Court square : movement, memory, method, meaning

"The court square as a city form is repeated throughout the Ohio Valley, yet, the circumstances surrounding its initial construction are less important than its continued existence. This thesis serves to illustrate that existence through identification and description of four Indiana court squares from 1800 to 2000. Evolutions in transportation have changed the ways in which the court square is approached and experienced; thus, the transportation history of the state is used a context for change. However, physical evidence is dependant on personal experience and collective memory for meaning. Changes to the structure, landscape, streetscape, and monuments of each square were documented through photo analysis and evaluated for their symbolic value. This thesis provides justification for a method for describing urban environments, one that considers symbolic value in the interpretation of physical space. "--Abstract from author supplied metadata

Integrated Freight Network Model: A GIS-Based Platform for Transportation Analyses

The models currently used to examine the behavior transportation systems are usually modespecific. That is, they focus on a single mode (i.e. railways, highways, or waterways). The lack of integration limits the usefulness of models to analyze the intermodal movement of freight. This project developed a GIS-based model of the three primary surface modes as well as intermodal connections. The resulting Integrated Freight Network Model (IFNM) accommodates highly detailed about shipping costs, transfer costs, traffic volumes (including non-freight auto traffic), and network interconnectivity properties. As a proof of concept, the research team conducted an exploratory analysis that asked what the potential impact would be to Kentucky highways if approximately half of the freight currently transported by barges on the Ohio River were shifted onto trucks. Coal-haul roads in the northeastern and western part of Kentucky would be particularly hard hit by a broad scale modal shift. The IFNM highlighted that roads emanating from the Western Coalfields would experience explosive growth in freight transport, with the proportion of trucks relative to overall traffic significantly increasing. Applying the IFNM to a range of freight-related transportation questions could greatly enhance system efficiencies and positively impact local economies and environments

Trans-Appalachian America and the National Road

Following the Revolutionary War, the British ceded the Northwest Territory to the United States. This territory was the land north and west of the Ohio River to the Mississippi. The territory corresponds to the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and an eastern portion of Minnesota. With Britain controlling the Great Lakes to the north and Spain to the south and west, this remained a landlocked territory whose only access to the eastern seaboard was over rugged mountain trails. In 1784, George Washington wrote of the need to link the western territory to the eastern states. He proposed an improved road to link an eastern river with the Ohio. Washington’s vision was accomplished as Congress enacted legislation during the Jefferson Administration for this infrastructure project. In 1811, work began at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac River in Maryland. The road conquered the mountains and reached the Ohio River in 1818. Originally known as the Cumberland Road, the National Road was eventually extended to Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana and finally Vandalia, Illinois in 1837. The federal funding and oversight of the road faced challenges from narrow readings of constitutional authority. Proponents of the road resorted to alarmist rhetoric, portraying the road as necessary, even vital, to prevent the nation becoming divided and separated by the mountainous terrain. This paper will evaluate the alarmist rhetoric in relation to the potential threats of disunion. Primary and secondary sources will be used in an ethnographical analysis of western culture and nationalism to demonstrate that the western settlers were patriots. The threat of disunion was used to justify federal control and funding for the National Road. (Author abstract)Boyd, E.L. (2018). Trans-Appalachian America and the National Road. Retrieved from http://academicarchive.snhu.eduMaster ArtsHistoryCollege of Online and Continuing Educatio

The Right Track: Building a 21st Century High-Speed Rail System for America

Provides an overview of U.S. investment in high-speed intercity passenger rail, its economic and environmental benefits, analyses by region, and key steps for building an efficient network, including balancing private investment with public safeguards

The history of the 341st Engineer Regiment, July 29, 1943-March 22, 1946

Members of the Three Forty-First: Joining with you in the pleasure and satisfaction of looking over the record of the 341st Engineer Regiment. I feel anew that warmth of joy and pride which came over me every time I visited your jobs. It made no difference whether the dust was at Briquebec or Coutances, the mud at Roanne Coo or Ettelbruck, the snow at Bastogne or St. Vith, or you were getting in the steel at Koblenz or at Bamberg, you were there and I saw you, day and night, overcoming impossible difficulties. You built 110 bridges, more than two miles of them, and the 341st target painted on them was a symbol of a job done well and in time. The Armies depended on you to do more than your part, and they knew that you would not, and did not, fail them. Our losses were few, and that also is a credit to the superb leadership of the officers and non-commissioned officers, and to the perfect teamwork of every part of the organization. Let us join as we have joined before in thanks to Almighty God for His care and for His continued guidance. Sincerely yours, Colonel Edward H. Coehttps://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/ww_reg_his/1191/thumbnail.jp

Ecospatial Orientation and American Literature

Place is complex, and it undergirds and influences our fictional and nonfictional narratives in ways we often fail to recognize. In this dissertation, Lowell Wyse argues for a more holistic understanding of place\u27s role in literature while asking what it means to read environmentally€”spatially, ecologically, and historically. Drawing from ecocriticism, which emphasizes the biological world, and geocriticism, which privileges the spatial, Wyse proposes a hybrid ecospatial criticism, with a particular emphasis on the role of maps in reading for place. With individual chapters on the nonfiction of William Least Heat-Moon, John Steinbeck\u27s Salinas Valley fiction, Richard Wright\u27s Native Son, and the central New Mexico novels of Willa Cather, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ana Castillo, this project demonstrates how maps, travel guides, biographies, and environmental history can contribute to new understandings of literary place(s) on the continental, regional, and local scales. The underlying message of this dissertation is that place matters, both in the world and in the text. To the extent that we fail to understand the cultural, ecological, and spatial dynamics of place, we miss the many significant ways that social and environmental issues overlap. This project thus aligns neatly with the message of the environmental justice movement and the related branch of ecocriticism. It also stands as a corrective to the relative indifference of the ecocritical and geocritical communities to each other\u27s core concerns

Mid-

This thesis explores a personal and cultural tension between rootedness and restlessness, set against the backdrop of my native Midwest. The large-format portrait and landscape photographs reflect a paradoxical longing to pull up stakes and put down roots, and the liminal state we often dwell in as a result. Playing on the conception of the Midwest as a transient zone to be passed through en route to somewhere else, the work refers to the pervasive belief that our greatest hopes and potentials can only be realized in some other place, at some future or past time. It’s a syndrome I grapple with myself, centrifugally lapping the country in perpetual search for an impossible landing pad. As American society drifts increasingly towards untethered mobility and develops a homogenized temporary landscape in its wake, our identifications with distinct regional home places are more likely to reach mythical proportions. As such, the Midwest becomes not just my centripetal anchor, but also my stage — a metaphorical intersection between movement and stasis drawing from observation, experience, memory and fantasy. Here, my personal myth of place unfolds

Industry Analysis on Domestic Petroleum Transportation Industry

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston Universit