Doctoral Dissertations from Urban and Regional Planning Ph.D. Graduates

A Study of Displaced Populations: Infrastructure, Economic Barriers, and Urban Planning Solutions in South Sudan and Uganda

by Timothy Berke

This dissertation delves into the intricate challenges of urban planning for displaced populations and their host communities in South Sudan and Uganda, with a focus on fostering self-reliance. It examines the experiences and needs of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, and host residents in urban settings, aiming to inform effective integration strategies. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the research encompasses household surveys, interviews, focus groups, participant observation, GIS analysis, and document analysis, and is presented across three chapters. Chapter 1 investigates priorities for city infrastructure and services among displaced populations and host communities in Juba, South Sudan. It finds that service prioritization varied more by household status (host, IDP, returnee) than by residential area. Cheaper transportation emerged as the most impactful service for both host and IDP households, while security was deemed a critical basic service by all groups. For shared facilities, hosts prioritized better markets due to income generation opportunities, whereas IDPs and returnees favored parks, reflecting their rural and camp-living backgrounds. Regression analysis highlighted that households facing food insecurity valued city services more highly, with female-headed households placing greater importance on these services than their male counterparts. Despite extreme poverty and food insecurity affecting both hosts and IDPs, the former had higher expectations for city services due to perceived stability. The study recommends collaboration between humanitarian agencies and city officials to engage and empower existing IDP and returnee networks in development projects. Chapter 2 explores income-generating barriers for displaced persons and host residents in Juba. It reveals that IDPs were more likely to encounter economic shocks, with 37% of IDP households experiencing such events compared to 17% of host households. To cope, IDPs commonly resorted to casual labor, whereas hosts often had better safety nets. Both groups relied heavily on microenterprises; however, IDPs engaged more in casual labor while hosts had higher rates of salaried employment. Lack of capital was the major barrier for income generation across both groups. Interestingly, legal documentation posed greater challenges for hosts due to more stringent municipal requirements in informal markets. Furthermore, IDPs faced severe difficulties in accessing loans and forming valuable connections. These findings underscore the shared economic vulnerabilities of both groups, suggesting that integrated, community-based approaches might be more effective than targeted demographic strategies to address these systemic barriers. Chapter 3 shifts focus to Uganda’s land allocation policy for refugees in the Bidi Bidi integrated settlement, designed to promote self-reliance. While initially successful in fostering agricultural self-reliance, issues like reduced plot sizes and environmental degradation underscore the need for diversified strategies. The chapter stresses the importance of involving local authorities, host community leaders, and refugees in the planning and managing integrated settlements to ensure sustainable and effective outcomes. The dissertation concludes with targeted policy recommendations, advocating enhanced urban planning and service provision, redefined self-reliance strategies, stronger social networks, and a focus on environmental sustainability. It calls for future research on comparative urban integration strategies, health outcomes, and the distinct needs of climate—versus conflict-displaced persons. By adopting inclusive, adaptable, and context-specific approaches, policymakers and planners can develop resilient urban environments that address the needs of both displaced individuals and host communities.

Fostering Urban Nature Amidst Rapid Urbanization: Evaluation of Urban Green Spaces in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kampala, Uganda

by Tilahun Fikadu

Urbanization in African cities is hoped to bring prosperity and economic development. However, its rapid pace and unregulated nature becomes a formidable challenge for urban sustainability, leading to a significant decline of urban green spaces. While prior studies identified institutional challenges for protecting urban green spaces in African cities, a comparative study of these challenges, especially among cities with different land tenure and governance system, is lacking. Additionally, Africa’s urbanization is largely associated with informal development but the link between informality and green space use is lightly studied. Filling this gap, my research investigates institutional challenges for protecting urban green spaces and how these vary under unitary land tenure and polycentric governance (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) and multiple land tenure and monocentric governance (Kampala, Uganda), how communities perceive and use urban green spaces and how this varies among residents of formal housings and informal settlements. First, my research examines the institutional challenges of protecting urban green spaces in Addis Ababa and Kampala, focusing on how these challenges vary under different land tenure and governance systems. In Addis Ababa, there is a polycentric governance structure, and all public green spaces are state owned. In Kampala, there is a monocentric governance structure and public green spaces are divided amongst three land tenure systems (private, communal, and state ownership). Data from 26 in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders were analyzed to uncover institutional challenges. The findings reveal that despite differences in land tenure and governance, both cities face common challenges, including inefficient and unenforceable legal frameworks, inadequate green space planning and implementation, limited human and financial resources, and informal decision-making processes. The study found no support for the polycentric governance model, which failed in Addis Ababa due to a lack of enabling factors (administrative accountability and transparency). However, it suggests that a diversified land tenure system, as implemented in Kampala, could improve land ownership rights and better protect urban green spaces. My research further examines residents’ perceptions and use of urban green spaces, focusing on differences between formal housings and informal settlements. Using ordinal regression, I analyzed data from 241 households to explore the frequency of green space visits and factors influencing it, such as demographic characteristics, satisfaction with green spaces, and residential characteristics. The findings indicate that housing type influences visitation frequency, with residents of formal high-rise housing visiting green spaces more often than others. Additionally, factors like satisfaction with green space conditions (e.g., aesthetics, amenities, and safety) and demographic characteristics, particularly age, significantly impact visit frequency. My research also explores how residents’ preferred activities in urban green spaces—such as socialization, physical activity, and nature interaction—affect visitation frequency. I use survey data from 241 households and apply binomial regression to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics, activity preferences, and green space use frequency. Physical activity, ranging from light to vigorous exercise, emerges as the most popular activity and residents’ satisfaction with preferred activities strongly predicts their visitation frequency. My research guide policymakers, urban planners, and stakeholders in designing strategies to enhance urban green space provision and protection. It contributes to the current efforts revisiting the institutional and legal frameworks in East African cities and reforming strategies for green space planning and management through introducing user-oriented and community-engaged planning approaches.

Delhi’s Highway Wedding Venues — An Urban Form interconnecting Metropolis, Village and Countryside

by Amit Ittyerah

This dissertation explores the large-scale commercial wedding venue, a striking new multicultural typology which has emerged since the 1990s along highways at the periphery of metropolitan Delhi and other Indian villages, towns and cities. The dissertation aims at a comprehensive analysis of the wedding venue, including perspectives drawn not only from architecture but also from anthropology, as well as from the political economy of the wedding venue, where specialized entrepreneurs (tent-walas or community tent vendors, band-walas or brass bandsmen, halwais or community caterers and photographers) mobilize skilled labor guilds, usually via regional caste and family-based work and kin networks. The coordinated efforts of these actors produce wedding spectacles that combine contemporary Bollywood popular culture and tourism with elements drawn from palatial South Asian and European architectural imagery using a variety of flexible and scalable material assemblies that range among decoration, food and construction materials. Although these grand and visually impressive venues are usually associated with elaborate middle-class forms of consumption especially after the economic liberalization of 1991, research reveals that this typology also has deep roots in spatially extensive older regional metropolitan and rural endogamous caste-based wedding relations and practices. One important concept for the dissertation is darśan—the ritual of seeing and being seen, that ties even the most contemporary wedding spectacle and associated digital visual architectural forms to traditional rites. While darśan emerges among Hindus its social structural and material manifestations manifest more secular form bundling other religious groups and urban forms as well. Finally, because these wedding venues are now almost all located along peripheral highways and regional practices of caste endogamy, the dissertation addresses issues of “highway urbanism,” especially their translation to sprawling peripheral multi-functional zones where highways and weddings define an intermediate social space between the metropolis and the village.

Quantifying the Impact of Override Behavior on the Performance of a Summer Direct Load Control Program

by Pamela Wildstein

Demand response (DR) programs represent an important tool for mitigating electric grid reliability risks posed by extreme weather, heat events, and increased electrification. Residential direct load control (DLC) programs with behavioral elements, such as an override option, are often used during the summer to reduce load from air conditioners (AC). Although override options make DLC more attractive to consumers, the high likelihood of an imperfect response can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the program overall. Thus, utilities must understand the impact of these behavioral elements on load-shaving capabilities. To fill this gap, we design a regression-based, deterministic model to predict the behavior of thermostats participating in ecobee’s Donate Your Data initiative under various temperature conditions. The model is then used to quantify the impact of the override option on the performance of 403 ecobee thermostats participating in Southern California Edison’s 2019 Summer Smart Energy Program. Our analysis estimates that although the group’s participation in the DLC program led to a 41% reduction in AC demand, 48% of potential load reduction was lost to exercise of the override option. Similarly, most of the so-called DR events followed a pattern of near-perfect participation for a short duration of time preceded by a steady increase of overrides as the event progressed. DLC programs with an override option are effective at reducing demand in the aggregate, but designers must consider the savings lost to behavior.

Big Data for Urban Health: Examining Where People Live, Work, and Play

by Meixin Yuan

Urban planning decisions shape environments that profoundly influence public health, yet significant racial health inequities persist. Traditional research often focuses on residential neighborhoods, potentially overlooking the health implications of environments encountered during daily travel – the activity space where people live, work, and play. This dissertation addresses this gap by using residential and activity space lenses to examine health equity in Southeast Michigan. It explores the utility of big data and participatory methods to develop a Planning Support System (PSS) prototype that aids health-equity-informed planning. The research pursued three main objectives: 1) quantify and compare social and environmental exposures relevant to health equity within the residential neighborhoods and activity spaces of different race-dominant census tracts; 2) investigate the relationship between these exposures and health outcomes, assessing the added value of activity space analysis; and 3) engage practitioners to understand barriers and opportunities for health equity planning and collaboratively design a PSS prototype using Design Thinking strategies. Quantitative analysis utilized 2020 demographic and environment data for 1,251 tracts and anonymized cell-phone-derived mobility data recorded by SafeGraph in January 2020 that represents 5.48 million origin-destination pairs for over 300,000 devices. Three composite indices – Neighborhood Disadvantage Index (NDI), Health Opportunity Index (HOI), and Unhealthy Exposure Index (UEI) – and their activity space counterparts (ANDI, AHOI, AUEI) were constructed using 13 variables. Spatial Error Regression (SER), Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) and Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) were employed to analyze relationships with eight chronic disease prevalence rates (e.g., diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure). Participatory PSS development involved 21 interviews, three focus groups, and a design thinking workshop, culminating in a functional prototype developed with AI coding assistance. Key findings reveal significant disparities in both residential and activity space exposures. Hispanic and Black tract residents experienced significantly higher levels of social disadvantage (NDI/ANDI) and unhealthy exposures (UEI/AUEI) compared to White tract residents, with disparities often magnified in activity spaces. Activity space indices (ANDI, AUEI, AHOI) significantly improved predictions over residential-only indices for obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure prevalence in SER models, demonstrating the independent contribution of environments visited during daily life beyond residential proximity. LISA analysis identified high health burden clusters often characterized by constrained mobility (shorter travel, lower destination diversity), particularly for Black-dominant tracts. GWR showed the relationship between activity space disadvantage and health outcomes varies spatially. Practitioner engagement highlighted the potential of activity space analysis but also significant barriers: lack of incentives for health equity planning, data trust issues, capacity limitations, and fragmented governance. The participatory PSS design process successfully yielded a well-received prototype design, valuable insights into practitioner needs, and a working PSS prototype, demonstrating the utility of design thinking and the potential of AI assistance in PSS development. This research underscores the necessity of incorporating activity space perspectives for a more nuanced understanding of spatial health equity. It highlights the potential and pitfalls of using big mobility data in planning and demonstrates the value of participatory approaches in developing relevant planning tools. The findings call for greater regional and cross-sector collaboration, stronger incentives for health equity action, politically resilient strategies, and continued research into activity space dynamics and the responsible integration of AI in planning support.

If They’re Riding It, We’re Not Voting for It: Assessing the Role of Racial Threat on Voter Support for Regional Public Transit in Atlanta and Detroit

by Eric Bettis 

Regional transit ballot measures in racially segregated metropolitan areas of the United States have historically faced fierce opposition by suburban voters. Proposed public transportation network expansions often reveal acute tensions between constituencies and their priorities, with urban residents tending to support such proposals while suburban residents do not. Furthermore, support for transit proposals tend to show differences by race, with Black, Latino, and other marginalized groups typically supporting transit at higher rates than White voters. The spatial patterns of this support suggest that race itself, and particularly increasing diversity, play a role in this disparity, and further suggests a connection between a region’s contentious racial history and suburban transit opposition. To study this relationship between diversity and transit support, this dissertation employs multiple regression and geospatial analyses of demographic and election data to support an examination of demographic composition’s role in reflecting and influencing changing levels of regional transit support. Using the Racial Threat Hypothesis to interpret past and current suburban voter opposition to transit, the project examines four suburban counties in the Atlanta and Detroit metropolitan regions as case studies. Regression analyses of precinct-level voting data and 1990, 2000, and 2010 census tract-level data find that measures of Black population density and proximity exert moderately strong influence on transit support: positive in more racially diverse census tracts, and negative in tracts and subregions with less diversity. These results are more pronounced in homogeneously White portions of segregated counties: the study shows a statistically significant decrease in transit initiative support associated with growing proportions of nearby Black populations, with Black residential density and proximity being second only to partisanship in influence. The study also finds a direct relationship between increases in Black populations and increasing support for conservative policies and candidates in homogeneously White portions of metro counties. This suggests that areas with recent, significant Black population growth exhibit voting behavior more consistent with the Racial Threat Hypothesis, while those with longer exposure to integration show more tolerance for minority-beneficial policies. This research has implications for understanding how demographic transition, racial group concentration, and proximity to communities of color can influence voter support for regional transit expansion. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the relationship between democratic processes and the success of equity-associated policy can be tenuous in areas where diversity has historically been resisted or absent.

Integrated Planning for Climate Resilience and Food Security: An Analysis of Urban Food System Resilience Planning in U.S. Cities

by Sarah Dobie

Urban food systems face growing threats from extreme weather and climate disasters. The need to proactively build urban food system resilience is becoming more apparent as city planners and policymakers increasingly recognize that disasters can lead to an inability to carry out critical food system functions, such as providing food security. Addressing this cross-cutting challenge will require policy alignment and coordination between the climate and food sectors. Policy integration—i.e., the alignment and coordination of policy processes and outputs across policy sectors—has long been viewed as a tool to improve governance of complex policy problems. However, research on policy integration has revealed many gaps that limit its practical utility. In many instances, poorly conceived and implemented policy integration can instead lead to policy failures. The aim of my dissertation is to provide an improved understanding of how policy actors can effectively leverage policy integration to address urgent policy problems, using integrated planning for food system resilience as a lens. I performed three interrelated studies, using a three-paper model, that contribute to an improved theoretical foundation for policy integration research as well as practical guidance to help policy actors get food system resilience onto their cities’ political agendas. In the first paper, I conducted a systematic review of policy integration research to understand the current landscape of research on policy integration within an urban governance context, identifying the limitations from a planning perspective and ways future research can address these shortcomings. Specifically, I suggest three research needs: to differentiate between stages of the policy process when studying policy integration; to apply plan evaluation methods to evaluate policy integration; and to explore pathways taken to facilitate integration and weigh tradeoffs. I drew on these findings in the second paper, where I applied plan evaluation methods to evaluate the extent to which U.S. cities have developed integrated plans for food system resilience. I developed two indices—a plan quality index and plan policy focus index—to understand the quality of planning and types of policies being incorporated into plans by cities for food system resilience. I found that few cities have developed high quality plans or plans with a comprehensive focus on food system resilience policies, and the most significant predictors of overall plan scores (a combined plan quality and plan policy focus index) were the rate of food insecurity (higher food insecurity associated with higher plan scores) and plan type (sustainability and food systems plans associated with higher plan scores, and climate resilience plans associated with lower plan scores). This analysis demonstrated how plan evaluation methods could be used as a proxy to measure policy integration for the policy formulation stage of the policy process. It also provided a better understanding of actions cities should include in their plans to address food system resilience challenges. Finally, the third paper included case studies of three U.S. cities identified as national leaders for food system resilience planning based on the plan evaluation performed in the second study. Through document review and interviews, I applied policy process theories to understand how case study policy actors were able to steer the urban agenda to address food system resilience challenges, including the role that policy integration played. Baltimore, Honolulu, and Seattle have taken different pathways to planning for food system resilience, but the type of approach seems to have been less influential in furthering the topic on urban agendas than the degree of integration across the climate and food policy sectors. Based on the case studies, I developed several recommendations for future research to build on this research to advance both theory and practice, including six propositions for policy integration researchers to explore in other planning and policy contexts. Finally, I conclude with a reflection of how this research contributes to policy integration theory, as well as how the insights from this research can be applied to further planning for urban food system resilience across other cities.

Planning Resettlement: Assessing Governance Gaps in the U.S. Resettlement Program

by Alex Judelsohn

Cities, especially those that have faced population loss and austerity measures as a result of neoliberal policies, may engage in welcoming work to support refugees and immigrants as part of efforts to revitalize their cities. For this welcoming work, local and county governments may have an office or implement a plan dedicated to new Americans; they do not just provide lip service but deploy monetary resources. In theory, welcoming work bolsters the U.S. refugee resettlement program, as it inadequately supports adjustment to a new home. This research examines the welcoming work and governance gaps that refugees experience in two rust belt cities and their surrounding counties: Buffalo, located in Erie County, New York and Grand Rapids in Kent County, Michigan.

Utilizing a qualitative research approach including document review, interviews, and a focus group, I examine how urban planning impacts the refugee experience. My research findings are organized around three main sub-questions. I first examine welcome plans and comprehensive plans to understand whether and how they address the needs of refugees, if at all, employing Ager and Strang’s conceptual framework that proposes four themes of integration (2008). The analysis shows that welcome plans are more thorough in including domains of Ager and Strang’s framework, while comprehensive plans primarily cover topics such as housing, safety, and employment. Secondly, through interviews and a focus group, I examine how local and county governments engage and interact with other refugee support organizations, including local resettlement agencies and refugee-led community organizations. Findings show that it is common for support organizations to point to local resettlement agencies as key players in supporting refugees, but generally do not see the work that refugee-led community organizations do and are unclear as to how local planners are involved in resettlement. Additionally, communication and collaboration between these entities is lacking. Lastly, I examine how the official welcoming work and other public-sector supports are perceived and experienced by refugees, in comparison to the unofficial support offered by grassroots groups. The data show that while local and county governments attempt to support refugee communities through offices and plans dedicated to them, they largely miss the mark, either through their engagement processes or by cherry picking what goes in the plan. On the other hand, refugee-led community organizations, while not perfect, are more effective at serving refugee communities as their work shares some principles and modalities of insurgent planning.   Research findings show that the welcoming work by local and county governments is done in a way that ostracizes refugee communities, even as they have good intentions and invest resources. Further, a lack of collaboration and leadership from refugees themselves prevents buy-in to the welcoming work. This results in perpetuation of a harmful rhetoric, with cities — especially rust belt cities in need of retaining population – seeing refugees as a way of “saving” or “revitalizing” their cities, rather than being places where refugees have the tools and support to flourish in their new homes. I outline a way forward through a collaborative approach to resettlement that can also weather changes in political views. 

Food Systems Planning to Rebuild Infrastructure of the Middle:
A Case Study of Urban-Rural Public Food Procurement in Seoul, South Korea

by Seulgi Son

Increasing reliance on the global corporate food system has made food supplies more vulnerable and threatened local food economies. While private-sector, community-led and non-profit efforts to re-embed food systems are emerging in many global cities, such as food hubs and farms to school, few of these efforts to shorten and re-localize supply chains have been led by the public sector except for a few examples. My dissertation examines the roles urban and regional planners can play in re-localizing food systems, using the Urban-rural Coexistence Public Meal Program (UCPMP) in Seoul, South Korea as a case in point.UCPMP is a city-level effort to link small-size rural farmers and public institutions including schools, daycare centers, and welfare facilities in the urban area. This study will argue that public food procurement can make a meaningful contribution to scaling up short food supply chains, supporting a transition to sustainable local food systems. Methods in use include a)direct observations of project sites, b) semi-structured interviews with government officials, involved civic actors, and rural farmers, and c) a wide array of document analysis.

A Metropolitan Dilemma: Regional Planning, Governance, and Power in Detroit, 1945-1995

by Joel Batterman

Scholars of planning and policy have long argued that metropolitan or regional institutions for planning and governance are needed to address such problems as urban sprawl, central city decline, and inter-jurisdictional segregation and inequality. Yet some form of regional planning and governance is already practiced in every major U.S. metro area under the auspices of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), which the federal government has mandated for roughly half a century. Why have these institutions proved inadequate to remedy America’s “metropolitan dilemma” of sprawling, inequitable (sub)urbanization? Are they simply too weak? Have they lacked the political will to challenge this pattern? Or both?

I examine the question through a historical case study, based in archival research, of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), the MPO for the seven-county area that includes metropolitan Detroit. I argue that SEMCOG should be understood in the context of the political history of twentieth-century Detroit and the trajectory of twentieth-century American liberalism. The development of SEMCOG in the wake of the New Deal and World War Two reflected broader liberal efforts to harmonize private choice and public planning, and municipal autonomy with metropolitan interdependence, in an era of federally sponsored, whites-only suburbanization. SEMCOG’s arrested development from the 1970s onward mirrored the broader unraveling of postwar American liberalism as the inherent tensions in the project became increasingly evident.

In the twenty years after World War Two, Detroit pioneered the development of regional institutions for planning and governance: a Regional Planning Commission (RPC) and a Supervisors Inter-County Committee (SICC). These institutions were initially intended not to challenge but to facilitate the prevailing patterns of outward development and the proliferation of independent suburban communities, both of which placed escalating burdens on the central city of Detroit and black Detroiters in particular.

The RPC and SICC were merged to form SEMCOG just as the political transformations wrought by suburbanization, segregation and the African American freedom movement shook the foundations of the liberal political order in which regional planning and governance had evolved. As metropolitan politics grew increasingly racialized along city-suburb lines, and the federal government retreated from regional initiatives, SEMCOG survived the 1970s only by vowing to defend local control and eschewing a role in resolving issues of racial segregation and inequality, while accommodating the prevailing pattern of sprawl and disinvestment. When SEMCOG staff questioned this course, they were forced to back down in the face of opposition from the now-dominant suburban growth regime.

For advocates of regional planning and governance, there are sobering lessons to be drawn from the history of SEMCOG. In Detroit, institutions for regional planning and governance have failed to resolve the problems of sprawl and inequality, and in some respects exacerbated them, since these institutions are embedded within a larger political system that has been dominated by suburban development interests and defenders of racial and economic segregation. Although MPOs can help to bring important metropolitan issues before policymakers, and structural reform of MPOs could increase their capacity and willingness to do so, solving the metropolitan dilemma will ultimately require the development of a new multi-racial metropolitan politics that builds grassroots power for “reparative regionalism” across city-suburb boundaries.