PLATFORM: Complexity | Scale | Power

2018-19

| THE UNIVERSIT Y OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

PLATFORM Complexity | Scale | Power

PLATFORM

Complexity | Scale | Power

3

Dean's Message

Scale

4 Contributors 6

Editors' Introduction

Complexity 8

The Production and Tolerance of Poor Housing Conditions Elizabeth J. Mueller, PhD, and Kathryn Howell, PhD

10 Transit Deserts USA Junfeng Jiao, PhD 12 Fencelines and Observatories: Two Texas Communities Navigating Change Katherine Lieberknecht, PhD 14 Vertical Extensions for Austin, Texas: Experiments in Balancing Urban Densification and Historic Preservation Juliana Felkner, PhD

16 By Guarding Against the Big and Bad, Have We Eradicated the Small and Beautiful? A Skeptical Take on Contemporary Planning Practice Jake Wegmann, PhD 18 Toward Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions Ming Zhang, PhD 20 Searching for the Spatial Fix: The Salience of Megaregional Geographies for InterMetropolitan Planning and Policy Making Michael Oden, PhD

Power

26 Community-based Planning and Critical Pedagogy in Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic Bjørn Sletto, PhD, Raksha Vasudevan, Ariadna Reyes, and León Staines 28 Sewers for Social Justice Miriam Solis, PhD 30 Alumni Profiles Barbara Brown Wilson

Elizabeth “EB” Brooks

Jared Genova 34 Endowments 35 Philanthropy 40 Advisory Council

22 Transportation Equity and Meaningful Public Engagement Alex Karner, PhD 24 Including Institutions in the Panoramic Regional View Gian-Claudia Sciara, PhD

EDITORS

Alex Karner Katherine Lieberknecht Elizabeth J. Mueller MANAGING EDITORS

Stacey Ingram Kaleh Jonathan Riley Moore DESIGN

Whitebox CONTACT

The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture 310 Inner Campus Drive B7500 Austin, TX 78712-1009 512.471.1922 stacey.kaleh@utexas.edu soa.utexas.edu TO OUR READERS

We welcome ideas, questions, and comments. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us.

ON THE COVER

PLATFORM is the annual magazine of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. It serves as a “platform” for the school to investigate the intersection of its research, practice, and pedagogical interests with a broader audience.

Outlook Tower. Edinburgh, Scotland. From Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: an introduction to the town planning movement and the study of civics. Williams, London, 1915.

Each issue of PLATFORM features thought-provoking articles of topical interest in the disciplines of architecture, architectural history, community and regional planning, historic preservation, interior design, landscape architecture, sustainable design, and urban design. Editors selected from the school’s faculty develop a new theme or prompt for the publication each year and drive its conceptual direction.

This issue, titled Complexity | Scale | Power, is edited by Alex Karner, Katherine Lieberknecht, and Elizabeth J. Mueller and focuses on new approaches to planning in the context of rapid growth and urbanization. It represents a dynamic collection of expert voices and viewpoints brought together by the need to advance accessibility, sustainability, and resilience.

2

PLATFORM 2018-19

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

DEAN’S MESSAGE

D. Michelle Addington, Dean

D. Michelle Addington, Dean Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture

The Community and Regional Planning (CRP) program at The University of Texas at Austin originated in 1944 as a concentration within the Architecture program and evolved into a distinct advanced degree program by 1959. Similar to many programs in urban or city planning that are housed in design schools throughout the United States, the CRP program must negotiate relationships both within and beyond their home schools in order to position their disciplinary contributions.

These contemporary relationships are built upon a history of conflict dating back to the 1960s, when architecture and planning disciplines stood squarely apart on questions of urban renewal—which was inherently based on form and property—and community engagement—which emanated from equity and advocacy. In the early 1970s, Yale University jettisoned their urban planning program from their School of Architecture rather than address the progressive platform being advocated by the program; to this day, only the Architecture program remains, even though there has long been a desire to reclaim some version of urban studies. In 1980, Harvard University’s city planning program decamped from the Graduate School of Design and found a new home in the Kennedy School of

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Government, only to return in 1994 as a rebranded program in urban planning that was conjoined with their existing urban design program with stronger ties to formalism. The residue of these early conflicts manifests in their resolution, as we see planning programs housed in design schools aligning closely with schools of policy and vice versa for those programs whose home base is policy. One might surmise, then, from both the positioning of the programs and this recent history, that the role of planning is to serve as a bridge between the producers and the consumers of the built environment, but this would discount the critical disciplinary contributions of the field.

While many disciplines have been quick to self-identify as inter-disciplinary (or multi-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary), particularly if there is a public aspect to their work, planning is on another level altogether. Certainly, the knowledge that comes to bear has an extraordinary breadth, and the analyses that are developed often must drill through multiple layers to be meaningful. What truly sets planning apart, however, resides in the need to navigate the simultaneity of competing domains and negotiate the unpredictability of conflict and consequences.

The design disciplines and professions of the built environment do indeed bring in a wide range of content, but there is a very clear bracketing of domain. From interior design to architecture to landscape architecture to urban design, the bracketing is spatial—the geometric protocols that guide the purview of the respective professions as well as the dimensions of property. This spatial bracketing fundamentally doubles down on establishing a boundary, which makes it quite easy to truncate that which lay beyond, thereby inherently privileging form over behavior. Policy is bracketed by limits of jurisdiction and legal standing, similarly rendering a boundary of ownership. These boundaries delimit input for consideration—on the part of design—and responsibility for consequences beyond the jurisdiction—on the part of policy. By focusing on the production of a solution, both design and policy ostensibly disentangle their processes from intractable conflicts. And both presume their solutions are for the long term.

Planning for the built environment, given that it is often accompanied by descriptors such as urban, city, regional, and/or community, may seem to be the next geometric dimension up from the more district based urban design, but the dimensions of planning supersede the spatial. Planning’s domain is the public sphere, in all of its scales, addressing its complex systems and infrastructure, and, most importantly, confronting the impacts of actions

on the welfare of every segment of the population.

While design and policy deliver solutions, planning must anticipate and mitigate consequences. As such, planning is not an adjutant to design or policy, nor an extension thereof, but rather it composes and comprises the overarching framework that folds the many aspects, modes, constituents, and time frames that shape and govern our built environment into a coherent discourse.

The essays within this edition of PLATFORM exemplify the scope and scale of planning writ large as well as through the views and research of faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. From research that incorporates the health needs of an aging rural population into the development of a mega-regional transportation framework for rapidly growing urban centers, to questions of intersectionality regarding the leveraging of employment opportunities for underrepresented groups to participate in infrastructure rebuilding, to analyses that reveal how well-intentioned policies to improve equity and representation can lead to the opposite result depending upon the specific features of the implementation, these essays also reveal the uncertainty inherent in every action that is taken. Planning must always confront and reconcile the aspirations of objectives with the messiness and unpredictability of implementation.

With 12 full-time faculty and 95 graduate students, the CRP program has a footprint on campus and in the public sphere that is far larger than its size would indicate. Research, teaching, and grants examine questions regarding gentrification in Austin, aquifer management in Hays County, disaster mitigation on the Gulf Coast, and public transit availability across the United States. Faculty in the program are engaging with partners beyond our walls by leading major multi-disciplinary initiatives across the University through the Bridging Barriers program, and they are also directing a multi-university consortium evaluating transportation in megaregions.

The Community and Regional Planning faculty here at The University of Texas at Austin are tackling many of contemporary society’s most pressing problems, and are doing so with multimodal, multi-domain, multi-disciplinary questions, methods, and propositions. If what starts here changes the world, then our faculty and students are already guiding that change.

PLATFORM 2018-19

3

Contributors

Juliana M. Felkner is an assistant professor of Community and Regional Planning and Sustainable Design at The University of Texas at Austin. Felkner’s research and teaching address the societal and architectural challenges that come with the increasing urbanization of the world.

She was a recipient of a Faculty Innovation Grant for 2017 for the project, “Form and Energy: Bridging Engineering and Architectural Education through a collaborative project utilizing interactive architectural models, sensors, control systems, and real-time data.” Felkner holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, an MS in Spatial Planning/ Built Environment from KTH Stockholm, and a master’s degree in Architecture and bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Studies and English from the University of Kansas. She worked for Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris and is a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects.

Kathryn Howell is an assistant professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Virginia Commonwealth University. She holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her work focuses on affordable housing and public spaces to explore redevelopment, displacement, and governance. She has specifically looked at the preservation of affordable housing in Washington, DC, examining the intersection between policies, governance, and the built environment. She was previously a practitioner in local government and developed housing and community development policy at Washington, DC, and Maryland agencies.

Junfeng Jiao is an assistant professor of Community and Regional Planning and founding director of Urban Information Lab at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. His research focuses on urban informatics and smart cities. He coined the term “transit deserts” and has measured access to transit, healthy food, Uber, Airbnb, and bike sharing services within many U.S. cities. His work has also explored perceptions of cities in cyber space using Twitter, drones, and virtual reality.

His research has been featured by CNN, NBC, U.S. News and World Report, Yahoo, Wired, NPR, Finance and Commerce, Smithsonian magazine, and numerous other outlets. Jiao holds a PhD in Urban Design and Planning and an MS in Engineering 4

PLATFORM 2018-19

(Transportation) from the University of Washington. He also holds a master’s degree in GIS and Earth Observation from the University of Twente, Netherlands, and an ME in Architectural Design and BE in Urban Planning and Design from Wuhan University in China.

Alex Karner is an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. His work critically engages the practice of transportation planning with the goal of achieving progress towards equity and sustainability. To this end, he develops innovative methods for analyzing the performance of integrated transportation-land use systems in the areas of civil rights, environmental justice, public health, and climate change. This work is undergirded by his training in civil engineering, transportation planning, and history. Karner’s work has been supported by the Federal Transit Administration, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the California Endowment, the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, the National Transportation Center at the University of Maryland, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, among others. He holds a PhD in civil engineering from the University of California, Davis, and a BASc in civil engineering from the University of Toronto.

Katherine Lieberknecht is an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. She researches urban water resources planning, metropolitan-scaled green infrastructure planning, and food systems of metropolitan areas. Lieberknecht teaches courses on water resources planning, urban ecology, urban agriculture systems, and participatory methods. She has published articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Hydrology, the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, and the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, in addition to book chapters.

Lieberknecht currently serves as the chair of Planet Texas 2050, UT Austin’s first grand challenge research program.

Prior to joining the UT Austin faculty, Lieberknecht worked in land conservation.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the College of William and Mary, a Master in Environmental

Management from Yale University, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.

Elizabeth Mueller is an associate professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her research focuses on social and political inclusion in cities, and how city planning and development policies shape the quality of life and opportunities available to historically vulnerable residents and communities.

Her current work focuses on these topics through investigation of tensions between the goals and policies of local planning agencies and local housing agencies, as seen in current thinking about strategies for building sustainable cities. She pursues her research on several, complementary levels: funded academic research, class projects in partnership with community partners, and research with or for community organizations or local government. Mueller holds a PhD and Master of City Planning degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.

Michael Oden is an associate professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. His teaching and research areas include local and regional economic development, local and regional governance systems, planning history and theory, and fiscal policy and impact studies. Oden is currently conducting research on collaborative planning between US MPOs at various spatial scales, including Megaregions. This research is supported by the Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2) consortium at UT Austin.

Oden has published widely on a range of economic development and planning topics.

Some recent works include “Better is Better than More: Investigations Into Qualitative Growth,” with Michael Benedikt, International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2016; “Equity the Awkward E in Sustainable Development,” Steven Moore, editor, Pragmatic Sustainability; Dispositions for Critical Adaptation, 2016; and “Local Fiscal Impact Model for Envision Tomorrow,” Sustainable Places Project-Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2014. Oden holds a PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Originally from Mexico City, Ariadna I. Reyes-Sanchez is a postdoctoral fellow in the Global Shifts Program at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Reyes-Sanchez holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and a Master of Science in Civil and Environmenttal Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico (IPN).

As a doctoral student, Reyes-Sanchez participated in the Dominican Republic Studio in Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo, and was the recipient of the Fulbright and CONACYT fellowships, among others. Her dissertation examined the extent to which people in Isidro Fabela, a consolidated informal settlement in Mexico City, use energy and resources. From 2009 to 2013 she served as a specialist in sustainable housing at the Centro Mario Molina, where she led a study to evaluate the environmental sustainability of Mexican Social Housing.

Gian-Claudia Sciara teaches at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, where she is assistant professor of Community and Regional Planning and Fellow of the Hampton K. and Margaret Frye Snell Endowed Chair in Transportation. She researches and writes about transportation planning, policy, and decision-making, particularly as they relate to transportation finance and connections between transportation and land use.

Regional transportation institutions are a longstanding focus of her work. Recent studies examine the implementation of California’s SB 375, environmental mitigation applications that enhance land conservation, and regional transportation funding strategies. Sciara teaches classes in urban public finance, transportation policy, bicycle and pedestrian planning, and land use and transportation. Before joining UT Austin, she was a professional researcher at the University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. She is an AICP certified city planner who has served in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. She holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Bjørn Sletto is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. He received his doctorate in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. A native of Ål, Norway, Sletto’s research focuses on indigenous land rights, environmental and social justice, and community-based planning in Latin America.

He is particularly interested in the tensions between traditional and formal planning and environmental management systems.

He has lived and worked in indigenous COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

communities in Venezuela, investigating environmental conflicts and land rights struggles and conducting participatory mapping projects with the Pemon in the Gran Sabana and Yukpa in the Sierra de Perijá. He is also engaged with research on informality and community development in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, focusing on the role of critical pedagogy for insurgent planning.

For the past ten years, Sletto has been teaching practicum courses in Santo Domingo, where students work closely with community leaders, activist organizations, and public officials to address environmental and social vulnerability in the informal settlement of Los Platanitos. Sletto is also an associated faculty member in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at UT Austin.

Miriam Solis is an assistant professor of Community and Regional Planning The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the links between capital planning and social justice in cities, race and racism in environmental planning, and the role of organizational change in the pursuit of equity. Solis’ most recent research investigates how these relationships play out in the rebuilding of wastewater infrastructure systems in older American cities. Solis’ scholarly pursuits are informed by professional practice, including work for the cities of San Francisco, New York, and Richmond, as well as for the Greenlining Institute. In 2017, she was named a Switzer Fellow by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation in recognition of her achievements as an environmental leader. She holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning, as well as a BA in Geography and Ethnic Studies, from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a MCP degree from MIT. Originally from Monterrey, Mexico, León Staines received a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and holds a Master of Science in Urban Affairs from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, where he has been a professor since 2012. Since 2016, Staines has taught in the Master of Urban Planning program at the School of Architecture and Design. He also worked at the urban planning office in Monterrey, where his research focused on spatial justice and participatory processes to improve communities. He holds doctoral scholarships from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and ConTex. Raksha Vasudevan is a doctoral candidate in Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. She is interested in social

justice, youth geographies, and design, and hopes to contribute to radical planning theories and methodologies. Her dissertation research explores the mobilities and spatial imagination of young adults living in informal settlements in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Vasudevan earned a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning, with a specialization in sustainable community development, and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture at Virginia Tech. Her work experiences include serving as an intern architect, teaching children, and managing the sustainability program at the National League of Cities, where she worked with sustainability directors and local elected officials to advance city sustainability efforts in the United States.

Jake Wegmann has been an assistant professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture since 2014.

His research primarily focuses on housing affordability, broadly defined, with particular attention to housing supply. It lies at the intersection of land use regulation, housing studies, and real estate. Wegmann received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his career in academia, he worked as an affordable housing developer for nonprofit and for-profit entities in Denver and San Francisco.

Ming Zhang is a professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Director of the United States Department of Transportation University Transportation Center Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2) consortium. His research and teaching interests include urban and regional planning (transportation), the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior, Geographic Information System (GIS) applications, and planning/transportation issues in developing countries.

Prior to joining UT Austin, Zhang served as tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University, Research Scientist at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York, and Lecturer and licensed Planner/Architect at the Huazhong (Central China) University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. He received a BE in Architecture and an ME in Urban Planning and Design from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and holds an MS in Transportation and PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT.

PLATFORM 2018-19

5

ALEX KARNER, KATHERINE LIEBERKNECHT, ELIZABETH J. MUELLER

Complexity | Scale | Power In this issue of PLATFORM, we reflect and report on three aspects of contemporary planning practice and research that are changing how we “survey and plan”—in the words of Patrick Geddes—for the future. We consider several dimensions of this issue. First, we look at the changing nature of the problems we are attempting to solve and the knowledge we need to survey in order to respond.

While planning problems have long been regarded as “wicked,” we have seen increasing recognition of the interrelationship of once distinct planning domains in recent years. Housing cannot be viewed separate from its location, environment from the distribution of its amenities and exposure to hazards, transportation from the burdens and benefits of its financing and its interaction with urban form, and so on. Second, we reflect on the scale at which we need to understand the various problems and opportunities that come with urbanization and at which we govern and act on problems. Finally, we come down from Geddes metaphorical observation tower to consider how action is shaped and who has agency in the context of unequal power.

Outlook Tower. Edinburgh, Scotland. From Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: an introduction to the town planning movement and the study of civics. Williams, London, 1915.

6

PLATFORM 2018-19

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Complexity

Scale

Four essays consider different aspects of context and complexity. All invite us to take a deeper look at traditional planning domains—including housing, transportation, historic preservation, or environmental planning—and consider new framings, evolving relationships, and changing conditions.

When we think about housing, affordability often comes to mind, especially in fast-growing cities such as Austin that are suffering severe housing cost and gentrification issues. Elizabeth J. Mueller and Kathryn Howell, while acknowledging the importance of affordability, ask why local governments have not also considered poor housing conditions as a significant public policy issue given the high percentages of vulnerable central city renters who live in housing with severe problems.

Junfeng Jiao describes his work to identify transit deserts—places with inadequate transit service.

Lack of access to transit, particularly in car-dependent Sun Belt cities such as Austin, impacts a resident’s ability to get and keep a job, obtain health care, and travel to the grocery store, interweaving transportation planning with economic development, public health, and food security.

Katherine Lieberknecht explores how complex changes in population, climate, and urbanization will shape how communities reimagine the services and infrastructure needed to support more people under more extreme conditions. She describes two research projects that seek to develop tools to grapple with increasing complexity in our communities: one focused on the social and ecological infrastructure needs of Gulf Coast neighborhoods bordering industrial areas, and the other dedicated to developing an online data and communication platform designed to help Texas communities better understand and plan for metropolitan areas.

Juliana Felkner discusses complexity in the relationship between densification and historic preservation—the tensions and synergies of increasing urban density in areas with concentrations of historic buildings. In her studio last spring, undergraduate students grappled with the context that planning brings to the discipline of architecture as they considered how issues of zoning, local identity, and urban growth processes influence design that fuses new buildings with historic structures.

Three essays focus on the scale at which we understand problems and organize solutions. They offer different takes on the value of viewing and acting on problems at increasingly larger scales.

Jake Wegmann reflects on developments in planning since the mid-twentieth century and finds that large-scale projects have come to dominate local development. He suggests that this trend has excluded non-professionals from engaging in the creation of their local environment, with negative implications for community and well-being.

Michael Oden and Ming Zhang provide two perspectives on the concept of “megaregions”— agglomerations of regional economies into entities that cross state, and sometimes national, boundaries. Zhang provides an overview of the School of Architecture’s University Transportation Center Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2). The center investigates the implications of an upward shift in the scale at which transportation problems are studied and understood. He argues that analyzing problems at this scale can lend new insight into transportation challenges.

Oden takes a critical perspective on megaregions and situates the phenomenon within a broader planning history in which the search for a “spatial fix” to social and environmental challenges is central. He describes the limits encountered by prior efforts to increase the scale at which planning occurs, but closes by noting several examples where megaregional efforts appear promising.

Power The final section of essays offers insight into the ways that planning approaches can either produce or address inequities. These essays consider the agency of those affected by planning problems from different vantage points, considering strategies for giving voice to communities that remain outside of formal planning processes and for making formal planning processes more inclusive.

Alex Karner argues that past approaches to addressing inequities in access to or burdens associated with transportation systems—whether based in quantitative analysis or legal challenges— have proved ineffective in changing outcomes. He suggests that allowing affected communities to

set priorities for the use of transportation funds through participatory budgeting processes is more likely to shift spending priorities and outcomes…if applied at a scale able to affect meaningful change.

Gian-Claudia Sciara adds an institutional dimension to the Geddes regional survey. Through her research on regional transportation and environmental planning, she demonstrates that consideration of governance and regional planning institutions is critical to effective solutions. Planners must understand how institutions work, what they can and cannot do with existing lines of power and authority, and what institutional changes or strategies will be most effective.

Bjørn Sletto and Community and Regional Planning doctoral students Raksha Vasudevan, Ariadna Reyes, and León Staines describe the community of Los Platanitos and a series of servicelearning practicum courses that have taken place there over the past 10 years. In this informal settlement in the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, students have worked alongside residents typically marginalized from planning and urban development processes. Through these courses, students have learned to value and practice collaborative approaches to planning that center on residents’ knowledge about their community’s needs and visions for the future.

Miriam Solis describes the unequal environmental burdens for communities of color historically associated with wastewater infrastructure. She argues that by taking an intersectional approach— one that foregrounds power relations among and within social groups—planners can generate and promote social justice. She applies this thinking to workforce development programming in San Francisco’s sewer system improvement program.

Together, these dynamic perspectives offer an overview of issues that faculty in The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture’s Community and Regional Planning program are studying, and of the types of challenges currently facing cities and regions both domestically and internationally. While these issues are grounded in the real-world complexity of planning problems, they also reveal opportunities to address the ongoing struggle planners face in moving from conceptualization to decision making to action.

Nineteenth century urban theorist and practitioner Patrick Geddes urged planners to survey context and conditions of the site, city, and region before making recommendations about the built environment. Geddes developed the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a physical example of what he called the "civic survey"—a museum where Edinburgh's citizens could learn about their city, moving from broad to narrower geographic scales. He encouraged planners to consider context and scale from a metaphorical observation tower before direct engagement and action.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

PLATFORM 2018-19

7

The Production and Tolerance of Poor Housing Conditions ELIZABETH J. MUELLER, PHD, AND KATHRYN HOWELL, PHD

Cross Creek protest

O

ver time, the problem of affordability has eclipsed housing conditions as the central focus of federal housing policy for low-income people.1 Yet, poor conditions have not disappeared. Instead, they disproportionately affect those with the fewest housing choices due to income or discrimination in the private market. Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted, and reporting on poor conditions associated with redevelopment have returned attention to the poor housing conditions affecting renters at the low end of urban housing markets. Of 19 million central city renters with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, 13.4 million—70%—live in housing built before 1980. Housing of this vintage comprised 87% of the central city rental housing with severe problems in 2013.2 Strategies for addressing poor housing conditions rest on assumptions about the nature of the threat to the public posed by these conditions.

The dominant view has historically been that poor conditions are concentrated in particular locations, labeled as blight or slums, and operate like a contagion to threaten a city’s economic or social vitality. To the extent that the residents experiencing poor conditions are considered, it is in terms of the threat they pose to social order. The abysmal conditions in which immigrant residents of industrial cities lived at the turn of the twentieth century were brought to light in investigative reports, social surveys, and public exhibits.3 Zoning and housing codes were the initial solutions offered by the new profession of urban planning in the U.S. Over time, the policy focus shifted to emphasize lost opportunities for local economic development,4 or the dangers to a city’s future posed by slums.5 By the mid-twentieth century, when central cities

8

PLATFORM 2018-19

were struggling to retain jobs and residents as mass suburban residential development and highway building were drawing them out, federally-funded urban renewal strategies proposed dramatic, modern solutions for central cities. Following demolition of their communities, African-Americans and others excluded from the migration to the suburbs often ended up living in even poorer conditions.6 In the current context, cities—and their private partners—are again proposing bold proposals for economic development. Smart Growth planning initiatives center on transit-supportive density and foster redevelopment that increases property values, thus aligning the interests of developers and cities.7 While there is increasing concern regarding the displacement of low-income residents by such projects, alternative equitable development strategies are still seen as costly add-ons rather than integral pieces of such projects.

A competing view—increasingly cited—is that poor conditions are a natural market outcome and rarely justify intervention. Instead, such conditions can help produce housing affordable to low income renters, through the filtering of units through the rental housing market. As new housing is constructed in more desirable locations, high income households will move up the housing ladder, leaving behind their current, slightly older homes to be occupied by those below them on the income ladder. This has a ripple effect downward, in theory, making the oldest, lowest cost housing available to low-income households.8 However, in practice, many units in central cities do not filter down due to repositioning for higher income renters9 or loss through demolition. Another argument against regulation of standards posits that higher standards might reduce housing options for the poor in terms of the quantity of low-rent units available. Under higher standards, landlords would be unable to maintain their buildings based on rents limited either by the poverty of residents or various forms of rent control.10-12 However, some landlords operating in poor neighborhoods have found creative ways to generate profits through fines, deposits, and fees associated with eviction.13 And so-called “milkers” generate cash flow through the disparity between low purchase prices, minimal maintenance costs, and rents.14 Such profits may be based, in part, on the limited housing choices for residents in local markets, whether due to segregation15 or immigrant or undocumented status.16,17 Both approaches avoid the normative issue of what should be considered a minimally habitable home, and how tenants will be ensured that whatever community standard is set will be maintained. Such standards will be fought out in the political arena. We argue that this process should be the focus of current efforts to address poor conditions.

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

Framing local responses to poor conditions

Addressing substandard housing conditions that pose threats to residents’ health and safety begins with public awareness of both conditions and causes. Arguably, the first step is framing the issue as one that requires action that will prevent ongoing production of poor conditions. Yet in many cities, such policies—if they exist—are reactive and leave the burden of enforcement on vulnerable tenants. They are premised on the view that poor conditions are outliers and the result of a few bad actors, rather than a normal outcome of public or private development practices. In recent work, we compared the evolving responses of Washington, DC, and Austin, Texas, to poor conditions. The contrasting experiences of these cities was rooted in the outcomes of early battles against urban renewal.

In Washington, DC, civil rights leaders succeeded in organizing against urban renewal overreach, ultimately achieving Home Rule for the city in the 1970s. They then began to build an infrastructure of tenants’ rights. One of the most important victories in this process was passage of the Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act of 1980, which requires owners of rental property to notify tenants of their intent to sell well in advance and to offer tenant associations the right to purchase the building—a right supported initially through cityfunded legal assistance to tenants and, since 2004, technical assistance to tenant organizations. This has enabled tenant associations to purchase dozens of buildings containing thousands of units. The city now coordinates its efforts to prevent tenant displacement or harassment through its Office of the Tenant Advocate.18 Austin’s lack of success in protecting tenants from poor conditions is similarly traceable to its struggles over urban renewal, linked to civil rights battles. In a city where the comparatively small African-American community was politically voiceless, efforts to fight displacement during urban renewal were not translated into political empowerment. Instead, efforts to push for change in city laws, whether to redress wrongs inflicted by decades of segregation and disinvestment or to provide modest rights to tenants, were blocked.

In 1968, when the city council passed a Fair Housing Ordinance mirroring the new national law, it was dramatically struck down in a citizen’s referendum.19 Since that time, other efforts to push for change in city laws protecting tenants have been quickly defeated: a 2009 effort to create a citywide rental housing registry was blocked and a 2014 ordinance prohibiting discrimination against those paying part of their rent with vouchers was overturned by the Texas Legislature in its next session.

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

Success, in most cases, has consisted of blocking or stopping harm building by building rather than by giving vulnerable groups leverage to prevent future harm across the city. Even the dramatic collapse of a balcony at an aging apartment complex was not enough to provoke citywide action to prevent similar events from happening in the future. Instead, a program was created that places the burden on tenants to file complaints, without protecting them from retaliatory evictions.

Efforts to hold publicly subsidized owners accountable for their promises to provide decent conditions and foreswear retaliatory evictions have proven Sisyphean, too. A years-long effort to hold the owner of the city-subsidized Cross Creek Apartments accountable resulted in the sale of the property. The new owner agreed to maintain current affordability requirements and housing standards. But it did not result in changes to city practices that might prevent such cases from recurring. While the city redirected funds from the Code Compliance department to local legal aid tenant organizing group Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA) in 2015, this does not yet signify the establishment of ongoing support for tenants in the spirit of, for example, DC’s Office of the Tenant Advocate.

Our study of the different responses of cities to the problem of poor conditions highlights the importance of the power of tenants to define the nature of the problem and to gain control over housing conditions. Yet current explanations for poor conditions leave tenants out of the story: the poor conditions they live in are used to justify intervention, but the results for them are not the focus of policies. Changing this equation requires political power. Washington, DC, has been able to institutionalize rights for tenants that enable them to control their own housing conditions.18 In Austin, battles against poor conditions remain ad hoc with no foothold for meaningful change.

Explanations that obscure the outcomes for tenants undermine the case for public action. As we learned in Washington, DC, success in achieving citywide change requires organizing to pass new laws—and then organizing to ensure ongoing enforcement.

1

Schwartz, A. F. 2015. Housing Policy in the United States (3rd edition). New York: Routledge.

2

American Housing Survey. 2013. Housing Quality. All Occupied Units. Metropolitan Area, Central Cities. By Poverty Level and Year Built.

3

Hall, P. 1988. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Blackwell.

4

Gordon, C. 2003. Blighting the way. Fordham Urb. LJ, 31, 305.

5

Pritchett, W. E. 2003. The “Public Menace” of Blight. Yale Law & Policy Review, 21(1), 1–52.

6

Reynolds, H.W. 1963. Population displacement in urban renewal. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 22 (1), 113-128.

7

Mueller, E. J. & S. Dooling. 2011. Sustainability and Vulnerability. Journal of Urbanism, 4 (3): 201-222.

8

Baer, W.C. & Williamson, C. B. 1988. The filtering of households and housing units. Journal of Planning Literature, 3(2), 127–152.

9

Skaburskis, A. 2006. Filtering, city change and the supply of low-priced housing in Canada. Urban Studies, 43(3), 533–558.

10 Garboden,

P. M. E., & Newman, S. 2012. Is preserving small, low-end rental housing feasible? Housing Policy Debate, 22(4), 507–526.

11 Stegman,

M. 1967. Slumlords and public policy. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 33(6), 419–424.

12 Sternlieb,

G. 1966. The tenement landlord. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED019317

13 Desmond,

M. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. New York: Crown.

14 Mallach,

A. (n.d.). Landlords at the Margins: Exploring the dynamics of the one to four unit rental housing industry.

15 Satter,

B. 2009. Family Properties. New York: Metropolitan

Books.

16 Luna,

G. 2004. Immigrants, Cops, and Slumlords in the Midwest. Southern Illinois University Law Journal, 29, 61–89.

17 Schill,

M., Friedman, S., & Rosenbaum, E. 1998. The housing conditions of immigrants in New York City. Journal of Housing Research, 9(2), 201–235.

18 Howell,

K. 2016. Planning for empowerment: Upending the traditional approach to planning for affordable housing in the face of gentrification. Planning Theory and Practice, 17 (2), 210-226.

19 Orum,

A. 1987. Power, Money and the People. Texas Monthly

Press.

PLATFORM 2018-19

9

Transit Deserts USA JUNFENG JIAO, PHD

Public transit and transit deserts

The benefits of public transit are well known.

Public transit improves air quality, creating a more sustainable environment. It helps connect people to jobs, stimulating the local economy. And it encourages more physical activity, promoting public health. But none of these benefits matter if public transit is inaccessible.

For many Americans, public transit is not an option. Routes may not reach them, buses might not show up, or wait times are too long. To describe these problems in U.S. cities, I coined the term “transit desert” and developed measurement methods in 2013. Residents who live in areas with inadequate transit service are trapped in their neighborhoods, stranded in “transit deserts.” These

are areas where the demand for transit is high, but supply is low. Knowing where transit deserts are located is important for improving a community’s well-being. People who depend on public transit are often either physically or economically unable to access a car. Unreliable transportation prevents people from these already vulnerable populations from finding and keeping jobs. In addition, health issues may be ignored or exacerbated if people do not have reliable transportation to medical services.

Transportation, in many ways, is the life blood of cities. It allows people to access jobs, recreational opportunities, shopping centers, and more. But traditional transportation planning faces several challenges. First, it is often expensive and requires special training to conduct. Second, it often

privileges either public transportation or roads and may not reflect the entire transportation network (e.g., sidewalk, bike lane). Finally, transportation planning often uses land use patterns as a predictor of trip demand when this can be unreliable and may not truly reflect the demand for transit in certain areas. To address the above problems and better plan public transit service, I have developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) based method for quickly assessing transit supply, demand, and gaps within cities. I have applied this method to 52 major United States cities. Results indicate that providing sufficient transit access is an issue that all cities face, and areas of inadequate transit service are often of lower socioeconomic status. Full results for all 52 cities can be found at www.transitdeserts.org.

Identifying transit deserts

Figure 1. Transit demand, supply and gap in Austin, Texas

10

PLATFORM 2018-19

New tools are needed to allow urban planners to quickly identify transit demand, supply, and gaps within cities. Such tools need to be flexible and adaptable enough to be of use in a wide variety of places and circumstances. At UT Austin’s Urban Information Lab, I developed a refined sketch planning method to assess transit demand and supply at the block group level in a given geographical area. This sketch planning tool relies on publicly available census and transit data to map out the relative transit demand and supply in a city, then identify the gaps between them as transit deserts.

Transit demand is calculated from the American Community Survey’s five-year estimate data for 2011-15. For each block group, the number of transit-dependent persons is used as a proxy for transit demand. Transit supply is calculated using publicly available GIS and the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. For each block group, the transit route length, number of transit route stops, total bus trips per day, street length, sidewalk length, bike lane length, and other transit-related variables were used to calculate the transit supply.

Then, transit deserts are identified by subtracting supply from demand. Figure 1 shows the transit demand, supply, and gaps/deserts in Austin, Texas.

The darker the color, the more severe the transit desert. We can see some transit deserts are located in the South Austin and North Lamar areas.

Further study shows that transit-dependent people make up more than 20% of the population in all major cities in Texas, apart from Austin, where they make up about 15% of the population. In Houston, that number is as high as 38% of the population.

In Dallas, it is 26%, and in Fort Worth, it is 22%.

In San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city by population, nearly a quarter of the population is dependent on public transit. Thus, providing enough transit service to people who rely on transit is a challenge for all major Texas cities.

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

informative. This method is meant more as a sketch planning tool that planners can use to quickly measure the spatial distribution of transit supply and demand in their cities. It is our hope that an innovative method like this can help planners to better identify public transportation needs within cities and alleviate transit equity issues.

This method also suffers from some limitations.

First, it relies on publicly available GIS and GTFS data, which is not always available. Second, the threshold to define a transit desert could be further examined. Finally, the method cannot diagnose the exact causes of transit deserts. Further investigation is needed to understand the local issues associated with transit deserts.

Working toward transit desert solutions

Figure 2. Transit Deserts in Buffalo (upper) and New York City (bottom)

Transit desert problems

My research shows that transit deserts exist in all 52 cities (Figure 2). Populations living in transit deserts tend to be of lower socioeconomic status, younger, and are less likely to be white than the populations living in areas with sufficient transit supply. Lower access to transportation for poorer Americans creates a potential negative economic feedback loop. People need access to high-quality transportation (either private vehicle or transit) in order to find and retain jobs. Poor Americans are often unable to move out of poverty because of this lack of quality transportation access. Thus, I argue that investing in infrastructure is a way of increasing social and economic equality.

The percentage of the population living in transit deserts also varies significantly between cities. Research shows that there are more than four

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

million people, or 6.6% of the total population, in these major U.S. cities living in transit deserts.

Denver has the lowest percentage of the city population (1.5%) living in transit deserts. On the other hand, San Francisco has the highest percentage of the population (13.8%) living in transit deserts.

However, this result does not indicate that Denver has a better transit system than San Francisco; it only shows that there are many unmet transit demands in the city of San Francisco, which could be due to factors such as the spatial distribution or routes of transit, land use patterns, low car ownership, or high cost of living.

Again, this method of detecting transit deserts is not intended to be a method for comparing transit access across cities. Because the transit service and demand in each city is normalized against itself, direct comparisons between cities are not

Correcting this transportation mismatch is not easy. Reducing transit deserts in U.S. cities might not require wholesale construction of new transit infrastructure. Some solutions can be implemented relatively cheaply and easily. New and emerging technologies can provide alternatives to traditional public transportation. Examples include services from transit network companies, such as Uber’s Pool and Lyft’s Line; traditional or dockless bike or E-scooter sharing sharing services, such as Mobike and Lime; and microtransit services like Ford’s Chariot. However, in order to ensure equity of service, cities will have to work with private companies to ensure that these services are accessible to all residents.

Cities can also take steps to ensure their current transit systems are well-balanced and shift some resources from overserved areas to neighborhoods that are underserved. Even modest investments can make a difference. Some cities are starting to make headway. For instance, transit authorities in Austin and Houston (CapMetro and METRO) have redesigned their bus systems to increase transit access in their cities. In Dallas, the city council and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Board are debating the merits of a bus service overhaul versus funding a major rail expansion. In San Antonio, VIA Metropolitan Transit is also evaluating a potential redesign of its bus services. For cities, expanding existing bus services may be the most cost-effective way to improve transit access. Adding bus lines, redesigning the bus system, increasing service hours, and even streamlining boarding and fares can help improve service and increase access.

Integrating bicycling with transit services would be another cost-effective option.

Ultimately, federal, state, and city agencies must work together to ensure an equitable distribution of transportation so that all citizens can fully participate in civil society. Identifying transit deserts is a first step toward solving this issue. Continued research on transit deserts will develop more precise methods for identifying gaps in transit coverage and provide increased access for everyone. By improving transit services in the areas that need them most, we are ensuring that our cities, states, and nation will grow and thrive in the decades to come.

PLATFORM 2018-19

11

Fencelines and Observatories Two Texas Communities Navigating Change KATHERINE LIEBERKNECHT, PHD

Add climate change and population growth to our state’s existing inequity, inadequate services, and aging infrastructure, and we have a Texas-sized recipe for disaster.

On the bright side, Texans often rise to a challenge. Getting ready for climate and population change provides Texas with an opportunity to reconsider and recreate our everyday infrastructure and services in a way that meets the needs of all residents, both now and in the future. Two new research projects that involve UT Austin School of Architecture faculty provide examples of promising approaches to preparing for these changes: a research and implementation project focused on “fenceline” communities along the Gulf Coast, and the Texas Metro Observatory, an online platform to share data and exchange ideas about an urban and urbanizing Texas. Both projects focus on linking university-based data and analytic capacity with people power—the knowledge of lived experiences and the aggregate ability of a community to make change. Through these projects, we hope to assist and support residents as they adapt their homes, neighborhoods, and communities to changing conditions of climate, population, and urbanization.

Yudith Nieto, Gulf Coast Organizer for Another Gulf is Possible, holds an air quality sampler in Hartman Park, Houston, Texas. Courtesy of Earthjustice.

T

exas, like pretty much everywhere else, has entered uncharted territory as projected changes in climate, population, and urbanization unfold. And although we haven’t given up on climate mitigation, as we think about Texas’ future it also makes sense to consider how to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the social and built environment. For example, Central Texas will likely receive more frequent and intense rainstorms, distressingly matched by longer and more severe droughts. At the same time, over the next several decades, Texas’ population could grow from 28 million to almost 50 million.1 Today, 88% of Texans live in metropolitan areas, and demographers project that 95% of the population growth between 2010 and 2050 will be in metropolitan areas across the state, from Houston to the east, Dallas-Fort Worth to the north, El Paso to the west, and Brownsville to the south.2 Climate and population projections can seem abstract, but here are a few thought experiments to put these numbers into context. The record-setting 2011 Texas drought caused more than $8 billion in damages, killed more than 5% of the state’s tree cover, and resulted in at least one town (Spicewood Beach) having to truck in water supplies.2 Imagine the next major drought, but with 10 or 20 million

12

PLATFORM 2018-19

more residents, all trying to run the AC (energy production requires a huge amount of water) or use water for lawns, washing machines, and bathing.

Or imagine Houston having double the number of people during the next Hurricane Harvey—twice as many residents to evacuate, to provide emergency housing for, and to help recover from damage.

This combination of climate change, population growth, and urbanization will reshape how Texas communities plan, design, finance, and build the services and infrastructure needed to support more people under a more extreme climate. These changes present tremendous challenges to planning for the future, especially given the considerable unmet needs of Texans today. Although Texas can point to a strong and growing economy, significant percentages of Texans do not have safe, healthy, just, and ecologically and economically viable places to live. For instance, 25% of children in Travis County (where Austin is located) suffer from food insecurity, defined as limited or uncertain access to adequate food.3 Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio all make the list of the top ten most economically segregated large cities in the U.S.4 And at least half a million Texans live in neighborhoods that lack basic services, including potable water supply, wastewater, and trash service.5

Fenceline communities

Fenceline communities, which are residential areas adjacent to incompatible industrial uses, present some of the starkest examples of U.S. neighborhoods likely to suffer from projected population growth and extreme weather events. Along the Gulf Coast, the term often specifically refers to residential areas that border petrochemical facilities such as refineries. Almost unbelievable images show homes, schools, and playgrounds directly adjacent to refineries, sometimes only separated by a chain link fence. Significant air, water, and noise pollution characterize everyday life for residents, and after extreme rain events, the surface water in these neighborhoods quickly becomes a toxic soup.

Unfortunately, the U.S. and other places around the world have a long history of neighborhoods located at the residential-industrial nexus, such as the well-known environmental justice case of New York’s Love Canal neighborhood,6 which the City of Niagara Falls developed on top of Hooker Chemical’s waste disposal area. However, today’s Gulf Coast fenceline communities seem particularly extreme. The images of these neighborhoods have a surreal quality, with houses and playgrounds juxtaposed within feet of industrial infrastructure.

This extremity makes it easy for us to grasp how we have failed these neighborhoods and residents in our basic guarantee of health, safety, and welfare.

The Gulf Coast fenceline communities exist because of a legacy of segregation and the failure

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

to adequately separate residential areas from hazardous land uses. Although the solution seems simple—in the case along the Gulf Coast, relocate residents away from refineries—at least three major complications have arisen with relocation programs.

First, some residents may not want to move, or underfunded and cumbersome relocation programs may result in only some residents participating, leaving a neighborhood characterized by increasing numbers of vacant homes. As a result, residents who stay in place end up worse-off than before the program, suffering from decreasing property values and problems related to vacancy, such as dumping and vandalism. Second, securing financing, long-term ownership commitments, and stewardship responsibilities for the newly vacant land can present a challenge. Lastly, even when residents participate and relocate to new areas, the less visible but critical functions of neighborhoods are often not successfully recreated, whether that be community ties, proximity to work, or access to transit.

In response to these challenges, a consortium of researchers and practitioners are working with residents of fenceline communities in the Houston area to develop responsive relocation programs that consider community opinions, ease of participation, adequate financing, long-term planning for vacant buffer lands, and holistic considerations of new neighborhoods. UT Austin School of Architecture faculty hope to contribute to this larger effort by adding expertise in both a physical and a social component of the overall program. We plan on using suitability analysis to understand which fenceline areas, if taken out of housing and reused as green space, could provide conservation value, whether that be a buffer against storm surge, an area designed to clean air and water pollution, a place to infiltrate and moderate flooding from stormwater, or restored habitat in a formerly ecologically vibrant estuary system. This analysis will provide justification for alternative financing sources and, if used for implementation, will contribute toward conservation benefit and perhaps natural hazard mitigation for the broader region.

At the same time, we will determine strategies for identifying appropriate sites for relocation, based on research focused on the relationships among housing location, physical safety, and access to opportunity, as well as processes for engaging residents in relocation planning.

Texas Metro Observatory

Although fenceline communities present an extreme example of neighborhood life in Texas, in the years ahead, many communities across the state will be affected by similar challenges caused by changes in urbanization, population, and climate

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

(e.g., environmental toxicity, displacement, growing public health impacts, etc.). Future decisions about policies, funding priorities, and planning and design strategies will depend in part on better understanding life in Texas’s metropolitan areas, since they are home to almost 90 percent of Texans.

For example, what do we need to know in order to plan for, design, and implement sustainable water use for Texas cities? What will our housing needs be, and how will changes in population and climate influence our built environment? How will service providers adapt to metropolitan change, such as the shifts in urban form, population distribution, and demographics that will impact everyday needs like access to food, health care, and work?

In response to these questions, a group of UT Austin researchers is developing the Texas Metro Observatory, which will be a comprehensive data and communications platform focused on urban and urbanizing Texas. This project is a part of UT Austin’s Planet Texas 2050 grand challenge research program, which is an eight-year initiative to develop the knowledge and tools necessary to make Texas a safe, healthy, just, and ecologically and economically vibrant home for all its residents.

Our hope is that the Texas Metro Observatory will serve as a place to convene discussion and catalyze positive change about urban Texas, in addition to its more straightforward function as a place to access data about metropolitan areas. We see the Observatory as a place where researchers, community members, nonprofit organizations, public sector staff, and the business sector will come together to better understand and exchange ideas about Texas communities. We envision the Texas Metro Observatory as a: • Communication and convening platform for developing a discussion about the future of Texas’s communities; • Place where users can better understand common problems and solutions across the state’s metropolitan areas; • Unique and comprehensive data repository that integrates data across geographic, thematic, and user categories; • Research tool itself, providing data analysis tools and query methodologies; • Place for faculty, researchers, students, and community members to share special reports and research products (data visualizations, maps, etc.) on important topics drawing upon the data platform.

In order to better understand what Texas will look like over the next few decades and how to make our communities more livable and resilient, we want to harness and share the vast amount of data that

are currently available, but not integrated and not particularly useful for people outside the research community. We believe that the durable value of the Texas Metro Observatory will be to substantially deepen and expand communication and knowledge-sharing across Texas metropolitan areas. We hope to produce better answers to critical research and policy questions while making this pathway a two-way street, where researchers can learn from communities and policy makers and academic research reaches audiences outside the university.

Climate change, rapid population growth, and increasing urbanization can greatly stress communities, threatening residents with displacement from their homes and health impacts due to catastrophic weather events, environmental degradation, and changes in urban form. We can see these changes occur at the neighborhood scale, such as in fenceline communities, where toxicity in surface water that followed Hurricane Harvey’s rains made a bad situation even worse, or across Texas metropolitan areas, which are projected to receive almost all our state’s population growth.

The pace and complexity of these changes requires an “all hands on deck” approach to planning for the future. We look forward to bringing some of what the University has to offer—research capacity, analysis, data visualization—to communities across the state, while knowing that our planning and design work will be continually reshaped by local knowledge and context.

1

White, Steve, Lloyd Potter, Helen You, Lila Valencia, Jeffrey Jordan, Beverly Pecotte, Sara Robinson. 2017. Urban Texas.

Texas Demographic Center, 6 pages.

2

Fannin, Blair. 2012. Updated 2011 Texas agricultural drought losses. Texas AgriLife Today (March 21, 2012); Henry, Terrance.

2012. The Drought Killed Texas Trees, But Not How You Might Think. StateImpact. https://stateimpact.npr.org/ texas/2012/07/23/the-drought-killed-texas-trees-butnot-how-you-might-think/; Fernandez, Manny. 2012. Texas Drought Forces a Town to Sip From a Truck. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/texas-droughtforces-town-to-haul-in-water-by-truck.html

3

Center for Public Policy Priorities. 2018. State of Texas Children: The Road to a Brighter Future. 24 pages. http:// www.forabettertexas.org/images/KC2018_SOTCReport_ web.pdf

4

Florida, Richard, and Charlotta Mellander. Segregated city: The geography of economic segregation in America's metros.

Martin Prosperity Institute, 2015.

5

Barton, Jordana, Elizabeth Sobel Blum, and Raquel R. Márquez. “Emily Perlmeter (2015),” Las Colonias in the 21st Century: Progress Along the Texas-Mexico Border,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas."

6

Beck, Edkardt C. “The Love Canal tragedy.” EPA J. 5 (1979): 17.

PLATFORM 2018-19

13

Vertical Extensions for Austin, Texas Experiments in Balancing Urban Densification and Historic Preservation JULIANA FELKNER, PHD

A

s many cities grapple with rapid population growth, historic city centers face particular pressure, creating a tension between the desire for preservation and some of the aims of sustainable development, including the need to add density. Austin is no exception. The city is faced with the dilemma of increasing urban densification while also balancing the goals of heritage and culture, as many historically significant areas and buildings occupy the most central parts of the city. Renovations and additions to these structures could be one alternative to demolition, but sensitive issues arise. As Dibner writes, “Especially sensitive in contextual considerations are additions to historic or architecturally significant structures…the designer is dealing with an important part of our heritage and has a moral, and sometimes legal, obligation to preserve and create something which will fit in well within the context of the existing structure and location.”1 Multiple authors have examined how some preservation policies and sustainability efforts, such as energy consumption, inclusion, and urban densification, can be more closely aligned.2 In his debate over mid-rise versus tall buildings, Brent Toderian reflects on his own experience with city planning in Vancouver to argue against “density at any cost,” or density that is poorly contextualized, in favor of “density done well.” He proposes context-specific mixes of mid-rise and tall buildings as an appropriate solution for many cities.3 Randolph Hester states that concentrated neighborhoods create resilience in a number of ways and should have a density of at least 50 units per acre.4 The question of what density is appropriate for a given location is complex and depends largely on context. Many issues arise, such as inclusion and affordability. This design exercise looks specifically at the densification-preservation complexity in the context of Austin, Texas. The motivation for using this as a design project for architecture students was to instill in the designers of tomorrow a sensitivity to the complexity of adding density to our city centers.

How historic structures are dealt with varies by location and context, but, in some cases, they are at risk of being demolished to make room for newer, taller buildings as pressures for rentable space are too great to ignore. In order to save the street view of existing historic structures, some architects have found novel ways to harmonize the need for added density with the aims of historic preservation by introducing vertical extensions to historic structures. The size of these extensions depends largely on the neighboring buildings. Large cities such as New York have witnessed massive vertical extensions, as in the case of the Hearst Tower, where a tower was placed within the façade of the original building. For smaller cities, however, attention to scale is important. Moreover, these additions and retrofits require a sound knowledge of the existing structure, site context, and future needs of the area. As one of the fastest growing cities in the country,5 Austin is challenged to create more residential space without creating additional sprawl or destroying its heritage.

At The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, undergraduate students in the Fall 2017 Construction III course had to locate historic structures in Austin worthy of preservation, based on research into their cultural significance. These structures also had to meet design needs for a harmoniously

14

PLATFORM 2018-19

Dr. Zoltan Nagy and Dr. Patricia Clayton from the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, giving feedback at the final review (Group 1 shown)

Group 1 site analysis

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

integrated vertical residential extension, respecting the scale, based on zoning for the area, as well as their aesthetic vision to contrast and complement old with new. Achieving this goal required students to learn about the interplay of issues such as zoning, local identity, and urban growth, in addition to structural interventions. A primary architectural objective was to explore how the structure itself can mediate and negotiate the two forms toward a favorable interior and exterior spatial quality, with broader objectives requiring students to engage in discourse with other disciplines from community and regional planning to historic preservation and structural engineering.

The structural design of the extensions was purposely exposed in the models to teach students about the flow of forces through an existing structure. By working with structural models, they were able to feel and intuit the flow of forces in addition to representing them in their drawings and sizing specifications. The students (57 undergraduate architecture students) were placed into 12 groups of four to six and could choose any existing building in Austin, as long as it was central, historic, or significant. Floorplans and structural information also had to be readily available so that locations for reinforcements could be identified. Their designs varied from safe, single-story structures to provocative and daring solutions, leading to fruitful discussions during reviews.

The goal of the course was not only to negotiate between different structural materials and loads, but also to apply knowledge in concrete examples and learn the importance of collaborating early in the design phase with planners, property developers and owners, and engineers. Students visited sites and some interviewed relevant stakeholders. They also made precedent studies of existing vertical extensions for historic structures. Lessons in class also covered multiple case studies and methods for respecting the structural grid and redirecting the forces when needed.

Ultimately, students gained a new appreciation for the need to engage in discourse with other disciplines early in the design phase to find appropriate solutions specific to their site. Students found value in surprising sites, some of which were not historically protected but which they felt held historic or sentimental significance to the community. They also learned the role of architectural design in the greater planning process, especially in terms of physical planning. According to Peter J. Park, Manager of Community Planning and Development for the City of Denver, the planning profession, as it was started some hundred years ago, had a stronger emphasis on physical planning.

“At that time,” he stated, “landscape architects and planners and architects and engineers had very common foundations in understanding the design of cities.

And then the evolution of the profession of planning, as in many professions, evolved into specialties, and oftentimes some of those specialties lost the connection with the physicalities of their policies.”6 It was the hope of this project to reconnect to the physical aspects of planning and architectural design through these structural explorations.

To further strengthen the sense of collaboration with other disciplines, reviewers were selected from fields other than architectural design, including Assistant Professors Zoltan Nagy and Patricia Clayton, both from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at UT Austin, and Mr. Donghwan Kim, a graduate of our MArch Post-Professional Sustainable Design program. From lessons such as resisting torsion in the structure and using materials with the least embodied energy, to cultural sensitivity in choice of scale and materials, the reviewers were an integral part of this interdisciplinary learning experience. They helped impress upon students that there is more to structural design than just the structure of the building itself; the structuring of our cities is also a complex endeavor best met by the integration and collaboration of various fields related to the built environment. Students walked away with the insight that establishing common ground and collaborative relationships are key aspects of the planning profession. In addition, they learned that designing and structuring a building addition involves not only a fundamental understanding of statics, but also of material and resource consumption, energy performance, spatial quality, and local culture.

1

Dibner, David R., Dibner-Dunlap, Amy. 1985. Building Additions Design. McGraw-Hill.

2

Avrami, Erica. 2016. Making Historic Preservation Sustainable, Journal of the American Planning Association, 82:2, 104112.

3

Toderian, Brent. Tall Tower Debates Could Use Less Dogma, Better Design, Planetizen, June 1, 2014.

4

Hester, R. 2006. Designing for Ecological Democracy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.

5

http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/austin-population/

6

Park, Peter J. A Return to Physical Planning. Planetizen, Oct. 25, 2010.

CO M PLEXIT Y | SCALE | POWER

GROUP 1 — Brown Building / Precedent 1 / Group 1 Final Structural Model of Vertical Extension to Brown Building Lofts

GROUP 2 — Scarborough Building, 522 Congress / Precedent: Porter House, Shop Architects / Final Model

GROUP 3 — Tejas House, 2600 Rio Grande St. / Precedent 1 / Precedent 2 / Process Sketch / Final Model / Final Model

GROUP 4 — Travis County Courthouse, 1000 Guadalupe St. Built in 1930; additions in 1959 & 1962 / Precedent: Bisha Hotel, Toronto, ON. Wallman Architects / Final Model

GROUP 5 — Seaholm Power Plant, City of Austin / Precedent: CoRe Hanok / Final Model Students: Special thanks to all the undergraduate students of Construction 3, Fall 2017.

Highlighted works: Group 1: Ian Amen, Raymond Castro, Rachel Deschner, Jonathan Martinez, Collin Stack Group 2: Nailah Bell, Ana Coppola, Isabelle Donatelli, Laura Lancaster, Andrew Winn Group 3: Natalie Avellar, Andrew Curran, Christian Pena, Draven Pointer Group 4: Ana Cantu, Jorge Diaz, Sameer Kanafani, Kabir Karnani, John Tolander Group 5: Alicia Chen, Brandon Lee, Aitana Medina Hernandez, Tanvi Solanki, Christopher Stoll

PLATFORM 2018-19

15

By Guarding Against the Big and Bad, Have We Eradicated the Small and Beautiful?

A Skeptical Take on Contemporary Planning Practice JAKE WEGMANN, PHD

The commissioners of the housing agencies of New York City sincerely believe that they have been benefitting the economy of the city by reducing the numbers and varieties of New York’s enterprises in the cause of efficiency for those retained. It is the boast of one of these commissioners, one that he often repeats with pride in public, that in the new Lower East Side, rebuilt under the city’s auspices, each new store the plans have permitted takes the place, on the average, of forty older stores that have been wiped out. By such means, he reports, the city is being made efficient. Of course the Lower East Side, once fabulously productive in developing work, is now almost an economic desert. But the commissioner is quite right: it does have more efficient stores.

—Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, 1969 (p. 96)

16

PLATFORM 2018-19

T

here is an origin story in the discipline of Planning that is so familiar that almost all of our incoming graduate students know its gist before they even set foot on the Forty Acres. It goes something like this: once upon a time, arrogant and out-of-touch technocrats throughout the United States, and indeed throughout the world, proposed and enacted heavy-handed interventions in cities that ripped apart existing communities. Where once had stood a community that from the outside appeared to be disorderly or unkempt, but that to its residents was laden with thick social connections, meaning, and a deeply rooted sense of place, there was now a gigantic public housing development, or performing arts complex, or shopping mall, or freeway.

Then a change in consciousness took place, and it changed everything about the way that planning is implemented. High Modernist ideas about centralized control and scientifically driven, rationalist decision-making gave way to radically new ideas about the beauty of complex systems and the wisdom of local knowledge. The quintessential dramatic image of this confrontation is Jane Jacobs staring down New York’s master builder, Robert Moses, circa 1955 in opposition to a freeway Moses intended to drive through the heart of Jacobs’ Greenwich Village neighborhood. Jacobs and her allies won, the freeway was never built, and, despite many lamentable losses, numerous other similar scenarios were averted. Half a century later, Moses endures as the ultimate symbol of overbearing Modernist planning, and Jacobs is remembered as the founding mother of planning as it is now practiced. Today, as a direct result of Jacobs winning not only the battle against Moses but the war over the approach to planning he embodied, the notion of tearing down a neighborhood in Manhattan—or Austin, or in most places, for that matter—to make way for a new freeway is more or less inconceivable.

I have no interest in disputing this basic story. I do, however, believe that the legacy of Jacobs—and so many others who followed in her footsteps who collectively advocated for a far more participatory

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

and democratic approach to planning—has resulted in a set of circumstances that Jacobs herself would find troubling. My argument is that by enacting a set of principles and procedures to prevent, or at least blunt, the “big and bad,” we have unwittingly begun to eradicate, with apologies to the economist E.F. Schumacher, the “small and beautiful” from city life.

Below, I outline six principles that I believe govern contemporary decision-making in planning and which are typically perceived as axiomatic. In any proposed intervention for which public permission is required, whether it be construction of a new housing or office development, or a new piece of public infrastructure such as a park or a set of bike lanes, it is assumed that: 1. Collaboration across disciplinary “silos” is always advisable.

2. Public input should always be solicited.

3. It is always prudent to systematically study the effects of the proposed intervention.

4. The opinions of people who have lived in the community for the longest time, and who live closest to the proposed intervention—above all those who own property—should count more than those of newcomers, or those who live further away.

5. It is best to seek to achieve multiple publicly beneficial outcomes all at once by engaging in a comprehensive negotiation process.

6. If there is any doubt, the safest course of action is to adhere to the planning version of the Hippocratic Oath: to deny the intervention and preserve the status quo.

In reading the six principles individually, it seems churlish to object to any of them. Who could ever be opposed to collaboration, or to public input?

Isn’t it better to strive for comprehensiveness in decision-making rather than a narrow perspective?

Isn’t it wise to study things before doing them?

While Death and Life of Great American Cities is Jane Jacobs’ best-known work, often reverently cited by those who fight to stop the “big and the bad,” her writings on economic development are also enormously influential within economic development circles. In The Economy of Cities, she wrote that cities thrive when they create “new work.” New work is innovation that stems from existing economic activities, as when Ida Rosenthal, a New York dressmaker, pursued manufacturing brassieres as a sideline in the 1920s and eventually revolutionized the garment industry and women’s fashion in so doing. Jacobs describes cities as hothouses of innovation, not in spite of being inefficient and congested, but because they are inefficient and congested—the more people, the more enterprises, the more ideas that cross-fertilize each other, the better.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

In our contemporary era of craft brewing, pop-up retailing, and small batch production, these ideas may seem obvious. In 1969, they were heretical. A careful reading of the quote at the beginning of this article reveals that Jacobs was aghast at the replacement of forty stores with one.

Surely, she would also have been astounded if, in setting up a system that stops the eradication of forty existing stores, we made it impossible for forty new stores to arise in the future.

And yet, I would argue, that is what we have done. When every proposed intervention requires repeated town hall meetings, or an environmental study, or a traffic impact study, or close coordination with other affected governmental departments, or some combination of all of the above, there arises a minimum feasible size of intervention. This point often gets lost in a lot of debates, such as NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) vs. YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), about the costs versus benefits of regulation. In the case of housing production, the urgent questions are just as much about who or what will end up producing housing as how much housing will be produced. The various processes that any developer or builder must navigate in a fast-growing city, with intense controversy over what can be built where, essentially lock small players out of the game. Only a large developer, with a phalanx of land use attorneys and myriad other consultants and access to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in institutional capital needed to pull off a project covering multiple acres of urban land, can play.

Does it matter? Jane Jacobs thought so, and there is a growing number of others, including nonprofessionals, practitioners, and thinkers spanning various disciplines, who think so today.

For one thing, something is lost when small, local players are barred from city-building. Small entrepreneurs were once able to scrape together enough capital from friends, families, local banks, and the undersides of their seat cushions to build a fourplex apartment building or a Main Street shopfront building with a flat above. Today, the rules of the game mean that those who lack the wherewithal to build tens of thousands of square feet at once need not apply. Public participation is worthy, of course, but something is lost when the most profound form of shaping one’s environment, actually building it, has become effectively barred to everyday people.

This situation strikes me as unique, and uniquely unfortunate, in historical terms. In most places in the world, right up until the mid-twentieth century, much of the built environment had consisted of small groups of people building homes, workshops, businesses, and places of worship for themselves.

The nascent countermovement consists of a motley crew from a variety of disciplines, mostly outside of planning. Lean Urbanism is an offshoot movement of New Urbanism, which may be surprising to many, given that New Urbanists are

often thought of as desiring to control every minute detail of how new neighborhoods are designed. And yet it is easy to forget that Seaside, New Urbanism’s seminal community in Florida, before it became world-renowned and stratospherically expensive, was initially built with minimal infrastructure such as unpaved streets. The Incremental Development Alliance1 seeks to train people who have never thought of themselves as real estate professionals to succeed, against the odds, in building small building urban building blocks such as fourplexes.

The Strong Towns Movement2 was founded by a self-described recovering civil engineer who seeks to reshape development patterns in a more incremental direction that is less reliant on goldplated infrastructure outlays by local governments, above all for fiscal reasons. And Tactical Urbanism,3 within Planning, has emerged as a set of strategies that civic groups, or even local governments, can deploy to evade the welter of rules that hold back needed improvements in the public realm, such as dedicated transit lanes, bike facilities, and expanded sidewalks.

I am heartened by these swirling crosscurrents, and hope for more in the future. I would like to see a movement toward reducing or eliminating procedural hurdles to small projects below a certain size.

Local governments might even need to get back into the business of subdividing land and extending infrastructure themselves, as they routinely did a century ago. If they were to sell or lease lots of land plots to small entities rather than all at once to one big entity, they might like the results: more entrepreneurship from a wider variety of small, local players, a greater range of buildings and services, and in general an urban environment “built by many hands.” Without a doubt, that would require courage on the part of elected officials. They would need to accept a degree of loss of control over how decisions today play out tomorrow, and embrace a level of uncertainty concerning the future. In other words, perhaps governing bodies can be persuaded to treat decisions about city building more like decisions about life in general—messy, muddled, and uncertain, to be sure, but endlessly varied and interesting.

1 http://www.incrementaldevelopment.org/ 2 https://www.strongtowns.org 3

Lydon, Mike, and Anthony Garcia. 2015. Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change. Washington, DC: Island Press.

PLATFORM 2018-19

17

Toward Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions MING ZHANG, PHD

I

n the United States, existing highways, ports, and gateways are very much congested, many operating at close to saturation for extended periods. The mobility problems facing the nation will likely worsen in the forthcoming decades as demand for passenger and freight travel is expected to increase more than 45% by 2045.

More often than not, mobility problems occur locally but originate beyond local jurisdictions crossing regional, state, or even national boundaries.

The mobility challenges of tomorrow cannot be resolved by adding up silo solutions from individual communities, agencies, or transportation modes. Accordingly, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in “Beyond Traffic 2045: Trends and Choices,” a 30-year framework for the future, calls for an entirely new megaregional approach to tackle future mobility challenges.

Megaregions (also termed “super-city regions” or “city cluster regions” in European and Asian contexts) refer to large geographies consisting of two or more metropolitan areas and their hinterlands. The new geography is playing an increasingly important role in the globalized economy. Quality mobility of people and goods is a critical attribute of competitive megaregions. U.S. trade partners and competitors in Europe and Asia have recognized the critical nature of megaregion mobility and have been proactive. Examples of their actions include the continuing development of the multimodal Trans-European Transportation Network (TEN-T) in the European Union (EU); the creation of four EU “Macro Regions” since 2010 (which are integrated regional frameworks that are supported by structural and investment funds to address common challenges faced by defined geographical areas); and high-speed rail (HSR) investments, along with port and highway constructions in China, Japan, and other Asian countries.

Responding to the U.S. DOT’s call, a faculty team representing the Community and Regional Planning program and the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) at The University of Texas at Austin proposed and won a five-year grant to take up the work of developing a megaregional approach to tackle future mobility challenges facing the United States. The grant, authorized by the U.S. Fixing America Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (2015), supports the creation of a Tier-1 University Transportation Center (UTC), Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2), led by the UT Austin School of 18

PLATFORM 2018-19

Architecture. CM2 partners include Texas Southern University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

CM2 emphasizes a strategic, megaregional approach to conduct research, provide education and workforce development, and deliver technology transfer for mobility enhancement and economic competitiveness. A megaregional approach does not suggest a new layer of political or institutional governance adding to the existing, already complex setting for transportation planning and investment decisions. Instead it proposes a cooperative framework for mobility problem-solving from a broad and strategic scope consistent with rising mega-agglomerations. A megaregional approach aims at building bridges and filling the gaps among the silos of individual institutions, modal systems, and jurisdictional territories. It starts from the future and works toward the present to gain a better understanding of mobility trends and needs and to identify mobility supply deficits and strategic options.

CM2 research targets the first of the six research priorities specified by the U.S. FAST Act: Improving Mobility of People and Goods.

Specifically, CM2 focuses on three FAST Act topic areas.

Regional planning and setting of transportation priorities

Identifying an appropriate institutional framework and governance structure is the first step in addressing megaregional mobility issues.

Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) often find themselves unable to address cross-jurisdictional transportation issues because they do not have authority to conduct planning beyond their boundaries and can conduct regional planning only if they have interlocal agreements in place. An effective institutional and planning framework must be established to transform research into action.

CM2 consortium members are researching the legal and institutional challenges and options for passenger and freight mobility improvement in the multi-jurisdictional setting of megaregions.

CM2 also supports research to develop a muchneeded analytical framework for understanding and modeling long-term megaregional mobility demand.

Inter-metropolitan travel has received less attention than intra-metropolitan travel among scholars and practitioners. Megaregional travel crosses

boundaries of political jurisdictions and individual MPOs. Studies of inter-metropolitan travel are often done on an ad hoc, project-specific basis.

These models are not typically owned by a single public agency and thus are not well maintained or up-to-date. The megaregional analytical framework for passenger mobility should not substitute for, nor separate from, existing modeling framework such as MPOs and state-wide models. Instead, it should integrate with these models.

Efficient and competitive transportation modes and systems underpin vibrant, growing economic regions, and their impacts apply to increases in state, multi-state, and national gross products.

U.S. freight volume is expected to increase dramatically; much of this freight traffic will be concentrated in megaregions. Developing methods and strategies for the efficient flow of freight is vital to ensuring future economic competitiveness. CM2 supports research that will examine how planning decisions, technologies, modes, and private sector partners can cooperate to improve freight mobility and safety. Research on private sector freight operations and on public-private partnerships is of particular interest.

Increase access to opportunities that promote equity in connecting regions and communities, including both urban and rural communities

By many measures, the United States is increasingly challenged by growing inequalities.

These inequalities often manifest spatially and are also tied to mobility. CM2 supports research in multiple dimensions to improve the equity of access in megaregions.

A megaregional perspective sees new opportunities to connect residents with jobs. For example, opportunities such as employment, education, health care, and recreational facilities in Dallas are traditionally not considered as feasible options accessible by Houston residents. CM2 researchers explore how these opportunities can be better accessed with improved mobility. Mobility may be improved by high speed rail services and advances in smart vehicle/highway technologies among communities in the Texas Triangle megaregion.

At the same time, the transportation challenges of equal access may worsen if the mobility gap widens between high-growth regions and rural COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

CM2 Researchers and Student Research Assistants attended the 2018 CM2 Summer Forum at PennDesign, June 19-21, 2018.

communities. CM2 supports its faculty’s ongoing examination of the gap between transit demand and supply, namely transit deserts in the United States.

A critical aspect of growing trends in inequality between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas is the growing number of elderly people in rural communities and in communities adjacent to metropolitan areas. CM2 supports research to better understand how the megaregion can provide for greater mobility for aging populations. Given that megaregion planning and policy for transportation will by default focus on ‘regional’ projects, it is imperative that a set of environmental justice and equity metrics are developed to be used by local, state, regional, and federal agencies as megaregion transportation plans and policies are created.

The widespread use of mobile phones and internet access has enabled new forms of public engagement, generating a large amount of information not readily comprehensible by public agencies.

This is a new challenge facing public agencies in the big-data era. It will be particularly complex at the megaregional scale, where transportation planning and decisions involve a much larger geography and population than individual MPOs. CM2 researchers are exploring how the applications of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) can help improve public engagement in transportation investment decisions and policy making.

Innovations in multi-modal planning and motdeling for highgrowth regions

A new megaregional approach to tackle future mobility challenges calls for innovations in developing analytical tools to support cooperative planning and policy making. CM2 researchers are developing analytical models and decision support COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

systems to optimize multi-modality and inter-modality and to facilitate cross-agency, cross-jurisdiction decision making.

Multi-modality aims at supplying efficient mobility with optimal combination and utilization of different modes. Achieving multi-modality in megaregions should consider the factor of scale.

At the local scale, multi-modality involves the combination of driving, transit, bicycling, walking, and other local modes. At the megaregional scale, multi-modality aims at optimizing High Speed Rail and highway combinations to serve the demand for high-speed travel in high-growth megaregion corridors. CM2 will conduct research to promote strategic investments in HSR that will best serve megaregional mobility needs and help reduce congestion on roadways and in airspace and minimize total emissions and environmental impacts of the transportation sector.

Inter-modality aims at seamless transfer when trips by people or goods involve multiple modes of transportation. CM2 supports research on ways to improve intermodal connectivity concerning system operations and management, including the interconnectedness and interoperability of infrastructure networks, door-to-door information, hand-in-hand service deliveries, ticketing and fares, baggage handling, and special services for the elderly, those with children, or those with impaired mobility. CM2 supports research on innovative building information modeling (BIM) tools to optimize operational design of multi-modal terminal complexes, border-crossing port facilities, and the concept of airport-city.

CM2 supports research on developing planning support systems (PSS) for megaregion transportation planning through collaborative research among the consortium members. The PSS functions as a meta-model, i.e., the model of

models for multi-modal planning and modeling for megaregions. Public and private sector constituents in megaregions mostly develop and maintain their own analytical tools and models. For example, MPOs have been developing and maintaining transportation planning and modeling programs for decades. States are also required to conduct statewide transportation planning. What is lacking is a platform that connects and integrates these models to facilitate cooperative and coordinated mobility planning and investment decisions among multiple jurisdictions.

The University Transportation Center’s mission goes beyond research and supports education and technology transfer. In its first two years of operation, CM2 funded 27 student research assistants through 30 projects. The consortium provides students with real-world, experiential learning opportunities and their work has contributed significantly to its progress.

In the five-year time frame of the UTC grant, the CM2 team is fully charged to generate significant influence through multi-disciplinary, multi-institution collaboration. CM2 efforts will lead scholarly research on megaregions and related issues to the next higher level. Research deliverables will support transportation planning and policy-making at the local, regional, and national level.

The educational influence of UTC CM2 will go beyond local to provide international applications as interest in megaregion development continues to rise around the world.

For further information, please visit the CM2 website at sites.utexas.edu/cm2.

USDOT. 2016. Beyond Traffic: 2045 Final Report. Available at URL: https://www.transportation.gov/policy-initiatives/ beyond-traffic-20t45-final-report

PLATFORM 2018-19

19

Searching for the Spatial Fix The Salience of Megaregional Geographies for Inter-Metropolitan Planning and Policy Making MICHAEL ODEN, PHD

F

or over a century, scholars and policymakers have been searching for a spatial fix to the myriad challenges associated with urbanization. This search has focused on identifying the most logical and effective spatial scales to address environmental, social, and physical processes and matching governance and policy institutions to the appropriate territorial geography. The core animating argument for spatial fixes involving larger-scale territorial configurations has been consistent over time—as human settlements grow and evolve, the spatial scales of externalities, network effects, and economic/residential integration become mismatched to the territorial reach of government or governance institutions.

Recent attempts to address large-scale regional processes gained momentum in the late 1990s and focused most prominently on the metropolitan (MSA) scale. Contemporary metro-regional advocates promoted much deeper inter-jurisdictional cooperation to better attack problems of traffic congestion, environmental degradation, infrastructure shortfalls, labor market mismatches, and other aspects of metro growth.1-3 Over the past twenty years or so, numerous state and local governments, regional councils of governments (COGs), and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have engaged in new initiatives to advance planning and policy efforts at the metro-regional scale.4,5 A few years into the waxing of U.S. metro-regional initiatives, a set of studies and convenings (circa 2005) directed attention to a much larger spatial scale—the megaregion. Megaregions were defined as connected networks or clusters of metropolitan areas where U.S. population and employment growth is concentrating and forecast to concentrate further. Fashioning new strategies to manage growth flowing to eight to ten major agglomerations was identified as a preeminent challenge that called for new thinking and policies by national and subnational planning and policy institutions.6 In megaregion literature, this new, more expansive scale is advanced as uniquely compelling and necessary to address infrastructure modernization, economic development, growth management, and environmental impacts.6-11 Does the megaregion represent a clear improvement over existing scales to address pressing 20

PLATFORM 2018-19

environmental, social, and infrastructural challenges now or in the future? And, does the megaregional scale have meaning and salience for existing government and governing institutions to attend to specific planning and policy problems?

The megaregion discourse

Concern with larger clusters or agglomerations of metro regions has a long history, dating from the work of Mumford and fellow travelers in the 1920s and 1930s to Jean Gottmann’s study of the agglomerated urban centers of the northeastern U.S. under the term “megalopolis.”12,13 The contemporary discourse on megaregions shares with Gottmann a certain celebratory tone regarding increasing scales in contemporary urban systems sounding many notes about efficiency, economies of scale and scope, and the status of megaregions as central to national competitive prowess in a globalized economy.7 All megaregional definitions start with a basic notion of connected networks or agglomerations of proximate metropolitan areas. The dense relationships within a megaregion are “environmental systems and topography, infrastructure systems, economic linkages, settlement patterns and land use, and shared culture and history…the emerging megaregions of the United States are defined by layers of relationships that together define a common area that can be used to organize policy decisions…”14 These America 2050 megaregional elements and specifications are, to put it mildly, a very big tent. Indeed, these defining characteristics have proven problematic for the megaregional project on multiple levels.

Analytical and definitional problems with megaregions

The spatial fix arguments for the megaregional scale require demonstrating that matrices of human, environmental, socioeconomic, and infrastructural interaction are significantly concentrated in a megaregional spatial geometry. This has proven to be a difficult stretch in numerous domains.

For example, the most sophisticated delineation of ecological regions is the Ecoregions project sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) and a range of other government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). None of the eco-regional levels specified by this research program map to megaregional concentrations in any meaningful way, suggesting that numerous interrelated environmental challenges might be better addressed at a different scale.15 Similarly, the meaning and mapping of “cultural regions” is a long and contested project, made increasingly intractable by robust domestic and international migration, rapid economic change and restructuring, and growing inequality at numerous scales. As the megaregional discourse progressed, analysts homed in on a much more discrete set of relationships, namely the “infrastructure systems, economic linkages, settlement patterns and land use” parts of the America 2050 elements.

Even with this more modest specification of linkages and relationships, definitions and rationales for the megaregional scale have proven problematic.

First, there are at least four prominent and widely referenced studies that offer distinct megaregional maps which cross state boundaries and built and natural systems in different ways. 8,9,16,17 These competing maps with distinct and sometimes unfamiliar megaregional shapes undermine the legibility and salience of the megaregional scale for public sector actors and institutions. To paraphrase Thrift, “to govern [or plan] it is necessary to render the visible space over which government [and/or governance] is to be exercised.”18 Second, the variously defined megaregional geometries do not map cleanly to any jurisdictional element in the U.S. system of fiscal federalism or to current multi-jurisdictional governance institutions (Metropolitan Planning Organizations, Councils of Governments, Water Management Districts, etc.). More critically, megaregional spaces do not obviously correspond to larger scale functional problems that might motivate multi-jurisdictional or inter-metro collaborations. Actual planning and governance at larger spatial scales in the U.S. has been common and long-lived. But it has been confined to a number of specific and discrete territorial functions/problems/activities, such as water management and waterways, electric power grids, transportation networks, and international border compacts managing resources and trans-border movements. These existing inter-jurisdictional COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Flagstaff and Nogales, and recent literature and reports have delineated an “Arizona-Sonora transborder megaregion” that spans most of Arizona and northern Sonora.25 An overview of the 19 cases of large-scale collaboratives, including the six cases described above, suggests that megaregional scale does not currently have significant resonance or salience with government or governing institutions. The spatial scale and framing of these initiatives are largely shaped by the discrete territories of the functional element or system(s). The Arizona Sun Corridor may be the exception that proves the rule. In this one collaborative effort, where activities were framed around a megaregional scale, the scale expanded beyond the defined megaregion to accommodate extended functional areas, connections, and issues.

Given the newness and fluidity of the megaregional concept, is there any evidence of meaningful inter-jurisdictional collaboration and action at the scale of the megaregion? To investigate this question, we conducted a qualitative research effort funded by The University of Texas at Austin’s U.S. Department of Transportation-funded Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions

(CM2) research program. We first evaluated 19 inter-jurisdictional institutions/initiatives involving multiple metro regions (i.e., at scales larger than a Metropolitan Statistical Area). From this larger set of cases, we closely examined six cases drawn directly from scholars and megaregional proponents who profiled these initiatives as case studies of megaregional planning.6,11,21-23 In analyzing the details of these cases, a number of characteristics stood out.

In four of the six cases, the territory and focus of the collaboration related to a specific functional domain: the large water and environmental area of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative; the interstate highway corridor running from Maine to Florida in the case of the I-95 corridor coalition; transit system issues in the growing and closely linked metro areas in the case of the Central Florida MPO alliance and the West Florida MPO Chairs Coordinating Committee; and transit corridor and border crossing management for the Niagara International Transportation Technology Coalition.

In only two cases did the spatial scope of the inter-metro collaboration map to a defined megaregional space. The Southern California collaboration was focused on developing a Multi-County Goods Movement Action Plan to address congestion and environmental and economic development concerns related to the major transit corridors (port, rail, trucking) in the region.11 This functional focus eventually spilled outside the defined megaregional space to encompass border-crossing issues via a binational strategic planning process involving the federal governments of the U.S., Mexico, and Tijuana and the state of Baja California.11 The Arizona Sun Corridor initiatives stand out as an interesting and anomalous case where the scope of the initiative mapped to a megaregional space and where the participants and produced texts used the megaregion to frame the initiative and activities.23,24 Even here, however, the megaregional space became fluid and ambiguous over time. Recent studies and initiatives have brought other Arizona metro areas into the Sun Corridor fold, including

1

10 Nelson,

20 Mahtesian,

governance frameworks are typically organized around discrete and pressing functional domains where the scales are more obvious and potential benefits of participation are legible. In terms of both government and governance, there is no clear institutional scaffolding or obvious motivation to support megaregional scale activity or interventions.

Third, while there may be significant mismatches between functional processes and the territorial scope of public institutions, powerful political and institutional forces have historically resisted efforts to advance inter-jurisdictional planning and governance. Regional initiatives have been opposed due to perceived encroachments on household preferences for local choice and control, disinterest of local governments in ceding powers, and explicit political resistance from higher income suburbs, developers, and select businesses.19,20 In light of these forces, organizing governance initiatives at the metro scale has proven extremely challenging. Regional collaboration and governance at the megaregional level would be much more complex as it would involve numerous local governments and governing institutions, and, in many cases, multiple state governments. The risks and transaction costs to local entities operating at such a large and complex scale could be high relative to the benefits of collaboration that would be hard to specify. In light of opaque or unfavorable tradeoffs, why would state and local governments allocate scarce time and resources to megaregional collaborations?

The status of megaregional planning and policy making

Benjamin, Gerald and Richard Nathan. 2001. Regionalism and Realism: A Study of Governments in the New York Metropolitan Area, Washington D.C: Brookings Institution Press.

2

Norris, Donald. 2001. “Prospects for Regional Governance Under the New Regionalism: Economic Imperatives Versus Political Impediments,” Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 557-571.

3

Savitch, H.V. and Ronald Vogel. 2000. “Introduction; Paths to New Regionalism,” in Savitch and Vogel (eds.), Symposium on the New Regionalism and Its Policy Agenda, State and Local Government Review, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 158-168.

A.C. and R.E. Lang. 2011. Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography, Chicago, IL: APA Planners Press.

11 Peckett,

Haley and William Lyons. 2012. “Evolving Role of Metropolitan Planning Organizations in Transportation Planning for Megaregions,” Transportation Research Record, No. 2307, pp. 43-51.

12 Mumford,

Lewis. 1938. The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace.

13 Gottmann,

J. 1957. “Megalopolis or the urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard”, Economic Geography, Vol. 33, No.3, pp. 189-200.

4

Salkin, Patricia. 1999. “Smart Growth at Century’s End: The State of the States,” The Urban Lawyer, Vol 31, No. 3, Summer, pp. 610-648.

14 America

5

Rusk, David. 1999. Inside Game Outside Game. Washington D.C: Brookings Institution.

15 Wiken,

6

Dewar, Margaret and David Epstein. 2007. “Planning for Megaregions in the United States,” Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 22, No. 2. pp. 108-124.

7

Carbonell, A. and R. Yaro. 2005. “American Spatial Development and the New Megalopolis.” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Cambridge, MA.

8

Florida, R., T. Gulden and C. Mellander (2008), ‘The rise of the mega-region’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 459-476.

9

Ross, Catherine, Myungje Woo and Jason Barringer. 2009.

“The Physical and Functional Definitions of Mega Regions, Center for Quality Groth and Regional Development (CQGRD) Georgia Institute of Technology, ACSP Congress October.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

2050. 2006a. A national strategy for prosperity, equity and sustainability. Draft prospectus, April 21. New York: America 2050.

E., F. Jiménez Nava, and G. Griffith. 2011. North American Terrestrial Ecoregions—Level III. Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Montreal, Canada, p. 149.

16 Lang,

Robert, and Dawn Dhavale. 2005. Beyond megalopolis: Exploring America’s new “megapolitan” geography. Metropolitan Institute Census Report Series, Census Report 05:01, July. Alexandria: Virginia. Polytechnic Institute and State University.

17 Hagler,

Yoav. 2009. “Defining U.S Megaregions,” America 2050, November.

18 Thrift,

N. 2002. “Performing Cultures in the New Economy” in du Gay P.; Pryke, M.: Cultural Economy. London, pp.

201-234.

19 Oakerson,

Ronald. 1999. Governing Local Public Economics, Oakland, California: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press.

Whither megaregions?

The idea that the megaregion offers a new and uniquely compelling spatial fix for contemporary urbanization processes has both analytical and institutional limitations. Does this mean, as one critic argued, that the megaregional discourse emerged simply as a refreshing “respite from gridlocked politics and often ineffective institutions at other levels?”26 Despite shortcomings, research and policy advocacy around megaregions may have significant value moving forward. This approach has drawn new attention to the importance of maintaining larger, highly connected functional systems in an era of federal and state devolution and underinvestment. The content of the megaregional analysis also implicitly shows that devolving responsibilities and fiscal burdens to increasingly local scales risks network ruptures and negative externalities that will have wide-ranging costs at larger scales. At a more aspirational level, expanding the spatial scale of the megaregional levels may help prepare the ground for deeper discussions of national infrastructure, environmental crises, and problematic socioeconomic patterns of human settlement.

Charles. 2006. “Suburban Blind Spot,” National Journal, Vol. 38, Issue 17.

21 Ross,

C.L. et al. 2012. Literature Review of Organization Structures and Finance of Multi-jurisdictional Initiatives and the Implications for Megaregion Transportation Planning in the U.S. Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development. Atlanta, GA.

22 Read

Anna, David Morley, Catherine Ross and Sarah Smith.

2017. Multimodal Planning at the Megaregional Scale- Final Report, U.S. Department of Transportation-Federal Highway Administration, June.

23 Loftus-Otway,

Lisa, Brian Miller, Robert Harrison, Dan Marriott, and Roger Mingo. 2017. Successful Jurisdictional Approaches to Megaregion Planning, Project Report, Austin: Center for Transportation Research, January.

24 AECOM.

2010. “Phoenix-Tucson Ambitions Report: Sun Corridor, A Global Megaregion in the 21st Century.”

AECOM Global Cities Initiative. Accessed April 10 2018 at http://www.aecom.com/content/wpcontent/ uploads/sites/2/2015/10/AECOM_Cities_SunCorridor_ PhPhoenixTucs_ambitions_Report. Pdf.

25 Gibson,

L. J., Pavlakovich-Kochi, V., Wong-González, P., Lim, J., Wright, B. 2016. “Sun corridor” as a trans-border mega-region: Revivifying economic development in the Arizona-Sonora region”. Studies in Regional Science, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 41-62.

26 Wheeler,

Stephen. 2017. “Five Reasons Why Megaregional Planning Works Against Sustainability,” in Magaregions: Globalization’s New Urban Form? Harrison, John and Michael Hoyler (eds.), Edward Elger, Cheltenham, UK. pp. 97-118.

PLATFORM 2018-19

21

Transportation Equity and Meaningful Public Engagement ALEX KARNER, PHD

Photo by Christian Lomeli/CVCF

T

ransportation systems connect people to opportunities. Access to employment, health care, and education are made possible by freeways, public transit networks, and high-quality pedestrian and bicycle routes. Of course, not all of these options are available in all locations or for all people. Across the United States, households in poverty are less likely to own automobiles compared to all other households.

Approximately 40% of the 10 million households without access to a vehicle are in poverty, compared to just 6% of the 66 million households that have access to two or more vehicles.1 Some of these households live in areas where public transit is plentiful, affordable, and convenient, but many others do not. Even in locations where public transit is a viable alternative, a car will provide much greater accessibility in almost all cases.2 Households with limited earnings fortunate enough to own a car may experience undue financial stress from transportation expenditures. Populations with insufficient access to opportunities because of a lack of transportation often overlap with other aspects of disadvantage, including age, income, race, and household structure.

The burdens of transportation systems are also inequitably distributed across the population. As reported by Rowangould,3 heavily traveled roads have higher shares of low-income people and people of color living nearby. Specifically, 20% of the U.S. population lives within 500 meters of roads that carry greater than 25,000 vehicles per day, on average. Yet 27% of people of color live within this same buffer. For closer buffers and higher traffic volumes, the disparities increase. Roadway proximity is associated with increased exposure 22

PLATFORM 2018-19

to air pollution, noise, visual blight, and attendant effects on population health and wellbeing.4-6 Transportation equity is a growing interdisciplinary subfield concerned with examining the distribution of these transportation infrastructure benefits and burdens across demographic groups and space and making normative claims about fairness, justice, and equity.7,8 An equitable transportation system would be one where no individual is disadvantaged by a lack of access to affordable and reliable transportation or burdened with excessive exposure to environmental harms.

Crucially, distributions of benefits and burdens are shaped by the amount and kind of public engagement that occurs when transportation planning and investment decisions are being made.

Accordingly, transportation equity researchers are also interested in understanding public engagement efforts and how they can be made more meaningful and effective.9

How do we achieve transportation equity?

Achieving transportation equity has proven challenging in practice.10,11 The academic literature and transportation agency practices related to transportation equity encompass both problem identification (i.e., how to determine the extent to which current or projected conditions are inequitable) and strategies that can be used to mitigate disparities and enhance fairness. Problem identification is usually accomplished using quantitative spatial analyses and geographic information system methods. Mitigation has previously been achieved using legal and administrative remedies. Beginning in the early 2010s, a third approach took root that

involves using the traditional tools of community organizing to achieve desired outcomes. Below, I discuss each of these approaches in turn.

Quantitative problem identification studies are very common but are seldom able to move the needle on key equity-related indicators. Part of the problem is that there are few commonly held analytical approaches that can be consistently employed in different situations. Agencies and researchers often produce new methods or use novel data sources to study a specific problem in a specific place. Defining communities of concern (e.g., low-income neighborhoods) is particularly fraught and inconsistent.12 Comparative studies are rare. In the absence of standardization, transportation planning agencies wield substantial power and can conduct analyses as they see fit.

The promise of emerging data sources is also limited; without appropriate methods for standardization, integration, and interpretation, better data are not likely to lead to improved decision making.

Legal and administrative complaints can also be pursued to mitigate inequity and achieve fair outcomes. Legal arguments often rely on Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title VI prohibits discrimination in the delivery of public services among agencies that receive public funds. But a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision severely limited the types of cases that could allege discrimination under Title VI.13 On the administrative side, agencies of the U.S. Department of Transportation can investigate Title VI complaints. But these investigations proceed outside of the formal legal process and the vigor with which complaints are investigated can vary depending on the political persuasion of a presidential administration and their appointees.

In part because of the limitations associated with quantitative analyses and legal challenges, a third approach to achieving transportation equity has been pursued with increasing frequency— community organizing and advocacy. This approach emerges from affected groups and neighborhoods and often involves direct engagement with planning agencies within formal public participation venues (e.g., public meetings or written comments). It seeks to articulate important issues, like disparities in access by mode, and mitigate them by changing infrastructure investment priorities. Yet even this third approach entails risk; agencies may invite stakeholders to participate and subsequently ignore their recommendations. They can then point to the inclusion of certain stakeholders as evidence of their commitment to equity.

Can this situation be improved? The literature provides some insight into improving the performance of public engagement efforts, noting that COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

two categories of performance measures are often used: 1) those that measure aspects of the process, and 2) those that measure aspects of outcomes.

Process-based measures include those that count the number of meetings and their attendees, examine counts of engagements on social media (e.g. retweets, comments, and likes), compare the demographics of participants to those of the broader community, and assess whether documentation was provided in appropriate languages. The most important outcome measure has been defined as “influence”—whether public involvement efforts have the potential to have a genuine impact on the policy, plan, or other outcome in question. I posit that outcome measures are much more likely to be viewed as meaningful on the part of participants.

Unfortunately, measuring influence is not straightforward. Public engagement may come too late in the process to affect decision making. The outcomes of a particular engagement effort may not come about until long after the engagement is completed. Complex policies and plans will have many different engagement opportunities, and other factors must be considered (e.g. the prerogatives of decision makers). The perspectives of participants may be wildly different and divergent. It is not reasonable to assume that every public involvement effort will have an obvious and measurable effect on outcomes.

Participatory budgeting for transportation equity

One innovative engagement approach is available that sidesteps many of the limitations inherent in typical transportation decision making processes and ensures that a given participation effort will affect outcomes. It is known as Participatory Budgeting (PB) and represents a promising alternative approach to achieving transportation equity. The idea emerged in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989 and has been widely employed around the world. It involves turning over a (typically small) portion of a municipal budget to direct democratic control and allowing residents to determine its allocation. Available evidence shows that the use of PB can result in dramatic improvements in the quality of public engagement.

The reasons for PB’s track record are obvious.

In turning over a portion of an available budget to direct community control, the priorities of local residents will definitely be reflected in the outcomes—the projects or programs selected for funding. There is no need for the use of performance measures; PB embodies the idea of influence from the outset.

Applying PB to transportation planning to make progress toward transportation equity is relatively straightforward.8 One clear opportunity to use PB principles is provided by the regional transportation planning and programming process. Planning COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

agencies across the United States routinely allocate billions of dollars in federal, state, and local funds to transportation projects through an ongoing process. To apply PB, agencies simply need to follow a three-step process.

To apply Participatory Budgeting, agencies simply need to follow a three-step process: Step 1: Identify priority unmet needs.

Using a process that could closely resemble traditional public involvement, agencies need to determine pressing equity issues among populations of concern in a region. These might include access to public transportation, opportunities for low-cost financing for vehicle purchase, excessive noise pollution from goods-movement activities, etc.

Step 2: Allocate funding.

Once needs are identified, funding should be allocated to meet those needs. This step is undoubtedly the most challenging; most transportation funding comes with severe restrictions on use. That said, some funding streams are flexible and agencies have historically been entrepreneurial when looking at the potential uses for flexible funds. This step also entails deciding on an appropriate share of funds to allocate in this way. This share will have to be determined in partnership with affected communities.

Step 3: Track progress over time.

Finally, to understand whether the priority unmet needs are being addressed, appropriate transportation system performance measures will need to be developed, calculated, and tracked over time. These measures should be tailored to the specific situation and community at hand but must also be developed in partnership with affected communities to avoid the possibility that measures or their evaluation will not comport with local understandings of transportation equity issues.

PB is not a transportation equity panacea. As with any policy effort, the likely success or failure of a given PB effort will heavily depend on the specifics of the implementation. For PB, these details may relate to the total share of an overall budget available for allocation, the resources made available for underrepresented groups to participate, the timing of meetings, and the ways the meetings are run. There is also still a risk that a given PB effort is tokenistic but masquerades as a true partnership. PB does little to actively address the real barriers to participation that historically marginalized communities face. When individuals or community-based organizations do not have the resources or expertise to effectively participate, simply providing another participation venue does little to advance equity-related goals.

Despite the limitations inherent in PB, its robust deployment across planning agencies in

the U.S. promises to circumvent many of the limitations of prior approaches used to address transportation equity. Importantly, PB embodies the idea that progress can only be made on critical transportation equity issues if funding priorities shift and different decisions are made. As more communities become aware that PB is a possibility, it will be critical that they demand high-quality implementation from their decision makers by lifting up international best practices in conjunction with local voices and perspectives.

1

2006-2010 Census Transportation Planning Package, Part 1 (place of residence).

2

Golub, A. and K. Martens. 2014. “Using principles of justice to assess the modal equity of regional transportation plans.”

Journal of Transport Geography 41: 10-20.

3

Rowangould, G. M. 2013. “A census of the US near-roadway population: Public health and environmental justice considerations.” Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 25: 59-67.

4

Brunekreef, B., A. H. J. Nicole, J. de Hartog, H. Harssema, M. Knape and P. van Vliet 1997. “Air Pollution from Truck Traffic and Lung Function in Children Living near Motorways.”

Epidemiology 8(3): 298-303.

5

Brugge, D., J. Durant and C. Rioux. 2007. “Near-highway pollutants in motor vehicle exhaust: A review of epidemiologic evidence of cardiac and pulmonary health risks.” Environmental Health 6(1): 23.

6

Karner, A., D. Rowangould and J. London. 2016. We Can Get there from Here: New Perspectives on Transportation Equity.

Davis, CA, National Center for Sustainable Transportation.

7

Karner, A., D. Eisinger and D. Niemeier. 2010. “Near-Roadway Air Quality: Synthesizing the Findings from Real-World Data.” Environmental Science & Technology 44(14): 5334-5344.

8

Karner, A., A. Golub, K. Martens and G. Robinson. 2018.

Transportation and Environmental Justice: History and Emerging Practice. In The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice. J. Chakraborty, R. Holifield and G. Walker. New York, Routledge: 400-411.

9

Karner, A. and R. Marcantonio. 2018. “Achieving transportation equity: Meaningful public involvement to meet the needs of underserved communities.” Public Works Management and Policy 23(2): 105-126.

10

Karner, A. and D. Niemeier. 2013. “Civil rights guidance and equity analysis methods for regional transportation plans: a critical review of literature and practice.” Journal of Transport Geography 33: 126-134.

11 Karner,

A. 2016. “Planning for transportation equity in small regions: Towards meaningful performance assessment.”

Transport Policy 52: 46-54.

12 Rowangould,

D., A. Karner and J. London. 2016. “Identifying environmental justice communities for transportation analysis.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 88: 151-162.

13 Alexander

v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275. 2001.

PLATFORM 2018-19

23

Including Institutions in the Panoramic Regional View GIAN-CLAUDIA SCIARA, PHD My research foregrounds the institutional context4,5 for regional transportation planning.

I consider the organizations, agencies, and stakeholders that produce regional transportation plans and investment decisions. How are these entities structured and what policies, funding sources, and rules govern their behavior? Then, how does this institutional context constrain and enable effective regional planning to address contemporary challenges?

Metropolitan planning organizations

C

ity and town planners have long agreed on the importance of the regional scale.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scottsman Patrick Geddes, considered the father of regional planning, called for studying urbanization and its complexities by surveying the region. Deliberate planning for the wider region would do more for urban ills, argued Geddes and his followers, than would city-centered solutions. With a comprehensive regional survey, planning could achieve “the more panoramic view of a definite geographic region...as lies beneath us upon a mountain holiday.”1 Over 100 years later, planners appreciate metropolitan regions as the scale at which many urban systems and processes operate as well as undeniably important units of economic activity and innovation.2,3 A regional view is especially important in transportation planning. Transport systems function across space to make connections within and among towns, cities, suburbs, and regions. They link major metropolitan centers across megaregions, enabling economic and social interactions. Physically, transport systems link local streets, arterials, highways, ports, rail infrastructure, and airports.

Most fundamentally, transportation systems interact with physical development. The spatial arrangement of places in and across regions strongly influences where people work, innovate, sleep, study, shop, dine, worship, and recreate. By extension, patterns of physical development affect how far, how often, and by what modes people travel to activities. In turn, access to transportation influences where employers locate firms, where buyers and renters seek homes, and where developers add residential and commercial capacity.

A comprehensive view of the region, Geddes proposed, could be achieved with detailed surveys inventorying its geology, ecology, hydrology, and other natural, economic, and social attributes.

Missing from Geddes notion of a regional survey were the region’s institutions. Institutions include formal authorities and organizations, both within and outside government, as well as the rules, practices, and norms by which those players operate.

24

PLATFORM 2018-19

Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are among the most common regional planning institutions in the U.S., and they have been a particular focus of my work. Over 400 MPOs conduct regional transportation planning in urbanized areas across the country. The regional transportation plans that MPOs develop define long-term regional goals. They prioritize transportation projects that state departments of transportation (DOTs), local governments, and transit operators will build for the region. MPO boards approve plans and funding for regionally significant and federally funded transportation projects. By some estimates, U.S. MPOs direct hundreds of billions in annual transportation investment.6 Yet, metropolitan-scale planning and MPOs face various structural challenges. For one, while transportation systems operate at the regional scale, governmental authority in the U.S. is located in local (city and county) and state governments.

MPOs are asked to plan for the region’s future, yet individual local and state agencies and governments control funding and build projects, maintaining considerable sway and often pitting regional against parochial interests.7,8 Further, though physical development drives regional transportation demand, local governments make the pivotal land use decisions about what, where, and how intensively development will occur—not MPOs. Growing numbers of regions seek to promote less car-dependent and more walkable and bikeable development patterns, but MPOs lack the authority to affect those patterns.8 Given these constraints, how can regional transportation planning—and MPOs responsible for it—be more effective twenty-first century forces for regional transformation and sustainability? What can we learn about sustainable regions by surveying not just a region’s physical and social attributes, as Geddes suggests, but also the institutions that sustain it?

Research on regional institutions

My research observes regional transportation planning practice in order to answer these questions. By studying how planning works, my research identifies the specific practices

and policies that undercut or support regional solutions. It also theorizes about the general circumstances under which regional organizations and institutions are most effective. Through this approach, I seek insights into how planning practitioners and policymakers can use or modify existing planning rules, practices, and funding to enhance sustainable regions. My work highlights regional planning institutions and processes in three domains in particular: • Regional responses to the politics of transportation finance; • Regional integration of transportation and environmental planning; and • Regional integration of transportation and land use/development planning.

A foundational set of studies examines the politics of transportation funding in metropolitan regions; it asks how metro regions and their MPOs fared from the 1990s to late 2000s when earmarking of federal transportation funds was common. The U.S. Congress used earmarks during this time to designate increasing amounts of money for growing numbers of projects to benefit specific places. In contrast, without earmarking language inserted into federal funding bills, decisions about which projects would receive federal funds would fall to MPOs and their members. This work examined how MPOs responded to congressional incursion on their discretion, particularly when Congress’s pet projects were not the region’s priority projects. My research showed that many—though not all—earmarks undermined regional planning and priorities.9,10 It also revealed that seemingly procedural planning requirements (namely fiscal constraint and air quality conformity) became important tools for MPOs seeking to discourage congressional interference and to uphold regional investment choices.11 The structure of planning institutions matters. When they need to, MPOs can use planning procedures and structures—like fiscal constraint or conformity—to bolster regional decisions.

Weak linkages between transportation and environmental planning present another challenge to effective and sustainable regional planning.

If projects in a region’s transportation plan will negatively impact natural lands, species, and habitats, implementing transportation agencies must consider how to mitigate those impacts.

For example, if a proposed bridge replacement would disrupt fish spawning in a stream below, the sponsoring agency may need to restore spawning ground elsewhere to satisfy environmental laws and preserve critical ecosystem functions.

Institutionalized funding and project development practices require agencies to design, build, and mitigate transportation projects individually.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

Environmental mitigation undertaken one project at a time can miss opportunities to align mitigation with regional conservation goals. Planned in isolation and just-in-time, actions to restore fish spawning areas may fail to consider which stream or river is most important from a regional conservation perspective or when to best acquire the mitigation land. Geddes’ panoramic view of the region is lost, and resulting mitigation is costly and ecologically suboptimal for the region.

From 2013-17, I led a multidisciplinary effort involving ecologists, economists, and transportation planners to explore new organizational practices and routines for environmental mitigation. The study analyzed conventional transportation mitigation practices and documented national experiences with innovative “advance mitigation” approaches.12 Rigorous empirical analysis of advance mitigation’s potential costs and benefits showed that newer, comprehensive mitigation can yield regional ecosystem and sustainability benefits, save transportation agencies money, and speed project delivery.13,14 This research has become an important practical resource in California and beyond. California’s transportation department committed $45 million for advance mitigation in 2014 and 2016. Further, in 2017, the state legislature dedicated $30 million annually for four years to a revolving Advance Mitigation Fund, as the study proposed.

A complementary stream of research examines efforts to better integrate regional transportation and land use planning to support more sustainable land use and transportation patterns. This work examines implementation of California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act (SB 375), which requires the state’s MPOs to include in their regional transportation plans a “forecasted development pattern” that, with supportive transportation projects, will temper automobile use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While SB 375 involves MPOs far more squarely in land use planning, local governments retain authority over development. No matter how walk-, bike-, or transit-friendly the MPO’s “forecasted development pattern,” a city can choose to cooperate with it or not.

My research here asks how MPOs can be effective when local governments decide where and what gets built. I use collaborative governance theory to understand how MPOs can more effectively nudge local land use decisions. One study surveys cities about whether they are adopting strategies to increase density and mixed uses, expand affordable housing, or restrict development on natural lands, for instance, strategies supporting more compact regional growth.15 It examines what factors make cities more likely to cooperate with the regional land use vision by using such strategies. Notably, cities that report

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

prior experience collaborating with other local governments and positive engagement in regional planning are more likely to adopt such strategies, consistent with collaborative governance theory.

Cities with larger populations, more Green Party registrants, and more political similarities with neighboring cities are also more likely to use compact growth strategies. The findings suggest that MPOs—in California and elsewhere—may bolster local commitment to smart growth-oriented land use by engaging cities in the regional planning process articulating those goals. Complementary work shows that MPOs can also effectively deploy local government grants to incentivize smart growth planning and development activity16 and that statewide transportation funding allocation practices need reform to enhance regional smart growth and climate action objectives.17

Addressing unprecedented challenges

Today’s metropolitan regions face unprecedented challenges. Pressures to accommodate growth while also preserving affordability, quality of life, and the environment dominate regional discussions from Seattle to Austin to Philadelphia.

And, growing transportation demand means more vehicle miles of travel and greenhouse gas emissions, just as more regions are working to mitigate climate change. Existing metropolitan transportation infrastructure and systems urgently need physical renewal. Yet, decisions for using limited transportation resources to address those needs can fall captive to local political interests and overlook region-serving priorities.

Today, Geddes-inspired regional surveys would detect many of these issues and tease out their implications. Yet, for any “panoramic view” of the region to be complete, it is necessary to inventory, observe, and analyze regional planning institutions as well. How do planning organizations and players and their institutionalized practices produce, exacerbate, or help to resolve these challenges? To address key regional transportation and land use issues, planners need to understand how current institutions work, what they can and cannot do with existing lines of power and authority, and what institutional changes or strategies will be effective. My research has convinced me that if MPOs and other regional scale agencies are to create more sustainable regions, they must work creatively within existing institutional arrangements, as some MPOs have done to temper the negative impacts of earmarks or to proactively engage local governments on land use. They must also take the steps necessary to reinvent existing institutions, for instance, by more formally coupling transportation, land use, and conservation planning routines or by recasting transportation funding allocation to reflect climate action goals.

1

Hall, P. G. 1996. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Updated ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

2

Katz, B., & Bradley, J. 2013. The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

3

Storper, M., Kemeny, T., Makarem, N., & Osman, T. 2015. The rise and fall of urban economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Stanford University Press.

4

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. 1991. Introduction. In P. J. DiMaggio & W. W. Powell (Eds.), The New Institutionalism and Organizational Analysis, pp. 1-40. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

5

Ostrom, E. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

6

Sciara, G. C., & Handy, S. L. 2017. Regional Transportation Planning. In S. Hanson & G. Giuliano (Eds.), The Geography of Urban Transportation, 4th ed., pp. 139-163. New York: The Guilford Press.

7

Lowe, K., & Sciara, G.-C. 2018. Chasing TIGER: Federal Funding Opportunities and Regional Transportation Planning. Public Works Management and Policy, 23(1), 78-97.

8

Sciara, G.-C. 2017. Metropolitan Transportation Planning: Lessons from the Past, Institutions for the Future. Journal of the American Planning Association, 83(3), 262-276. doi:10.108 0/01944363.2017.1322526

9

Sciara, G.-C. 2012. Financing Congressional Earmarks: Implications for Transport Policy and Planning.

Transportation Research Part A, 46, 1328-1342. doi:http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2012.05.001

10

Sciara, G.-C. 2012. Peering Inside the Pork Barrel: A Study of Congressional Earmarking in Transportation. Public Works Management and Policy, 17(3), 217-237. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1087724X12445777

11

Sciara, G.-C. 2012. Planning for Unplanned Pork: The Consequences of Congressional Earmarking for Regional Transportation Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 78(3), 239-255. doi:10.1080/01944363.2012.694 269

12

Sciara, G.-C., Bjorkman, J., Lederman, J., Schlotterbeck, M., Thorne, J., Wachs, M., & Kirkham, S. 2015. Experimentation and Innovation in Advance Mitigation: Lessons from California. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2502, 144-153. doi:10.3141/2502-17

13

Sciara, G.-C., Bjorkman, J., Stryjewski, E., & Thorne, J. H. 2017. Mitigating environmental impacts in advance: Evidence of cost and time savings for transportation projects.

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 50(January), 316–326. doi:10.1016/j.trd.2016.10.017

14

Sciara, G.-C., & Stryjewski, E. 2015. Saving Money when Safeguarding Species and Habitats: Conventional vs.

Advance Land Acquisition for Transportation Mitigation.

Research in Transportation Economics, 52, 100-110. doi: 10.1016/j.retrec.2015.10.011

15

Sciara, G.-C., & Strand, S. 2017. When Do Local Governments Regulate Land Use to Serve Regional Goals?

Results of a Survey Tracking Land Use Changes that Support Sustainable Mobility. Davis, CA: National Center for Sustainable Transportation.

16

Sciara, G.-C. (Under Review) Regional Incentives to Nudge Smart Growth: How Do They Work? What Do They Do? Journal of Planning Education and Research.

17

Sciara, G.-C., & Lee, A. 2018. Allocating Transportation Revenues to Support Climate Policies in California and Beyond. The California Journal of Politics and Policy, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.5070/P2cjpp10139474

PLATFORM 2018-19

25

Community-Based Planning and Critical Pedagogy in Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic BJØRN SLETTO, PHD, RAKSHA VASUDEVAN, ARIADNA REYES AND LEÓN STAINES

Photo by Bjørn Sletto

Student groups have sought to foster capacities and provide spaces for residents typically marginalized from planning.

26

L

os Platanitos, an informal settlement in Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic, has been built incrementally since the 1980s through hard work and ingenuity. Its approximately 1,500 residents are exposed to numerous environmental risks, lack formal education and employment opportunities, and rely on intermittent and unreliable public services. Since Los Platanitos is built in the floodplain and steep slopes of a canyon, it is commonly known as a cañada (creek) community. The term cañada is also used to describe informal neighborhoods that are unplanned, consist of self-built housing, suffer from high rates of unemployment, and that are not connected to the formal grids of basic services such as water, municipal sewage, electricity, or trash collection.

Despite these challenges, residents of Los Platanitos have developed innovative adaptation strategies to secure basic services, such as electricity and running water, to incrementally improve their infrastructure and to manage persistent flooding and solid waste problems. This local capacity for organizing and problem-solving formed the foundation for seven Community and Regional Planning service-learning practicums in Los Platanitos.

Beginning in 2008, interdisciplinary groups of nine to ten students have worked in collaboration with Los Platanitos residents, civil society organizations, and local and national government agencies to document social and environmental challenges facing the community and envision possible solutions based on local capacities and priorities. Beyond conducting planning research and participatory plan development, the goal of the ongoing course has been to foster students’ critical thinking about urban planning and development, which is especially important for future planners seeking to work in low-income communities that have been neglected by the state and municipal authorities.

PLATFORM 2018-19

Initial research and planning efforts

The Dominican Republic Practicum initiative began with a risk and vulnerability assessment in 2008 in which residents identified the lack of garbage collection as a principal health and infrastructure challenge. This led to a 2010 study of adaptive strategies developed to tackle the lack of solid waste services in Los Platanitos, which in turn laid the groundwork for a composting pilot project in 2012 funded by an award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 2014, a fourth group of students conducted an outcome assessment of the composting project in concert with a study of household plant production and green infrastructure with the goal of improving public health and providing a source of income for a new women-led community organization, Mujeres Unidas.

Both the 2008 and 2014 projects received the national Best Applied Research Student Award from the American Planning Association. In 2014, the Santo Domingo initiative was also recognized with a substantial grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program. The NSF grant provided financial support for the three subsequent service-learning courses and funded the field research of nine master’s and doctoral students. Ultimately, fifteen students would go on to conduct their thesis and dissertation research in Santo Domingo as a direct result of their participation in the course.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

Changes

The 2016 class saw the beginnings of significant change in Los Platanitos. The 2008 student group had titled their risk and vulnerability assessment Rincón de los Olvidados (“The Corner of the Forgotten People”), reflecting the sense of neglect among residents and their great desire to “tapar la cañada” (cover the cañada). Household waste and sewage had long flowed through the streets of the community and been a source of respiratory and digestive ailments as well as dengue and other mosquito-borne illnesses. However, on February 5, 2016, Dominican President Danilo Medina made a surprise visit to Los Platanitos, bringing news of a new stormwater drainage project that would help tackle sewage problems while providing new housing and connecting homes to the sewage and water systems.

Faced with this unexpected development, the 2016 student group adjusted their work to focus on documenting residents’ perspectives and priorities for infrastructure development, including residents’ conceptualization of “infrastructure” as a complete, interconnected system of people, materials, and space. Informed by this situated understanding of infrastructure and the potential for green infrastructure development, students focused on developing community-based designs for a solid waste management program as well as an expanded composting and greenhouse project. Residents in Los Platanitos have to carry their household waste up deteriorated steep staircases, and without a program to facilitate waste collection, the stormwater system would be overwhelmed with uncollected household garbage. To motivate residents to participate in such a program, students led workshops with more than 100 residents to collaboratively develop an environmental awareness campaign and empower innovative solutions to the solid waste problem. At the same time, other students collaborated with Mujeres Unidas to develop community-based designs of an expanded composting project that would support, and benefit from, the local culture of plant production.

The following year, students worked with residents to analyze impending changes to the community, in part by capturing and retelling community narratives in order to strengthen local capacities. Students were tasked with co-reflecting on data gathered in previous years through critical pedagogy methodologies, capturing and sharing the narratives of elders in the community through participatory video, and facilitating participatory research activities and visioning workshops with youth. The work with youth involved the development of a youth organization in Los Platanitos, and the students drew on arts-based methodologies to assist youth in imagining alternative possibilities

for their community. These methods included Photovoice, where youth used the students’ cameras to take pictures of community elements important to them, a chalk activity where youth took over the walls and floors of the community to redraw possibilities for Los Platanitos, and a design workshop where youth used Legos to design their own community space.

By the start of the 2018 class, the infrastructure project had covered approximately half the length of the cañada. New apartments were under construction, a road had penetrated the once isolated community, and new open spaces were created.

However, the project had also resulted in the demolition of dozens of houses and the displacement of sixty-five families to rental homes and apartments. For the time being, their rent was being paid by the development agency. However, the great uncertainty about their future, the demolition and relocation process, and the radical changes to the social and physical geographies of the community were causing widespread trauma among residents.

The task of the class became to document the material, social, and emotional impacts of the infrastructure project while working with residents to envision the potentials of the new, residual open space created as an unexpected outcome of the demolition process. Drawing inspiration from tactical urbanism and community-based design, students led visioning workshops to identify design elements and preferred uses for the space. Then, they developed design proposals for the residents’ consideration.

participating in roundtable discussions.

Thus, the conference represented a culmination of not only the 2018 coursework but also the ten-year effort to foster capacity-building and community-based representation in Los Platanitos.

In the past decade, all of the student groups have sought to foster capacities and provide spaces for residents typically marginalized from planning and urban development processes—especially elders, women, and youth—to share their knowledge and vision for their community. By challenging assumptions and formal training in scientific fields such as geography, engineering, and architecture, the students who participated in the Dominican Republic Practicum worked to understand and appreciate different ways of documenting, developing, and speaking about innovative, community-based planning solutions. This willingness to embrace alternative conceptualizations of social, economic, and environmental relationships has allowed students to co-produce knowledge and planning solutions to the challenges facing residents in Los Platanitos.

Representation

The 2018 class concluded with a major international conference organized by both the students and residents of Los Platanitos. The conference was co-sponsored by the Municipality of Santo Domingo Norte, the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU), and the principal project partner, Centro de Investigación y Acompañamiento a Mujeres y a la Familia (CIAMF). It was funded by NSF and a Faculty Research Initiative grant from the Institute for Latin American Studies at UT Austin (LLILAS).

This significant support made it possible to invite speakers from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, in addition to government officials and civil society representatives from the Dominican Republic. The conference provided students with the opportunity to present their work and attend a concert with local performers, organized by residents in the same open space that was the subject of the community-based design.

Perhaps more importantly, the conference saw residents of Los Platanitos actively engaging in a critical planning dialogue, giving presentations, and

Photo by Bjørn Sletto

Planning in communities such as Los Platanitos must focus on residents’ capacities and knowledges, often in the face of inactive local governments and structural injustices. To better support such local, community-based planning efforts, planners need to pursue collaborative strategies that foreground local knowledge and support communities’ own needs and visions for their own future. This requires developing participatory planning processes that are deeply grounded in local context, that legitimize informal storytelling as well as formal technical knowledge, and that foster critical reflection of the complex relations of power that shape such communities and our engagement with them.

More information about the Dominican Republic Practicum is available at http://sites.utexas.edu/santodomingo-informality/.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

PLATFORM 2018-19

27

Sewers for Social Justice MIRIAM SOLIS, PHD

P

hiladelphia, Washington, DC, and San Francisco are among cities across the country undertaking capital improvement programs for their aging wastewater infrastructure. Upgrades will help ensure that systems are better able to deal with the consequences of climate and demographic change.

The recruitment and retention of a workforce to operate and maintain this infrastructure is a parallel challenge for many wastewater agencies, since approximately one third of their workforce is approaching retirement.

These positions must The wastewater workforce is be filled to ensure the ongoing delivery of changing. An intersectional basic services.

Elisha Andoniah’s experience as a approach can help planners former intern for San Francisco’s wastewater ensure that its composition agency is an important of how reflects the people it serves. example cities can meet this challenge. A few years ago, I worked alongside her and other brilliant and enthusiastic youth who had assignments in the areas of engineering, architecture, and government operations. Unlike most of the wastewater workforce, which is predominantly white and male, many of the interns were African American and female, including Elisha. They took on the challenge of working in an environment where they were not well represented.

The pursuit of social justice through infrastructure rebuilding and workforce development initiatives is particularly critical in cities like San Francisco, where the wastewater system forms part of a larger fabric of exclusion. The city’s primary

treatment plant, which treats 80% of the city’s wastewater, is located in Elisha’s neighborhood, a low-income and historically African-American community.

Reducing and redistributing the wastewater systems’ environmental burdens— such as odors and pollution—is one way to create more equitable wastewater infrastructure. Ensuring that the wastewater workforce represents the communities that it serves is another. Intersectionality is a helpful framework when pursuing these goals.

Intersectionality

Race, class, gender, age, disability, and other forms of social difference are defining and contextual features of communities. These are also lines along which social inequality persists. Increasingly, planning scholars and practitioners are attuned to how the profession is complicit in perpetuating these forms of marginalization. Work on environmental justice, for example, reveals and responds to the disproportionate siting of toxic facilities in communities of color. Some of this work has shown that, even when controlling for class, people of color can bear greater environmental burdens than white people living in cities.

But is it possible to respond to multiple forms of inequity at once? This goal undoubtedly requires a more complex understanding of a given context, and complexity can be paralyzing. Afterall, is it the responsibility of planners to respond to oppression based on multiple forms of social difference? Won’t these various considerations delay or dramatically transform a project? It can also be challenging to think about the wide range of planning possibilities given limited budgets and timelines. How, then, can planners simultaneously respond to racism, sexism, and other inequalities?

Intersectionality offers a way for planners to think about their role in mediating multiple forms of exclusion and marginalization. This framework— developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw1—accounts for numerous and overlapping layers of inequality. Intersectionality considers the power relations among and within social groups. An intersectional approach is critical to advancing social justice because any effort to respond to one form of injustice may inadvertently compound another. Crenshaw and others challenge social institutions and policies to consider the particular configurations of inequality in each context. Because some intersections of power and oppression may be more salient than others, it is up to planners to conduct analyses and develop collaborations that will generate and promote social justice through an intentional use of intersectionality. Workforce development programming in San Francisco’s sewer system improvement program is an example of the application of an intersectional approach.

Intersectional infrastructure

CityWorks intern Elisha Andoniah (top left) and Prof. Miriam Solis (bottom right) on a tour of a wastewater treatment plant in San Francisco, California.

28

PLATFORM 2018-19

Wastewater industry jobs tend to be well-paid and stable, in part because they are highly unionized. Occupations in the wastewater sector have unionization rates as high as 38%,2 well above the overall rate of 11.7% for all wage and salary workers in the United States.3 Unions often have formal apprenticeship programs and enable workers to participate in labor management programs. The highly regulated water industry also imposes requirements for good working conditions through contracts that adhere to local, state, and federal labor standards such as local hiring ordinances or minimum wage requirements.

Unfortunately, people of color and women are underrepresented in the wastewater infrastructure sector.4 One barrier that these groups face in becoming part of the utility workforce involves lack of information about job openings or formal training programs. And even when potential opportunities arise, nepotism within the public sector can exclude people who do not have family or friends to vouch for them during the application process.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

The generation of a new wastewater workforce is an opportunity to respond to multiple, intersecting inequities. Officials can create long-term opportunities for historically excluded residents through workforce training and development programs. This strategy is a reflection of Gordon et al.’s “high road” approach2 in the utility sector, which involves promoting new training programs that offer career pathways and, ultimately, family-sustaining jobs for workers.

Many workforce opportunities exist in the sector, not all of which require formal levels of higher education. To understand these various opportunities, San Francisco’s wastewater utility commissioned a study to identify the potential role of small and minority owned businesses in the wastewater planning value chain.5 The study included an analysis of the multiple career options in wastewater operations and maintenance. It showed that all levels of educational attainment are represented in the workforce. There is some stratification by type of job, with those in design mostly requiring at least a bachelor’s degree. On the other hand, most of the jobs in the areas of materials and components, construction and installation, and maintenance and operations require a high school degree or less. The wastewater sector thus presents an opportunity to incorporate people of color and women with a wide range of educational backgrounds.

To create a larger pool of recruits, San Francisco’s wastewater officials engaged in a regional collaborative of seventy-seven utilities focused on workforce development efforts. The collaborative’s convenings included educational institutions—particularly community colleges— that provide students with support to participate in training programs. The utilities also developed a website that lists resources and events for prospective applicants. San Francisco’s approach to creating career pathways includes a focus on internships, apprenticeships, and pre-apprenticeship programs for youth and adults.

The focus on young people is strategic for the long-term hiring goals of the utility. It also heeds research which shows that summer jobs for youth are a critical poverty alleviation strategy.

In the summer of 2016, for example, more than 1,000 youth participated in internship or other workforce development programs through the utility. 37% were from Bayview Hunters Point, the neighborhood where the city’s largest treatment plant is sited, 55% of participants were under the age of eighteen, and 35% were African American.

These demographics are a marked departure from the demographic composition of the existing wastewater workforce.

When I worked with Elisha, she was enrolled in “CityWorks,” a paid summer internship program

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWE R

geared towards high school students in her neighborhood. The program is operated by the utility in partnership with Young Community Developers, a neighborhood workforce development organization.

During the internship, youth participate in a two-week job readiness training to learn about professionalism and public speaking. Participants ages 15 to 19 work at the wastewater utility or at a partner engineering firm—e.g., Brown and Caldwell, AECOM-Parsons, Stantec-MWH—in the areas of engineering, architecture, government, and communications. Firm engineers mentor program participants and provide them with a stipend.

Elisha speaks highly of her internship experience. She learned a lot of professional skills and became more confident about speaking up in work settings. Elisha also notes, however, that both youth and professional staff have a lot of learning to do in programs like these. The more established group, for example, often had low expectations of Elisha and her peers. “It’s an opportunity for everyone to learn from the situation,” she pointed out.

Identifying and avoiding bias is essential to creating a more representative wastewater workforce.

All planning practice has intersectional implications.

The question is whether the field is reinforcing or reconfiguring axes of power. The workforce development programming in San Francisco is an effort to respond to several forms of oppression, including those based on race, gender, class, and age. And while a planning project cannot “fix” these forms of inequality at large, it can strategically intervene. By responding to these contextual and multiple dimensions of social difference, planners can advance social justice.

Design Architects Civil engineers Arch & civil drafters Environmental engineers Engineering technicians Conservation scientists Landscape architects Hydrologists

Materials & Components Machine and tool operators Welding, soldering & brazing workers Assemblers & fabricators Dispatching & distributing workers Farmworkers & nursery workers

Construction & Installation Construction laborers Construction managers First-line supervisors/forepersons Cement masons & concrete operators Paving & other equipment operators Plumbers, pipefitters, steamfitters Construction & other helpers Welding, soldering & brazing workers Pipelayers

Maintenance & Operations Septic tank servicers & sewer pipe cleaners Water & waste treatment plant & system operators Maintenance & repair workers Grounds maintenance workers

1

2

Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” U. Chi. Legal F., 139.

Gordon, Emily, Jeremy Hays, Ethank Pollack, Daniel Sanchez, and Jason Walsh. 2011. “Water Works: Rebuilding Infrastructure Creating Jobs Greening the Environment.”

Green for All.

3

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. 2018.

“Utilities Industry Has Highest Union Membership Rate in Private Sector in 2017.” February 23, 2018.

4

Kane, Joseph, and Adie Tomer. 2018. “Renewing the Water Workforce: Improving Water Infrastructure and Creating a Pipeline to Opportunity.” Metropolitan Policy Program.

Brookings Institution.

5

Daly, Jack, Lukas Brun, and Andrew Guinn. 2015. “Targeting Inclusive Development: A Value Chain Approach to Sewer Infrastructure Investment.” Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness, Duke University.

Landscaping & groundskeeping workers Plant operators & technicians Inspectors & auditors

Typical education neeeded for entry Less than high school High school equivalent Associate’s degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Occupations in green are associated with green infrastructure projects

Career pathways in wastewater infrastructure.

Source: Daly, Brun, and Guinn (2015, 34)

PLATFORM 2018-19

29

ALUMNI PROFILES

Barbara Brown Wilson

Can you describe a pivotal moment in your career or an educational experience that transformed the way you view planning?

Barbara Brown Wilson [PhD CRP ’10, MA Arch History ‘05] is an assistant professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and the Director of Inclusion and Equity at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Dr. Wilson’s most recent book, Resilience for All: Striving for Equity through CommunityDriven Design (Island Press: 2018), interrogates the efficacy of traditional design and development practices in vulnerable communities and highlights the ways in which community-driven design can help us rethink what resilience planning should include.

As we built the Alley Flat Initiative (AFI) at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture (UTSOA) when I was a PhD student, we realized that there were opportunities for almost 30,000 units of affordable housing if the alleys of Austin were transformed into places for secondary units of housing. When we tried to build a few test houses, we realized that there were regulatory hurdles that made this impossible in practice, despite the city’s stated interest in building more accessory dwelling units. The AFI team took initiative to help resolve these issues. Dr. Steven Moore’s class mapped out all the code conflicts that needed to be resolved, and Dr. Liz Mueller’s students confirmed that with a modest subsidy from the City, lower-income home owners could build affordable units in their backyards, which would help with the affordable housing crisis while keeping existing residents in place. The city staff we spoke with agreed this was a compelling proposal, but told us that until the general public expressed more of an interest in this type of density, they could not put any more energy toward fixing these glitches in their policies and practices. Residents in these bungalow-lined neighborhoods liked that this approach retained the residential character of their neighborhoods, but expressed worries about increased parking problems and crime (classic “Not-In-My-Back-Yard”

PLATFORM 2018-19

It was a winding path, but a series of internships during my undergraduate study (first at a local architecture firm that built affordable housing and then with the Town Manager’s Office in Chapel Hill) helped me realize that it was the cultural context of design and policy decisions that interested me most. After my undergraduate degree, I interned for a nonprofit affordable housing provider in Austin, Texas, and then started the Architectural History master’s program at UTSOA. In that program I realized that I loved teaching and writing about the history of cities, but that I also did not want to let go of the applied, practical work I was doing at the nonprofit. Professor Chris Long, a wonderful mentor of mine, was actually the person who pointed out that I could do both in the field of planning! As I started the PhD program at UTSOA, I had the pleasure of working with many faculty to establish the AFI and helped to found the Austin Community Design and Development Center as a nonprofit that could support the work happening through AFI and throughout the city by bringing sustainable design services to low- and moderate-income families. These partnerships eventually led me back to the UTSOA Center for Sustainable Development, which I had the pleasure of directing for four years after I finished my PhD. Those experiences solidified my love of building transdisciplinary teams that bring local and technical knowledge together to solve complex problems, which is what I am doing now as an assistant professor in the Urban and Environmental Planning Department at the University of Virginia.

It was transformational to see that sometimes the creation of a broader collective vision is all that is needed for people to overcome their blind spots and biases. arguments that are not supported by facts). As a student, this amazed and concerned me. What was equally amazing was how easily the community was persuaded once we reframed the argument to not only focus on the added affordable housing it would produce, but also the opportunities for pedestrian pathways, food production, water reclamation, and solar energy capture at the district level. It was transformational to see that sometimes the creation of a broader collective vision is all that is needed for people to overcome their blind spots and biases.

30

Tell us a bit about your career path.

What do you see as major challenges facing the discipline and practice of planning?

Planning is currently attempting to face the full breadth of complexities that relate to the built world—including racial injustice, climate change, and other profound challenges that require immediate dramatic action if we aspire to have our cities reflect our values.

And the various social movements that animate these issues are coming together to realize their shared fates, finding ways in which the issues they care about intersect. Really grappling with these challenges means thinking differently about many of the standard conventions in land use, and that is not something we can do without creativity, bravery, and a great deal of collaboration with other disciplines.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Really grappling with these challenges means thinking differently about many of the standard conventions in land use, and that is not something we can do without creativity, bravery, and a great deal of collaboration with other disciplines.

How can students best prepare for these challenges?

Students need to build skills of cultural competency and to be able to talk across difference about difficult subjects in order to contribute to solving these global challenges. They need to be able to de-center their own technical knowledge and make space for the notion that local knowledge is equally valuable to all of these issues. Planners and other designers must learn to make space for trauma and memory in their practice, and to critically evaluate their own work to ensure that it not only does no harm, but actually benefits the lives of communities already living in the place you are working. This means recognizing the importance of contributions from the fields of community organizing, social work, public health, and, most importantly, from vulnerable residents themselves.

Share a success story about an approach or program that you’ve seen help address issues of equity.

In Portland, Oregon, a network of organization and resident leaders called Living Cully uses green infrastructure as an anti-displacement strategy.

Living Cully invests in local residents through leadership development and job training that allows lower-income residents to contribute to positive change in their communities, while also building their own capacity to stay as revitalization occurs.

Early “signature projects” included gaining the development rights to transform a brownfield into the community’s vision for a public park and installing a set of wayfinding signs crafted by the community to highlight their walking and biking programs. The wayfinding project also helped the community in their effort to convince governmental agencies of the need for better pedestrian and bike infrastructure. These successes laid the foundation for a series of housing improvements, including a project that helped tenants of a mobile housing development cooperatively buy their property from the owners and a nationally significant pilot project with Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East to focus deeply on the area, involving retrofitting existing neighborhood homes. Residents are also transforming an old strip club into a thriving community center and affordable housing. The inspiring stories of these resident leaders—whom are mostly lower-income, non-English speaking, stay-at-home mothers—are the most community-driven of the examples in my recent book.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Share a success story about an approach or program that you’ve seen improve resilience.

Resilience can be thought of from an engineering mindset (bouncing back), from an ecological mindset (absorbing shock), and from a community-focused mindset (building adaptive capacity).

The restoration of Bayou Auguste in East Biloxi that I feature in Resilience for All is great because it brings in all three. They referred to the project as the “Bayou By You” because they saw the restoration of this bayou in a formally segregated, low-income neighborhood as an opportunity to help residents better connect with this natural asset. Children engaged in guerilla art activism and citizen science, the local nonprofit jobs training outfit Women in Construction built a new training program around this opportunity, and a broad spectrum of civic leaders and organizations helped to transform this inlet back into a functioning wetland. The City of Biloxi traditionally understood nature as something to be controlled, but this team illustrated how community-driven bayou restoration produced not only healthy bayous, but also more fish, more jobs, more educational opportunities for children, and less flooding in their communities.

The Bayou By You project restored 2.5 acres of wetlands, logged 2,800 hours of volunteer service, trained 45 women to become ecological restoration professionals, and educated over 200 students and teachers in environmental science. This volunteer effort contributed to the construction of gabion wall elements, the installation of erosion control materials, the removal of over 100 cubic yards of debris and approximately 4,000 cubic yards of fill, and the installation of over 5,000 native plants.

The City has now taken on eleven more bayou restoration projects in the area.

Tell us about your new book. What motivated you to write it? What are the main lessons you’d like to convey to students and practitioners from your research with communities?

Participatory planning has always intrigued me, especially when it includes tactile experiences that allow people to plan together across linguistic and cultural difference. But participatory processes still reinforce existing power dynamics and structural inequities if they do not result in more equitable outcomes. As Sherry Arnstein illustrated in the Ladder of Citizen Participation 50 years ago, consulting underserved residents without redistributing power is a form of tokenism. In Resilience for

All, I’m speaking most directly to practitioners concerned with resilience planning in vulnerable communities. I wanted to raise up best practices of community-driven design where local knowledge was centered in the decision-making process and where the projects increase self-determination for existing residents in a vulnerable community so they have the adaptive capacity to thrive regardless of the urban stressor.

In the conclusion of the book, I outline seven lessons these cases illustrate. I’ll share the shorthand version here: 1) Recognize the intractable relationship between social and ecological systems.

2) Value* the contributions of all parties (*this includes compensating them for their effort).

3) Ask: Who is crafting the questions asked?; Who is collecting the data?; and Who gets to participate in data analysis?

4) Build coalitions.

5) Incite collective material play.

6) Defer to local wisdom on community issues of all types, especially policing.

7) Explore the role that micro projects can play in changing macrosystems.

What other advice would you like to give students and recent graduates?

Internships were powerful venues for me to test out my interests in practice early on in my professional journey. I should add that I worked in restaurants at night to subsidize low-paying internship experiences, but the sleep deprivation was absolutely worth the learning that balance provided. Students and recent graduates should look for professional outlets at which both the daily activities and the larger purpose behind the work bring them joy.

Also, build relationships with willing mentors and seek advice from as many of them as possible when you are making professional decisions. They will not always agree, but then you can decide for yourself what mosaic of wisdom works for you.

PLATFORM 2018-19

31

ALUMNI PROFILES

Elizabeth “EB” Brooks Elizabeth "EB" Brooks [MSCRP ‘14, MSUD ‘14] is the Executive Director of Moncus Park, a new, 100-acre central park being built by a non-profit conservancy in her hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. After running a grassroots campaign in college to save the park property from commercial development, she attended The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture (UTSOA) and obtained dual masters' degrees in Community & Regional Planning and Urban Design.

Can you describe a pivotal moment in your career or an educational experience that transformed the way you view planning?

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, inspired me to become an environmental activist. I changed my undergraduate major to Sustainable Community Development and got involved in the environmental club. In a course on human macro-ecology, I was introduced to the concept of intentional communities. They creatively explore the intersection of planning, sustainability, community, programming, and design. That intersection has remained the focus of my career, education, and extracurricular activities ever since.

Tell us a bit about your career path.

As an undergraduate student, I took “CommunityBased Planning” with my best friend and fellow UTSOA alumna, Danica Adams [MSCRP ’13, MSSD ’13]. One day, our mentor and professor, Dr. Griff Blakewood, announced that a 100-acre farm owned by the university was slated for commercial development. In response, we co-founded and led a successful grassroots campaign to “Save the Horse Farm” as a park instead.

While the city and university were finalizing acquisition details for the park property, I moved to Texas to further my career and education. I had a yearlong City Hall Fellowship under Mayor Bill White in Houston, then chose UTSOA for the dual-degree program offered in planning and urban design. During my studies, I worked at the Center for Sustainable Development assisting with the Sustainable Cities Doctoral Initiative and coordinating the Center’s events and outreach. I then returned to Houston to work as the planning and urban design project manager for Better Houston, a non-profit founded and led by former councilmember and architect Peter Brown.

In 2013, the “horse farm” property had been purchased by the city of Lafayette, and I was offered the opportunity to move home and lead the effort to transform the 100 acres we had worked so hard to save into a new central park. I now serve as the Executive Director of the non-profit formed to oversee the creation of what is now called Moncus Park, after our lead donor. Over the last five years, I’ve enjoyed overseeing the public engagement, master planning, design, contract management, fundraising, and construction of this world-class park. The first phase is set to be completed in 2020.

What do you see as major challenges facing the discipline and practice of planning?

Beyond obvious challenges like climate change and

32

PLATFORM 2018-19

inequality, one of the biggest hurdles planners face is the discourse around taxation, since so much of the work we do involves public funding. As support wanes for new (and renewed) taxes in many places, planners will increasingly need to seek out creative mechanisms to build and maintain projects and programs, including public-private partnerships, incentives, fees, and fundraising. The privatization of public goods and services will be an ongoing shift we will all have to accommodate.

Share a success story about an approach or program that you’ve seen help address issues of equity.

Park systems are often riddled with inequity, though they originated out of the most democratic of ideals—public spaces available to anyone for recreation, regardless of their background. Low-income communities sometimes have better access to parks, but the quality is often lacking. Creative tools, like the Trust for Public Land’s park equity maps and Park Score analyses, use GIS data to highlight accessibility and inadequacies in park amenities that help municipalities focus capital expenditures in areas of greatest need.

Another creative approach worthy of mentioning is joint-use agreements. School boards and park departments are creating legal frameworks that allow the public to use school playgrounds and other facilities after hours, distributing liability and maintenance costs across multiple agencies while serving more residents.

Share a success story about an approach or program that you’ve seen improve resilience.

Resilience has a depth to it that hints at learning how to use both situational adaptations and longer-term course corrections in the face of changing circumstances. It is more than “bouncing back,” because “back” may not be possible.

Resilience builds in elasticity around the unknown and attempts to pre-emptively bolster a multi-dimensional approach to recovery.

A simple, but multi-dimensional, example of this is the construction of park amenities in floodways and retention basins. These areas are designed to flood and clearly provide valuable ecosystem services in rain events, but resilience is more dynamic than that. Part of that resilience is found in improved insurability and the reduction in flood-related damage costs in surrounding areas. Other parts of that resilience are found in the increase in property values that result from being located close to a park, in residents’ improved quality of life and community-building opportunities, and in the creation of jobs from

economic development that occurred along the new parkway or pond. While the known economic benefits created by these multi-layered integrations often prove to be greater than the project costs, some of the benefits are intrinsic and difficult to measure. However, these are often the benefits that support resiliency the most. Flood victims who feel as though they are a meaningful part of a community, who have pride in their place, who trust and value the leadership that invested in a parkway in their neighborhood, have much greater capacities to recover successfully after a natural disaster. Arguably, it may be the park along the floodway that plays a larger part in that fabric that holds people together in the wake of change than the actual improved drainage capacity itself.

Ultimately, planners have an opportunity and an obligation to think about resilience in a deep and holistic way, working to integrate these multidimensional design and programmatic features into every project.

What other advice would you like to give students and recent graduates?

Pay attention to the forecasts of how shared transportation economies (Uber, Lyft, bike-share, scooter-share, Car-To-Go, etc.) and autonomous vehicle technologies will impact our urban systems.

No matter how you steer your career, impacts on the built environment, the economy, traffic patterns, and infrastructure spending will require calibrations in planning and design. Our roadway designs, capacities, parking infrastructure, curb systems, and information technology needs are all up for major changes to accommodate these new demands. They will change the world as much as smart phones did and continue to do.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

ALUMNI PROFILES

Jared Genova Jared Genova [MSCRP ‘12] is an independent urban strategy and development consultant based in New Orleans. He most recently served as the Resilience Planning and Strategy Manager for the City of New Orleans, where he managed the development and implementation of the world's first comprehensive city resilience strategy, Resilient New Orleans, as part of the city’s partnership with 100 Resilient Cities—Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation. Jared holds a bachelor’s degree in Metropolitan Studies and Urban Design + Architecture from New York University (NYU) and a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture (UTSOA).

Can you describe a pivotal moment in your career or an educational experience that transformed the way you view planning?

In my first year of graduate school at UTSOA, I took a chance and helped build a team for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Student Urban Design Competition. The experience was intense and collaborative, forcing me to build both technical and communication skills in the process to help coordinate and synthesize diverse perspectives to share our team's proposal. I still use and continue to hone these skills today, particularly working to communicate complex ideas to a wide variety of collaborators and audiences.

Tell us a bit about your career path.

I've been able to work in both the public and private sectors and in a variety of settings. I came to the university having experience in a New York City councilmember's office. After graduating from UTSOA, I quickly jumped into the private sector, working as a planner for an Austin urban design firm. I continued working in Austin as an independent consultant, serving clients that ranged from small cities to law firms and participating in collaborative design competitions. I later jumped at the opportunity to move to New Orleans to manage the development of a city resilience strategy, which was incubated in a quasi-governmental agency then institutionalized in city government. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to experience and help drive the shift from planning to implementation and the challenges and successes associated with it. Since leaving city government, I’ve returned to consulting, this time for international development agencies and local firms.

What do you see as major challenges facing the discipline and practice of planning?

I believe some of the challenges we are beginning to face today will only become more urgent in the near future. While planning has always been political, more and more, the power of planners to make transformative change in policy, development decisions, and visioning is waning when not connected to political power. Connected to this is the challenge of taking bold political stances on issues such as climate change that are often perceived as less urgent than daily municipal operations.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

How can students best prepare for these challenges?

Students should seek to understand planning as more than just land use and public participation, but really as how all aspects of cities and political influences work together (and against each other).

A lot of political communication is based on multiple issues being zero-sum games. Students today can work to develop strategies that prove that good planning decisions (and visions!) have ripple effects well beyond physical sites of intervention, and we can address long-term challenges with changes today.

Share a success story about an approach or program that you’ve seen improve resilience and equity.

One of my favorite projects came out of the New Orleans resilience strategy and evolved into both a resilience and equity building success. What started as a “digital equity challenge” to connect people to job opportunities became a model partnership with the Arts Council of New Orleans and a path to directly connect with young New Orleanians. Led by the Arts Council and local youth development advocacy groups, the twelveweek program used collaborative art-making and community engagement as entry points to digital literacy and professional skill-building. Throughout the program, the students assisted in designing a traveling public art installation and participated in community events to gather stories to inform the artistic design. The combination of building valuable digital skills, fostering creative expression and storytelling, and giving young people the opportunity to lead made this a huge success and a model for future programs.

What other advice would you like to give students and recent graduates?

Don't be afraid to explore working from different perspectives. Planning is a participatory, multi-actor, multi-disciplinary profession, and being able to understand the motivations and goals of the public, private, civil society, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors is critical to being able to navigate decisions and honestly interrogate your own values.

Sometimes the best way to learn is by doing, so if you can, take the opportunity to move around sectors and make change in all of them! Oh, and don’t be afraid to run for elected office—we could use more planners in politics!

Students should seek to understand Planning as more than just land use and public participation, but really as how all aspects of cities and political influences work together (and against each other).

PLATFORM 2018-19

33

VITAL FORCES

Endowments

These 144 permanent endowments have an approximate market value of $37.3 million and account for $1.74 million in annual, renewable funding that directly supports students, faculty, programs, travel, lectures, exhibitions, prizes, research, and other initiatives as directed by the dean. Invested for perpetuity, endowments grow in value over time and provide a reliable funding stream to advance the mission of the School of Architecture.

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ENDOWMENTS AS OF JUNE 2018

AIA Austin Charles Moore Endowed Scholarship Brooke and Frank Aldridge Endowed Faculty Excellence Fund Blake Alexander Traveling Student Fellowship in Architecture ARCHITEXAS Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Historic Preservation Francisco "Paco" Arumi-Noe Memorial Fellowship in Sustainable Design Yvette Atkinson Memorial Scholarship in Architecture Marvin E. and Anne Price Beck Endowed Scholarship Wayne Bell Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation Edwin E. Beran Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Carl O. Bergquist Endowed Scholarship Sinclair Black Endowed Chair in the Architecture of Urban Design Myron Geer Blalock Endowed Presidential Scholarship Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Annual Lecture in Architecture Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Architectural History Jean and Bill Booziotis Excellence Endowment in Honor of the Texas Rangers Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Excellence Fund Hal Box Endowed Chair in Urbanism Hal Box Endowed Scholarship in Architecture George W. Brackenridge Scholarship Fund Brightman/York Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design Brochstein Excellence Fund C. William Brubaker/Perkins+Will Endowed Presidential Scholarship David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Urban Design John Buck Company and First Chicago Investment Advisors for Fund F Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Kent S. Butler Memorial Excellence Fund in Community & Regional Planning Edwin W. and Alyce O. Carroll Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Matt Casey Memorial Scholarship in Architecture

34

Center for American Architecture and Design Endowed Excellence Fund Center for the Study of American Architecture Endowment John S. Chase Endowed Presidential Scholarship Dick Clark III Endowed Chair in Architecture Dick Clark Student Travel Fund Fred W. and Laura Weir Clarke Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture honoring Carl Bergquist Fred W. Clarke Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture honoring Alan Y. Taniguchi Bartlett Cocke Regents Professorship in Architecture Bartlett Cocke Scholarships Cogburn Family Foundation Architecture and Urbanism Prize Peter O. Coltman Book Prize in Architecture and Planning Bluford Walter Crain Centennial Endowed Lectureship Roberta P. Crenshaw Centennial Professorship in Urban Design and Environmental Planning The Paul Philippe Cret Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Fred Winfield Day, Jr. Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Isabelle Thomason Decherd Endowment for Preservation Technology Jorge Luis Divino Centennial Scholarship in Architecture Amy Dryden Endowed Scholarship Raquel Elizondo Staff Excellence Fund William H. Emis III Traveling Scholarship in Architecture Excellence Fund for Topics in Sustainable Development O'Neil Ford Centennial Chair in Architecture Ford, Powell & Carson Endowed Scholarship Terry Norman Forrester & Nancy Hoppess Forrester Dean's Excellence Fund Ted Freedman Endowed Scholarship Suzie Friedkin Endowed Scholarship in Interior Design Gensler Exhibitions Endowment The Cass Gilbert Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Golemon & Rolfe Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Herbert M. Greene Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Adam Conrad Grote Memorial Scholarship in Architecture Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professorship in Architecture HDR Architecture Endowed Scholarship Mike Hogg Professorship in Community and Regional Planning Lily Rush Walker and Coulter Hoppess Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture Humphreys & Partners Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Interior Design Endowed Excellence Fund Janet C. and Wolf E. Jessen Endowed Presidential Scholarship The Wolf and Janet Jessen Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Wolf E. Jessen Endowment Fund Journeyman Construction Faculty Excellence Fund in Architecture

PLATFORM 2018-19

Professor Terry Kahn Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Community and Regional Planning Karl Kamrath Lectureship in Architecture Martin S. and Evelyn S. Kermacy Collection Endowment Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professorship in Architecture Henrietta M. King Endowed Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation Henrietta Chamberlain King Endowed Scholarship Matthew F. Kreisle, III/Page Southerland Page Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Dr. Nancy Panak Kwallek Endowed Chair in Design & Planning William E. Lake, Jr. Excellence Fund for Architecture Lake/Flato Endowed Scholarship Leipziger Travel Fellowship Fund LPA Endowed Scholarship for Sustainable Design Hugo Leipziger-Pearce Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Planning Lynne Brundrett Maddox Scholarship in Interior Design Harvey V. Marmon, Jr. FAIA/Marmon Mok Scholarship in Architecture Sue and Frank McBee Fellowship in Historic Preservation McCall Endowed Excellence Fund Eugene and Margaret McDermott Excellence Fund for the Study of American Architecture Eugene McDermott Centennial Visiting Professorship Margaret McDermott Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellowship in Architecture Meadows Foundation Centennial Professorship in Architecture Mike and Maxine K. Mebane Endowed Traveling Scholarship in Architecture Alice Kleberg Reynolds Meyer Foundation Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Gene Edward Mikeska Endowed Chair for Interior Design The W. L. Moody, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Architecture Jack Morgan Endowed Scholarship Charles M. Nettles Endowed Presidential Scholarship Oglesby Prize Endowment Overland Partners Endowed Presidential Scholarship George M. Page Endowed Graduate Fellowship Page Southerland Page Fellowship in Architecture Jane Marie Tacquard Patillo Centennial Lectureship Barbara & Donald Pender Endowed Scholarship Claude M. Pendley, Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund (for Graduate Fellowships) Edward J. Perrault Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Interior Design Alma Piner Scholarship in Architecture John William Potter Endowed Fund for the Encouragement of Risk Taking Boone Powell Family Prize in Urban Design Paul C. Ragsdale Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation

The Sid W. Richardson Centennial Professorship in Architecture Debbie Ann Rock Scholarship in Interior Design Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professorship in Architecture Potter Rose Graduate Fellowship Potter Rose Professorship in Urban Planning Edwin A. Schneider Centennial Lectureship in Architecture School of Architecture Advisory Council Endowed Excellence Fund School of Architecture Faculty Fund for Student Domestic Travel School of Architecture Scholarship and Fellowship Awards Endowment Joy & Morin Scott/Sally & John Byram Graduate Fellowship Brandon Shaw Memorial Endowed Scholarship Overton Shelmire Scholarship in Architecture Sixth River Architects Endowed Fellowship Snøhetta Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Established by Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar Louis F. Southerland Endowed Scholarship Lawrence W. Speck Excellence Fund Lawrence W. Speck Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Lawrence W. Speck/PageSoutherlandPage Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Frederick Steiner Endowed Excellence Fund in Landscape Architecture Ruth Carter Stevenson Regents Chair in the Art of Architecture Emily Summers Excellence Fund for the History of Interior Design Lance Tatum Endowed Scholarship John Greene Taylor Endowment for Collections Enhancement John Greene Taylor Family Graduate Fellowship in Architectural History Texas Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects Endowed Graduate Fellowship Jack Rice Turner Endowed Scholarship in Architecture The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture's Advisory Council Women's Endowed Scholarship Urban Edge Developers Dean's Excellence Fund Wilmont "Vic" Vickrey, FAIA, Endowed Excellence Fund for Architecture of the Americas Wilmont "Vic" Vickrey Endowed Scholarship J. M. West Texas Corporation Fellowship in Architecture Robert Leon White Memorial Fund Roxanne Williamson Endowed Scholarship Trisha Wilson Endowed Professorship Fund Wilsonart Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design

ENDOWMENTS ARE FOREVER

To create a new endowment or make a gift to support an existing endowment, please contact Luke Dunlap, Executive Director for Development, at luked@austin.utexas.edu or 512.471.6114.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Shaping the School

Dick Clark III. Photo by Hayden Spears. Courtesy of Dick Clark + Associates.

Legacy Chair and Scholarship Created in Memory of Visionary Austin Architect and Alumnus Dick Clark

I

n October 2017, the School of Architecture announced two major gifts from the estate of Dick Clark, FAIA, esteemed alumnus and visionary Austin architect. The Dick Clark III Chair in Architecture emphasizes the importance of teaching design and will support a senior-level faculty member in the architecture program, and the generous Dick Clark III Scholarship will provide critical support to architecture students. These new endowments complement the Dick Clark Travel Fund, an endowment he established in 2008 to provide travel opportunities for students.

Clark died at the age of 72 on August 8, 2017, after a battle with leukemia.

He and his firm, Dick Clark + Associates, are highly regarded for innovative architecture and design projects that shaped the Austin vernacular. Clark was well known for his residential work in Austin and Central Texas as well as entertainment and hospitality projects in the downtown district and on South Congress. He was widely considered a visionary who saw Austin’s potential to become a world-class city for arts and entertainment and played a large role in shaping Austin into the major destination it has become.

A generous patron with deep ties to the School of Architecture, Clark graduated with Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Business Administration degrees in 1969. He went on to become a valued mentor to several generations of noteworthy architects and was an active member of the school’s Goldsmith Society and Advisory Council. In 2016, he served on the Dean Search Committee that resulted in the appointment of Dean Michelle Addington.

“Dick had always been a committed volunteer and generous benefactor to the School of Architecture. His presence, his influence, and now his legacy touch so many aspects of our program, students, and community,” remarked Dean Addington. “We are deeply honored to announce two new permanent endowments that Dick envisioned for the school. The first is a legacy scholarship, the Dick Clark III Endowed Scholarship in Architecture, which will provide generous funding that will significantly enhance our ability to recruit, retain, and support future leaders in the field of Architecture. Furthermore, great students need great faculty, and Dick wanted to build upon the school’s COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

long history in the excellence of teaching to ensure that we could continue to hire the exceptionally talented designers who shape the education of future generations. In this light, he left a second, very generous gift and communicated his wishes to create the Dick Clark III Chair in Architecture.”

This contribution marks the eighth endowed chair for the School of Architecture in its 108-year history. “As the namesake of these two endowments, Dick Clark joins an esteemed group of celebrated architects who have played a seminal role in establishing UT’s history and building its community— Cass Gilbert, Paul Cret, O’Neil Ford, Harwell Hamilton Harris and the Texas Rangers, Hal Box, and, most recently, Sinclair Black,” stated Dean Addington.

Known for his curiosity and keen observation of human behavior, as well as an insatiable passion for his work, Clark leaves an enduring legacy at The University of Texas at Austin.

Lifelong friend Sherry Matthews, CEO of Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing, remarked about Clark, “Dick was very loyal to the UT Austin School of Architecture, and he wanted more than anything to see a chair in his name. He knew a chair would be a lasting legacy and help in recruiting and honoring top faculty and student talent.”

CEO of Dick Clark + Associates and 1996 BArch graduate Mark Vornbeg added, “Dick defined himself first and foremost as an architect, and that is how he wanted others to think of him. He was teaching right out of graduate school, so mentoring was part of his generous personality from the beginning.

He fostered the growth of many successful architectural firms in Austin and was proud to see his protégés expand the quality of architecture across the region. I think he found great joy in the tree of architects that grew from his mentorship.

The UT Austin Chair adds to his legacy as a talented and caring mentor.”

Dean Addington first announced the commitment of these transformative gifts at a tribute event for Clark organized by Matthews on October 1, 2017.

The event took place at Austin’s Paramount Theatre before an audience of over 1,000 of Clark’s friends and featured a film screening and surprise performance

by Texas legend Willie Nelson.

PLATFORM 2018-19

35

THANK YOU

Friends of Architecture June 1, 2017-August 31, 2018

We would like to extend our thanks to all donors, including those who wish to remain anonymous.

ENDOWMENTS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Alfred L. Conrad, Jr. Beth and Daniel Grote Doris G. Hardy James R. Lee Lynne C. McCall

Thomas N. Matthews [BBA ‘68] Robert L. McCamey, Jr. [BBA ‘77] Patty P. Mueller [BS ‘54] B.P. Newman Investment Co. Anne R. Noble James K. Noble Lloyd W. Powell Peggy Davis Pryor Consuelo Garza Rivera [BArch ‘94] Robert A. Shoop Anginelle Trowbridge Dana and Raymond Turner Joyce T. Zimmerman

ARCHITECTURE CLASS OF ’78 SCHOLARSHIP HONORING DUANE MEYERS

JEAN AND BILL BOOZIOTIS ENDOWED ANNUAL LECTURE IN ARCHITECTURE

4X40 GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP

John J. Grable [BArch ‘76] Overland Partners Inc. ADAM CONRAD GROTE MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Anonymous ARCHITEXAS ENDOWED ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Architexas Craig H. Melde [BArch ‘74] BLAKE ALEXANDER TRAVELING STUDENT FELLOWSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Nancy Sparrow BOONE POWELL FAMILY PRIZE IN URBAN DESIGN

LARRY ALAN DOLL MEMORIAL FUND

Lynn Read Frederick Steiner LILY RUSH WALKER AND COULTER HOPPESS ENDOWED PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Laura Powell [MSCRP ‘95] and John A. Hartman [MSCRP ‘95] Boone Powell [BArch ‘56]

Coulter and Lily Rush Hoppess Foundation

BRANDON SHAW MEMORIAL ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP

LPA Foundation

Gordon W. Bergstue The Boeing Company Charlotte K. Larsen Margaret and Joseph Maycock, Jr. Kathleen and Brewster H. Shaw, Jr. Edythe Tonnesen DICK CLARK III CHAIR IN ARCHITECTURE

Dick Clark III Foundation Estate of Dick Clark [BArch ‘69, BBA ‘69]* DR. NANCY PANAK KWALLEK ENDOWED CHAIR IN DESIGN & PLANNING

Estate of Dick Clark [BArch ‘69, BBA ‘69]* Raymond A. Landy [BArch ‘70] FREDERICK STEINER ENDOWED EXCELLENCE FUND IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Frederick R. Steiner HUMPHREYS & PARTNERS ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Humphreys & Partners Architects JACK RICE TURNER ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Joel M. Allen Fred Braselton Jill [BSID ‘85] and Douglas Chestnut [BBA ‘82] Geanette S. Dailey Nancy N. DeAnda Charles H. DeCou Robert L. Dewar [BA ‘55 Joe R. Fulton [BSArchE ‘56]* Joseph L. Hunt [BA ’48, BA ‘50] Susan Johnson Carol I. Kilgore [BA ‘45]

36

Lexa M. Acker [BArch ‘63] Bill Booziotis Management Trust G. Kent Collins [BArch ‘81] Carol Legros [BA ’75, MArch ‘78] and Daniel Randle [MArch ‘78] Nelson H. Spencer

PLATFORM 2018-19

LPA ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP FOR SUSTAINABLE DESIGN KENT S. BUTLER MEMORIAL EXCELLENCE FUND IN COMMUNITY & REGIONAL PLANNING

Leeanne W. Pacatte [BA ’80, MSCRP ‘93] Eugene R. Peters [MSCRP ‘82] Jeffrey S. Wood [BA ‘03, MSCRP ‘05] MATT CASEY MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Kent McNeil Thomas B. Walsh [BA ‘96] PAUL C. RAGSDALE EXCELLENCE FUND FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

The Ragsdale Foundation OVERTON SHELMIRE SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE

Bonnie S. Alexander Richard Allison Charles M. Best Kate Orgill Boone Gary Brooks [BS ‘80] Stephen R. Butter [BBA ‘58] John W. Carpenter [MBA ’77] Diane H. Collier Barbara Hunt Crow [BA ‘76] Michael W. Fairchild Douglas Folk Frost Bank Bill Gribble Andrew L. Guinn [BBA ‘82] Marjorie L. Hopkins Barron U. Kidd [BA ‘58] Dorothy Lipscomb Ellen W. Loar Cary M. Maguire Medley & Brown, LLC William D. Northcutt

F. Elaine Notestine [BA ‘53] Wade T. Nowlin [BBA ‘52] Carolina J. Pace James S. Robertson [BA ‘72] Stephen J. Rogers Catherine Ross James A. and Mayme H. Rowland Foundation Jan S. Sanders [BA ‘52] Frank H. Sherwood [BSArchE ‘48] Nancy P. Shutt [BS ‘56] Sally and Ben Sparkman Camille Sowden Sallie B. Tarride [BBA ‘55] Barbara Wiggins PETER O. COLTMAN BOOK PRIZE IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING

Felicity A. Coltman Heather J. Coltman [PhD ‘90] PROFESSOR TERRY KAHN ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING

David C. Bodenman [BA ‘72, MSCRP ‘76] Pamela [BSGeoSci ‘84, MSCRP ‘89]and Terry Cole [MSCRP ‘89] GE Foundation Shannon Carrie Harris [BA ’07, MSSD ‘15] HRI Resources Inc. Judy L. Ramsey [BA ’71, MSCRP ‘76] James Rice [MSCRP ‘85] William Thomas [BA ‘70, MSCRP ‘79] Bruce R. Uphaus [MSCRP ‘94] Xichang Zhang [PhD ‘94] SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ADVISORY COUNCIL ENDOWED EXCELLENCE FUND

W. Randall Ackerman [BArch ‘73] Allen Boone Humphries Robinson LLP Charles H. Armstrong [BArch ‘81] Phil Arnold John Avila, Jr. [BSArchE ‘75] David B. Barrow, Jr. [BBA ‘53, BArch ‘55] Ken Bentley Susan R. Benz [BArch ‘84] Myron Blalock, III [BArch ‘78] David Bodenman [BA ’72, MSCRP ‘76] Laura V. Britt [MArch ‘00] H. Hobson Crow III Gary M. Cunningham [BArch ‘76] Gabriel Durand-Hollis, Jr. [BArch ‘81] Bibiana B. Dykema [BArch ‘79] Charles Fulton [BArch ‘99] Gensler The Ginkgo Group Ltd. John J. Grable [BArch ‘76] Gromatzky Dupree and Associates Charles E. Gromatzky Impact Outdoor Advertising Company Terry Kafka Anne E. Kniffen [BArch ‘79] Lake/Flato Architects Inc. David Lake [BSArchStds ‘77] Laura Britt Design LLC Kate Mraw Michael J. McCall [MArch ‘80] Dana Nearburg [MArch ‘76] Donald W. Pender [BFA ‘78, MArch ‘81] Judith R. Pesek [BSID ‘78] Charles A. Phillips [BA ‘70, BArch ‘74, MArch ‘75] E. Scott Polikov [BBA ’86, JD ’89, MSCRP ‘02] Howard E. Rachofsky [JD ’70] Roland G. Roessner, Jr. [BArch ‘76]

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Deedie Potter Rose Jim Shepherd [MArch ‘94] Dan Shipley [BArch ‘79] Sixth River Architects Inc. Lenore M. Sullivan Emily R. Summers James Susman [MArch ‘79] Jerry Sutton Evan Taniguchi Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc. Christine E. Ten Eyck Helen L. Thompson [BA ‘71, MA ‘73] SINCLAIR BLACK CHAIR IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF URBANISM

Sinclair Black (BArch ’62) TED FREEDMAN ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP

Renee Stern [BA ’71, MA ‘80] TEXAS CHAPTER AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP

American Society of Landscapte Architects

PROGRAMS AND CENTERS ARCHITECTURE

Peter J. Boes [MArch 93 Thomas M. Brown [BArch ‘04] Scott Cavaness [BArch ‘80] Chien-Yu Chen Ulrich C. Dangel Patrick B. Davis, Jr. [BArch ‘74] Firooz Gidfar [BArch ‘00] Michael H. Hsu, AIA, IIDA [BArch ‘93] Susanna Y. Kartye [BA ’96, MArch ‘02] Katrina C. Kosted [BA ’90, MA ‘05] Poyy H.Y. Kwan [BArch ‘73] Tina Y. Li [BSArchStds ‘06] Rui Luo [MArch ‘14] Dana Mahony Juan Miro Paula R. Pacotti [BSArchStds ‘11] Ya-Ting Shieh Kerry C. Shriver [MArch ‘07] Richard P. Swallow Arthur R. Tatum [BArch ‘84] Andrew M. Torres [MArch ‘07] Ranjani Vaidyanathan Wilfried Wang James E. White [BArch ‘57] ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Adam Spencer Alsobrook [BSArchStds ‘04] Larry W. Gooch, AIA [BArch ‘72] R. Kelly Mathews [MPA ’91, BBA ‘91] CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Kevin S. Alter Coleman Coker Erik A. Josowitz [BArch ‘91] CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Luke W. Dunlap [BA ‘01] David Bronson Hincher [MArch ‘05] Jennifer B. Morgenstern [MArch ‘94] Stephen F. Wettermark [BArch ‘01] COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING PROGRAM

American Planning Association Susan M. Appleyard [MSCRP ‘94]

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Bilbie Hall Inc. Richard L. Bilbie [MSCRP ‘74] Paula B. Burns [MSCRP ‘95] Mary S. French [MSCRP ‘90] Joelle D. Kanter [BA ‘98, MSCRP ‘04] Katherine Lieberknecht Zachary Tyler Lofton [MSCRP ‘16] Lauren L. Marschall [MSCRP ‘11] Leeanne W. Pacatte [BA ‘80, MSCRP ‘93] Floyd T. Watson, Jr., P.E., AICP [MSCRP ‘79] HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAM

Adam Spencer Alsobrook [BSArchStds ‘04] Heidi F. Buchberger [MArch ’16] Michael Holleran Richard W. Meyer [BArch ’70, JD ‘74] Scott Woodard [BArch ‘76] INTERIOR DESIGN PROGRAM

Michael A. Dalton [BSID ‘93] Tamie Michele Glass Gerald A. Griggs [MArch ‘11] Janet H. Sisolak [BSID ‘81] Laurie O. Tyler [BSID ‘82] WeWork LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM

Patrick C. Buchanan, Jr. [BA ‘77] Michael D. Pecen [MLA ‘07] Emily Anne Scarfe [MArch ’11, MLA ‘11] Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc. Christine E. Ten Eyck MATERIALS LAB

Gayle Coates Ya-Ting Shieh PUBLICATIONS

American Planning Association SUSTAINABLE DESIGN PROGRAM

Kirk S. Yoshida [MLIS ‘12] Logan L. Cravens [MArch ‘86]

OTHER GIFTS

Architecture Annual Fund Marla W. Ablon [BSArchE ‘86] George T. Adams [MSCRP ‘94] Robert W. Arburn [BArch ‘56] Alexander T. Barclay [BArch ‘05] Carl H. Beers [BArch ‘86] Beautiful Homes by Bray Edward M. Bennett [BArch ‘61] Twyla and Edward Benson [Ph.D. ‘71] Hilary K. Bertsch [MArch ‘95] Jeremy Boon-Bordenave [BArch ‘00] Farzad Boroumand [BArch ‘87] Frederick C. Bosserman [MArch ‘79] William E. Bowerman [BS ‘84] Bridget Boyd Diana Bravo Gonzalez [BArch ‘81] Ernest R. Breig [BArch ‘66] Stephen A. Bright [MArch ‘88] Jay M. Brotman [BArch ‘79] Kent I. Broyhill [BArch ‘53] James E. Buescher, Jr. [BArch ‘72] Richard J. Burnight [MArch ‘81] Margaret W. Campbell [MArch ‘02] Thomas R. Campbell [BArch ‘59] Salvador Cardenas [BArch ‘65] Henry Carranco [BArch ‘75] Seth Chandler Michael N. Conrad [BArch ‘78]

Cherlyn [BS ‘86] and O. Neal Corbett [BArch ‘86] John T. Corder, II [BArch ‘95] Herman Coronado [BArch ‘78] Sara A. Costa [BArch ‘05] Hilary Crady [BSID ‘83] Corey O. Credeur [BSArchStds ‘97] Jack S. Crier [BArch ‘60] Carl Daniel Architects Leopold P. Danze [BArch ‘55] Patrick B. Davis, Jr. [BArch ‘74] Erin K. Donatelli Clarice Droughton [BJ ‘71] Katie Frances Droughton [BArch ‘09] Donesh Victor Ferdowsi [MArch ‘17] Terese E. Ferguson [BArch ‘80] Jennifer E. Foster [BSID ‘95] Ron W. Foster [BArch ‘70] Norman K. Friedman [BSArchE ‘85, MArch ‘92] Michael T. Fries, AIA [MArch ‘84] Sarah Pollard Gamble [MArch ‘05] Benjamin Goldberg [BSArchStds ‘15] Frank A. Gomillion [BArch ‘92] Ramiro Gonzalez Lee J. Govatos [BArch ‘66] Sharon G. Bray Graff [BSID ‘75] Joannes A. Haakman [BSArchE ‘83, BArch ‘84] John C. Haba [MArch ‘94] Charles L. Harker, Jr. [MArch ‘71] Frederick Harrison [BA ‘71, MArch ‘78] Ingeborg C. Hendley [MArch ‘04, MSHP ‘08] Tom E. Hinson [BSArchStds ‘40, BAArt ‘70] Larce Holder, III [BArch ‘68] Samantha F. Hurd [BSID ‘95] Linda M. Jackson [MA ’87, MSCRP ‘87] Marianne M. Jones [BSID ‘81] Virginia W. Kelsey, AIA [BArch ‘83] Kent Broyhill Properties Roger H. Kolar [BArch ‘72, BArch ‘79] H. Hall Lamme [BArch ‘81] John A. LeBlanc [BA ’92, MArch ‘96] Yoon Soo Lee [MArch ‘05] Ashley O. Lembcke Katherine Livingston [BArch ‘75] Ronald E. Marabito [BArch ‘61] Joe M. McCall [BArch ‘74] Scott W. McCrary, Jr., AIA [BArch ‘71] Patrick Scott McGovern [BArch ‘17] Laura M. McGuire [MA ’08, PhD ‘14] L. Ashley McLain [MSCRP ‘97] Phillip Gunn Mead [MArch ‘91] Sarah R. Mehaffey [MArch ‘02] Richard W. Meyer [BArch ‘70, JD ‘74] Jennifer N. Miller [BArch ‘95] Mason A. Miller [BA ’06, BArch ‘06] Matthew Harris Moore [MSCRP ‘93] Meeta A. Morrison [MArch ‘07] Stephanie F. Motal [BArch ‘04] Gregory V. Musquez, Jr. [BArch ‘69] Charles L. Nelson [BArch ‘78] Jim R. Nix [BArch ‘71] Charles W. Nixon [BArch ‘67] O'Connell Robertson & Associates Ann L. Patterson [MArch ‘82] Paul J. Peters [BArch ‘69] Charles W. Pope Jr. [BArch ‘86] Rene D. Quinlan [BArch ‘88] Charles H. Randall [BArch ‘54] Brent Redus [BArch ‘85] Wendy W. Rhoades [MSCRP ‘95] Ronald C. Roeder [BArch ‘76] Alesa Iola Rubendall [MArch ‘03] Karin Ann Salch [BArch ‘86] Manuel A. Sanchez-Ruiz [MArch ‘84]

Mark Charles Santa Maria [MArch ‘86] James H. Shackelford [BArch ‘80] Michael A. Shelton [BArch ‘66] Molly M. Sherman [BA ‘86, MBA ‘89] Dustin L. Slack [BArch ‘93] V. Raymond Smith [BArch ‘61] Jerry M. Sparks [BArch ‘67] Stephen C. Springs [BArch ‘96] Sandra K. Standefer [BS ‘87] Thomas H. Stovall [BArch ‘62] Robin and Charles Studebaker [BArch ‘79] Patrick A. Tangen [MArch ‘90] Andrew B. Taylor MArch ‘92] Richard J. Temple, AIA [BBA ’82, MArch ‘89] Hsiao-Ling Ting [MArch ‘87] Robert L. Tobias [BArch ‘85] Lisabeth C. Townsend [MSCRP ‘88] Kay A. Troutt [BSID ‘73] Linda M. Tsai [MArch ‘93] Bruce E. Turner [MSCRP ‘75] Brady H. Vinje [BArch ‘83] John W. Watson [BArch ‘76] Jenilee Webb [MSCRP ‘11] R. Erle Weekley [BArch ‘73] Samuel B. Windham [BArch ‘01] Noah Eli Winkler [MArch ‘16] Fred W. Worley [BArch ‘71] Huiyi Yang Kuang-Fu Yang [MArch ‘83] GENERAL GIFTS

Michelle Addington Anand M. Anbalagan Bernie E. Babendure [BArch ‘73] Jack T. Backus [MArch ‘97] Shawn Michael Balon [MSUD ‘11] Alexander T. Barclay [BArch ‘05] Anna Bargas Burns Lou Bauman [BA ‘60] Evan L. Beattie [BArch ‘04] John A. Bechtel [BMusic ‘78, MArch ‘88] Jennifer L. Bennett-Reumuth [BSUD ‘06, MSCRP ‘08] Martha L. Bennett [BArch ‘75] Kory Bieg John Martin Bodkin [BArch ‘15] Michael Robert Boduch [MArch ‘12] Gerard Bolsega [MArch ‘95] Jeremy L. Boon-Bordenave [BArch ‘00] Gayle E. Borst [MArch ‘83] Oza Bouchard [BArch ‘75] Jennifer J. Boverman Melissa Brand-Vokey [BArch ‘88] Winfried Brenne Sara C. Bronin [BA ’01, BArch ‘01] John R. Brown [BSArchStds ‘71, BArch ‘72] Agnes Cailliau Paul Thomas Cato Jr. [MSHP ‘15] Nicholas R. Cervenka [BArch, ‘81] Tamara K. Chambless [BArch ‘79] Diane T. Cheatham John D. Cheetham [BArch ‘90] Carol-Ann C. Church [MSCRP ‘06] Jacquelyn B. Chuter [BA ‘99, BSRTF ‘99, MSCRP ‘02] Eliza Cink [MLA ‘13] D. Sherman Clarke Richard L. Cleary Robert F. Coffee [BArch ’62, BJ ‘56] Sean S. Coney [MArch ‘86] David M. Cooperstein [MArch ‘98] Hilary F. Crady [BSID ‘83] Malcolm J. Crayton Corey O. Credeur [BSArchStds ‘97] Sylvia M. Crook [BA ’79, March ‘85]

PLATFORM 2018-19

37

Dennis G. Crow [BA ‘75, PhD ‘81, MSCRP ‘84] Hermann Czech Architekt Thomas B. Daly [BArch ‘65] Marcela Dejean [BS ‘99] Lisa C. DeLosso [MFA ‘10] Charles H. Di Piazza [MArch ’96, BA ‘91] Rebecca Barlow Dorsey [BSID ‘84] Tara T. Dudley [MArch ‘03, Ph.D. ‘12] Caleb Duncan [BSArchE ‘97, BArch ‘98] Frank E. Dunckel [BArch ‘78] Jonathan D. Ellis [BS ‘90] Winston L. Evans [BArch ‘68] Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios LLP W. Scott Field [MArch ‘81] Linmor B. Feiner [BSArchStds ‘64] Charles E. Fisk, Jr. [BArch ‘77] Terry N. Forrester [BArch ‘59] Dennis L. Gerow [BA ‘76, MArch ‘85] Annette D. Gigon Egan R. Gleason [BArch ‘55] Frank A. Gomillion [BArch ‘92] Jennifer J. Griffith [BSID ‘96] Ian Groff Sara Ann Groff Craig W. Grund [MArch ‘82] Ranjit Balakrishna Gupta [BArch ‘96] Camille G. Gutierrez [BSID ‘93] Joannes A. Haakman [BSArchE ‘83, BArch ‘84] Sarah Y. Hafley [MArch ‘11] Royce Jay Hailey, Jr. [BA ‘68] Christopher Mark Harris, P.E. [BSArchE ‘88] Stephen H. Harris [BArch ‘87, MPAff ‘16] Andy L. Helms [BA ‘64, MSCRP ‘70] Joan A. Hickey [BSID ‘84] Gerd Hille Mary Marjorie Hohlt [MArch ‘16] Kayla [BA ‘11] and Aaron Michael Hollis [BArch ‘12, BSArchE ‘12] Morris W. Hoover [BSArchStds ‘74, BArch ‘77] Leland C. Horstmann [BArch ‘80] Nathan J. Howe [MArch ‘02] Intl Society of Arboriculture Texas Chapter David Ish-Horowicz Dee and Robert Jackson [BArch ‘70] Susanna Janfalk Jose G. Jimenez [BArch ‘63] Estrella Krystal Juarez [BArch ‘16] Stacey I. Kaleh [BSAdv ‘09] Ann K. Kilpatrick [BArch ‘87] David R. H. King [BArch ‘75] Jan Kleihues Grace Y. Koo [BSID ‘87] Heather L. Lamboy [BA ’92, MA ’98, MSCRP ‘98] Regine B. Leibinger George M. Lewis [BArch ‘82] Suzette Loeffler Viola Lopez [BArch ‘79] Sandra Lucas [BSID ‘78] Kelly W. Mahan [MArch ‘00] Meili Marcel Scott H. Martin [March ‘90] William R. Massingill, AIA [BArch ‘84] Cheryl G. Maxwell [BSID ‘86] Caitlin E. May [BSID ‘15] Roman J.A. McAllen [MArch ‘11] Roy J. McCarroll [BArch ‘62] Michael McCauslin [MArch ‘89] Ashley E. McClaran [MArch ‘01] Patrick Scott McGovern [BArch ‘17] Scarlett L. McKenzie [BArch ‘01] Kevin McLaren [BArch ‘83] Microsoft Corporation Mason A. Miller [BA ‘06, BArch ‘06] Christopher Andrew Minor [MArch ‘09]

38

PLATFORM 2018-19

Kevin Hadsell Moore [MArch ‘09] Linda R. Moriarty [BArch ‘70] Vigen O'Hanian [BArch ‘71] Frank E. Ordia, Jr. [MSHP ‘16] Justin H. Oscilowski [BArch ‘12] Julie N. Patton [BSID ‘92] Jim T. Phillips [BArch ‘73] Karen E. Pittman [MA ‘87, MArch ‘10] David R. Plummer, AIA [MArch ‘94] Adam A. Pyrek [BArch ‘91] Vineeth P. Ravinder [MSArchStds ‘00] Johanna H. Reed [MArch ‘12] Martina Reeh-Turkalj Don R. Reimers [BArch ‘58] James Richards [MArch ‘02] Ricardo C. Rodriguez [BSID ‘88] Joshua Ross-Southall Timothy L. Sadler [MArch ‘93] Travis Henry Schneider [BArch ‘16] Luca Smith Senise [BArch ’16, BA ‘16] David Ogden Sharratt [MArch ‘16] Frank H. Sherwood [BSArchE ‘48] Ya-Ting Shieh Robert S. Simpson [BArch ‘75] Jonathan B. Smith [BArch ‘03] Marianna Sockrider David R. Stanford [BSArchE ’79, BArch ‘79] Julie N. Steele [BArch ‘89] Tracy A. Stone [MArch ‘85] Thomas H. Stovall [BArch ‘62] Rommel A. Sulit [MArch ‘98] Jessica H. Sun [BSArchStds ‘08] Kalpana R. Sutaria [MArch ‘78] R. Pat Sweeney [BArch ‘57] Arthur R. Tatum [BArch ‘84] John W. Taylor [BArch ‘74] Howard L. Templin [BArch ‘72] Texas Urban Forestry Council Jack L. Tisdale [BArch ‘73] Marc A. Toppel [BArch ‘06] Ana Tostoes Heidi P. Tse [BSID ‘91] Drexel W. Turner [MSCRP ‘73] John C. Tyler [BSArchE ‘88, BArch ‘88] Laurie O. Tyler [BSID ‘82] Michael K. Uyeda [BArch ‘84] Ranjani Vaidyanathan Jane W. Verma [BArch ‘90] Chandler Vreeland John P. Walker [MArch ‘74] Julie W. Walker [MSCRP ‘06] Cynthia Y. Walston [BArch ‘82] Ludwig Wappner Ernst Wasmuth Verlag GmbH & Co Susan M. Weaver [BArch ‘72] Julia C. Webber [BArch ‘94] Norman G. Weiner [MArch ‘96] Michael I. Wheeler [BBA ‘74] Lori Whitlock Canan F. Yetmen [BA ‘91] Brandon L. Young [MArch ‘02] NON-MONETARY GIFTS

Snøhetta StudioSix5 Degrees from The University of Texas at Austin are indicated.

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this list. If your name was omitted, misspelled, or incorrectly listed, please accept our apologies and notify us at 512.471.1922 so that we may correct our error.

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

FOUNDERS AND CURRENT MEMBERS

Goldsmith Society

Lexa M. Acker W. Randall Ackerman Diana Keller Aldridge and Frank Aldridge Phillip Arnold Lisa and Tim Blonkvist Suzanne Deal Booth Jean* and Bill* Booziotis Diane and Hal Brierley Lynne and Lyle Burgin Diane and Chuck Cheatham Dick Clark, III* Reenie and Kent Collins Curtis and Windham Architects Willard Hanzlik J. David Harrison Nancy and Richard Jennings Journeyman Construction, Inc. Jeanne and Michael Klein Ray Landy Charles Lohrmann Lucas/Eilers Design Associates, LLP Lucifer Lighting Company Ileana Mendez and Kevin J. Lorenz The Eugene McDermott Foundation Robert J. Moore Dana Edwards Nearburg Cindy and Howard Rachofsky Gay and Shannon Ratliff J. Brett Rhode Deedie and Rusty* Rose Lloyd Scott Lawrence W. Speck Lenore Sulluvan and Barry Henry John Greene Taylor Helen Thompson Melba and Ted Whatley Kathryn and Mike Wheeler Coke Anne and Jarvis Wilcox

*in memoriam

COMPLEXITY | SCALE | POWER

Found Objects in Goldsmith Hall's Eden and Hal Box Courtyard. Digitally fabricated by SOA students in Juan Jofre Lora's Visual Communications III studio. Photo by Stacey Kaleh.

CREATE OPPORTUNITY Join the Goldsmith Society The Goldsmith Society is a special group of principal benefactors who provide flexible, annual support to promote scholarly excellence and advance the school’s high standards of design. Gifts from Goldsmith Society donors have an immediate and direct impact on the School of Architecture, allowing the dean to seize opportunities and invest strategically in important projects that shape the school’s evolving teaching and research agenda.

The Goldsmith Society is comprised of individuals, families, firms, corporations, and foundations that pledge $25,000 in unrestricted funds over five years ($5,000/year). The school recognizes Goldsmith Society members for their generous support and hosts special events featuring leaders from the architecture and design world.

Interested in joining the Goldsmith Society today? Contact Garrett Loontjer, Associate Director of Development, at garrett@austin.utexas.edu or 512.471.8187.

PLATFORM 2018-19

39

Non-Profit Org U.S. Postage Paid Austin, Texas Permit No. 391 300 Inner Campus Drive B7500 Austin, TX 78712-1009

ADVISORY COUNCIL 2018–19 Donald W. Pender, Chair Bibiana B. Dykema, Vice Chair

Battle Hall. Photo by Stacey Kaleh.

Lexa M. Acker

Kevin J. Lorenz

W. Randall Ackerman

Sandra D. Lucas

Frank M. Aldridge, III

Jessica L. Mangrum

Diana W. Keller-Aldridge

Gilbert Lang Mathews

Richard M. Archer

Michael J. McCall

Charles H. Armstrong

Kate Anne Mraw

Phillip Arnold

Dana E. Nearburg

John Avila, Jr.

Judith R. Pesek

David B. Barrow, Jr.

Charles A. Phillips

Ken Bentley

E. Scott Polikov

Susan R. Benz

Boone Powell

Rebecca H. Birdwell

Leilah H. Powell

Myron G. Blalock, III

Howard E. Rachofsky

Timothy B. Blonkvist

Jody Richardson

David C. Bodenman

Elizabeth Chu Richter

Melissa M. Bogusch

Roland G. Roessner, Jr.

Bob Borson

Deedie Potter Rose

Nestor R. Bottino

Samantha W. Schwarze

Laura V. Britt

Lloyd Scott

Lyle Burgin

James W. Shepherd

Anthony R. Chase

Dan S. Shipley

Diane T. Cheatham

Lenore M. Sullivan

G. Kent Collins

Emily R. Summers

Tommy N. Cowan

James C. Susman

H. Hobson Crow, III

Jerry S. Sutton

Gary M. Cunningham

Evan K. Taniguchi

William P. Curtis, Jr.

Christine E. Ten Eyck

Gabriel Durand-Hollis, Jr.

Helen L. Thompson

Darrell A. Fitzgerald

David H. Watkins

Charles B. Fulton

Melba D. Whatley

Ruth H. Gay

Michael I. Wheeler

John J. Grable

Gordon L. White

Charles E. Gromatzky

Allison Lee Wicks

Jesse Cameron Hager

Coke Anne M. Wilcox

David Harrison Christopher C. Hill Tony L. Horton

Emeritus Members

Michael H. Hsu

Marvin E. Beck

Ford Hubbard, III

Reed A. Kroloff

Terry B. Kafka

Graham B. Luhn

Anne E. Kniffen

John V. Nyfeler

Sam Kumar

Gay K. Ratliff

David C. Lake

Frank H. Sherwood