Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: urban planning
- Creators: Meerow, Sara
- Creators: Muller, Larissa
Description
This research project is part of a larger study of green infrastructure in urban planning and sustainability initiatives in cities across the U.S. Within the past few decades, the topic of sustainability has been at the forefront of city planners’ minds as cities grow, there is new or redevelopment, and the threat of climate change and future climate variability increases. Green infrastructure is one increasingly popular urban sustainability strategy, which is widely promoted for its ability to provide multiple benefits. This multi-functionality translates into ecosystem services and possible disservices for a local community and the city as a whole. This research project examines 120 planning documents from 19 U.S. cities to examine whether the services cities say they expect green infrastructure to provide, or the rationale, match with the criteria used to determine where green infrastructure is sited. For this project, we ask: what are the rationales that cities provide for developing green infrastructure and what are the criteria cities are using to determine where to site it? We find that certain rationales, or benefits, are claimed without corresponding and specific siting criteria to substantiate how these benefits will be achieved, while other benefits, like those related to stormwater management, are prioritized over other potentially important benefits.
ContributorsColeman, Emma Ciara (Author) / Meerow, Sara (Thesis director) / Hoover, Fushcia-Ann (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
Description
Transit agencies are struggling to regain ridership lost during the pandemic. Research shows that riding transit was among the most feared activities during the pandemic due to people’s high perceived risk of infection. Transit agencies have responded by implementing a variety of pandemic-related safety measures in stations and vehicles, but there is little literature assessing how these safety measures affect passengers’ perception of safety. This study implements surveys, interviews, and observations in Berlin, Germany to assess how passengers’ demographic characteristics and experiences with safety measures are related to their perception of safety using transit. Females and older age groups were more likely to perceive transit as riskier than males and younger age groups. The results provide little evidence to suggest that safety measures have a significant impact on passengers’ perception of safety, however. If this result is supported by future research, it suggests that transit agency investments in pandemic safety measures may not help them to regain ridership.
ContributorsKatt, Noah (Author) / Salon, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Meerow, Sara (Committee member) / King, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The continued rise of temperatures and extreme heat events globally is contributing to increases in mortality and morbidity in every region of the world. Urban areas are experiencing the combined effects of anthropogenic climate change and the urban heat island effect, exacerbating the risks associated with heat for urban residents. In response, cities must make every effort to adapt, pursuing engagement in high-quality planning processes and implementing robust sets of strategies to mitigate and manage the heat. Cities are shaped by networks of plans, however, the process of systematically evaluating these plans has focused on individual plans or plan types when assessing their quality. This study combines qualitative plan quality evaluation and semi-structured interviews to assess how Vienna’s network of plans addresses heat. Two clear divides emerge when analyzing the plan network; direction-setting principles are included more often than others, and mitigation strategies are more prevalent than management strategies. These results, which are consistent across the broader plan quality evaluation literature, illuminate a clear path for Vienna to continuously improve their planning process and effectively respond to heat.
ContributorsLeyba, Bryan (Author) / Meerow, Sara (Thesis advisor) / Damyanovic, Doris (Committee member) / Hondula, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The lack of in-depth understanding of why policies succeed or fail in implementation puts future policymaking in a situation of having insufficient information to craft effective interventions. Mainstream policy implementation theory is rooted in a democratic institutional setting. Much less empirical research and theory addresses implementation in top-down authoritarian contexts, such as China. This study addresses the research question of how the Chinese governance context affects stakeholder’s behavior in combating air pollution, based on the analysis of implementation of three particular air pollution policies: (i) Natural gas / electricity conversion from coal, for winter heating, (ii) Widespread deployment of New Energy Vehicles, and (iii) The shutting down of cement production in northern China during the winter heating period to avoid overlapping pollution emissions from winter heating.
This study identifies flexibility and accountability as two important characteristics of the Chinese governance context, and traces how they affect stakeholder behavior and coalition formation, which in turn impacts policy implementation performance. The case study methodology triangulates analysis of government policy documents, secondary data, and the results of semi-structured key informant interviews.
Findings include: (i) The Chinese government has a very strong implementation capability to pass directives down and scale up, enabling rapid accomplishment of massive goals. It also has the capability to decide how the market should come into play, and to shape public opinion and ignore opposition; (ii) Interventions from the authoritarian government, given China’s vast economy and market, and the efficient top-down tiered bureaucratic system, risk distorting the market and the real policy goals during the implementation process; (iii) There tends to be an absence of bottom-up participation and feedback mechanisms; (iv) An effective self-correction mechanism, associated with flexibility and adaptability by a myriad of stakeholders often enables effective policy adjustment.
Policy implications include: (i) Policy implementation concerns need to be integrated into policy design; (ii) More thorough discussion of options is required during policy design; (iii) Better communication channels and instruments are needed to provide feedback from the bottom-up; (iv) On complex policy issues such as air pollution, pilot projects should be carried out before massive adoption of a policy.
This study identifies flexibility and accountability as two important characteristics of the Chinese governance context, and traces how they affect stakeholder behavior and coalition formation, which in turn impacts policy implementation performance. The case study methodology triangulates analysis of government policy documents, secondary data, and the results of semi-structured key informant interviews.
Findings include: (i) The Chinese government has a very strong implementation capability to pass directives down and scale up, enabling rapid accomplishment of massive goals. It also has the capability to decide how the market should come into play, and to shape public opinion and ignore opposition; (ii) Interventions from the authoritarian government, given China’s vast economy and market, and the efficient top-down tiered bureaucratic system, risk distorting the market and the real policy goals during the implementation process; (iii) There tends to be an absence of bottom-up participation and feedback mechanisms; (iv) An effective self-correction mechanism, associated with flexibility and adaptability by a myriad of stakeholders often enables effective policy adjustment.
Policy implications include: (i) Policy implementation concerns need to be integrated into policy design; (ii) More thorough discussion of options is required during policy design; (iii) Better communication channels and instruments are needed to provide feedback from the bottom-up; (iv) On complex policy issues such as air pollution, pilot projects should be carried out before massive adoption of a policy.
ContributorsZhang, Feifei (Author) / Webster, Douglas (Thesis advisor) / Pijawka, David (Committee member) / Cai, Jianming (Committee member) / Muller, Larissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Being on the frontline of China’s ambition to internalize hi-tech supply chains (e.g., “Made in China 2025” campaign) and on the cusp of global tech competition (e.g., U.S.-China tensions), much strategic significance is given to the electronics hardware innovation cluster in Shenzhen, better known as “the world’s hardware capital”. This study investigates the latest dynamics of Shenzhen’s electronics cluster from the perspectives of agglomeration, institutions, and the built environment. The study found that despite different interpretations of the trade-off between agglomeration economies and diseconomies by both firms and analysts, increasingly diverse types of firms and intra-firm functions spillout from Shenzhen to surrounding areas, such as Dongguan and Huizhou in the Greater Bay Area. Institutionally the dissertation found that recent major external context changes, namely the pandemic, trade war, and financial and property economy fever, have not significantly changed the innovation culture in Shenzhen. As for the built environment dimension, in the context of policy thrusts, market forces, and stakeholder interests, gentrification of affordable rental housing in urban villages only happens in a modest way, without significant displacement of labor forces serving Shenzhen’s electronics industry. Policy implications include: (i) More administrative and planning co-operation should occur between Shenzhen and surrounding municipalities, given the increasingly diverse types of firms and intra-firm functions spilling out from Shenzhen; (ii) For local government, cultivating innovation culture in a cluster is a long-term task, which requires persistent building of a favorable policy environment for many years; (iii) In terms of built environment policy-making in innovation clusters (both living and working environments), more attention should be paid to implementation mechanisms; (iv) Areas surrounding Shenzhen, potentially the future spatial focus for Shenzhen’s future innovation, should be of higher policy significance. Theoretical insights include: (i) Better understanding of mechanisms underlying the spatial growth of clusters at the sub-regional scale; (ii) The importance of the long-term in the formation of cluster institutions and culture, even in the face of short-term strong context changes; (iii) The built environment is both a driver and product of industrial clustering; (iv) Integrated study of the agglomeration, institutional, and built environment dimensions of cluster dynamics will yield new insights.
ContributorsLi, Jianyi (Author) / Webster, Douglas (Thesis advisor) / Pfeiffer, Deirdre (Committee member) / Cai, Jianming (Committee member) / Muller, Larissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021