Urban Studies Faculty Research Projects

Carl Abbott

Dr. Abbott is studying planning practices of the American West and how different areas approach a variety of issues. Currently he is exploring zoning practices in relation to retaining older industrial districts and how zoning practices are effectecd by changes in industry. He is looking at long range city plans to see what the future of the American West holds.

Abbott is also studying the relationship between cities and regional identities and how "boarding house cities", or "weekend cities" are effected by being part of the the Portland Metropolitan region. Must the rural west become like Hood River or die? What draws people and resources into these areas? How does new industry like Google in The Dalles impact rural areas.

Sy Adler

Dr. Adler is writing a book-length political history of the Oregon statewide land use planning program. The research covers the period between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s. It addresses these topics: the major pieces of state legislation enacted during that time; the creation and evolution of the Land Conservation and Development Commission and its staff agency as they endeavored to implement the laws; and the roles played by state and local planners, land use and environmental activists, especially the lawyers among them, and industry groups as they attempted to shape the laws, the agency, and local level plan making and implementation. The politics of developing the statewide planning goals that were adopted during the 1970s is a major part of the story. The dynamics associated with the acknowledgment process, during which the state agency and several watchdogs scrutinized the plans and implementation ordinances prepared by local governments for compliance with those statewide goals, are another critical element. The creation and evolution of 1000 Friends of Oregon, the leading watchdog, is another very important piece. The relevance of the historical analysis to current efforts to change the program will be explored. The research is based on materials in several archives and libraries, other documentary sources, and on interviews with state and local planners, and with environmental, citizen, and industry advocates.

Ellen M. Bassett

Dr. Bassett's research centers on land use planning and international development, with a particular emphasis on land tenure, property rights, and access to land and housing by the urban poor.

Dr. Bassett is working on several research projects at present. These include:

Climate change planning: This research project is in collaboration with Dr. Vivek Shandas of USP. We are critically examining local level climate action planning to understand whether this new type of planning represents policy innovation at the local level. Two questions guide our research: 1) What drives local governments to address climate change through a planning process? Why are some localities motivated to act, while others do not? 2) What types of new policies or planning strategies are being adopted in these plans? Do climate action plans reflect true policy innovation or are they simply a repackaging of previous land use/sustainability strategies (e.g., mixed use, multi-model transport, etc.)?

Property Rights (Regulatory Takings and Eminent Domain): In collaboration with Dr. Harvey M. Jacobs of the University of Wisconsin Madison, Dr. Bassett is looking at the impacts of recent property rights legislation upon planning practice. The research seeks to determine to what extent the property rights movement is having a "chilling effect" on planning practice by (for instance) altering the willingness of local governments to adopt new regulations or utilize eminent domain. Dr. Bassett is also conducting research on Oregon's ballot measures, including Measure 37 and 49. A recently completed paper looks at the use of language and argumentation in official voters pamphlets printed by the Elections Division of the Oregon Secretary of State.

Informal settlements in Africa: The growth of informal settlements is a global phenomenon; many African cities are experiencing extremely rapid urbanization with the majority of new urban residents finding shelter in illegal / informal settlements. Dr. Bassett is currently working on a paper with Dr. Sumila Gulyani of the World Bank which develops a conceptual framework, known as the Living Conditions Diamond, for ascertaining relative levels of deprivation in these settlements; the tool also provides insights on interventions/strategies for development professionals planning and implementing settlement improvement projects.

Charles Heying

Currently, I am researching and writing a book on Portland's artisan economy. Work on this project has been highly collaborative with over 20 students becoming contributing authors and helping refine its theoretical framework. Brew to Bikes: Portland's Artisan Economy, describes how the transformation from a mass production to a post-modern economy is being articulated in the trend-setting edges of Portland's artisan production. For example, the microbrew renaissance, for which Portland can justifiably claim leadership, established a foothold in a US beer market that has traditionally been dominated by three major brewing companies. Now, over fifty percent of draft beer consumed in Portland is craft brewed. In artisan foods, Portland has been discovered. A story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine noted that "it's in the food-savvy city of Portland that the new food economy has taken root, and where the future may be taking shape." In cycling, a New York Times article explained how the nexus of planning, passion, and artisan skills is creating a new industrial cluster.  "Cyclists have long revered Portland for its bicycle-friendly culture and infrastructure.... Now, riders are helping the city build a cycling economy."  Handcrafted frames, precisions parts, specialty bikes and numerous organized bicycling activities add $34 million to Portland's economy. Even Portland's fashion sector has thrived despite the city's reputation for zen casual couture and its distance from traditional fashion centers. Ninety local designers sell their clothing in 38 retail shops found in neighborhoods throughout the city. Brew to Bikes examines these and other artisan sectors that are recognized for their contribution to Portland's cultural cache but are underappreciated for the role they play in the city's economy, the challenges they pose to traditional conceptions of economic development, and the adaptations in urban form they encourage.

Jennifer Dill

At the core of her research, Dr. Dill is interested in answering these questions:

• How do people make their travel and location decisions?
• What role does the physical environment play in these decisions, in relation to other factors?
• How do those decisions impact the quality of urban life?
• How do our planning decisions impact the physical environment?
• How do our planning decisions impact people's travel and location decisions, via the physical environment or other pathways?

These questions are central to many of the planning debates taking place throughout the U.S. and particularly in the Portland region. For more on Dr. Dill's work please see her website: http://web.pdx.edu/~jdill/research.php

Will Macht

The thread running through my research is the search for innovative solutions to design and development problems to achieve sustainable urbanity through the quintuple bottom line - efficiency, economy, ecology, energy and education.

We are inefficient in our land use because we segregate almost all of it in single-use zones. So I write about different ways in which to mix our uses at various scales. That segregation makes us inefficient in our use of parking because segregated uses cannot share parking. We build at least seven spaces for every car in America so at any time about 85% of them are empty. So I write about how to share parking and increase density

We still inefficiently stick-build most of our housing in muddy fields so I research and write about a variety of ways to prefabricate our housing and to integrate design, construction, marketing, finance and sales into systems building. I also write about efficiently reusing surplus shipping containers for office and housing building systems.

Too many of our development decisions ignore the importance of building urban networks and I research and write about why projects like Beaverton Round and the Columbia River Crossing do not add to urban networks and describe better ways to solve similar problems.

Economy and ecology share the same Greek root, oikos meaning house, and are two sides of the same coin. Yet rating systems like LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) award points without respect to cost-benefit analysis. So I am researching and writing about better green ratings systems that I call SEED, (Sustainable Economic & Environmental Development).

Our buildings inefficiently consume 40% of our total energy and 70% of our electricity and are mostly isolated. So I write about better ways to integrate buildings into energy-efficient smart networks starting with properly oriented street grids and lots, passive and active solar design and the integration of cars and buildings into smart networks that power each other at different times of the day.

Over 30 years of teaching I have tried to formulate different methods of teaching development. Rather than just read case studies, I had students write them. In more advanced courses, instead of just writing case studies, I had students develop their own development plans. And for a capstone course, I organized development planning workshops in which students work as a multi-disciplinary development team to formulate a development plan for a project of regional significance. Currently, I am researching biographies of developers and contemplating how to use that knowledge to impart more insights to educate students.

Barry Messer

The focus of much of my research interests and work regards the tools and mechanisms of public policy to promote public awareness and community engagement.   Specifically, I have examined public policy efforts to promote community-based efforts to address the long-term health and viability of the region's watershed.  In addition, I have investigated the structure and practice of multi-institutional collaboration and co-production implementation practices of public policy.  This interest includes the investigation into community-university collaboration and partnerships.  I have served as the Principal Investigator to a number of both large and small scale sponsored programs and grants including the Community Environment Services recycling education program and the Community Watershed Stewardship program. I am serving as the co-PI on a prospective NSF grant that is a collaborative effort between the university and several community college campuses to begin a sustainable industries training institute.  This effort promises to engage community partners and students in initiatives to prepare students in emergent employment and professional opportunities that focus on sustainability in the region. Closely related to my research interests is my commitment for experiential and community based learning to furthering the development of civic responsibility as a vital part of the university's mission.

Connie P. Ozawa

Research projects include:

(1) Urban environmental management: For several years,  Dr. Ozawa has been working closely with Dr. Alan Yeakley in Environmental Sciences and Resources examining the relationship between management approaches and on-the-ground losses of riparian vegetation in urban areas. The work in the project has involved interviewing, archival research, GIS work and ground truthing aerial photographs and has supported eight graduate research assistantships. Our past work has documented the losses of vegetation in three cities in the Portland, Oregon region during two periods, 1990-97 and 1997-2003, and has been published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management and the Proceedings of the Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium: Unifying Knowledge for Sustainability in the Western Hemisphere. Our next step is to conduct a comparative study between the city of Portland and two or more other U.S. cities.

(2) Consensus-based decision making processes: Dr Ozawa has worked with Oregon Consensus, a program located in the National Policy Consensus Center in the College of Public and Urban Affairs. Her focus is on how consensus building methods can be integrated into planning processes to facilitate public participation and to enhance the relationship between the involved public and technical experts. Graduate assistantships are allocated by Oregon Consensus to help provide assistance in documenting and evaluating cases.

(3) The PSU-China Sustainable Land Use and Planning Program: She has been co-directing with Dr. Marcus Ingle, a professor of Public Administration, a training program for Chinese planners in the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Housing and Urban and Regional Development. We are expanding this program through a new partnership with the Energy Foundation, through which we hope to support the Energy Foundation's work in creating pilot projects in green technologies modeled in the Portland region. This program typically enlists the assistance of both Chinese-speaking and non-Chinese speaking graduate assistants.

Ethan Seltzer

I am primarily interested in regional planning and regionalism, and the unique challenges posed by planning and acting at a regional scale.  The US has never been able to sustain an ongoing regional planning "movement."  The history is much more episodic, due in large part to the institutional inertia associated with the devoloution of planning authority to cities, townships, and counties.  Nonetheless, regional planning and regionalist approaches are intriguing because of the poor fit between jurisdictional boundaries and the territories that correspond to economies, landscape ecology, and simply the way people live and the life of communities.  Studying contemporary regional planning practice, the ways that regional planning is different than planning at other scales, and the opportunities that regional planning practice affords for better understanding and expanding our appreciation of what planning is more generally form the core elements of what I'm working on.  Recent projects include book chapters on the history of the urban growth boundary concept and its application in the Portland metropolitan region, regional growth management in the Portland area, and, with students, the issues associated with and prospects for acting at the scale of Cascadia, one of ten proposed US megaregions (see "Ecolopolis" reports posted on the America 2050 web site: www.america2050.org).  Future projects include regional planning processes and methods, design and planning/planning as design, and planning for the long-term future of the Portland metropolitan region.

Vivek Shandas

Vivek Shandas research aims to address three questions: (1) what is known about the effects of human activities on ecological integrity? (2) how do changes in ecosystems affect human preferences and decisions? and (3) how can institutions guide the growth of human settlements and its effects?

Research: To address these questions, he has four on-going research projects

i. Coupling of Human and Natural Systems;

ii. Modeling Land Use and Water Consumption;

iii. Spatially-Explicit Tools for Environmental Planning; and

iv. Assessing the Implications of Urban Planning Policies on Human Health.

Gerry Sussman

My research is focused on areas of political economy, third world development, globalization, and the social impacts of old and new media and communication technologies.

Several themes have been explored in recent books and publications, but the core of my work for many years has been concerned with the challenges and threats to democracy and the public sphere. As I see it, the informational and larger political economic power context is central to the idea of citizenship, the enabling and disabling possibilities with regard to public participation, and in general how cities and regions are discursively conceived and politically and spatially constructed. Previously, I directed my research at development practices in Southeast Asia, a region where I spent much of my early adulthood, with a particular interest in how the resources of the region were being developed by transnational financial and industrial interests and local Western-oriented entrepreneurs.

More recently, I’ve turned “east” in looking at political cultural changes in the United States and Central and Eastern Europe, particularly with reference to the professionalization of politics and the global political and cultural integration of national, group, and personal identities. A current book project looks at how the shift to an informational economy has generated a host of promotional enterprises that give rise to the intensification of consumerism and commodification of everyday life, including the use of political signifiers (propaganda). I’ve also been studying the recovery of the public sphere through community radio and other public media and the ways that they support a broad-based conception of who owns the city. A backburner project, for which I continue to collect data, is a book project on the informational metropolis, which starts with the idea that cities, (post)industrialization, and media have been mutually constituted in the development of the West (and now the major world cities).