DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING
KRESGE FOUNDATION
MEL KING MCP THESIS
FELLOWSHIP ABSTRACTS 2022/2023
Kresge Foundation Mel King MCP Thesis Fellowships
Thanks to generous support from the Kresge Foundation, the following students were awarded Mel King MCP Thesis Fellowships in 2022-2023.
MCPs
Shaler Campbell
Dylan Cohen
Juanita Halim
Tara Mohtadi
Romy St. Hilaire
Mikaela Strech
Melissa Q. Teng
Rose Winer
Each of these projects was specially chosen to represent the overlap between DUSP’s Strategic Priorities and the Mission Areas of the Kresge Foundation.
DUSP’s evolving Strategic Priorities include: achieving racial justice, enhancing multi-racial democratic governance, tackling the climate crisis, closing the wealth gap
Given the timing of these awards and the passing of our dear friend and colleague, we were especially grateful to be able to put this donation to such good use this year, and for the Kresge Foundation’s agreement to name the fellowships in honor of Mel King.
Full text copies of these theses can be found by searching the author name or by thesis title on MIT’s Dspace, a digital repository for MIT’s research, including peer-reviewed articles, technical reports, working papers, theses, and more.
The Kresge Foundation
The Kresge Foundation is a private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America’s cities through grantmaking and social investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development, nationally and in Detroit, Memphis and New Orleans.
Kresge works strategically to find the intersections between eight missions areas:
American Cities
promoting effective and inclusive community development practices in American cities
Arts and Culture
positioning culture and creativity as drivers of more just communities
Detroit
collaborating with cross-sectoral partners to promote and expand long-term, equitable opportunity for Detroit’s residents
Education
increasing college access and success while reducing inequitable student outcomes in the U.S. and South Africa
Environment
helping cities implement climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches grounded in equity
Health
building equity-focused systems of health that create opportunities for all people to achieve well-being
Human Services
expanding opportunities in American cities by centering racial equity to advance multi-generational social and economic success for families and communities
Social Investment Practice
strengthening neighborhoods and improving the quality of life in America’s cities by addressing barriers to capital
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Shaler Campbell
Repetitive Flooding in Riverine Towns: Understanding Responses, Barriers, and Challenges for the Future
Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity of precipitation events and increase inland flooding in the United States in the coming decades (Allan et al., 2020; Easterling et al., 2017; Kerlin, 2019; Mallakpour & Villarini, 2015). Unlike coastal communities, which have seen increased attention in the face of climate change, riverine communities have received far less attention (Jongman et al., 2012). This is despite a long history of repetitive riverine flooding and associated responses and barriers to flood mitigation. Important insights can be drawn from towns that have endured repetitive flooding and how they have responded.
This thesis explores riverine towns with repetitive flooding, the similarities and differences in their flood responses and barriers to mitigation, similarities that can be deduced for other riverine towns, and how policies may be improved to better support them.
To answer these questions, results were compared from semi-structured interviews and historical research from four case study towns in the United States: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Freeport, Illinois; Ellicott City, Maryland; and Athens Borough, Pennsylvania. Firstly, results showed several barriers to flood mitigation, including a lack of institutional capacity, challenges with regionalism, and insufficient federal flood mitigation assistance. Secondly, results showed that mitigating flood risk from multiple flood profiles, managed retreat, and structural flood mitigation solutions are proving successful for some riverine towns as flooding events increase in severity. Lastly, results showed that current federal programs must better fully support smaller riverine towns needing funding for flood mitigation, and modifications to existing programs and new programs are necessary to support their unique circumstances. From a resource allocation perspective, this thesis highlights the need to devote more resources to riverine towns with repetitive flooding to help them mitigate the worst effects of flooding in the face of increasingly worse storm events due to climate change.
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Thesis Advisor: Amy Glasmeier
Dylan Cohen Thesis Advisors: J. Phillip Thompson, Jason Spicer
Power and Control in Disinvested Affordable Housing: San Francisco’s Limited Equity Housing Co-operatives
The promise of the co-operative housing typology extends beyond providing stable, affordable housing. Co-operatives strive to offer a resident-centered site of democratic participation, where ownership and limited equity combine to provide both collective and shareholder ownership of a valuable community asset. Contentiously, local governments and civic institutions seek certainty and control in housing, prioritizing technical expertise and institutional relationships over deeper investment in resident-owner capacity. Affordable housing practitioners face complex and politicized projects, where co-op health is often threatened by mistrust, institutional failures, and funding scarcity.
In San Francisco, more than 2,000 limited equity housing co-operative units constitute a significant portion of the city’s legacy 1960s and 70s federally-funded housing stock. Co-ops routinely fall into crisis, where residents rely on dysfunctional boards, ill-suited housing management companies, and insufficient government support for their survival. Numerous co-ops face critical survival questions, including deferred maintenance and disrepair, potential redevelopment, political instability, and waning institutional support.
This client-linked thesis delves into the landscape of one local government’s relationship with its co-operative housing ecosystem. Through dozens of interviews, a literature review, policy analysis, and several case studies of existing co-ops, this thesis elucidates present-day challenges and findings, and by discussing peer-city case studies of Vancouver, Canada, and Washington, D.C., proposes viable solutions charting a path forward.
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Juanita Halim Thesis Advisor: Eran Ben-Joseph
Re-Thinking Urban Retail: The Design and Planning of “Dark Stores” and Public Spaces
The rapid evolution of the retail industry in response to technological advancements and the sharing economy has given rise to various formats and concepts. One such concept is grocery “dark stores,” which are retail facilities designed for online order fulfillment, primarily located in urban areas.
This thesis aims to analyze the proliferation of online grocery shopping and its impact on the urban landscape, specifically focusing on the spatial distribution of grocery “dark stores” and their activities. This research utilizes spatial analysis and interviews to address three key questions: the role of grocery “dark stores” in cities, their location patterns, and their impacts on the urban fabric.
The findings reveal that grocery “dark stores” are predominantly located in neighborhood areas with a high concentration of retail food stores and facilities. In Manhattan, they are primarily situated in Commercial and Manufacturing districts. Despite the rise of grocery “dark stores” and their promise of convenience to customers, they have faced challenges
such as exits attributed to dwindling investor funding, a competitive market landscape, and political influences driven by Russia-backed Venture Capitalists.
In the digital era, strategies aimed at transforming cities digitally must consider the implications of different retail formats and the various stakeholders involved. Urban policies and regulations need to address how new retail platforms reshape the relationship between business locations, their design and function, and the public. This thesis underscores the urgency of such considerations as new forms of retail and businesses emerge within the tech-enabled digital economy and shape urban infrastructure.
By studying the impact of grocery “dark stores” on the urban fabric, this research contributes to a broader understanding of how the digital transformation of cities intersects with retail and business landscapes. It highlights the importance of proactive urban policies and regulations to effectively navigate the evolving retail ecosystem and ensure a sustainable and inclusive urban environment.
Overall, this thesis serves as a valuable resource for urban policymakers, city officials, and researchers seeking insights into the implications of emerging retail formats and their effects on the urban fabric in the context of the digital economy and new urban infrastructure.
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Tara Mohtadi
Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Vale
Imagining and Building More Equitable and Democratic Systems: Lessons from Bay Area Organizations
America’s democratic system has been built atop politics of exclusion and oppression. While strides have been made in enfranchisement and inclusion, communities continue to be systematically marginalized, dispossessed and disempowered. Processes illuminate the often invisible purpose and values that underlie systems, but as this research discusses, an overemphasis on process as the problem and solution has limited the potential to create substantive change.
To build a true democracy requires both imagining and building alternative political and economic systems that rest on the premise of equity and collective power. Social movements are at the forefront of transforming oppressive systems, and marginalized communities in particular are often on the frontlines of the struggle for justice. Collective and cooperative organizations have emerged within and alongside movements as explicit infrastructures that both embody and support social change. They form to respond to unjust material conditions in their communities related to land, labor,
wealth and housing, while simultaneously being embedded in sustained movements, coalition building and policy advocacy efforts to address the root cause of these injustices.
Through numerous conversations with organizations located in the San Francisco Bay Area, this research highlights how systems that foster shared power are not only imaginable, but are being built. In sharing learnings from these organizations, this research tells the story of their challenges and visions, their various approaches to enacting change, and how they are linked to broader networks of mobilization. As microcosms of a truer democracy, collectives and cooperatives have implications for reshaping the relationship between people and power, at the individual, organizational, and societal level. Ultimately, this thesis presents these models as a pathway for transitioning from an extractive to a regenerative economy, and from concentrated to collective power.
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Romy Saint Hilaire Thesis Advisor: Delia Wendel
BLACK ART PLANNING: an exhibition manifesto
Black Art Planning: an exhibition manifesto, honors the many modes and forms of knowledge that inform Black artists acting as informal planners, designers and urbanists working to harmonize spatial urban realities for marginalized communities. This is a focused introspection of Black liminal realities and how art is used as a tool to challenge, redress and inform the healing of vulnerable communities in the United States. This thesis is in the form of an exhibit showcasing a series of manifesto posters highlighting the key elements of a Black Art Planning framework. Accompanied by a short film capturing the essence of what has informed this thinking through travel and research in Saint Martin and South Africa.
This thesis intends to combine an academic and practice-informed approach to synthesize the phenomena of Black artists and creative collectives cultivating planning solutions through an arts practice in cities across the US and abroad. In highlighting an approach that is intersectional in both the planning field and the art sector, Black Art Planning is positioned in conjunction with curatorial critique, black critical thought, and city planning pedagogies that inform possibilities for thriving communities through the arts. Essentially exploring who has the right to Art in the city?
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Mikaela Strech
Thesis Advisors: Brent D. Ryan, Eran BenJoseph, Alan Berger
Design for More Equitable Neighborhood Adaptation: Climate Resiliency and Public Space Planning in U.S. Border Colonias
The relationship between environmental harms and the political and economic marginalization of communities cannot be easily disentangled in today’s world. Consequently, this thesis reexamines the relationships between planners, designers, and communities in response to environmental challenges that marginalized communities face. I advocate for beginning with incremental advancements in adaptation in design using community organization and a site and services approach as a way of contending with resource constraints and urgent issues. Acknowledging that this design work simultaneously enhances social resiliency, I argue that the timeliness of this approach promotes resilience.
The research analyzes design and planning strategies for neighborhood-scale environmental design, drawing from case studies in Puerto Rico, Detroit, Nairobi, and Texas. These insights inform conceptual design frameworks in three neighborhoods to test what an incremental, nature-based approach to environmental hazards might accomplish, and how. This thesis has a specific focus on US border colonias in Texas, where flooding and disparities in adaptation and recovery resources are especially relevant. Considering the projected growth of fringe neighborhoods across the United States, this study contributes to the dialogue on equitable resilience.
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Melissa Q. Teng
Thesis Advisor: Catherine D’Ignazio
The Urgency of Presence: Designing Healing Community Spaces After Displacement
Named for its proximity to the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, “Mass. and Cass” is an informal neighborhood in Boston that is often described in the news with disaster-tinged language like “epicenter” and “tent city”. After this neighborhood was declared a “public health crisis”, the City of Boston made major investments into constructing and bolstering permanent supportive housing and other much-needed services. But when we sat with its unhoused, drug-using, and outreach communities on the ground, they described parallel investments in militarized public spaces, an exclusionary neighborhood planning process, and stigmatizing media stories that overemphasize the neighborhood’s crime and violence. Most narratives about “Mass. and Cass” ignore these structural oppressions, exemplifying how current “solutions” to homelessness are less concerned with the well-being of unhoused people and more with their disappearance from public space.
In response, our art collective See You In The Future has been working with community members of “Mass. and Cass” and poor people’s movements to research how histories of crisis and displacement connect with current anti-homeless policies, and to collectively imagine what healing community spaces might feel like. Centering the wisdom and lived experiences of residents and staff—and informed by liberatory and loving philosophies like harm reduction, disability justice, and abolition—we offer four spatial design values: belonging, care, hope, and growth. As our project is ongoing, this document shares our work thus far: our methods rooted in seeing and solidarity; research on the creative labor of maintaining community spaces despite policy interventions; practical notes on designing workshops and a mural; and finally reflections on presence and solidarity as outside artists and designers. Because we are focusing on community stories, which are in some sense infinite, I present our work as a series of essays to emphasize the indeterminate, character-led, and emotional nature of our methods and findings. My hope is this reads like a walk, where our feet stay planted on the ground and the humanity of community members never leaves our sight.
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Rose Winer-Chan
Thesis Advisors: John Fernandez, Lawrence Susskind
Nature-Based Coastal Adaptation: A Comparative Assessment to Inform Effective Implementation
As coastal adaptation planning becomes the new normal, governments have increasingly shifted a significant portion of new infrastructure from hardened “gray” structures toward natural and “nature-based” solutions (NbS): restored or constructed ecosystems that, by enhancing or mimicking natural processes, mitigate coastal hazards while offering socioeconomic, environmental, and public health benefits. However, the use of NbS remains limited due to uncertainty over cost and performance, a fragmented regulatory landscape, inconsistent planning tools, and the context dependence of NbS design.
This thesis aims to explore these diverse uncertainties in detail by shedding light on the key factors and processes that may pose critical barriers or drive success during the implementation of nature-based coastal adaptation (NBCA) projects. This study employs stakeholder interviews to explore and compare four NBCA case studies from design through implementation: Hunter’s Point South Park and West Pond in Queens, New York; Rose Larisa Park in East Providence, Rhode Island; and the Sand Motor in South Holland, the Netherlands. By identifying the common challenges, success drivers, and success metrics shared across these projects, this thesis hopes to provide useful early insights that help NBCA decision-makers thoughtfully define and measure success, anticipate key challenges, and take steps to overcome those challenges and achieve more successful implementation.
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