Development of a Communication Tool to Frame a Vision for Changing Neighbourhoods

Post war neighborhoods all over Europe are facing different kind of challenges in order to adapt them for the use in the future. The predominant factor in many concepts of neighborhood refurbishments is the energy demand of the buildings. In connection, many research projects focus on the reduction of CO2 emissions omitting the fact that this specific value does not have any immediate benefit on the residents themselves, neither on a psychological nor on an economical level. Benefits are solely on a macro-economic level, which rarely is calculated and most likely cannot be communicated as a benefit to the residents in a comprehensible fashion. The methodological approach presented in this paper reflects an iterative process of establishing a vision for a neighborhood development strategy. Its core is an iterative process, using the tools of questionnaires, workshops and focus group discussions, which includes the owners of the buildings, the local energy provider, policy makers, representation of the residents and research experts. Singular priorities were harmonized in the form of a questionnaire and multiple workshops. Based on this process, five key areas of action (energy, living space, open space, social and mobility) have been identified. It is valid for an urban area with mostly social housing, erected between 1966 and 1976. The reference neighborhood houses approximately 2,500 inhabitants and is situated in the town of Salzburg/Austria. The developed iterative process is multipliable and transferrable to comparable urban areas, which share a set of similarities. It is the basis for future decisions and gives orientation to the building owners, the energy provider and policy makers. Besides the methodology the outcome of this process are a poster, a folder and a detailed catalog of measures. The poster and the folder visualise the neighborhood development strategy. A set of characters, icons and photos including easily comprehensible comics were developed. Those design features are important in order to create a recognition value and to stimulate acceptance among the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Moreover, the low-threshold approach of the design facilitates future communication with the concerned public. The methodology of the neighborhood development strategy guarantees the inclusion of all stakeholders and supports a prioritization in order to decide on future measures that can lead to a more energy-efficient and liveable development of neighborhoods in need of adaptation

Connecting People, Places, and Pollinators: A Year-long Classroom and Community Collaboration in Portland, Oregon

This unique project at Portland State University (PSU) has been revolutionizing undergraduate community-based learning (CBL) efforts since the collaboration started in 2012. This case study involves a deep look into a year-long CBL effort involving three university instructors, two undergraduate student fellows from PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS), Green Lents, a neighborhood-based nonprofit, and approximately seventy-five undergraduate students

Distress, circadian rhythms, immunity, and survival in presurgical breast cancer patients.

Women with breast cancer experience significant stress related to diagnosis and treatment, which may negatively affect physiology (e.g., circadian, endocrine, and immune) and contribute to cancer progression. Demographic (e.g., ethnic minority) and neighborhood factors can contribute to cancer-related stress. African American women with breast cancer experience more adverse disease pathology and earlier mortality; however, factors that explain these disparities rarely have been explored. It is hypothesized that psychosocial stressors (i.e., ethnicity, neighborhood stress, and cancerrelated stress) will be related to one another. Associations of psychosocial stress with physiological disruption are posited with regard to circadian, endocrine, and immune function. It is also hypothesized that psychosocial stress and physiological disruption will predict earlier cancer recurrence/mortality. Presurgical breast cancer patients (N=57) reported on demographics and cancerrelated stress and provided three-day home-based collection of rest/activity rhythms and salivary cortisol. Neighborhood stress data were obtained via the 2010 Census. Immune parameters were assessed in serum samples. Progression-free survival status was obtained at a median of seven years post-enrollment. Bivariate correlations examined relationships between psychosocial stressors. Hierarchical linear regressions adjusted for age, cancer stage, and income in tests of associations between psychosocial stress and physiological disruption. Cox proportional hazards analyses tested the prognostic value of psychosocial stress and physiological disruption on progression-free survival from initial diagnosis and study entry. African Americans had higher neighborhood stress compared to non-Hispanic White patients. Patients with greater neighborhood stress had greater overall cortisol secretion (ΔR2 = .246, p = .001). Patients reporting greater cancer-related stress had accentuated diurnal cortisol rhythms (ΔR2 = .084, p = .047). Exploratory post hoc analyses revealed this finding was likely driven by avoidance of cancer-related thoughts. Psychosocial stress was not significantly related to circadian or immune disruption, nor was psychosocial stress or physiological disruption predictive of progression-free survival. Improved resources within disadvantaged neighborhoods may help counter the effects of neighborhood stress on cortisol disruption by reducing stress and improving health outcomes. Interestingly, during the acutely stressful presurgical period, avoidance appears to serve as an adaptive coping strategy. Therefore, the presurgical period may be the opportune time to introduce psychosocial interventions to combat challenges throughout one’s cancer journey

Privacy-preserving power usage control in smart grids

The smart grid (SG) has been emerging as the next-generation intelligent power grid system because of its ability to efficiently monitor, predicate, and control energy generation, transmission, and consumption by analyzing users\u27 real-time electricity information. Consider a situation in which the utility company would like to smartly protect against a power outage. To do so, the company can determine a threshold for a neighborhood. Whenever the total power usage from the neighborhood exceeds the threshold, some or all of the households need to reduce their energy consumption to avoid the possibility of a power outage. This problem is referred to as threshold-based power usage control (TPUC) in the literature. In order to solve the TPUC problem, the utility company is required to periodically collect the power usage data of households. However, it has been well documented that these power usage data can reveal consumers\u27 daily activities and violate personal privacy. To avoid the privacy concerns, privacy-preserving power usage control (P-PUC) protocols are proposed under two strategies: adjustment based on maximum power usage and adjustment based on individual power usage. These protocols allow a utility company to manage power consumption effectively and at the same time, preserve the privacy of all involved parties. Furthermore, the practical value of the proposed protocols is empirically shown through various experiments --Abstract, page iii

Monitoring Reduction Efforts for PM2.5 in Ellensburg,WA Using Community-Based Social Marketing to Examine Behavioral Change

In 2011, Ellensburg, Washington was labeled by the Washington Department of Ecology as being vulnerable for violating National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate pollution (PM2.5­). In the Kittitas Basin, winter-time frequent air inversions and stagnant air events trap pollution near the ground, elevating pollutant concentrations during winter months. Wood smoke from household burning has been identified by mobile PM2.5 monitoring completed in 2015 as the primary source of PM­2.5. This research utilizes community-based social marketing techniques to encourage behavioral change for wood burning in a targeted neighborhood in Ellensburg. Residents of the target neighborhood were interviewed to gage knowledge and perceptions about wood burning and local air quality. Throughout the home-heating season mobile sampling for PM­2.5 and black carbon was conducted (i) to evaluate relative changes in PM­2.5 concentrations throughout the city from the 2015 mobile sampling study and the data collected in 2017, and (ii) to determine the effectiveness of informational campaigns on behavioral change in the population within the target area that may have affected emissions. Data on knowledge and perception was obtained through 15 individual interviews and data on air quality was collected during 5 sampling evenings in winter of 2017. Analysis of findings using ArcGIS and R statistical software indicates that PM2.5­ concentrations in 2017 are higher than in 2015 as a whole. The increase in pollutant concentrations shows that the pilot community-based social marketing strategies used in the target neighborhood were not effective in altering behaviors that are associated with PM2.5 producing activities in the time of this study. Suggestions for future research and management of PM2.5 reductions efforts are made within this study

Releasing network isolation problem in group-based industrial wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization scheme named Adjusting the Transmission Radius (ATR), which is based on the Energy Consumed uniformly Connected K-Neighborhood (EC-CKN) sleep scheduling algorithm in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In particular, we discovered two important problems, namely, the death acceleration problem and the network isolation problem, in EC-CKN-based WSNs. Furthermore, we solve these two problems in ATR, which creates sleeping opportunities for the nodes that cannot get a chance to sleep in the EC-CKN algorithm. Simulation and experimental results show that the network lifetime of ATR-Connected-K-Neighborhood-based WSNs increases by 19%, on average, and the maximum increment is 41%. In addition, four important insights were discovered through this research work and presented in this paper

In the name of pluralism : fighting the (perceived) ultraorthodox penetration in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem

In Jerusalem the term pluralism recently received an alternative meaning—non-Haredi. Conflicts between the “pluralist” and the Ultra-Orthodox populations regarding the character of city neighborhoods are quite frequent. The focus of this article is one Jerusalem neighborhood—Baka—and the conflicts that occurred there around this issue in 2009–10. Neighborhood residents interpreted and framed the conflicts as opposition to Ultra-Orthodox penetration, but I argue, relying on ethnographic data analysis of two conflicts, that the main focus was the definition of the public space. As these conflicts involved Ultra-Orthodox and organizations, in the sensitive context of Jerusalem, framing them as anti-Ultra-Orthodox penetration was useful in mobilizing residents’ participation and in gaining wider legitimation and support. More broadly, based on my ethnography, I argue that residents participate in neighborhood affairs due to sentiments of belonging and commitment, thus creating the political format I term “neighborhood citizenship”

In the Name of Pluralism: Fighting the (Perceived) Ultraorthodox Penetration in the Baka Neighborhood of Jerusalem

In Jerusalem the term pluralism recently received an alternative meaning—non-Haredi. Conflicts between the “pluralist” and the Ultra-Orthodox populations regarding the character of city neighborhoods are quite frequent. The focus of this article is one Jerusalem neighborhood—Baka—and the conflicts that occurred there around this issue in 2009–10. Neighborhood residents interpreted and framed the conflicts as opposition to Ultra-Orthodox penetration, but I argue, relying on ethnographic data analysis of two conflicts, that the main focus was the definition of the public space. As these conflicts involved Ultra-Orthodox and organizations, in the sensitive context of Jerusalem, framing them as anti-Ultra-Orthodox penetration was useful in mobilizing residents’ participation and in gaining wider legitimation and support. More broadly, based on my ethnography, I argue that residents participate in neighborhood affairs due to sentiments of belonging and commitment, thus creating the political format I term “neighborhood citizenship”

Challenging Silencing in Stigmatized Neighborhoods Through Collaborative Knowledge Production

Researchers are always potential traitors when they represent what they see or hear. This is of particular concern in the case of people in subaltern positions, who lack the power to challenge possible misrepresentations. This article deals with an old dilemma in critical social science: How to use language when research objects are silenced through dynamics of domination? Is it possible for research to create space for marginalized people to speak for themselves? This was one of the questions of the Université Populaire, a group initiative by actors in a marginalized social housing neighborhood in Grenoble. The community‐based people’s education initiative was created in a double context of violence and silence. As a result of incidents of violence, media coverage participates in depicting the neighborhood as a place of danger and otherness, which impedes voices from the neighborhood from being heard. The initiative of the Université Populaire made space for speech in this marginalized and racialized area of Grenoble dealing with the consequences of terrorist violence in France. It is an initiative the author has been involved in since its inception in 2015. This article explains how the author sought ways to reduce power asymmetry in research relationships, why she steered away from using interviews for data collection and organized public debates instead, and how this made space for speech

Evaluating Community Advocacy in Response to Mayor de Blasio’s Homeless Shelter Development

In the United States, cities like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., the three metropolitans that are wealthy and have excessive cost, all share one common struggle: homelessness. With a policymaking effort regarding homelessness that were experimented within a highly dependent system of mayoral administration, hence my paper primarily focuses on new homeless shelter policy under NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term that started in 2017 until 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. This target has drawn different responses from local neighborhood community level that has forced the City to engage in complex situations, such as opposition and protest that require clear communication to push the goal to happen. Community advocacy and the way local residents negotiate has been central in influencing the City to open a new homeless shelter, with the notion that the local will always challenge any siting if its within their neighborhood area, activating their ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) response that arises by simply selfish or uninformed beliefs and responses by residents. This paper uses single case study (n=1) on West 58th St. Coalition in Manhattan to support detail examination based on the hypotheses that community advocacy that takes place in an affluent neighborhood (higher median income, higher educational attainment, higher median gross rent than the City’s average) is more likely to be powerful to oppose the City’s plan on developing new homeless shelter in their neighborhood. This community is chosen as a case because it has more accessible resources, therefore, it can provide more support to this research. To provide a fair comparison, West 58th St. will be supported by the other cases of community advocacy from different place such as Crown Heights shelters in Brooklyn and Maspeth shelters in Queens