Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, City and Regional Planning

This study investigates the effects of the surrounding environment on crashes, with a focus on crash severity and at-fault drivers characterized by gender and age. Crashes where a vehicle is the guilty party are investigated. The study adopts two approaches: aggregate and disaggregate. In the aggregate approach, the numbers of crashes, classified in terms of severity (fatalities, injuries, property damages only), and gender and age of the driver (with several age groups covering the 15-100 age span), represent the variables to be investigated, and have been derived for the Central Ohio Region from the multiple files of the crash database of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, over the period 2006-2011. These data are aggregated at the level of Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ). OLS models are first estimated, but spatial autocorrelation tests point the existence of spatial autocorrelation (SA). Spatial econometrics models are then used to eliminate the SA bias: the Spatial Autoregressive Model (SAR) and the Spatial Error Model (SEM). Subsequent analyses are conducted using the SEM estimates, as the SEM model is successful in completely eliminating spatial autocorrelation. The aggregate approach uses a large set of explanatory variables classified into six groups: Regional and Locational, Socio-Economic, Land-Use, Public Transit and Traffic Flow, Circulation and Network, and Physical Characteristics. The results show that variables in all these groups have significant impacts on crash severity and frequencies. The disaggregate approach accounts for more variables that influence crash severity, but cannot be captured in the aggregate approach, such as weather conditions, light conditions, road conditions, type of intersection, and type of vehicle. All these variables are directly related to an individual crash. The logit model is used to explain the probability of a Bodily Injury (BI) crash at the crash scene, where the alternative is Property Damage Only (PDO) crash. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jean-Michel Guldmann (Advisor); Burkhard von Rabenau (Advisor); Philip Viton (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Land Use Planning; Transportation; Transportation Planning; Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Environmental Science

Every occupied indoor environment, including spacecraft, has its own unique microbiome. This composition and quantity of the microbiome present in these environments is dependent on many factors including building materials, occupants cleaning habits, presence of pets, and environmental conditions inside. Indoor microbes can be found in dust, which is generated in both Earth- and space-based built environments, a unique nutrient rich substrate that can act as both a source and sink especially in Earth-based buildings with carpet. Unintended microbial growth indoors can affect the health of the occupants and cause premature failure of building materials via biodegradation. Water is the limiting factor for growth, with moisture in the indoor air sufficient to support microbial growth indoors, especially for fungi. However, we need an improved understanding of microbes and their growth in indoor spaces to ensure healthier environments. The goal of this paper is to provide these examples and show how they fit into the concepts of One Space and bioastronautics. One Space is the idea that the built environment and human health are interconnected based on the One Health principles. Bioastronautics is the study of living organisms in spaceflight conditions. These two ideas complement each other and provide ample opportunity for interdisciplinary collaborations that can lead to innovative solutions to making healthier, safer, and more comfortable built environments on Earth and in space. In these studies, we focus on the intersection between microbiology and the built environment, by looking at the indoor dust microbiome in Earth- and space-based built environments like the International Space Station (ISS). We show that bacteriophages in common Earth-based building materials such as carpet and house dust can remain viable and infectious for up to several days making it a potential source of exposure. We also found the viral genetic material (RNA) remained stable for weeks t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Karen Dannemiller (Advisor); John Horack (Committee Member); Michael Bisesi (Committee Member); Natalie Hull (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Health; Environmental Science; Microbiology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, City and Regional Planning

Communities experience substantial changes in daily travel through rapidly evolving mobility systems. Although smart infrastructure and data-driven innovations have the potential to enhance citizens' lives, they may also contribute to deepening socio-economic divides and inequitable access to opportunities. To designate strategies that can contribute to improving the quality of life of our communities, urban planners and sustainability researchers need to revisit well-known planning tools related to sustainable development and mobility. Comprised of three essays, this dissertation delves into different dimensions of sustainable development with an emphasis on sustainability assessment methods, the adoption of emerging mobility technologies, and the effects of COVID-19 on travel behavior and health outcomes. The first essay conducts a critical review of sustainability assessment literature and presents an index of key indicators of sustainability. The second essay explores the factors affecting e-scooter use and pro-e-scooter attitudes using a campus transportation survey. The third essay analyzes the impacts of built environment characteristics on infection risk perception while traveling and subjective well-being during the pandemic. The results present policy implications that can help address contemporary sustainable development challenges, integrate rapidly evolving urban mobility technologies, and design pandemic resilient cities in the post-COVID era. This dissertation highlights the importance of developing novel sustainable planning practices, suggesting that urban planning should be more dynamic to reflect to the needs of our rapidly evolving cities.

Committee: Maria Manta Conroy (Committee Chair); Gulsah Akar (Advisor); Harvey J. Miller (Committee Member); Natasha Bowen (Committee Member) Subjects: Sustainability; Transportation Planning; Urban Planning

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

The places we live, study, and work have major impacts on our health. Except for some diseases that are caused by genetic defects, most of the diseases can be prevented by avoiding exposure to detrimental environments and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which is highly determined by the built environment in our neighborhood. Thus, measuring the built environment and identifying its health-related elements become important for public health policy and urban planning. Conventional measurement such as questionnaire surveys, however, is time-consuming and not cost-effective. With the state-of-art deep learning and computer vision technology, combined with imagery-based spatial data, we have new opportunities for examining neighborhood health and built environment effectively at a large scale. This dissertation develops and demonstrates the effectiveness of identifying built environment features using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN). The DCNN-extracted deep features of satellite images and street views show promising performance in modeling the prevalence of obesity at the census tract level. The important deep features that contribute to obesity modeling are identified from the heatmap in the images, including the pavement of roads, decent residential buildings, and amusement parks. The correlation analysis with conventional datasets also suggests that these DCNN-extracted deep features can capture the environment and socioeconomic factors such as PM2.5, employment, poverty, and income. In addition to the public health sector, the research also contributes to the communities of the general public, policymakers, and researchers, by providing a new effective way of analyzing the built environment.

Committee: Jay Lee (Advisor); Ye Zhao (Committee Member); Tim Assal (Committee Member); He Yin (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Health; Geographic Information Science; Geography; Health; Remote Sensing

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Environmental Science

We spend 90% of our time indoors where we are exposed to diverse microbial communities which can have profound effects on human health outcomes. Advances in DNA-based technologies offer greater ability to quantitatively measure indoor fungal communities and more accurately assess the influence of environmental conditions on fungal communities as well as the influence of fungal exposures on health. Trends are emerging in our understanding of pathways between built environments, indoor microbiomes, and ultimately human health, but much remains uncertain. Fungal diversity is consistently and inversely associated with development of asthma and allergic disease. Further, seasonal variation in asthma and allergy is well established. So too is the relationship between asthma development and sensitization to select allergenic fungi. However, the influence of fungal exposures—including diversity, total fungal concentration, and select fungal taxa—on measures of asthma morbidity is still not well understood. The influence of season and other indoor environmental conditions or occupant behaviors in shaping these measures of fungal exposure is also understudied. The goal of this work is to investigate novel associations between measures of childhood asthma morbidity and fungal exposures, and to examine the effect of comprehensive occupant behaviors and indoor environmental characteristics—including conditions mediated by season—on indoor fungal communities. Bedroom floor dust samples were collected from two cohorts: the New York City Neighborhood Asthma and Allergy Study (NAAS) and the Columbia Children's Center Environmental Health (CCCEH) birth cohort. DNA extracted from floor dust samples was analyzed using quantitative polymerase chain reaction and next-generation sequencing in order to obtain total fungal concentration, fungal diversity metrics, and concentration of individual fungal taxa. Fungal diversity was significantly and inversely associated with asthma symptom freq (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Karen Dannemiller PhD (Advisor); Jeffrey Bielicki PhD (Committee Member); Jiyoung Lee PhD (Committee Member); Virginia Rich PhD (Committee Member); Matthew Perzanowski PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Health; Microbiology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, City and Regional Planning

Socio-demographics may represent constraints that shape different travel outcomes of individuals. This leads to studies with not only different findings on travel behavior, but also mixed and inconclusive conclusions on the effects of built environment on individuals' travel outcomes. There are gaps in many existing studies on the relationship between socio-demographics, built environment, and travel behavior, which need to be filled. In addition, the existing literature has not paid much attention to the varying impacts of neighborhood-built environment on travel outcomes across different socio-demographic groups. Many signs from U.S. Census Bureau and Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that the socio-demographics of the U.S. society are undergoing a process of significant changes. It is uncertain how these changes may affect travel behavior in the short term and the long term. In the face of this uncertainty, a key challenge for transportation planners and policymakers is to understand how socio-demographics affect individuals' travel outcomes and out-of-home activities. These major trends that affect future travel patterns will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. This dissertation quantitatively examines the links between socio-demographic constraints, neighborhood-built environments, and travel behavior. This dissertation comprises three essays. The first essay explores gender differences in commute behavior with a focus on two-earner households. The second essay examines the links between walkability and transit use, focusing on the differences between disabled individuals and others. The third essay explores how neighborhood walkability affects older adults' walking trips, considering different household income levels. The first essay utilizes the detailed individual-level data from 2001, 2009, and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS). The NHTS datasets provide information on travel by U.S. residen (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gulsah Akar (Advisor); Zhenhua Chen (Advisor); Harvey J. Miller (Committee Member) Subjects: Transportation Planning; Urban Planning

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Americans are increasingly isolated and removed from nature by way of man-made technologies, including the built environment. This thesis proposes a camp for families to reconnect with and find solace within nature while providing space for new camp community. This thesis investigates the relationship between the grassy and wooded hills adjacent to Perfect North Slopes, a ski area in Lawrenceburg, Indiana and the manmade built environment of a camp. The investigation acknowledges the spectrum of how the built environment mediates the relationship of humans to the natural world. This spectrum exists at all scales and therein the proposed camp will address the site, building, and detail scale.

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Member); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Environment and Natural Resources

Research into restorative environments and health has provided evidence for physical and mental benefits received from natural settings, views of nature, and general biophilic aspects of the world (Frumkin et al., 2017). Questions remain, however, about the pathways and mechanisms of the nature-wellbeing chain, and whether these benefits are uniformly experienced across individual-level characteristics. The current research used a series of quasi-experimental studies to examine the degree to which differing levels of familiarity with green space influence change in psychological wellbeing and negative affect upon completing a series of two self-directed walks differing in level of naturalness. Participants (n=306) filled out pre- and post-test questionnaires on psychological wellbeing and negative affect, familiarity with natural spaces, sociodemographic and group identities, and changes the COVID-19 pandemic had on their recreation-based views and behavior. The study also established a framework to examine familiarity with nature through green place attachment. With the lens of this framework, disparities and discrepancies in benefits due to (dis)connection with natural spaces, recreation behavior, and social relationships around nature were further explored. The current work answered calls of previous nature and health agendas for categorization of variables and outcomes that will allow for synthesis across studies to build a deeper understanding of underlying processes and benefits from natural spaces on human health. Using a novel categorization technique to determine the naturalness of the unique walk routes chosen by participants while controlling for their individual deviations from norm naturalness perceptions—the current study explored individual-level manifestations of the equigenic effect, characterized by previous studies as low-income households experiencing a proportionally larger wellbeing increase with a steeper slope than advantaged peers' wellbeing (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alia Dietsch Ph.D. (Advisor); Kristi Lekies Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kerry Ard Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Health; Environmental Studies; Epidemiology; Psychological Tests; Psychology; Sociology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: History

The built environment is an open archive—a twenty-four-hour museum of the past. The tangible, experiential nature of the urban built environment—streets, valleys, buildings, and bridges—helps historians uncover stories not always accessible in textual sources. The richness of the built environment gives historians opportunities to: invigorate their practice with new tools to uncover the stories of the past, expand the historical record with new understandings, and reach a wider audience with histories that feel relevant and meaningful to a broad range of citizens. This dissertation offers a sampling of material, methods and motivations historians can use to analyze the built environment as a source for their important work. Each of the five chapters of this dissertation uses the built environment to tell a previously unknown piece of Cincinnati's urban history. The first chapter questions the inconvenient placement of the 1867 Roebling Suspension Bridge and uncovers the story of the ferry owner who recognized the bridge as a threat to his business. Chapter two explores privies, the outdoor toilets now missing from the built environment, and their use as sites for women to terminate pregnancies through abortion and infanticide. The third chapter uses patterns in the construction of public elementary school buildings to illustrate urban change though population growth, annexation, and political maneuvering. Chapter four uses The Delmoor, an apartment flat in Clifton, to explore the lives and work of two women whose achievements were enhanced by their choice to move into the Delmoor in 1919. Finally, chapter five explores the stories of three diverse religious congregations once embedded in the walls of the now-demolished Revelation Baptist Church. The dissertation closes with a brief discussion of the tools of public history and historic preservation which offer historians fruitful strategies for engagement outside the academy.

Committee: Tracy Teslow Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Tiya Miles Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Stradling Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeffrey Tilman Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, American Culture Studies

Roughly 62% of Americans identify as middle-class but do not meet the middle-class characteristics long depicted in the national imagination: homeownership, savings, disposable income, and a comfortable retirement. Forty percent say they cannot cover an unexpected bill of $400. Because relying on objective characteristics like median family income, profession, and homeownership often ignore the nuances of class consciousness, this project hypothesizes a correlation existing between class and the physical environment, specifically that of post-industrial and residential landscapes. This project seeks to answer, “how does the built environment influence class identity?” Using the neighborhood of Canaryville, Chicago as a case study, this project uses an interdisciplinary methodology, historical and visual analysis, ethnography, and landscape theory, to examine the landscape's influence on class identity. It determines that a new identifiable landscape, defined as an urban suburb, can exist. An urban suburb is a densely populated urban area that alters its landscape to masquerade as suburban for class and racial identity affirmation. Urban Suburb demonstrates the performativity of landscapes. By looking at stereotypical attributes of suburban landscapes, Urban Suburb argues the transposition of those stereotypes is not confined by geographical location. Furthermore, performing the stereotypical suburban landscape is a subtle way to demonstrate both class and racial identity. Identification of the urban suburb adds to the growing body of research of understanding how race is reflected in the built environment, the performative nature of suburban landscapes, and the influence the built environment has on class identity.

Committee: Timothy Messer-Kruse (Advisor); Carolyn Tompsett (Other); Benjamin Greene (Committee Member); Rebecca Kinney (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Architectural; Ethnic Studies; Geography; History

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning

Access to primary health care is associated with individual and community health. However, there is often an unequal distribution of health care providers, thus leading to over and under-serviced areas. Common metrics of geographic access to primary health care tend to overestimate access as they assume an equal distribution of providers and equal access between where people live and where the health-related services are located through either private vehicles or public transit. Through land use and transport planning decisions, planners shape the built environment and therefore the distribution of different entities. In the field of transport planning, the connection between the built environment, transportation availability, and access to various destinations, such as employment, has been well established. However, coverage remains limited in terms of primary health care. The goal of this research is to provide a relatively comprehensive analysis of potential geographic access to primary health care by considering multiple factors, including modes of transport, neighborhood typologies, and individual built environment variables. Specifically, access scores for car-dependent and bus-dependent populations are separately calculated and compared across distinct neighborhood typologies to see how they change and differ between suburban and urban typologies in Hamilton County, Ohio. Then the relationship between access scores and individual built environment factors is investigated at a local scale by considering spatial heterogeneity. This study employs a multi-dimensional approach that incorporates spatial statistical modeling and geographic mapping to capture the complex relationship between the built environment and the multimodal geographic access to primary health care. The findings from this study show that commonly used metrics do overestimate access and overlook the significant differences in access experienced by car-dependent and bus-dependent populat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Na Chen Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Farrah Jacquez Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning

Gentrification, first noticed in the largest cities of the United States in the 1960s, had diffused down the urban hierarchy by the 21st century. This new use of the urban landscape ushers in concerns over how revitalization of formerly disinvested areas of the cities and the consequent in-migration of higher-income populations has affected low-income populations. Cincinnati is one medium-sized city that has been affected by gentrification and the displacement of its low-income, largely African-American population. Using Hammel and Wyly's (1996) gentrification criteria, it was determined that 26 census tracts in the City of Cincinnati experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2016. Fifteen of those tracts experienced displacement of the African-American population during this time. Logistic regression revealed that a gentrifying tract was 4.6 times more likely to experience displacement than a non-gentrifying tract between 2000 and 2016 indicating a possible cause and effect relationship. By using triangulation of three data sources: U.S. census data, Google Streetview imagery, and interviews with members of Community Development Corporations in four gentrifying neighborhoods in Cincinnati, this thesis explored possible reasons why two of these census tracts experienced displacement of African-American population and two did not. Tracts 55 (Madisonville) and 74 (Northside) were recipients of major economic investments in their business districts by public and private corporations after 2009. It is argued that substantial economic investment in these two formerly disinvested neighborhoods caused substantial increases in median housing values and median rent and led to displacement of lower-income individuals, many of whom were African-American. Google Streetview imagery examined change in the built environment in these two tracts between 2007 and 2014/16 and confirmed that these changes corresponded with gentrification. Conversely, Tract 84 (College Hill) did not (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Leah Hollstein Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Auffrey Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

This dissertation is a study of the trajectory of thoughts (ideology) conveyed by the propaganda postcards, photographs, and sketches that were prepared by the Italian army for the specific purpose of inspiring the soldiers, and for garnering support from the population at large in the war efforts to avenge the defeat of the country in the battle of Adwa, Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia), in 1896. Although the ultimate goal for the creation of the images was the establishment of an Italian empire in the footsteps adopted by the major European powers (England, France, Belgium, and Portugal) that already had large imperial domains in the continent, the ambitions of the leaders who sponsored the thoughts contained in the images were multipronged. Photographed and sketched from 1935, the propaganda images were also intended to cheer the invasion that would reclaim the masculinity that was believed to be lost during the defeat in Adwa in 1896, to show that the Italian military can win battles against opposing armies, emphasize the contrasts between Italians and Ethiopians through an encompassing cultural civilizing mission, and to reinforce Fascist binding ideologies in the Italian homeland. The return of Italy to Ethiopia in 1935 was to revenge the 1896 defeat and reestablish its African empire. In the History of the continent, late nineteenth century was a crucial moment that was known as the “Scramble for Africa,” because it was another late stage in Europe's expansion of capitalism by means of conquering territories and administering them as colonies following the 1886 Berlin Conference when the great powers in Europe carved out spheres of influences for their countries. Italy's march into Africa in the early twentieth century was grounded in the historical glory of the earlier Roman Empire that covered all of the Mediterranean, and the ideas of the past were integrated into the twentieth-century adventure through military conquest, parades, technology, and buildi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Flavia Maria Cunha Bastos Ph.D. (Committee Member); William Williams M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State University, 2019, City and Regional Planning

The built environment has been known to effect perceptions of safety, and many tools and theories have been created to measure and address the characteristics of the built environment that effect these perceptions of safety the most. A new movement in city planning, Gender Mainstreaming, has emerged out of the need to create cities that are more inclusive to women and people of all genders. This study aims to analyze the gendered perceptions of safety around the Ohio State University's Columbus Campus through a safety audit and subsequent narrative and photo reflections. This multi-faceted study produced findings including significant differences in perceptions of safety between men and women, especially in unsafe areas, and differences in the ways that men and women interact and internalize characteristics of the built environment as they relate to their perceived safety. Further, the stress of constant surveillance and fear of their surroundings limits women's access to opportunities in their college carrier.

Committee: Jason Reece PhD (Advisor); Bernadette Hanlon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning; Womens Studies

Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2019, EECS - Electrical Engineering

This thesis discusses an integrated tripartite method of building performance evaluation, analysis, and improvement. This method is described and explained through the context of studies involving the Olin Building on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. The three methods of design analysis, data collection, and fieldwork are introduced, and performance is defined as an optimization of comfort, energy efficiency, and reliability. Relevant history of the building's construction and renovation are discussed, including insights developed by the author regarding the consequences of various design features and modifications. Olin's major renovation in 1996 is a major focus, and the current controls installed in the building are discussed in detail. Data collection and analytical methods used and devised by the author are reviewed, and effective fieldwork techniques are outlined. The author concludes by summarizing major themes, illustrating accomplishments in Olin, and enumerating future work that could be done.

Committee: Kenneth Loparo (Advisor); Frank Merat (Committee Member); Sunniva Collins (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Mechanical Engineering

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Arts and Sciences: Geography

This dissertation research aims to investigate the relationships between built environment in various spatial contextual units and health-related behaviors in the domains of physical activity and food retail neighborhood environment. It has three research aims. The first aim is to examine how land use characteristics in both residential neighborhoods and activity spaces affect vehicle travel distance for non-work trips. The second one focuses on assessing how food accessibility in different spatial contextual units impact individuals' grocery food shopping behaviors. The third one is to investigate how healthy food accessibility varies across different activity spaces and improve nuanced understanding of food accessibility in various spatial units. Previous research has employed residential neighborhoods as the spatial units to measure built environment features. As residential neighborhoods are incomplete representation of people's actual spatial exposure areas, measuring built environment features only at residential neighborhoods might mischaracterize the associations of built environment with health-related behaviors and subsequently mislead the direction of policy interventions. Some recent studies have emerged to construct activity spaces around daily activity locations as the spatial units. However, the evidence on how the effects of built environment features on health-related behaviors vary across residential neighborhoods and activity spaces remains scarce. Further, few studies have focused on the effects in both physical activity and food environment domains simultaneously. In bridging the gaps, this research improves nuanced understanding of the effects of built environment features in both residential neighborhoods and various activity spaces on health-related behaviors. This research primarily relied on the GPS-based Household Interview Survey for the Cincinnati Ohio Region. To test the differences in associations of built environment features on (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Changjoo Kim Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Diego Cuadros (Committee Member); Hongxing Liu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lin Liu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Rainer vom Hofe Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning

Today many communities are trying to find different solutions for mitigating the negative impacts of growth, impervious surfaces, and stormwater runoff on the environment. Sustainable stormwater management is a challenge for cities but there is also opportunity. The purpose of this research was to explore an environmentally positive scenario to how Autonomous Vehicles will impact communities. The research attempted to gain insight about Autonomous Vehicles and their impact on the built environment, trees, and stormwater. For this report three methods of research were used: background experience, four case studies, and a site selected scenario case study. With the idea that Autonomous Vehicle adoption is going to occur in the next 10-30 years this is going to change not only the way we travel but also create changes to the built environment. Autonomous Vehicles can have positive implications to communities by allowing new ways to incorporate trees as green infrastructure and to reduce impervious surface leading to stormwater problems. Autonomous Vehicle technology has the potential to create available spaces in our communities. The built environment changes would most affect street design width and surface parking lots. The study revealed new areas of analysis to be researched in terms of stormwater and Autonomous Vehicles. Green infrastructure implementation, particularly tree planting, can be used to mitigate stormwater runoff in cities due to changes to the built environment resulting from the adoption of Autonomous Vehicles.

Committee: David Edelman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Leah Hollstein Ph.D. (Committee Member); Travis Miller MCP (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Regional Development Planning

Protecting public health has been an underlying goal of planning since its origin, and planners play a crucial role in creating healthy, sustainable communities by advancing policies that encourage active living and healthy eating. One health issue that has consistently interested planners is obesity. In order to reduce obesity and make our communities healthy, it is necessary to know which factors influence obesity and how planners can have a positive impact on them. There are various social, physical, and behavioral factors (also known as determinants) that affect health. In addition to individual characteristics such as race, income, educational attainment, gender, and age, neighborhood characteristics such as access to healthy food, access to parks, built environment, perceived safety, and social support have also been found to influence health. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the association between such determinants of health and obesity in Hamilton County, Ohio. Since planners can have a significant impact on the physical environment of a neighborhood, another purpose of this research is to find out if changing the physical environment can change the behavior of people enough to influence health. This work improves on the previous studies as it employs sophisticated and innovative spatial and quantitative analysis to analyze interactions between obesity and its determinants. This study uses three main types of data – qualitative survey data, quantitative data, and spatial data created using Geographical Information System (GIS). After comparing various methodologies and based on the characteristics of the data, log-level regression analysis was used to analyze the weighted data. The raw data was weighted to make it more representative of the Hamilton County population. The results of this research provide an evidence base for directing future planning policy decisions and implementation strategies at local and regional levels. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Auffrey Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Olivier Parent Ph.D. (Committee Member); Xinhao Wang Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2017, Art History (Fine Arts)

This thesis studies Zhang Yuan (Zhang Family Garden), a public garden in semi-colonial Shanghai founded by Wuxi merchant Zhang Shuhe (1850-1919). Opened in 1885 and closed in 1919, Zhang Yuan, along with other Chinese public gardens, was one the most popular venues for the public to experience the newly imported Western-style practices and ideas in urban Shanghai. However, scholarship on the urban history of Shanghai overlooks this critical field and focuses instead on Western-style schools, companies, and print industry. I propose that commercialized entertainment gardens, such as Zhang Yuan, better illustrate the negotiation between the established and the imported which marked the permeation of changes in late 19th and early 20th century Shanghai. In addition, this thesis approaches Zhang Yuan as a fluidly constructed social space to reveal the interconnections between changes in various integrated social areas. I frame the garden within the geopolitical transformation of semi-colonial Shanghai, map its architectural design in relationship to the developing built environment, and understand it through the ever-changing leisure pursuits. As a garden evolving with the urban culture of the city, Zhang Yuan illustrates the disappearing boundary between participating in the newly imported entertainments and advocating for sociopolitical reform. Such an interchangeability between popular culture and political discourse underlined the fluidity of changes in late Qing and early Republican Shanghai.

Committee: Marion Lee (Advisor); Samuel Dodd (Committee Member); Joshua Hill (Committee Member); Brian Collins (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Asian Studies; History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, City and Regional Planning

Research on travel behavior continues to be one of the most prominent areas in the transportation area. Planners and policymakers try to understand and manage travel behavior. Making and implementation of travel demand management (TDM) policies greatly rely on the understanding of the determinants of activity-travel patterns and travel demand. Among the activity-travel patterns, trip chaining and joint travel have received much research interest. Trip chaining is typically viewed as a home-based tour that connects multiple out-of-home activities. Joint travel is commonly defined as traveling with others. Travel demand is generally measured by trip generation and travel distances. Investigating different aspects of travel behavior helps us better understand the links between activity participation and mobility, and improves the evaluation of the transportation infrastructure investments and policies such as high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction programs. Several studies have regarded trip chaining, joint travel, trip generation, and travel distances as different dimensions of travel behavior to be examined in terms of various socio-demographics and urban form factors. However, limited work has been done to use activity-travel patterns as mediating variables and analyze how trip chaining and joint travel shape the resulting travel demand. Furthermore, relationships between travel behavior and urban form factors at out-of-home activity locations remain unclear. Based on the 2012 travel survey data from the Cleveland Metropolitan Area, this study first investigates the relationships among trip chaining, joint travel, home-based tour generation, and travel distances at three different levels: tour, individual, and household levels. Second, the influences of socio-demographics and urban form factors at tour origins and destinations on travel behavior are examined simultaneously. Lastly, while using trip chaining and joint travel a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gulsah Akar (Advisor); Zhenhua Chen (Committee Member); Jean-Michel Guldmann (Committee Member) Subjects: Land Use Planning; Transportation; Transportation Planning