Matching Items (4)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Urban
- All Subjects: Visioning
- Creators: Golub, Aaron
Description
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
Targeted growth is necessary for sustainable urbanization. There is a pattern in China of rapid development due to inflated projections. This creates "ghost towns" and underutilized urban services that don't support the population.
In the case of Taiyuan, this industrial third-tier city of 4.2 million people. A majority of the newer residential services and high-end commercial areas are on the older, eastern side of the city. Since 2007, major urban investments have been made in developing the corridor that leads to the airport, including building a massive hospital, a new sports stadium, and "University City". The intention of the city officials is to encourage a new image of Taiyuan- one that is a tourist destination, one that has a high standard of living for residents. However, the consequences of these major developments might be immense, because of the required shift of community, residents and capital that would be required to sustain these new areas. Much of the new development lacks the reliable and frequent public transit of the more established downtown areas.
Do these investments in medical complexes, sports stadiums and massive shopping centers create new jobs that impact the income disparity, or do these new areas take years to fill, creating vacuums of investment that remove funding from areas with established communities? Can Taiyuan move successfully to a post-industrial economy with these government interventions, or is it too much too soon?
By examining demographic data from 2000, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013, research on sustainability assessments in Chinese cities (Lu Jia), and translated government publications detailing the urbanization efforts in Taiyuan, I will assess the results of the urbanization changes instituted by the new mayor, Geng Yanbo. My thesis will evaluate the success and failures of these policies and the implications for Taiyuan.
In the case of Taiyuan, this industrial third-tier city of 4.2 million people. A majority of the newer residential services and high-end commercial areas are on the older, eastern side of the city. Since 2007, major urban investments have been made in developing the corridor that leads to the airport, including building a massive hospital, a new sports stadium, and "University City". The intention of the city officials is to encourage a new image of Taiyuan- one that is a tourist destination, one that has a high standard of living for residents. However, the consequences of these major developments might be immense, because of the required shift of community, residents and capital that would be required to sustain these new areas. Much of the new development lacks the reliable and frequent public transit of the more established downtown areas.
Do these investments in medical complexes, sports stadiums and massive shopping centers create new jobs that impact the income disparity, or do these new areas take years to fill, creating vacuums of investment that remove funding from areas with established communities? Can Taiyuan move successfully to a post-industrial economy with these government interventions, or is it too much too soon?
By examining demographic data from 2000, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013, research on sustainability assessments in Chinese cities (Lu Jia), and translated government publications detailing the urbanization efforts in Taiyuan, I will assess the results of the urbanization changes instituted by the new mayor, Geng Yanbo. My thesis will evaluate the success and failures of these policies and the implications for Taiyuan.
ContributorsDolins, Sarah-Laura (Author) / Webster, Douglas (Thesis advisor) / Golub, Aaron (Committee member) / Cai, Jianming (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Urban areas face a host of sustainability problems ranging from air and water quality, to housing affordability, and sprawl reducing returns on infrastructure investments, among many others. To address such challenges, cities have begun to envision generational sustainability transitions, and coalesce transition arenas in context to manage those transitions. Transition arenas coordinate the efforts of diverse stakeholders in a setting conducive to making evidence-based decisions that guide a transition forward. Though espoused and studied in the literature, transition arenas still require further research on the specifics of agent selection, arena setting, and decision-making facilitation. This dissertation has three related contributions related to transition arenas. First, it describes a process that took place within Phoenix that focused on identifying, recruiting, and building the capacity of potential transition agents for a transition arena. As part of this, a first draft suggestion of plausible steps to take for identifying, recruiting, and building a team of transition agents is proposed followed by a brief discussion on how this step-by-step process could be evaluated in subsequent work. Second, building on such engagement, this dissertation then offers criteria for transition agent selection based on a review of the literature that includes the setting in which a transition arena occurs, and strategies to support successful facilitation of decision-making in that setting. Third, those criteria are operationalized to evaluate the facilitation of a specific decision (draft of a new transportation plan) in a specific transition arena: the Citizens Committee for the future of Phoenix Transportation. The goal of this dissertation is to articulate a first-draft framework for guiding the development and scientific evaluation of transition arenas. Future work is required to empirically validate the framework in other real-world transition arenas. A feasible research agenda is provides to support this work.
ContributorsHarlow, John (Author) / Hekler, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Golub, Aaron (Thesis advisor) / Johnston, Erik W., 1977- (Committee member) / Wiek, Arnim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015