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Scripting spaces : designing between cultures of control and commons
Get PDFIn most American cities, public space is designed not to invite, but to instruct. Streetscapes serve movement, not gathering. Behavior is codified - walk here, wait there, don’t linger. What results is an efficient, safe, clean, but socially sterile urban realm that inhibits citizens from defining place and engaging in the spontaneous social life of public places. Acts of informal use - joy, commerce, play, survival, resistance - are seen as transgressions rather than expressions of belonging and hence discouraged by design.
In contrast, the streetscapes of many developing countries like those found in India encourage and support a different occupation of public space. Here, public space is redefined daily by citizens: street vendors, children, performers, passersby. These are vital zones of urban life that reflect agency, adaptability, and shared ownership. Activities are shaped by informal economies and negotiation of territories, facilitated by fluid social boundaries - what urban theorists Franck and Stevens call “loose spaces.” These spaces are not formally designed for interaction, yet they encourage it, they are imperfect, but profoundly human.
Recognizing that cities like Bangalore frame a public place that is lived in, shaped and shared by inhabitants, I ask - What can American cities and planners learn from cities in the developing world that prompt social engagement and offer more agency to their inhabitants to expect and indeed demand spaces that prompt informal use? And how can design intervene to make urban residents in the U.S. desire and advocate for these possibilities of liveliness, agency, and ownership in their own urban futures?
“Scripting Spaces” is a cross-cultural design investigation that compares the function of similar public spaces in Bangalore and Austin. A behavioral analysis, layered ethnographic and visual documentation of Church Street in Bangalore and South Congress Avenue in Austin, articulates the constraints of rigid urban planning in the U.S. and highlights the organic, flexible nature of public spaces in developing countries. This analysis informed parameters for a series of spatial experiments designed to test how designers might engage with publics, how to create new patterns of behavior in public space and test the potential of design experiments and even public art interventions to create "looser" spaces in American cities. These experiments reoriented itineraries and facilitated conversations and became a method of inquiry that uses design as a tool for observing, activating public spaces and imagining public life differently. It positions looseness as essential: a component of resilient, inclusive urbanism, rather than disorder and lack of development. Ultimately, the objective is not to romanticize informality or reject structure, but to propose a shift in both perception and practice - toward an urbanism that is lived in, shaped by, and shared.Desig
A comprehensive assessment of discretionary surface transportation programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Get PDFThe Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed into law in 2021, significantly expanded the role of discretionary grant programs in U.S. transportation policy. Unlike formula-based funding, many of the newly created programs require applicants to prepare competitive, resource-intensive proposals, raising questions about equity and accessibility. This thesis compiles a unified dataset of over 1,000 awards and 4,000 applications across ten new IIJA surface transportation programs to assess which states were best served by funding and what characteristics correlated with success. Each application was matched to demographic, infrastructure, and political variables to evaluate patterns in funding outcomes. The analysis finds that factors such as population, poverty rate, and lane miles are correlated with higher success rates, while political factors showed no consistent effect. A case study based on original survey data from the RURAL grant program further quantifies the time, cost, and capacity challenges applicants face. Together, these findings offer a data-driven foundation for evaluating how equitably federal transportation dollars are distributed under discretionary funding mechanisms.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin
NEST - Posters and Presentations
No full textThe Nutrition and Exercise Start Today (NEST) study is the efficacy pilot study that informed the randomized control trial study, Health4Kids. The purpose of the NEST study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive family-based intervention to reduce childhood obesity and overweight, targeting Latino families living in rural New Braunfels, Texas. Participants were randomized into one of two groups; standard care or prevention plus. Prevention plus is an educational intervention from the American Academy of Pediatrics which includes a healthy lifestyle prescription, one health education session, follow-up counseling calls, and bilingual newsletters. Outcomes included weight maintenance, fasting insulin and serum glucose levels, and markers of cardiovascular risk like lipid profile. The study aims to determine what individual, clinical, and program factors predict weight maintenance among children with obesity.This record contains all of the abstracts and presentations regarding the NEST study for various conferences. Includes posters for American Public Health Association, Practice-Based Research Network, and other conferences where NEST methodology or preliminary results were presentedCenters for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesLiberal Art
NEST - Manual of Procedures
No full textThe Nutrition and Exercise Start Today (NEST) study is the efficacy pilot study that informed the randomized control trial study, Health4Kids. The purpose of the NEST study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive family-based intervention to reduce childhood obesity and overweight, targeting Latino families living in rural New Braunfels, Texas. Participants were randomized into one of two groups; standard care or prevention plus. Prevention plus is an educational intervention from the American Academy of Pediatrics which includes a healthy lifestyle prescription, one health education session, follow-up counseling calls, and bilingual newsletters. Outcomes included weight maintenance, fasting insulin and serum glucose levels, and markers of cardiovascular risk like lipid profile. The study aims to determine what individual, clinical, and program factors predict weight maintenance among children with obesity.This record includes all of the standard protocols for managing and running the NEST study, including, but not limited to, policies for participant eligibility, randomization, management of data and expectations of various roles in the study.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesLiberal Art
Essays on screening and loan allocation in small business lending
Get PDFTo support credit-constrained small businesses, governments widely use loan guarantee programs that insure lenders against default risk. However, these programs face challenges in allocating appropriate loan sizes due to limited information about small businesses. This dissertation explores the welfare implications of using a loan guarantee menu as a screening mechanism to address such challenges.
The first chapter introduces the institutional background and establishes a conceptual framework explaining how offering borrowers a menu of guarantee contracts, combined with varying intensities of soft information collection (such as interviews and site visits), can effectively differentiate borrower risk profiles. This setup encourages borrowers to self-select into contracts that reveal their private information, enabling more informed loan-size decisions by guarantee agencies.
The second chapter empirically quantifies the effectiveness of these screening mechanisms using detailed administrative loan-level data from South Korean loan guarantee program. I develop and estimate a two-stage structural model in which borrowers first select a guarantee contract from a menu, and then the agency determines loan sizes based on the contract choice and the soft information collected—the extent of which depends on the borrower's contract choice. Using the estimated model, the study evaluates how these screening mechanisms impact both the economic output of small businesses and the financial losses incurred by the government, as captured by the agency's objective function—a combination of these two outcomes. I find that a loan guarantee menu is effective on its own, increasing the value of the agency's objective function by 3.9%. When combined with soft information collection, its impact is significantly enhanced, leading to an 8.7% increase. This complementarity arises because efforts to collect soft information encourage borrowers with varying risk profiles to self-select into appropriate contracts, thereby leading to more efficient loan allocations.
The third chapter empirically tests a key assumption underlying the structural model: that repayment rates serve as exogenous indicators of borrower type and are unaffected by loan sizes themselves. Utilizing a regression discontinuity (RD) design of loan size at credit-grade thresholds, I find that while borrowers just above these thresholds receive substantially larger loans, these increases do not significantly affect repayment rates. This supports the interpretation that the observed correlation between loan size and repayment performance is primarily driven by agency screening rather than loan-size effects.
Overall, this dissertation provides comprehensive evidence that integrating contract menus with targeted soft information collection substantially improves loan allocation efficiency in government guarantee programs. While the empirical findings of this paper are directly applicable to loan guarantee programs, the use of a menu of contracts alongside soft information collection can be applied in broader financial markets, such as consumer finance and commercial banking, providing insights on how to screen borrowers more effectively.Economic
Race And Provider Confidence: A Mixed-Methods Examination Of Medical Mistrust
Get PDFMedical mistrust plays a large role in the maintenance of health disparities as a barrier to seeking medical care and treatment compliance. Systemic exploitation from the slavery-era to the 21st century in the name of medical advancement has solidified associations of distrust and fear with healthcare among Black, Hispanic, and multiracial populations in the United States. Current literature describes disparities in medical mistrust seen among non-Hispanic White, African American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander populations in the United States. However, diverging findings are seen in studies examining this disparity when considering the intersecting social factors that may play a role.Health and Societ
Who leads the agenda? : intermedia agenda-setting on the discharge of Fukushima treated radioactive water
Get PDFFollowing the Japanese government’s announcement on the release of the Fukushima Treated Radioactive Water (FTRW), public and news organizations extensively discussed concerns over the FTRW issue. Drawing upon intermedia agenda-setting theory, this thesis examined how global news organizations reported the FTRW issue and how the pronounced agenda attributes on the FTRW issue changed over time, depending on regions and countries. A topic modeling and comparative time series analysis were performed for news stories on the FTRW issue (N = 2565) from 6 countries, with a focus on salient agenda attributes. The results of the Granger Causality test indicated that news media in non-Western nations with geographical proximity to events related to the FTRW issue exhibited unidirectional agenda-setting effects on those in non-neighboring Western nations. Furthermore, Japanese news media led the U.S. news media for most agenda attributes unidirectionally. However, the unidirectional news flow disappeared for the salience of fear-focused news stories on environmental and safety concerns. On the other hand, Chinese news media did not hold agenda-setting effects on the U.S. news media for general agenda attributes. Nevertheless, the anger-focused news stories on the environmental and safety concerns associated with the FTRW issue unidirectionally flowed from China to the U.S. These findings highlighted the significant role of issue-specific characteristics that potentially shape the dynamic agenda-setting capabilities between countries on the FTRW issue.Advertisin
Escenografía viva
No full textEscenografía Viva is the creation of scenography through the interplay of light, scenic elements, costumes, projections, bodies, and movement. This MFA thesis examines four original iterations developed using Escenografía Viva as the central framework for creation. Combining reflective practitioner and design research methodologies, the study investigates how scenography can emerge from the actions and movements of bodies in space. Through discourse analysis and cross-case study comparisons, the thesis identifies key design principles, strategies, and modes of communication that support this approach. The outcome is a practical framework aimed at guiding other creators interested in using Escenografía Viva to develop scenography that is alive, responsive, and body-centered.Theatre and Danc
Urban planning and generational shifts : exploring the evolution of city form and citizens’ memory in Wenzhou, China
Get PDFThis paper explores the evolution of urban form, memory, and identity in Wenzhou, China, a city deeply shaped by its geography, mercantile legacy, and rapid modernization. Drawing on historical analysis and interviews across three generations, the research investigates how urban planning, economic development, and historic preservation strategies have reshaped the city's landscape and the everyday experiences of its citizens. From a water-based trading hub to a high-density, road-oriented city, Wenzhou’s transformation has triggered a memory gap between generations, raising critical questions about cultural continuity and the role of preservation in contemporary urbanism. Through qualitative fieldwork and personal narrative, the study reveals tensions between economic progress and cultural loss, highlighting both the successes and shortcomings of preservation efforts. It argues for future planning strategies that are more context-sensitive, intergenerational, and community-oriented, aiming to balance growth with the meaningful retention and reinterpretation of local identity.Community and Regional PlanningArchitectur
The tiger and the spigot consider the stars
Get PDFThe Tiger and the Spigot Consider the Stars maps a constellation of ideas, material practices, and experiences that inform a queer, performative approach to art-making. This report weaves personal narrative with theoretical inquiry, tracing the ways queerness, cartoons, materiality, and play converge in my creative work. It unfolds in four sections: an introduction that positions queerness as a spatial and temporal deviation from normative paths; a chapter on The Cartoon Body, examining the cartoon language and logic that guide my visual world; a chapter on The Anthropology of Things, which delves into my tactile, object-oriented sculptural sensibilities; and a final chapter, The Social Contract of Play, reflecting on how these concepts coalesce in collaborative and improvisational performance practice. This report orbits The Tiger and the Spigot consider the Stars, a performance and installation that enacts and embodies an imaginative, playful, and pathetic approach to queer world-making.Studio Ar