Visioning our community : using urban design to move from "don't want" to "want"

Communities often find difficulty in organizing against the siting of locally unwanted land uses. While residents find ease in expressing what they do not want, they often fail to express what they do want, causing their ultimate exclusion from land use decision. This thesis examines how communities can use urban design as a process and a product to move from reactive organizing to proactive organizing in order to build more complete and effective campaigns for land use and community visions. To detail how communities can use urban design for proactive organizing, this thesis outlines several case studies. The major case, the Mystic View planning and design effort, is outlined in detail. As comparison I used brief descriptions of five other cases where community organization used urban design for proactive organizing. Urban design as a process and a product has flaws as a community-organizing tool. This thesis points out these flaws and shortcomings and explores ways that community organization can better make use of urban design to impact land use decisions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• DeLisi, Daniel (Daniel Bryon), 1973-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John de Monchaux.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65720

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/65720