#skrabut

[tuftsuep]

Josh McLinden: UEP Thesis Award Winner, 2023

Building Power: Tenant Organizing, Community Land Trusts, and the Right to the City: A Study of Housing Justice in Boston

This thesis examines how residents facing eviction in a Boston neighborhood organized into a tenant association to not only win the right to stay in their homes but also move the property into permanently affordable community control. This thesis makes an excellent contribution to the field of housing justice. The qualitative methods used in the thesis (stakeholder interviews and participant observation) are well-suited to the research objectives and help demonstrate how housing justice can be achieved through an institutionalized Community Land Trust, an activist “right to the city” organization, and tenants associations. The writing is extremely engaging, weaving in the compelling stories and experiences of directly impacted residents. Josh shows how tenant organizing and affordable housing development can work together to challenge the neoliberal system of housing and create alternative models of community control and democratic participation. This thesis is a great example of a student combining their passion and experience with skillsets developed as part of their UEP degree program, offering valuable lessons for practical visionaries who are interested in housing justice and other avenues of affecting change. 

Abstract

In the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, a group of residents facing eviction from 6 Humphreys Place organized into a tenant association with the support of local organizers and successfully fought back against their neglectful landlord. They won not only the right to stay in their home but also forced the sale of the property to a nonprofit that moved it off the market and into permanently affordable community control. This thesis examines the organizations and individuals involved in this struggle, painting a case study of 6 Humphreys Place but also crafting a broader view of the housing justice movement in Boston through interviews and observations of the staff and resident leaders of City Life/Vida Urbana, the Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust, and the 6 Humphreys tenant association. I find that both tenant organizing and affordable housing development are key in pursuing housing justice through a model of development without displacement.

[tuftsuep]

Meghan Tenhoff: UEP Thesis Award Winner, 2021

A Gendered Analysis of Climate Action Plans in Boston and Seattle 

More details to come on the UEP Practical Visionaries Blog

Abstract

This thesis discusses how Climate Action Plans contribute to inequalities. I examine Seattle's and Boston's Climate Action Plans through a feminist lens to gain an alternative perspective to mainstream climate policy. The research helps resolve what Michael et al. (2020, 800) describe as a "glaring gap in research on understanding the relationship between mitigation and gender justice." 

Drawing on feminist and political ecology literature, a discursive analysis of Climate Action Plans and peripheral documents, and interviews with people involved in producing Climate Action Plans, this thesis shows the following: first, the jurisdictional boundaries of the city limit the current climate action plans' effectiveness; second, the cities' goal of carbon neutrality relies on green growth and innovation that does not address the root causes of climate change; third, a critical mass of women does provide alternative climate action solutions; and lastly, the community engagement process seems to be more about education on proposed policies rather generating new climate action strategies. This thesis concludes with recommendations for how policy makers might more effectively integrate gender equity into future Climate Action Plans.

[tuftsuep]

Rachel Dowley: UEP Thesis Award Winner, 2020

Illuminations of Safety: Urban Design, Safety, and Conviviality in Danehy Park

This thesis combines rigorous ethnographic methods (e.g. semi-structured interviews, participant-observation, spatial observation, and companion species ethnography), with GIS analysis, and careful discussion of literatures on environmental remediation, security aesthetics, and sensory ethnography in a way that allows the author to make specific, grounded recommendations about how designing for conviviality can promote safety, equity, and community cohesion. This thesis exemplifies the “practical visionary” ethic of UEP, as the author does the hard, careful work to understand a local space and provides thoughtful recommendations for how to make the space work better and how these insights might be applicable to public space elsewhere. New thesis writers should look to this piece as a model for how to: (1) use qualitative methods, (2) study green space, (3) fluidly integrate academic literature into research, and (4) derive compelling policy recommendations from research.  

Abstract

Safety and social cohesion are interdependent components in park design. Safety increases visitation, but it also runs the risk of restricting activities at the cost of cultural diversity. How can social cohesion help shape safety design decisions? 

This thesis uses ethnographic methods to research the intricacies between social cohesion and safety in Danehy Park. First, it explores Danehy’s landfill remediation, demonstrating the ways that its aesthetic design has erased the neighborhood’s history. Second, it discusses how Danehy has been influenced by spatial safety models such as Defensible Space and Broken Windows Theory, hindering users’ right to the city. Lastly, it draws on insights from a multi-species ethnography of the senses to scrutinize how park users perceive safety, highlighting how users determine safety relationally, based upon their ties to those around them. This thesis argues for the importance of planning for social cohesion, not as a mere outcome of safety but as a way to generate it.