Differences in class and race have been shown to have a complex yet substantial effect on the integration of low-income minorities who move into majority White middle-class communities through affordable housing programs. Previous research has identified and outlined key variables and outcomes in the integration process, focusing on the nature and quality of network ties and performance indicators such as educational and occupational outcomes. However, the sociological literature fails to provide an understanding of the mechanisms by which the context of the social structure of suburban communities can affect the measured outcomes. The impressions, traits, and influence of social actors are conceptualized too statically. (More)

Though they represent a small proportion of the total immigrant population in the United States, refugees play a significant role in many cities and towns that have recently received substantial numbers of refugees but have little experience with immigrants. Despite their access to temporary resettlement services funded by the federal government, refugees experience constant and intense needs that are rarely fulfilled by formal assistance alone. Since most refugees lack strong social networks, they typically rebuild their social networks and use them for informal support after they arrive in the United States. Because refugees are such extreme cases, I argue that focusing on their experiences offers important insights into how individuals create and use social capital, and what effect it has on various outcomes in their lives. (More)

The results of this research will enable conclusions about the most effective strategies through which institutions of higher education can: 1) be a more comprehensive resource for the community, 2) provide community access to university resources, 3) improve relations between universities and their communities and address pre-existing conflicts and cultural barriers, and 4) improve the capacity of the community and contribute to urban revitalization. The research will also build upon the larger question of which institution provides the most effective structure to influence successful revitalization. (More)

This dissertation will investigate how the process of neighborhood change, taken here as gentrification, is associated with changes in housing and neighborhood context(that is, the habitat), and individual and community health and wellness outcomes. The overall goal of the proposed research is to better understand the relationship between gentrification and health, in particular by examining plausible health-related mechanisms of the habitat (that is, housing and neighborhood context). (More)

The dissertation synthesizes recent developments in urban research and seeks the new methods and ways to examine the issues of sprawl, metropolitan governance, and economic development. A number of quantitative methods will be employed in both operationalizing the variables and analyzing the relationships between them. (More)

This article describes the experience of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI), a single revitalization program that has aimed to jump-start languishing downtown Los Angeles neighborhoods since 1994. This experience will be discussed against the backdrop of two putative public policy tensions: people versus place prosperity and needs versus assets. (More)

This research project proposes to fill a significant gap in knowledge by describing salient characteristics of the institutional population of LHAs, investigating characteristics contributing to institutional survival and policy success, and drawing normative lessons from LHAs, for LHAs, for other special districts, and for public administration practitioners and scholars. (More)

The resolution of the U.S. retail finance crisis in the post-1989 period altered the landscape of central city mortgage markets by spurring the growth of new financial actors while these developments are widely hailed as making mortgage markets more stable and efficient, there is now consensus on whether these changes have increased opportunities for "historically underserved markets" - low-income and minority households and the neighborhood where they are concentrated. (More)

This research tests the relationship between each of four smart growth principles and the supply of affordable housing for low-income households. The four principles are higher residential density, a variety of housing options, mixed land use, and the preservation of open space. The relationships are tested at the neighborhood level in two different types of metropolitan regions, those with an urban containment policy to combat sprawl and those without. Four regions were chosen to represent two pairs. Each pair consisted of two regions which had similar urban containment policies at one point in time and different policies at a second point. By comparing regression analyses from these two points in time, the research design can detect the influence of urban containment on the relationships among the specific smart growth principles and the supply of affordable units. (More)