Jane Rongerude

Civic networks for sustainable regions – Innovative practices and emergent theory

This article presents an alternative way of thinking about how regional sustainability might be accomplished. It starts from the premise that metropolitan regions can be understood as self-organizing complex systems if they have certain characteristics. When observed through this framework, sustainability shifts from being an end state to being a continuing process of adaptation that maintains the system or even improves its performance through learning and innovation. This article explores these ideas by investigating four Collaborative Regional Initiatives (CRIs), voluntary networks of civic leaders in California. We compare them across six themes: fit to region, theory of change, role of research, leadership, network structure, and activity. We use these elements as a conceptual framework to tell each CRIs unique and interesting story, while at the same time comparing them along common dimensions. Drawing on complexity science, we use the stories of these CRIs to develop theory about how such networks can be designed and operated to play useful roles in advancing the sustainability of a region.

Telling a Story that Must Be Heard: Participatory Indicators as Tools for Community Empowerment

This article argues that community planners can better engage residents of marginalized communities by using indicators as tools for community empowerment. Using case studies from Oakland, California, and Lane County, Oregon, we demonstrate how participatory processes to develop formative indicators can legitimize local stories as valid sources of knowledge, facilitate community problem-solving, and translate community concerns into pathways for change. We conclude that these practices have the potential to facilitate more meaningful engagement with residents of marginalized communities and promote community empowerment.

Social vulnerability and participation in disaster recovery decisions: public housing in Galveston after Hurricane Ike

In September 2008, Hurricane Ike caused massive damages to Galveston Island’s residential structures including four public housing developments. These developments were located in neighborhoods with some of the lowest incomes and highest percentages of people of color on the Island. Four months later, the Galveston Housing Authority (GHA) decided to demolish all four developments consisting of 569 housing units due to the damages to the buildings. Today, despite federal regulations requiring reconstruction, court orders mandating replacement of the demolished units, and available funding, only 142 low-income apartments have been rebuilt. We used the social vulnerability framework to understand these outcomes through the ability of groups to shape post-disaster recovery decisions. This paper argues that one of the overlooked characteristics of social vulnerability is a diminished ability to participate in post-disaster decision-making. We found that social vulnerability limited participation through three distinct mechanisms: the physical displacement of public housing residents, the stigmatization of public housing, and the reduction of residents to housing units in the debates. There were few local advocates arguing for the preservation of public housing units and even fewer remaining residents to speak up for themselves in the face of strong local resistance to the reconstruction of public housing units or the return of public housing residents. The void of a strong and authentic local pro-public housing perspective in Galveston provided an opening for various local campaigns to claim that their desired plan benefited the poor. The disaster recovery became an opportunity to remove or reduce public housing units and therefore public housing residents. Our findings show the dynamic features of vulnerability. While static factors of vulnerability can limit access to resources for recovery, dynamic processes of social marginalization and exclusion limit the voices of socially vulnerable groups in recovery decisions and exacerbate marginalization.

Cores and Peripheries: Spatial Analysis of Housing Choice Voucher Distribution in the San Francisco Bay Area Region, 2000--2010

Abstract This study uses spatial regressions and spatial statistics to examine the changes in the distribution of Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) households within an expanded San Francisco Bay Area region. From 2000 to 2010, the density of HCV households grew disproportionately across the region, and areas of significant increase emerged in both the region’s urban cores and its rural periphery. Furthermore, the destination communities shared a set of common characteristics. In 2010 HCV households were more likely to locate in areas with lower housing prices, lower percentages of educated people, higher rates of poverty, and higher percentages of African American households when compared with the region as a whole. These findings suggest that voucher holders locate where housing is affordable. We conclude that in regions with tight housing markets, supply matters. This study also introduces housing researchers and policy makers to a methodological approach that addresses what is known in geostatistics as a change of support problem.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Team-Based Learning Outcomes in a Human Factors Course

This paper will describe a synopsis of the development and application of a survey instrument to assess team skills and professional development outcomes of Team-Based Learning (TBL) in a human factors course. TBL is an advancing teaching pedagogy that shifts instruction from a traditional lecture-based teaching paradigm to a structured learning sequence that includes individual student preparation outside of class followed by active, in-class problem solving exercises completed by student learning teams. As an evolving teaching method, TBL appears to be producing new empirical learning outcomes in areas that have only preliminarily been explored. Traditionally, the effectiveness of TBL has been assessed through grades and numeric measures of performance; however, TBL was designed to both enhance learning as well as team collaboration and critical thinking skills. Thus there a need for a validated measurement instrument emerged to assess the development of team skills in TBL classes. The newly developed survey instrument is designed to assess three overarching factors within the TBL framework: 1) attitudes and beliefs about learning; 2) motivation to learn; and 3) professional development. A pilot survey was created and administered in the summer of 2013 to 25 undergraduate students at a large Mid-Western university and was tested for internal consistency. To further improve the quality of the survey, two focus groups were also conducted. In the fall of 2013 the revised survey was administered to 182 undergraduate students and in the spring of 2014 to 197 undergraduate students. Based on encouraging results, the survey was used to assess the learning outcome gains in a graduate level human factors course. Preliminary results for this sample showed modest gains in critical thinking and external motivation. The survey has the potential to provide instructors a mechanism to measure student learning gains in TBL educational settings.

Hiding in the Shadow of Wagner-Steagall

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Researchers have explored public housing in large U.S. cities in great detail, including its history, design, effect on neighborhoods, role in urban renewal, the livelihoods of residents, and the consequences of mismanagement, demolition, and rebuilding. Based on these studies, scholars have largely concluded that public housing failed to achieve its goals. Yet, a parallel history of public housing construction and preservation in small towns and rural areas, a history that might challenge the dominant narrative of failure, remains unexplored. This article reviews the existing rural public housing literature, identifies important gaps, and explores its legacy. We find that while federal public housing policy in small towns and rural areas played an important role in the supply of affordable housing in these communities, little research has documented its impact. Rural public housing offers an alternative narrative less marked by problems and failures and more by solutions and successes, an idea that deserves much more attention from housing researchers in the future. Takeaway for practice: In the coming years, planners working in rural places will face numerous questions about not only how to house low-income households, but also how to preserve existing housing units in safe and sanitary conditions so that they remain viable. We identify a set of questions and issues pertaining to housing conditions in rural areas that, if answered, could offer planners valuable new insight into future federal housing policy more sensitive to community needs.