Simulating spatial market share patterns for impacts analysis of large-scale shopping centers on downtown revitalization

金沢大学理工研究域環境デザイン学系The decline of the downtown has been observed in many cities across the world. In response, many small cities in Japan, for example, have been making regeneration efforts including development controls on large-scale shopping centers. It is extremely useful to analyze the potential effects of relevant planning policies before implementation. We developed an urban planning support tool, a multiagent simulation (MAS) model called Shopsim-MAS, to investigate the impacts of some downtown revitalization policies through consequent spatial dynamics of shop market shares. We discuss methods to model household behavior and to understand the market area dynamics of shops. The Shopsim-MAS model developed in this project has proven to be a useful means to analyze the impact of downtown revitalization policies in Japan. It is also expected to be further expanded for impact analysis of similar or more sophisticated urban policies in other parts of the world. © 2011 Pion Ltd and its Licensors

Georgia's Redevelopment Powers Law: A Policy Guide to the Evaluation and Use of Tax Allocation Districts

Within the past five years, eleven separate tax allocation districts (TADs) have been created in the metropolitan Atlanta region. Currently, policy-makers in the City of Atlanta are considering the use of TADs to finance the proposed "Beltline" project. While TADs are a powerful tool in a localities' economic development arsenal, these policies are not without cost and not without risk. The sudden surge in popularity of this economic development tool generally has not been accompanied by any systematic assessment or set of policies to guide their evaluation or their use. Thus, this report sets out to familiarize local policy makers with:* How TADs work;* The potential benefits of TADs;* The potential risks and costs associated with TADs and how these might be distributed across different stakeholder groups; and* Policies to help minimize costs and risks

Creating Neighborhood in Postwar Buffalo, New York: Transformations of the West Side, 1950-1980

This project reconsiders post-World War II neighborhood change by examining how various groups in Buffalo, New York conceptualized, experienced and produced the West Side as a cultural and economic artifact between 1950 and 1980. This approach offers an alternative to conceptualizing neighborhoods as bounded, natural entities and it encourages narratives that complicate the prevailing metaphor of decline in rust belt cities by illuminating other components of postwar neighborhood change than population loss and economic disinvestment. This project uses neighborhood retail as a lens through which to examine how city planners, the West Side Business Men\u27s Club, the Federation of Italian American Societies and individual storeowners reproduced the neighborhood at multiple scales through city planning, local marketing, Columbus Day celebrations, and personal decisions. As the logics of those practices changed alongside shifting social and economic contexts in the depopulating, deindustrializing city, these social agents negotiated the West Side as both a tangible place and an abstract imaginary. While the place-based City and businessmen\u27s club promoted the area as a commercial destination, individual storeowners connected West Side stores to businesses networks that extended across the city. At the same time, the Federation recast the West Side as the old neighborhood, and a launching point for Italian American upward mobility in the region. The first three chapters concentrate on retail patterns at different scales of neighborhood production. The first chapter examines commercial areas of the West Side as sites of city planning intervention, the second chapter considers how the local business organization constructed the Grant-Ferry area as a defined entity through marketing and events, and the third chapter uses the stories of three individual business owners to show how the singular place images of the first two chapters belies personal experience of the same shopping area on the ground. The final chapter shifts to the Federation of Italian American Societies\u27 production of a regional Italian identity that casted the West Side as a place of the past, echoing the sentiments of former West Siders who identified the Grant-Ferry area as an idealized but bygone center of community. Each chapter of the project highlights the Grant-Ferry area as a critical component of neighborhood identity for groups engaging the West Side\u27s the past, present, and future as they responded to citywide and regional transformations. Together, these chapters suggest the importance of understanding neighborhood commercial areas as social and economic resources that stakeholders at multiple scales engage and transform simultaneously during periods of neighborhood change. This project contributes to a growing literature that interrogates the production of neighborhoods as emergent, ongoing processes. Getting beyond the container view of neighborhood reconnects postwar neighborhood change to broader urban development processes by illuminating scalar interconnections that remain obscured in those studies. This study interprets conceptualizations and uses of the West Side by examining how the groups and individuals framed neighborhood identity in planning documents, newspaper reports, maps, city directories, and interviews. Each point of view invoked the neighborhood through different temporal and functional associations, and implicated a different audience of neighborhood identity. This study suggests that using this approach, scholars of urban history and urban studies can better understand American neighborhoods as products of the same forces and contexts that produced other postwar landscapes rather than as sites or survivors of postwar urban decline. This project is also relevant to contemporary neighborhood revitalization efforts on the West Side of Buffalo because it suggests that the rediscovery narrative accompanying new investment is problematic in the same ways as the decline narrative commonly used to frame the last three decades; each explanation centers on a limited cast of stakeholders and severs the historical continuity of the processes that define places

Agent-based Simulation of Impact of Environmental Policies on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

13301甲第4631号博士（学術）金沢大学博士論文本文Ful

One-Way to Two-Way Street Conversions as a Preservation and Downtown Revitalization Tool: The Case Study of Upper King Street, Charleston, South Carolina

In the first half of the twentieth century, historic urban areas in America were retrofitted to accommodate a mass amount of automobile traffic. These retrofits came in the form of highways, thruways, and one-way streets. Many historic commercial streets in American downtowns were converted to one-way streets, because of traffic engineers\u27 narrow perspectives. After decades of decline, largely linked to automobile dominance, downtown economic revitalization emerged in the 1990s. One technique that appears to be remarkably successful is the re-conversion of one-way streets to two-way streets. One-way streets allow for greater traffic capacity and higher automobile speeds, while two-way streets provide the same functionality, while also increasing pedestrian safety and business visibility, essentials for successful downtowns. In 2002, the National Trust\u27s Main Street program, dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of historic commercial streets, acknowledged the use of one-way to two-way conversions, but declared the need for more research on the topic in 2002. Charleston, South Carolina\u27s major downtown retail center is the historic King Street corridor. Over time, King Street has undergone numerous transportation changes and traffic patterns. In 1956 a section of Upper King Street was converted to one-way traffic, to serve as an arterial road, negatively affected the street\u27s intended purpose as a business corridor. The area subsequently became unattractive, dangerous, and economically unsuccessful. Along with other revitalization methods, Upper King Street was reconverted to two-way traffic in 1994. Because of this conversion, the area has regained its status as a cultural and retail hub in the City of Charleston. In order to include the case study of Charleston\u27s Upper King Street in the discussion of downtown revitalization and historic preservation through traffic calming methods, this thesis includes a comparison of one-way to two-way streets as commercial corridors and a report on the history and practice of such conversions. Following these informational chapters, this thesis presents a detailed history of Upper King Street from 1950 to 1990, including major economic, transportation and preservation actions. While the project is generally considered a success, no previous statistical analysis has been available to validate this conclusion. Included in this thesis is an analysis of business type, vacancy rates, and a regression model of real estate prices for proving the significance of the conversion on property values. This analysis reveals that the 1994 one-way to two-way conversion was significant in contributing to the enhancement of the property values of properties on King Street. Beyond, an increase in property values, the one-way to two-way conversion of Upper King Street, generated a new interest in the commercial properties along the street, increased pedestrian activity of the area because of increased safety and general attractiveness, and has acted as catalyst in the further preservation of the storefronts lining Charleston\u27s most recognizable street

A New HOPE? A Critical Assessment of Gentrification and HOPE in Memphis, Tennessee

Gentrification is the manifestation of the Social change within urban residential neighborhoods as a result of uneven development in cities. These gentrification processes are a contextually dependent phenomenon, which vary both spatially and temporally when compared betwixt cities. Since the 1990s, local and state governments have developed more creative discourses for the promotion of gentrification which have overshadowed the positive outcomes of gentrification. The adoption of neoliberal policies has attacked many forms of the Keynesian welfare-state, most notably federal public housing. The United States’ Department of Urban Housing and Development’s (HUD) initiative Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) emerged as the new federal housing policy after this shift, and the program competitively awarded rehabilitative and demolition grants to public housing authorities. The neoliberalization of public housing has placed the Social wellbeing of many residents into the hands of the market as more mixed-use housing ventures are financed and developed. This study analyzed Census and HUD data to critically assess the relationship between gentrification and HOPE VI sites in the city of Memphis, Tennessee. The statistical models employed in this study indicate a weak relationship between gentrification and the redeveloped HOPE VI sites. Results have also shown that while the number of the original residents that return to the redeveloped sites have been low, and poverty concentration, housing prices, and college education attainment levels have seen little or no improvement at the census tract level. Furthermore, the results show that the Memphis Housing Authority’s adoption of the HOPE VI redevelopment model has only decreased affordable housing options in the city and may be contributing to increased income segregation across the city. This study serves to inform lawmakers of the true effects of their policy decisions and highlights those who are most affected. Key Words: gentrification, HOPE VI, Memphi

Becoming Gentrifier/d: Aesthetics, Subjectivities, and Rhythms of Gentrification in Seoul, South Korea

Gentrification has been extensively studied beyond Euro-American societies. In particular, previous research of Seoul’s residential gentrification has broadened our understanding of the role of the developmental state and property speculation in urban clearance and renewal. However, little attention has been paid to the contemporary retail gentrification in Seoul that has different aesthetics, subjectivities, and rhythms compared to residential gentrification. In retail gentrification, old urban neighborhoods are no longer demolished but cherished with their nostalgic landscapes and atmospheres. In this context, this dissertation project explores Seochon, a gentrifying neighborhood in Seoul, that was designated as a cultural heritage site in 2010. Since then, this previously underdeveloped neighborhood has become a famous tourist destination for urban adventurers who desire authentic objects, places, and experiences. Combining ethnographic and archival research, this project examines how the cultural politics around authenticity entwine with historic preservation and retail gentrification. Specifically, I address three questions: 1) how the hyperreal simulacra of the past aesthetically assemble Seochon as an authentic urban village, 2) how the fantasy of authenticity endlessly renews the desire for something more authentic while sustaining the paradoxical subjectivities of gentrification, and 3) how the in-betweens on the topological edge of the gentrifier/gentrified embody and enact gentrification in and through the heterogeneous space-times of Seochon. Consequently, the project opens new political possibilities to challenge gentrification-induced displacements by demystifying their physical and psychological processes. In doing so, this project contributes to more nuanced perspectives on Seoul’s gentrification, which has been predominantly identified with state-led, residential urban renewal. At the same time, the project engages with epistemological and ontological limitations in previous gentrification studies through the poststructural lenses of Baudrillard, Lacan, and Deleuze. Specifically, I dismantle the dualistic ideas of good/bad, authentic/inauthentic, and gentrifier/gentrified by analyzing the ever-changing rhythms of gentrification and displacement. Indeed, the paradoxical subjects of gentrification continue to decenter their subjectivities and distort the dynamics of displacement. Thus, they are virtually/actually in-betweens as they become gentrifier and simultaneously gentrified (gentrifier/d). This reconceptualization of ambivalent and mobile subjectivities highlights differences within and beyond the monstrously imagined gentrification while disclosing the potential for the fight against it from its sponge-like inside. Furthermore, this project empirically demonstrates this theoretical reframing based on 13 months of qualitative fieldwork and 47 interviews with 50 participants. I illustrate how the subjects of gentrification place themselves in Seochon by reinventing authenticity and displacing their imagined (in)authentic selves/others. Throughout various cultural politics around what authentic Seochon is, the subjects were ‘becoming gentrifier/d.’ I was one of them as I occupied everyday spaces of the neighborhood, interviewed old-timers and newcomers, participated in a local foodie community, and worked at a hipster-oriented restaurant as a server. Drawing on this autoethnography, the project uncovers the fantasy of authenticity as well as the heterogeneous space-times of gentrification, which are built upon people’s desires, imaginations, embodiments, and performances, including my own. Ultimately, this theoretical and empirical revisit enables us to mirror ourselves onto gentrification and to bear our responsibility in challenging the gentrification-induced displacements that we create

The impact of commercial activity on the form and structure of the city - the case of Portuguese mediumsized cities

The present document aims to sum up the first year of research in the on-going doctoral thesis, whichdwells on the balance between commercial activity and city realm. Both these entities have latelywitnessed new stages of evolution, which reflect themselves in changing variables and patterns. Initially,commerce was considered as an after-the-fact consequence of the urban form and structure preexistence,but because it has the ability to change and adapt more rapidly than the city, as well as havinglarge economic and social power, the flow of influence can be inverted. The research tends then to knowwhether the two entities are convergent or divergent in their patterns and what overlaps in theirdichotomies, bearing in mind that, although evolving separately, they must have to some degree commonvariables that can be assessed for further understanding the urban realm, finding solutions for regulatingand balancing estimated forms of distribution, proposing integrated political and technical mechanisms,and ultimately strengthening the use of commerce to reshape urban spaces. Aware that medium-sizedcities are now at the core of a network-base territory, are synonyms of equilibrium, sustainability andinnovation, and places of opportunity and (inter)national projection, the literature review focuses on fourdistinct points of view: city's, commerce's (three fronts: traditional retail, new commercial formats andweb-based), citizen's and planner's (merging the above and finding research tools). The "thesis" thatsubstantiates the research is then proposed. The last point presents the early makings of a workingmethodology, which presently is being developed

The countryside in urbanized Flanders: towards a flexible definition for a dynamic policy

The countryside, the rural area, the open space, … many definitions are used for rural Flanders. Everyone makes its own interpretation of the countryside, considering it as a place for living, working or recreating. The countryside is more than just a geographical area: it is an aggregate of physical, social, economic and cultural functions, strongly interrelated with each other. According to international and European definitions of rural areas there would be almost no rural area in Flanders. These international definitions are all developed to be used for analysis and policy within their specific context. They are not really applicable to Flanders because of the historical specificity of its spatial structure. Flanders is characterized by a giant urbanization pressure on its countryside while internationally rural depopulation is a point of interest. To date, for every single rural policy initiative – like the implementation of the European Rural Development Policy – Flanders used a specifically adapted definition, based on existing data or previously made delineations. To overcome this oversupply of definitions and delineations, the Flemish government funded a research project to obtain a clear and flexible definition of the Flemish countryside and a dynamic method to support Flemish rural policy aims. First, an analysis of the currently used definitions of the countryside in Flanders was made. It is clear that, depending on the perspective or the policy context, another definition of the countryside comes into view. The comparative study showed that, according to the used criteria, the area percentage of Flanders that is rural, varies between 9 and 93 per cent. Second, dynamic sets of criteria were developed, facilitating a flexible definition of the countryside, according to the policy aims concerned. This research part was focused on 6 policy themes, like ‘construction, maintenance and management of local (transport) infrastructures’ and ‘provision of (minimum) services (education, culture, health care, …)’. For each theme a dynamic set of criteria or indicators was constructed. These indicators make it possible to show where a policy theme manifests itself and/or where policy interventions are possible or needed. In this way every set of criteria makes up a new definition of rural Flanders. This method is dynamic; new data or insights can easily be incorporated and new criteria sets can be developed if other policy aims come into view. The developed method can contribute to a more region-oriented and theme-specific rural policy and funding mechanism