Lynn Mandarano

The built environment influences our use and experience of place, as well as emotions and well-being. It is important to understand how people associate emotions with urban places, or create “subjective” urban experiences in order to regenerate neighborhoods that are sensitive to our mental and emotional health and well-being. In this study, we analyzed photovoice-generated photos (n = 265), focus group and interview transcripts, and emotional maps as part of a brownfield revitalization planning effort in a post-industrial transitional neighborhood of Philadelphia, USA. We coded 13 themes to represent places, spaces, or topics and documented eight primary emotions associated with the photos. Joy was the most mentioned emotion, although the total number of negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, and disgust) far exceeded positive ones. Emotional maps revealed positive and negative hotspots and displayed how a single location or topic could trigger multiple contrasting or complementary emotions. A major contribution of this study is its methodological novelty of creating emotional maps with data collected from photovoice, interviews, and focus groups. Another contribution is an innovative community engagement approach involving underrepresented stakeholders in the process of planning for the revitalization of a transitional neighborhood facing pressure from development and gentrification.

Municipalities across the United States are prioritizing green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) projects due to their potential to concurrently optimize the social, economic, and environmental benefits of the “triple bottom line”. While placement of these features is often based on biophysical variables regarding the natural and built environments, highly urbanized areas often exhibit either limited data or minimal variability in these characteristics. Using a case study of Philadelphia and building on previous work to prioritize GSI features in disadvantaged communities, this study addresses the dual concerns of the inequitable benefits of distribution and suitable site placement of GSI using a model to evaluate and integrate social variables to support decision making regarding GSI implementation. Results of this study indicate locations both suitable and optimal for the implementation of four types of GSI features: tree trenches, pervious pavement, rain gardens, and green roofs. C...

Recently planning organizations have initiated planning academies to increase citizens’ capacity to effectively engage in city and local planning activities.  Yet, the success of these programs is largely unknown.  This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by proposing an assessment framework to identify increased civic engagement capacity using three tiers of outcomes.  The results of a multi-case study suggest that this model of public outreach and education programming is successful at realizing improvements in individual human and social capital that translate into effective citizen engagement measured as actions taken by participants to improve community conditions.

Social capital is an important primary outcome of collaborative planning and is deemed a precursor to arriving at successful collaborative planning outcomes such as more effective collective action and both individual and social benefits. Although commonly used definitions of social capital stress the importance of social networks, recent scholarly research tends to overlook the importance of understanding how collaborative efforts influence the formation of new relationships and the structures of these relations (social networks) and in turn how these influence success. This article documents the application of social network analysis methods in the evaluation of a collaboration's effectiveness at building social capital, the structures of these relations, the factors that influenced positively and negatively their formation, and finally, the influence of the social networks on realizing successful outcomes.

Research documenting the social and organizational benefits of collaborative planning has afforded collaborative planning an increasingly broader role in environmental policy and management. However, the bias toward evaluating the process and its social outcomes has resulted in a gap in knowledge of the impact collaborative environmental planning and management has on changing environmental conditions. This article attempts to reduce this gap by presenting a new performance evaluation framework that assesses collaborative environmental planning outputs and outcomes: both social and environmental. The case study of the Habitat Workgroup of the New York—New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program highlights the utility of this evaluation framework in assessing the quality of key outputs; the presence of outcomes (i.e., changes in social and environmental conditions); and observed relationships between process, outputs, and outcomes.

This paper articulates the complexities of adaptively managing Delaware River water resources to meet shifting priorities of drinking water supply, drought mitigation and flood mitigation, as well as conflicting stakeholder interests. In particular, the paper examines the short-term and long-term programs that comprise the Delaware River Basin Commission's (DRBC) and the 1954 US Supreme Court Decree parties' successful adaptive management approach that seeks to balance the growing list of demands for water resources management, including drinking water supply, drought management, flood control and cold water fisheries protection. Review of the DRBC's adaptive governance approach reveals the critical complexities of designing experimental, yet science-driven management approaches and effectively engaging various sets of stakeholders in the associated decision-making processes.

The aim of this study is to assess and document the influence of collaborative watershed partnership processes on realising outcomes: improvement in social conditions and implementation of restoration projects in the Philadelphia region. Methods include primary document review, a survey of partnership participants and quantitative analysis. This analysis identifies correlations between the quality of the collaborative process and changes in social conditions. In addition, although participants in the partnerships have implemented a range of watershed restoration projects, the influence of the process on implementation is ambiguous. The collaborative processes yield agreements, improve learning and build social capital; yet these alone may be insufficient to overcome barriers to implementation.

The city of Philadelphia has historically been among the leaders in urban water management in the United States and abroad. Philadelphia was not only the first city to provide water as a public utility, but it has also pioneered new technologies—such as ...

This paper evaluates alternative approaches to management of interstate water resources in the United States (U.S.), including interstate compacts, interstate associations, federal-state partnerships, and federal-interstate compacts. These governance structures provide alternatives to traditional federalism or U.S. Supreme Court litigation for addressing problems that transcend political boundaries and functional responsibilities. Interstate compacts can provide a forum for ongoing collaboration and are popular mechanisms for allocating water rights among the states. Federal-interstate compacts, such as the Delaware River Basin Compact and federal-state partnerships, such as the National Estuary Program, are also effective and complementary approaches to managing water resources. However, all of these approaches can only make modest improvements in managing water resources given the complicated and fragmented nature of our federalist system of government.

In this paper we examine the role of community-based organisations (CBOs) in the environmental policy regime of Philadelphia, through a citywide survey (N = 40) and interviews with leaders from three types of CBOs: community development corporations (CDCs), civic associations (CAs), and business-improvement organisations. We found that CBOs of all types have changed their organisational missions and identities in response to their pursuit of sustainability goals, but that CDCs more so than either CAs or business organisations have integrated sustainability into their governance structures. Second, we found that a growing number of CBOs have expanded their work to involve environmental policy and programming. Third, we found that the work of local non-profit organisations has become directly linked to the city's broader sustainability plan, Greenworks.

This paper describes an applied research project that used a sustainable land-use planning approach to examine flood hazard mitigation alternatives in a 536-acre developed office park complex. A watershed-wide assessment including floodplain remapping and modelling of low-impact and large stormwater improvements throughout the upper watershed revealed limited impact on reducing flooding downstream in the environs of the office park during large storms. Thus emphasis had to be given to recommending retroactive sustainable land-use development actions such as relocating buildings and roadways out of the 100-year floodplain, which involves creating a mixed-use overlay district on high elevations, and restoring the floodplain.

This dissertation is a critical review of the habitat protection program of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program (Harbor Estuary Program), one of 28 estuary programs in the US Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuary Program. The National Estuary Program ...