Insuring the City examines the development of the Prudential Center in Boston as a case study of the organizational, financial, and spatial forces that large insurance companies wielded in shaping the postwar American city. The Prudential Center was one of seven Regional Home Offices (RHOs)...

There is an implicit, and often explicit, policy view that cities need to provide increased public transit and access to that transportation for low-income and immigrant populations. In this perspective, only by providing increased access to public transit will society overcome the travel...

Very little is known about construction equipment activity on highway projects, which is of concern because nonroad diesel construction equipment is relatively unregulated and is a major contributor to NOX and diesel PM emissions. Estimates of equipment activity are important in order to...

Urban growth is taking new forms in recently urbanized or formerly suburban areas, characterized by low density, heavy dependence on automobile transportation, and multiple activity centers. In order to understand better such ’contemporary urban areas’, researchers need land-use...

A central tenet of urban economics is that households, businesses, and industries compete for urban sites that enjoy accessibility advantages – whether to jobs, labor markets, raw materials, or distributions centers. Transportation investments trigger economic growth by enhancing...

With soaring oil prices and growing concerns for global warming, there is increasing interest in the environmental performance of transportation systems. This dissertation contributes to this growing literature through three independent yet related projects essays that deal with transportation...

The main goal of this dissertation is to propose a new analytical framework and supporting optimization models that will encourage the aviation industry to incorporate alternative transportation modes when major airports in the system encounter temporary closures or severe capacity deficiencies....

One of the challenges facing intermodal integration is that the planning framework needed for it lacks appropriate measures of level of service that cut across the modes involved and the connections between them. In this study we develop a framework and a set of metrics of level of service in a...

New Urbanism seeks to exploit a relationship between urban form and travel behavior in order to develop communities which are simultaneously more egalitarian, more pleasant, and less costly to society as a whole. The focus of New Urbanist design practices is to create environments (both urban...

When a city requires on-site parking for all new housing, housing costs rise while the price of driving falls. This results in less housing and more driving. Minimum parking requirements are particularly troublesome for old, dense inner city neighborhoods. Many buildings constructed before World...