ETDs

This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.

In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.

Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.

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Spatial Optimization to Support Mobile Food Market Site Selection: A Case Study in the City of Phoenix

Description
Equity concerning food access has gained a lot of attention in the past decades. This problem can be seen in the dearth of supermarkets offering healthy food at reasonable prices in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Numerous studies show that the disparity in the distribution of food outlets has resulted in disparities in…

Equity concerning food access has gained a lot of attention in the past decades. This problem can be seen in the dearth of supermarkets offering healthy food at reasonable prices in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Numerous studies show that the disparity in the distribution of food outlets has resulted in disparities in health outcomes. To mitigate the issue, various intervention strategies have been proposed and implemented, including introducing new supermarkets, mobile food markets, community gardens, and city farms in these neighborhoods. Among these strategies, mobile food markets have gained the attention of practitioners and policymakers for their low costs and service flexibility. Challenges remain in identifying the sites for best serving the people in need given limited resources. In this study, a new spatial optimization model is proposed to determine the best locations for mobile food markets in the City of Phoenix. The new model aims to cover the largest number of people with food access challenges while minimizing transportation costs. Compared with the existing mobile market sites, the sites provided by the new model can increase the coverage of low-food access residents with a shorter transportation distance. The new model has also been applied to help expand the service provider of the existing mobile food markets. In addition to mobile food markets, the method provided in this study can be extended to support the planning of other food outlets and food assistance services.
ContributorsLu, Junzhou (Author) / Tong, Daoqin (Thesis advisor) / Connor, Dylan (Committee member) / Kuby, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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An Equity-based Maximum Covering Location Model for Siting Mobility Hubs in Tempe, AZ

Description
With the acceleration of urbanization in many parts of the world, transportation challenges such as traffic congestion, increasing carbon emissions, and the “first/last-mile” connectivity problems for commuter travel have arisen. Transport experts and policymakers have proposed shared transportation, such as dockless e-scooters and bike-sharing programs, to solve some of these…

With the acceleration of urbanization in many parts of the world, transportation challenges such as traffic congestion, increasing carbon emissions, and the “first/last-mile” connectivity problems for commuter travel have arisen. Transport experts and policymakers have proposed shared transportation, such as dockless e-scooters and bike-sharing programs, to solve some of these urban transportation issues. In cities with high population densities, multimodal mobility hubs designed to integrate shared and public transportation can be implemented to achieve faster public connections and thus increase access to public transport on both access and egress sides. However, haphazard drop-offs of these dockless vehicles have led to complaints from community members and motivated the need for neighborhood-level parking areas (NLPAs). Simultaneously, concerns about the equitable distribution of transportation infrastructure have been growing and have led to the Biden Administration announcing the Justice40 Initiative which requires 40% of certain federal investments to benefit disadvantaged communities. To plan a system of NLPAs to address not only the transportation shortcomings while elevating these recent equity goals, this thesis develops a multi-objective optimal facility location model that maximizes coverage of both residential areas and transit stations while including a novel constraint to satisfy the requirements of Justice40. The model is applied to the City of Tempe, Arizona, and uses GIS data and spatial analyses of the existing public transportation stops, estimates of transit station boardings, population by census block, and locations of disadvantaged communities to optimize NLPA location. The model generates Pareto optimal tradeoff curves for different numbers of NLPAs to find the non-dominated solutions for the coverage of population nodes and boardings. The analysis solves the multi-objective model with and without the equity constraint, showing the effect of considering equity in developing a multimodal hub system, especially for disadvantaged communities. The proposed model can provide a decision support tool for transport and public authorities to plan future investments and facilitate multimodal transport.
ContributorsQuan, Hejun (Author) / Kuby, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Frazier, Amy (Thesis advisor) / Tong, Daoqin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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The Spatial, Occupational and Social Mobility of Skilled U.S. Migrants in China: A Capital-mobility and Intersectional Analysis

Description
Increasing globalization and the knowledge-based economy creates a higher-than-ever demand for skilled migrant labor. While Global North countries are the traditional destinations for skilled migrants, Global South countries have recently joined the race for such talent. The conventional migration scholarship does not adequately explain this increasing Global-North-to-South skilled migration. This…

Increasing globalization and the knowledge-based economy creates a higher-than-ever demand for skilled migrant labor. While Global North countries are the traditional destinations for skilled migrants, Global South countries have recently joined the race for such talent. The conventional migration scholarship does not adequately explain this increasing Global-North-to-South skilled migration. This dissertation fills the gap by studying mobility and its underlying factors for skilled U.S. migrants in the Pearl River Delta region of China. Using data from semi-structured interviews and sketch mapping, this dissertation develops a capital-mobility framework and employs intersectionality theory to examine the impacts of skilled U.S. migrants’ capital and intentionality on global and local spatial mobility as well as occupational and social mobility. The first empirical paper highlights skilled U.S. migrants’ cross-border im/mobility and introduces the capital-mobility framework that argues migrants’ im/mobility outcomes are shaped by their aspirations to move, and the accumulation, transferability and convertibility of various forms of capital. While the migrants’ capital was smoothly transferred to China and facilitated their voluntary mobility, the continued accumulation of capital in China could not be fully transferred to the U.S. upon their return, thus causing involuntary immobility. Although they mostly had little intention of staying in China permanently, the COVID-19 accelerated their return. The second empirical chapter shows that one’s accumulation of capital could generate both enabling and limiting effects on their everyday mobility through influencing the capability to move and the demand for local travel. Whether migrants had intention to move around in the local city also affects their everyday im/mobility. The third empirical paper discusses skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational and social mobility and how they are influenced by the intersections of race, gender and citizenship. I coined the term “glass box” to explain the limited professional growth and segregated occupations of skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational mobility in China. Although their social mobility improved after moving to China, it declined after rising racial discrimination and xenophobia during the pandemic. This dissertation sheds light on the aspirations and capabilities for mobility among Global-North-to-South skilled migrants and provides policy recommendations for attracting and retaining skilled international migrants.
ContributorsTan, Yining (Author) / Li, Wei (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Tong, Daoqin (Committee member) / Nelson, Trisalyn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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Disparities in Access to Healthy Food: Exploring the Spatial Accessibility Patterns of Local and Conventional Food Systems in Maricopa County

Description

Disparities in access to healthy food are a key public health concern in the United States (U.S.) Food access is considered as a critical element of food insecurity. Food insecurity can often be prevalent in a region due to lack of healthy food outlets as well as inequitable access to…

Disparities in access to healthy food are a key public health concern in the United States (U.S.) Food access is considered as a critical element of food insecurity. Food insecurity can often be prevalent in a region due to lack of healthy food outlets as well as inequitable access to healthy food outlets. A large body of literature pertaining to access to healthy food has reported that conventional food outlets such as supermarkets and large grocery stores may not be equitably distributed across different neighborhoods in a region. There has been limited research on local food access patterns. Despite the few studies focused on access to individual types of local food outlets, such as farmers markets, little is known about whether such access varies among different types of local food outlets and how such access patterns compare with the uneven access to conventional food outlets. This study uses Maricopa County, one of the largest counties in Arizona, as a case study to examine the spatial patterns of access to conventional food markets (i.e. supermarkets or large grocery stores) and four different types of local food outlets, including farmers market, community garden, community supported agriculture (CSA) and mobile food markets. By analyzing the association between healthy food access and neighborhood characteristics, the study suggests that the local food system has a great potential in providing healthy food access to low-income and minority populations of the County than conventional food outlets. The study provides important insights into the way different types of local food outlets offer their availability in space and whether they are more equitable in serving underserved neighborhoods. The findings from this study can assist both government agencies and city planner formulate strategies to improve access to healthy food in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
ContributorsSafayet, Mastura (Author) / Tong, Daoqin (Thesis advisor) / Pijawka, David (Thesis advisor) / McGregor, Joan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Lots of Potential: Planning Urban Community Gardens As Multifunctional Green Infrastructure

Description
Urban community gardens hold the potential to serve as a form of multifunctional green infrastructure to advance urban sustainability goals through the array of ecosystem services they afford. While a substantial body of literature has been produced that is dedicated to the study of these services (e.g., providing fresh produce,…

Urban community gardens hold the potential to serve as a form of multifunctional green infrastructure to advance urban sustainability goals through the array of ecosystem services they afford. While a substantial body of literature has been produced that is dedicated to the study of these services (e.g., providing fresh produce, promoting socialization, and enhancing urban biodiversity), less attention has been paid to the strategic planning of urban community gardens, particularly in an expansive urban setting, and in the context of the co-benefit of mitigating extreme heat. The research presented in this dissertation explores the potential of community gardens as a form of multifunctional green infrastructure and how these spaces can be planned in a manner that strives to be both systematic and transparent. It focuses on methods that can (1) be employed to identify vacant or open land plots for large metropolitan areas and (2) explores multicriteria decision analysis and (3) optimization approaches that assist in the selection of “green” spaces that serve as both provisioning (a source of fresh fruits and vegetables) and regulating (heat mitigation) services, among others. This exploration involves three individual studies on each of these themes, using the Phoenix metropolitan area as its analytical backdrop. The major lessons from this piece are: (1) remotely sensed data can be effectively paired with cadastral data to identify thousands of vacant parcels for potential greening at a metropolitan scale; (2) a stakeholder-weighted multicriteria decision analysis for community garden planning can serve as an effective decision support tool, but participants' conceptualization of garden spaces resulted in social criteria being prioritized over physical-environmental factors, potentially influencing the provisioning of co-benefits; and (3) optimized urban community garden networks hold the potential to synergistically distribute co-benefits across a large metropolitan area in a manner that systematically prioritizes high-need neighborhoods. The methods examined are useful for all metropolises with a preponderance of open or vacant land seeking to advance urban sustainability goals through green infrastructure.
ContributorsSmith, Jordan Paul (Author) / Turner, Billie L (Thesis advisor) / Meerow, Sara (Committee member) / Tong, Daoqin (Committee member) / Grebitus, Carola (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021