School planning and design implicitly enters the realm of urban development when public school districts make land-use decisions on where to locate, construct, operate, maintain, and close their facilities. Moreover, schools and their campuses can impact the physical environment, influence urban design and development patterns, affect the local…

This dissertation seeks to better understand how an urban policy, creative placemaking, is adopted within a localized context. Creative placemaking is an ascendant urban policy borne out of a global pressure to adapt to industry changes within the 21st Century knowledge-based economy (Florida, 2002; Howkins, 2001; Jackson, 2012; Nicodemus, 2013).…

This co-authored qualitative case study explores the problem of teachers connecting with their students especially at the middle school level. While research has established the need for teachers to better understand the background experiences of their students, more research is needed to explore the value of place-based professional development…

This co-authored qualitative case study explores the challenge of teachers connecting with their students at the middle school level, especially when White teachers serve predominantly African-American students in large urban metropolitan areas like St. Louis, Missouri. While research has established the need for teachers to better understand the…

Traditional teacher education programs focus on pedagogy and, to a lesser extent, assessments of knowledge (Siedlecki, 2012). Pedagogy and assessments should be fundamental components of any secondary teacher's curriculum planning (Knight, Shum, & Littleton, 2014). This study sought to consider the possible effects of three pedagogical…

Location-based social networks (LBSNs) have recently attracted the interest of millions of users who can now not only connect and interact with their friends--as it also happens in traditional online social networks--but can also voluntarily share their whereabouts in real time. A location database is the backbone of a location-based social…

Providing information to the public is a widely recognized function of planning. Yet little attention has been paid to how expert information is characterized for citizens participating in a planning process. The text, maps and images used to tell the story in a planning process can help to bridge the divide between experts and citizens, or act to…

The objective of this study is to assess the role of mobile technology to promote a communicative city in Indonesia. The focus is on mobile technologies as symbols of the latest information and communication technology (ICT). Communication influences the capacity building of the governmental planning employees to conduct better planning…

This research asks us to consider the intersection of three major themes in the pedagogy of teaching Planning students: sustainable community theories, transformational leadership and community engagement. The intersection, a critical Planning pedagogy, should be a part of any Planning program, embedded within the curriculum of higher education.…

This dissertation constitutes a multi-scale quantitative and qualitative investigation of patterns of urban development in metropolitan regions of the United States. This work has generated a comprehensive data set on spatial patterns of metropolitan development in the U.S. and an approach to the study of such patterns that can be used to further…

This dissertation uses a case-sensitive approach to examine an active travel intervention's diverse target population. It builds on a series of travel choice models, and draws key conceptual themes from Chapin's (1974) human activity model, which highlights opportunity-related and propensity-related factors associated with behaviors. The research…

To explore student mathematical self-efficacy and understanding of graphical data, this dissertation examines students solving real-world problems in their neighborhood, mediated by professional urban planning technologies. As states and schools are working on the alignment of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), traditional…

This study explores the impact of non-traditional rhetorical media such as art, architecture, coins, and city planning in order to examine how these media promoted dynastic rule and influenced practices of citizenship during Augustus' reign, the period between the Roman Republic and Empire (31 BCE-14CE). My findings challenge the long-standing…

While deliberating and making decisions, participants in urban development processes need easy access to the pertinent content scattered among different plans. A Planning Markup Language (PML) has been proposed to represent the underlying structure of plans in an XML-compliant way. However, PML currently covers only textual information and lacks…

This dissertation examines the role of the community college in building institutional capacity within the context of a community's local and regional economy and provides recommendations on the manner in which the role of the community college can be enhanced with respect to interaction with other urban and regional partners. It seeks to at least…