Browsing by Subject "Cities"
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Item Cairo ecologies : water in social and material cycles(2014-05) Farmer, Tessa Rose; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation investigates the ways in which the natural and the social overlap in the symbolic center of human activity, cities. Cities are full of living organisms, existing not in a perfect state of equilibrium but rather in states of constant flux. The cycles of life moving through the city of Cairo, Egypt are dependent on water as a vital component and scarce resource in systems of biological exchange, as well as one among many pieces of infrastructure that the city requires to survive. This dissertation looks at the informal systems that residents of a squatter settlement in Cairo, Egypt called Ezbet Khairallah have created to make life possible, as well as their attempts to get the state to formally provide these services; work that is done at collective scales and in everyday practices. The dissertation also looks at what happens when areas such as Ezba are successful in getting the state to recognize them and institutionalize utility services, what the hidden costs and unintended consequences are of becoming formal end users of state systems. The dissertation provides an overview of the forces at work in shaping Cairo, highlighting the rural to urban migration patterns and shifting urban policy over the course of the 20th century that have funneled so many into informal housing settlements. In addition, the dissertation highlights the particular material history of Ezbet Khairallah, and how that has shaped the social and material circumstances of residents. It examines the material and affective implications of being unable to escape waste, of bodies that bear signs of systems that both make life possible and make life difficult. By studying the institutional framework in which these questions get worked out in Egypt, we can better situate the struggles of those living in the urban margins of the global south, such as those in Ezbet Khairallah.Item Microsimulation of household and firm behaviors : coupled models of land use and travel demand in Austin, Texas(2007-12) Kumar, Saurabh, 1983-; Kockelman, KaraHouseholds and firms are key drivers of urban growth, yet models for forecasting travel demand often ignore their dynamic evolution and several key decision processes. An understanding of household and firm behavior over time is critical in anticipating urban futures and addressing transportation, land use and other concerns. Birth and death, migration and location choice are defining events in a household's and firm's life cycle, and a study of household and firm evolution requires the estimation and application of models for each of these. Such an exercise is hindered primarily by a lack of quality micro-data. This thesis develops a basic framework for modeling household and firm demographics using microsimulation. Year 2005 zonal household population and employment point data for the Austin, Texas region, coupled with various, more aggregate data sets, are used to simulate household and firm evolution over time and space. The model consists of household evolution, firm evolution, location choice and travel demand models. Household and firm simulation models are run at one-year time steps, in order to forecast Austin's future. The household simulation component is made up of models for birth (of children and of households), death of individuals (and other forms of household dissolution), migration, children leaving home, vehicle ownership, and location choice. These models are estimated using multinomial logit and Poisson specifications. The firm simulation component consists of firm birth, death, growth and location choice models. A Markovian process is assumed in order to anticipate firm growth and contraction (across firm-size categories), along with logit and Poisson model specifications for firm location choice. Firms are categorized based on number of jobs (6 categories) and industry sector (4 sectors) they belong to. Austin's household and commercial vehicle travel survey data were used to estimate trip generation and distribution models. Simulation results for multiple growth-rate scenarios suggest a roughly 180% increase in the Austin population over a 30-year period, 210% increase in vehicle ownership, a 230% increase in jobs, and more than a 300% increase in vehicle-miles traveled. When a 10-cent/mile flat-rate toll is applied over all links, the year 2035 VMT is predicted to be just 3% less than under the no-toll scenario. A fixed toll of 10-cents-per-mile shows a very low impact on VMT over a 30 year period than expected. To ensure a jobs-worker balance, the model may well merit greater synchronization of the population and firm synthesis models. The simulations also suggest a clear shift of firms and households towards more central zones, in part because of the cross-sectional nature of the data sets used to calibrate the location choice models and the lack of density restrictions or other reflections of land-availability constraints on new development. Essentially, households and firms exhibit a strong centralizing tendency, that Austin's land market simply cannot allow, due to space and other constraints on new building. Explicit expressions of such constraints should prove helpful in future implementations of this work. While microsimulation of urban systems is data and computing intensive, it provides a flexible tool for analyzing the impacts of various policy decisions as well as other, demographic, environmental and system changes. It allows transportation planners explore the potential responses of individuals to changes in their environments and predict the long-term implications of policy decisions. This thesis seeks to be a bridge for further integrated travel demand and land use models of this type.Item Remaking urban worlds : New Delhi in the time of economic liberalization(2011-05) Mehra, Diya; Visweswaran, KamalaThis dissertation examines the impact of neoliberal economic reform on New Delhi's urban landscape. It shows how the city has transformed since 1991 through two distinct, but interlinked processes: firstly massive 'upgradation' and place-marketing efforts, initiated and supported by the state, to create for the city a global identity worthy of the capital of a newly resurgent and aspirational nation, one that is also welcoming to new capital flows and forms as Delhi undergoes massive spatial, and economic expansion. Secondly, neoliberal urban development is also marked by a series of mass evictions of the city's existing informal, indigenous economy as degraded urban forms. In tracking the unfolding 'worlding' of the city, the dissertation is interested in the production of locality at the scale of the city, the ways by different sites, networks and neighborhoods articulate with the process, and how locality is produced through a series of inclusions and exclusions. In the first half of the dissertation, the focus is the conjectural emergence of conditions of transformation, mainly through the articulation of state urban renewal policies which promote privatized urban development, judicial eviction orders and media circulated calls for the building of a new 'upgraded' city to replace the old. This, as a new 'globalized' and aestheticized imaginary of the nation, city and its citizens takes shape. In the second half, the dissertation examines shows how upgradation and mass eviction have played out in Delhi neighborhoods, juxtaposing the experience of middle class areas, who's activism has been vital in putting forth a new vision of the city, with two cases of displacement. These are the demolition of the city's slums, and secondly the sealing or closure of large networks of indigenous/informal traders. In all three cases, the dissertation outlines ethnographically how residents receive, perceive and negotiate changes in relation to their memories, habitus, and local knowledges of the old, and how they engage with state and political actors, judicial fiat, party politics and the structures of the city's mass democracy to encourage or oppose urban reforms. In its conclusion, it argues that upgradation and eviction notwithstanding, activism across classes has engendered a common critique of governance among residents.