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Description
Defines the concept of the arcology as conceived by architect Paolo Soleri. Arcology combines "architecture" and "ecology" and explores a visionary notion of a self-contained urban community that has agricultural, commercial, and residential facilities under one roof. Two real-world examples of these projects are explored: Arcosanti, AZ and Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Key aspects of the arcology that could be applied to an existing urban fabric are identified, such as urban design fostering social interaction, reduction of automobile dependency, and a development pattern that combats sprawl. Through interviews with local representatives, a holistic approach to applying arcology concepts to the Phoenix Metro Area is devised.
ContributorsSpencer, Sarah Anne (Author) / Manuel-Navarrete, David (Thesis director) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Residential Choice’s Impact on Sustainable Transportation Options: A Study in the Phoenix Metro Area
Description
This study adds to the literature about residential choice and sustainable transportation. Through the interviews and the personal stories gathered, there was diversity shown in the residential location choice process. We also noticed that “commute” means different things to different households, and that many people did not consider their commute to work to be a primary factor determining their final home location. Moreover, many people were willing to increase their commute time, or trade access to desirable amenities for a longer commute. Commuting time to work was one example of the tradeoffs that homeowners make when choosing a home, but there were also others such as architectural type and access to neighborhood amenities. Lastly, time constraints proved to be a very significant factor in the home buying process. Several of our households had such strict time constraints that limited their search to a point of excluding whole areas. Overall, our study sheds light on transportation’s role in residential choice and underscores the complexity of the location choice process.
ContributorsKats, Elyse Nicole (Author) / Salon, Deborah (Thesis director) / Kuminoff, Nicolai (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Since 1979, Phoenix has been organized into 15 theoretically self-contained urban villages in order to manage rapid growth. The major objective of the village plan was to decrease demand for personal vehicle use by internalizing travel to the closest village core, or an adjacent village core, instead of expanding travel to one metropolitan core. Phoenix’s transition from a monocentric urban structure to a more polycentric structure has yet to be studied for its efficacy on this goal of turning personal vehicle travel inward. This paper pairs more conventional measures of automobile dependence, such as, use of alternative modes of transportation in place of private vehicle use and commute times, with more nuanced measures of internal travel between work and home, job housing ratio, and job industry breakdowns to describe Phoenix’s reliance on automobiles. Phoenix’s internal travel ratios were higher when compared to adjacent cities and either on-par or lower when compared to non-adjacent cities that were comparable to Phoenix in population density and size.
ContributorsCuiffo, Kathryn Victoria (Author) / King, David (Thesis director) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Transit ridership is declining in most cities throughout America. Public transportation needs to be improved in order for cities to handle urban growth, reduce carbon footprint, and increase mobility across income groups. In order to determine what causes changes in transit ridership, I performed a descriptive analysis of five metro areas in the United States. I studied changes in transit ridership in Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Seattle from 2013 through 2017 to determine where public transportation works and where it does not work. I used employment, commute, and demographic data to determine what affects transit ridership. Each metro area was studied as a separate case because the selected cities are difficult to compare directly. The Seattle metro area was the only metro to increase transit ridership throughout the period of the study. The Minneapolis metro area experienced a slight decline in transit ridership, while Phoenix and Denver declined significantly. The Dallas metro area declined most of the five cities studied. The denser metro areas fared much better than the less dense areas. In order to increase transit ridership cities should increase the density of their city and avoid sprawl. Certain factors led to declines in ridership in certain metro areas but not all. For example, gentrification contributed to ridership decline in Denver and Minneapolis, but Seattle gentrified and increased ridership. Dallas and Phoenix experienced low-levels of gentrification but experienced declining ridership. Therefore, organizations such as the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) who attempt to find the single factor causing the decline in transit ridership, or the one factor that will increase ridership are misguided. Above all, this thesis shows that there is no single factor causing the ridership decline in each metro area, and it is wise to study each metro area as a separate case.
ContributorsBarro, Joshua Andrew (Co-author) / Barro, Joshua (Co-author) / King, David (Thesis director) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate the rapid adoption and complex implementation of city commitments to transition to 100% renewable energy (100RE). The first paper uses a two-stage, mixed methods approach to examine 100RE commitments across the US, combining a multivariate regression of demographic, institutional, and policy factors in adoption and six interview-based state case studies to discuss implementation. Adoption of this non-binding commitment progressed rapidly for city councils around the US. Results show that many cities passed 100RE commitments with no implementation plan and minimal understanding of implementation challenges. This analysis highlights that many cities will need new institutions and administrative capacities for successful implementation of these ambitious new policies. While many cities abandoned the commitment soon after adoption, collaboration allowed cities in a few states to break through and pursue implementation, examined further in the next two studies. The second paper is a qualitative case study examining policymaking for the Utah Community Renewable Energy Act. Process tracing methods are used to identify causal factors in enacting this legislation at the state level and complementary resolutions at the local level. This Act was passed through the leadership and financial backing of major cities and committed the investor-owned utility to fulfill any city 100RE resolutions passed through 2019. Finally, the third paper is a mixed-methods, descriptive case study of the benefits of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in California, which many cities are using to fulfill their 100RE commitments. Cities have adopted CCAs to increase their local voice in the energy process, while fulfilling climate and energy goals. Overall, this research shows that change in the investor-owned utility electricity system is in fact possible from the city scale, though many cities will need institutional innovation to implement these policies and achieve the change they desire. While cities with greater resources are better positioned to make an impact, smaller cities can collaborate to similarly influence the energy system. Communities are interested in lowering energy costs for customers where possible, but the central motivations in these cases were the pursuit of sustainability and increasing local voice in energy decision-making.
ContributorsKunkel, Leah Christine (Author) / Breetz, Hanna L (Thesis advisor) / Parker, Nathan (Committee member) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Public transportation is considered a solution to congestion and a tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is becoming popular even in cities with the harshest climate conditions as these cities grow rapidly and are trying to provide sustainable alternatives for their vehicle-oriented communities. A lot must be taken into consideration whendesigning transit systems to reduce riders' vulnerability to heat in cities with high temperatures averaging 40°C during the summer and humidity levels reaching 90 percent. Using transit systems in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Phoenix Metropolitan, United States, as case studies, this paper focuses on both qualitative and quantitative research methods to observe the built environment around public transit stations and measure the temperatures and humidity levels to compare with the experienced temperatures and the built environment observations. The results show that the design of transit stations and the public realm significantly impacts a rider's experience. The findings show that passive cooling, shading, and vegetation as the best practices in the two case studies. Both transit systems have certain elements that work efficiently and other elements that need improvement to provide a better rider experience. Identifying these best practices helps develop recommendations for the future of designing transit systems in desert cities worldwide.
ContributorsAlbastaki, Mohamed (Author) / King, David (Thesis advisor) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Kelley, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Much of modern urban planning in the United States is concerned with making cities more walkable. However, this is occurring as the urban landscape of the U.S. is altered radically by changes in crime patterns after the summer of 2020. This paper seeks to find out what the relationship is between walkability and crime in major U.S. cities after 2020. Using multiple linear regressions at the city and neighborhood scale, walkability is found to be a significant, positive predictor of 2019 violent crime rate, 2020 violent crime rate, 2020 property crime rate, and 2020 total crime rate at the city level. It was found to be a positive, but not significant predictor at the neighborhood level. Walkability has no protective influence against crime/rising crime, and it appears that as crime gets worse it tends to get worse in the cities that are more walkable, but other variables such as African American population are better determinants of crime. Urban planners should seek to increase walkability while also finding a way to mitigate potential exposure to crime.
ContributorsWeisman, Holden (Author) / Kelley, Jason (Thesis director) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor)
Created2023-05
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
Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.
ContributorsConway, Matthew Wigginton (Author) / Salon, Deborah (Author) / da Silva, Denise Capasso (Author) / Mirtich, Laura Christine (Author)
Created2020-09-03
Description
Bicycle sharing systems (BSS) operate on five continents, and they change quickly with technological innovations. The newest “dockless” systems eliminate both docks and stations, and have become popular in China since their launch in 2016. The rapid increase in dockless system use has exposed its drawbacks. Without the order imposed by docks and stations, bike parking has become problematic. In the areas of densest use, the central business districts of large cities, dockless systems have resulted in chaotic piling of bikes and need for frequent rebalancing of bikes to other locations. In low-density zones, on the other hand, it may be difficult for customers to find a bike, and bikes may go unused for long periods. Using big data from the Mobike BSS in Beijing, I analyzed the relationship between building density and the efficiency of dockless BSS. Density is negatively correlated with bicycle idle time, and positively correlated with rebalancing. Understanding the effects of density on BSS efficiency can help BSS operators and municipalities improve the operating efficiency of BSS, increase regional cycling volume, and solve the bicycle rebalancing problem in dockless systems. It can also be useful to cities considering what kind of BSS to adopt.
ContributorsCui, Wencong (Author) / Kuby, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Thigpen, Calvin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018