▼ New urbanism has emerged in the United States as a controversial alternative to the suburban sprawl of the 1970s to the present time. Does this new urbanism deliver the claims to create a “community” like social environment and decrease residence dependence on the automobile, while creating an increase in property value? A review will be conducted on the literature while drawing attention to both the claimed benefits and criticisms of the new urbanist style of development. In addition, statistical modeling will be used to identify new urban developments within sales data of single-family homes located in the greater Cleveland metropolitan area. Various global and local methodologies are utilized, quantified, and reviewed in their effectiveness to identify new urban housing. Advisors/Committee Members: Barrett, Linda.

▼ In this study annual, seasonal and monthly series for total precipitation are analyzed to find increasing or decreasing trends in rainfall over space and time in Puerto Rico from 1956 to 2010. The precipitation series were observed at forty meteorological stations scattered over the island of Puerto Rico. The groups of series were selected for their spatial and temporal representativeness. In order to detect possible trends in precipitation over the island, the Mann-Kendall test was applied to the annual, seasonal and monthly series. This test is non-parametric and thus, has the advantage of being insensitive to the true (unknown) form of the distribution involved. The Mann-Kendall statistical test results of this research have shown that statistically significant increasing and decreasing trends occurred on some locations in the island of Puerto Rico from 1956-2010. The spatial and temporal distribution of the trends vary from increasing trends in the southwest, central and northeast regions for the annual series and dry season months to decreasing trends for the early wet season months mainly in the western area of the island. The results show that increasing trends occurred in the months of January, March, April, September and October mainly in the southwest and northeast and decreasing trends dominated in the months of May, July, August, November and December mainly in the west. Advisors/Committee Members: Barrett, Linda.