Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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Local organic gardening once experienced great popularity with Americans. At one time promoted and prominent, local gardens became obscure, old-fashioned, and outmoded. However, in the last few decades, for various reasons, local organic gardening has made some progress. This study seeks to assist high-density, low-income, inner-city Americans, who often do not have have easy or affordable access to fresh whole food by creating sustainable, resilient, local, urban gardens. However, this effort does not attempt to address the needs of entire populations of census tracts, rather one suburban home, one small apartment complex, or one small community garden. O ne solution to the problems associated with food insecurity is to put the creativity and responsibility into the hands of those who need the food, allow them to work within a self-sustaining garden, and decide what to do with any excess food. W ith the help of Greg Peterson, Phoenix’s own urban farmer, this project set out to create a system using Phoenix’s limited amount of rainfall to create a aquaponic gardening system which will be used in micro-communities such as multi-family complexes, middle schools, or high schools, in order to help grow food for these communities and alleviate some of the difficulties of finding fresh food in the desert.
In 1974, with a relatively young and fast-growing city in front of them, the City Council of Phoenix, Arizona charged the Phoenix Planning Commission with studying potential plans for urban form. Through the help of over 200 citizens over the next eight months, the village concept was born. Characterized by an emphasis on community-level planning, unique neighborhood character, and citizen input, the village concept plan provides an compelling lens into decentralized planning. In 1979, the Village Concept, as part of the “Phoenix Concept Plan 2000,” was officially adopted by the Phoenix City Council and has remained a component of the city’s long-range planning ever since. Each village features a core of dense commercial and residential activity, with a surrounding periphery featuring varied densities and land usage. There were nine original villages outlined in 1979. As of today, there are 15 villages. Each village has a Village Planning Committee (VPC) made up of 15 to 21 citizens, each being appointed to the committee by the Phoenix Mayor and City Council. This exploratory study was born out of an interest in the Village Planning Committees and a desire to understand their function as a mechanism for citizen participation in urban planning and urban governance. Similarly, with the rapid onset of the automobile and freeway expansion in the decades after WWII, once-insolated communities in the Valley have become connected to each other in a way that raises questions about how to maintain neighborhood’s unique character while promoting sustainable growth and expansion of the city. Phoenix’s Urban Village Model attempts to answer those questions. The efficacy of the model can be considered from two perspectives––how does it aid in making land use decisions, and how does it promote citizen participation? While there is an extensive body of literature on neighborhood councils in the United States and plentiful analysis of the merits of such models as participatory mechanisms and devices of urban planning, there is a lack of discussion of Phoenix’s Urban Village Model. This thesis aims to include Phoenix in this growing body of work.
