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Over the last two decades programs and mandates to encourage and foster sustainable urban development have arisen throughout the world, as cities have emerged as key opportunity sites for sustainable development due to the compactness and localization of services and resources. In order to recognize this potential, scholars and practitioners have turned to the practice of visioning as a way to motivate actions and decision making toward a sustainable future. A "vision" is defined as desirable state in the future and scholars believe that the creation of a shared, motivational vision is the best starting point to catalyze positive and sustainable change. However, recent studies on city visions indicate that they do not offer substantive sustainability content, and methods or processes to evaluate the sustainability content of the resulting vision (sustainability appraisal or assessment) are often absent from the visioning process. Thus, this paper explores methods for sustainability appraisal and their potential contributions to (and in) visioning. The goal is to uncover the elements of a robust sustainability appraisal and integrate them into the visioning process. I propose an integrated sustainability appraisal procedure based on sustainability criteria, indicators, and targets as part of a visioning methodology that was developed by a team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) of which I was a part. I demonstrate the applicability of the appraisal method in a case study of visioning in Phoenix, Arizona. The proposed method allows for early and frequent consideration and evaluation of sustainability objectives for urban development throughout the visioning process and will result in more sustainability-oriented visions. Further, it can allow for better measurement and monitoring of progress towards sustainability goals, which can make the goals more tangible and lead to more accountability for making progress towards the development of more sustainable cities in the future.
ContributorsMinowitz, Amy (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Golub, Aaron (Committee member) / Pfeiffer, Deirdre (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Planners are often involved in the development of 'visions' for specific projects or larger plans. These visions often serve as guideposts for more specific plans or projects and the visioning process is important for involving community members into the planning process. This paper provides a review of the recent literature published about visioning and is intended to provide guidance for visioning activities in planning projects. I use the general term "vision" in reference to a desirable state in the future. The body of academic literature on visioning in planning has been growing over the last decade. However, the planning literature on visioning is diverse and dispersed, posing various challenges to researchers and planners seeking guidance for their own planning (research) activities. For one, relevant articles on visioning are scattered over different strands of literature ranging from traditional planning literature (Journal of the American Planning Association, Planning Practice and Research, etc.) to less traditional and intuitive sources (Futures, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology). Further, some of them not easily identifiable and may not be openly accessible via the Internet. Thus, our review intends to help collect and synthesize this literature and begin to provide guidance for the future of visioning in the field of planning. I do this by compiling visioning literature from different strands of the planning literature, synthesizing key insights into visioning in (urban) planning, undertaking exemplary appraisals of visioning approaches in planning against quality criteria, and deriving conclusions for visioning research and practice. From this review, I highlight areas of opportunity and ways forward in order to make visioning more effective and more influential for the future of communities throughout the world.
ContributorsMinowitz, Amy (Author) / Golub, Aaron (Thesis advisor) / Wiek, Arnim (Committee member) / Pfeiffer, Deirdre (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area has sustained one of the United States' fastest growth rates for nearly a century. Supported by a mild climate and cheap, available land, the magnitude of regional land development contrasts with heady concerns over energy use, environmental sensitivity, and land fragmentation. This dissertation uses four empirical research studies to investigate the historic, geographic microfoundations of the region's oft-maligned urban morphology and the drivers of land development behind it. First, urban land use patterns are linked to historical development processes by adapting a variety of spatial measures commonly used in land cover studies. The timing of development - particularly the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, and the impact of varying market forces is examined using econometric analyses of land development drivers. This pluralistic approach emphasizes the importance of local geographic knowledge and history to empirical study of urban social science while stressing the importance of temporal effects. Evidence is found that while recent asset market changes impact local land development outcomes, preferences for place may be changing too. Even still, present-day neighborhoods are heavily conditioned by the market and institutional conditions of the historical period during which they developed, while the hegemony of low-cost housing on the urban fringe remains.
ContributorsKane, Kevin (Author) / Ó Huallacháin, Breandán (Thesis advisor) / York, Abigail M (Committee member) / Golub, Aaron (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Transportation infrastructure in urban areas has significant impacts on socio-economic activities, land use, and real property values. This dissertation proposes a more comprehensive theory of the positive and negative relationships between property values and transportation investments that distinguishes different effects by mode (rail vs. road), by network component (nodes vs. links), and by distance from them. It hypothesizes that transportation investment generates improvement in accessibility that accrue only to the nodes such as highway exits and light rail stations. Simultaneously, it tests the hypothesis that both transport nodes and links emanate short-distance negative nuisance effects due to disamenities such as traffic and noise. It also tests the hypothesis that nodes of both modes generate a net effect combining accessibility and disamenities. For highways, the configuration at grade or above/below ground is also tested. In addition, this dissertation hypothesizes that the condition of road pavement may have an impact on residential property values adjacent to the road segments. As pavement condition improves, value of properties adjacent to a road are hypothesized to increase as well. A multiple-distance-bands approach is used to capture distance decay of amenities and disamenities from nodes and links; and pavement condition index (PCI) is used to test the relationship between road condition and residential property values. The hypotheses are tested using spatial hedonic models that are specific to each of residential and commercial property market. Results confirm that proximity to transport nodes are associated positively with both residential and commercial property values. As a function of distance from highway exits and light rail transit (LRT) stations, the distance-band coefficients form a conventional distance decay curve. However, contrary to our hypotheses, no net effect is evident. The accessibility effect for highway exits extends farther than for LRT stations in residential model as expected. The highway configuration effect on residential home values confirms that below-grade highways have relatively positive impacts on nearby houses compared to those at ground level or above. Lastly, results for the relationship between pavement condition and residential home values show that there is no significant effect between them.
Some differences in the effect of infrastructure on property values emerge between residential and commercial markets. In the commercial models, the accessibility effect for highway exits extends less than for LRT stations. Though coefficients for short distances (within 300m) from highways and LRT links were expected to be negative in both residential and commercial models, only commercial models show a significant negative relationship. Different effects by mode, network component, and distance on commercial submarkets (i.e., industrial, office, retail and service properties) are tested as well and the results vary based on types of submarket.
Consequently, findings of three individual paper confirm that transportation investments mostly have significant impacts on real-estate properties either in a positive or negative direction in accordance with the transport mode, network component, and distance, though effects for some conditions (e.g., proximity to links of highway and light rail, and pavement quality) do not significantly change home values. Results can be used for city authorities and planners for funding mechanisms of transport infrastructure or validity of investments as well as private developers for maximizing development profits or for locating developments.
Some differences in the effect of infrastructure on property values emerge between residential and commercial markets. In the commercial models, the accessibility effect for highway exits extends less than for LRT stations. Though coefficients for short distances (within 300m) from highways and LRT links were expected to be negative in both residential and commercial models, only commercial models show a significant negative relationship. Different effects by mode, network component, and distance on commercial submarkets (i.e., industrial, office, retail and service properties) are tested as well and the results vary based on types of submarket.
Consequently, findings of three individual paper confirm that transportation investments mostly have significant impacts on real-estate properties either in a positive or negative direction in accordance with the transport mode, network component, and distance, though effects for some conditions (e.g., proximity to links of highway and light rail, and pavement quality) do not significantly change home values. Results can be used for city authorities and planners for funding mechanisms of transport infrastructure or validity of investments as well as private developers for maximizing development profits or for locating developments.
ContributorsSeo, Kihwan (Author) / Michael, Kuby (Thesis advisor) / Golub, Aaron (Committee member) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016