for apartment REITs in China: to streamline the REIT structure and avoid excessive complexity and opacity; to promote information transparency and regulated disclosure mechanism; to encourage and protect equity REIT investors by constraining REITs from taking on too much debt. Finally, the thesis concludes that REITs, as shown by US experience, should be regarded as a great opportunity to cultivate Chinese investorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confidence in the stock market with its very simple and plain-vanilla structure. With the Chinese governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strong ambition to increase housing affordability and to deleverage the economy, we foresee continuous legislative breakthroughs and more systematic improvements in the REIT field.

Richard Yoo Thesis Advisor: Amy Glasmeier

The Evolution of Work and the Growing Contingency of Labor Practices in the Massachusetts Life Sciences Industry Contingent work has been used to describe a wide range of non-standard, short-term employment arrangements to include self-employment, home-based work, on-call work, temporary work, contracting, and other alternative employment arrangements. The use of contingent labor to complete work tasks is increasingly an essential element utilized by businesses as they shed non-essential functions in order to focus on their core competencies. This reflects a belief that a lean operating model will optimize companiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cost structures and provide flexibility to react efficiently during down and upturns in the economy.

the Massachusetts life science industry. The demands of capital markets are fiercely pressuring companies to grow and generate large returns for its investors. However, this places an uneven amount of focus on the commercialization of its products causing the industry to hone in on its core competencies and shed non-essential functions, thereby expanding the use of contingent labor. This thesis attempts to coalesce these broad themes to tell the story of what is happening to work in the Massachusetts life science industry.

The use of contingent labor modifies the conventional relationship between capital and labor in the formation of skill. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s utilization of contingent labor ignores the significant costs associated with recruiting and training new hires as well as the indeterminable loss in value from utilizing a workforce that is less incented to see their companies succeed. This thesis investigates the use of contingent work in

Hongmou Zhang Dissertation Advisor: Jinhua Zhao changed, whether mobility sharing can be used as a tool to change it, and improve the integration of cities. Besides, I also studied how time flexibility of trips can be incorporated into mobility sharing models to reduce congestion.

The Social Perspective of Mobility Sharing: Understanding, utilizing, and reshaping preference in shared rides Advances in information and communications technologies are enabling the growth of real-time ride sharingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whereby drivers and passengers or fellow passengers are paired up on car trips with similar origin-destinations and proximate time windowsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to improve system efficiency by moving more people in fewer cars. Lesser known, however, are the opportunities of shared mobility as a tool to foster and strengthen human interactions.

For policy makers and planners, this dissertation could partially answer or provide a framework of analysis to the following questions. 1) How could preference in mobility sharing services be used or misused? What is the efficiency trade-off, and how to regulate the use of it? 2) What factors may impact the preference for fellow passengers? Are these preference factors respectable, and what factors should be included/excluded in the mobility sharing services from a regulation perspective? 3) How can mobility sharing be actively used as a tool to encourage more social interaction, especially across different social groups? What are the short-term cost and the long-term benefit?

In this dissertation, I used preference as a lens to investigate the social interaction in mobility sharing, including how the inter-fellow-passenger preference in mobility sharing can be understood, utilized and reshaped. More specifically, I answered the questions of how preference could be used to match fellow passengers, and to improve trip experiences; how gender, one of the key factors may contribute to this preference; and in the reverse direction, if there are factors in the preference which are unrespectable and need to be

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