The United States’ major American sports leagues, the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL, are turning to franchise expansion to increase their presence in the economic and media markets along the West Coast, including the NHL’s expansion to Las Vegas for the 2017 season and future expansion to Seattle for 2021. However, expansion franchises are very difficult to get off the ground since they require new ownership and management structures, buy-in from the local fan base, and are often subject to much higher scrutiny during their first few years than other franchises. Currently, no universal metric exists to determine whether or not an expansion franchises was successful, and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to convince leagues to expand when they are unable to evaluate the likelihood of success for potential candidate cities. This research analyzed four major factors I identified that contribute to overall success for a team in any sport: financial prosperity, quality of national media coverage, public and local governmental support, and in-game accolades. Using these metrics as a starting point, I created an index that scored prior expansion franchises using a variety of indicators to quantify their overall success. Additionally, I applied this index to select cities currently under consideration for an expansion franchise to serve as a predictor of their potential success. Going forward, the use of this index as a predictive metric will allow leagues to make more informed decisions about the success of future candidates for expansion.

Benefits of nature on children’s health and development are becoming increasingly recognized across the globe. Norway is revered for putting this research into practice, centering nature in early childhood education and setting precedents for ways in which preschools and kindergartens can get their children moving beyond the traditional classroom and up into the trees, down into the mud, and everything in between. Norway has taken a progressive stance on multicultural learning as well. The Norwegian Framework Plan for the Content and Tasks of Kindergartens defines education as an inclusive cultural arena to promote respect for the diversities of all children. I explored this intersection as a landscape architecture student. How might nature itself be important to children’s development and expression of cultural values? In what ways was learning facilitated differently outdoors vs indoors, and what implications might that have for the design of outdoor learning environments? Over the course of three weeks in Trondheim, Norway, I visited three barnehage (preschools) and conducted interviews on the connections between the landscape and the Framework Plan’s goal of inclusion. I found that outdoor environments could be less culturally coded than indoor classrooms, creating an unfamiliarity conducive to curiosity. This curiosity, coupled with undefined materials found in nature or man made objects placed outside of typical contexts, encouraged children to use play to design, communicate, and participate in imaginary worlds together, rather than having to rely on language or common frames of reference. Consequently, some Norwegian educators saw nature as a critical component of promoting children’s inclusion, tolerance, respect, and understanding of the diversities among one another, a revelation frequently overlooked in the U.S. More broadly, my findings point to that missed opportunity, where educational goals for children are similar but neglect serious consideration of the landscape as part of the approach.

It is already difficult to navigate the UW Seattle campus, but it is made more difficult when there is a lack of consistent tools access and navigation. This project focused on how campus navigation can be improved. Current maps fixate on building to building navigation, but there is little consistency or clarity for how to find a room once one enters a building. I have developed an ADA compliant map for Gowen Hall as a model for how the ADA office could further enhance student navigation. I highlighted not only entrances as manual/motorized, but also where those entrances are in relation to the interior of Gowen and Padelford Halls, and what interior accessibility tools were present. Hallways are poorly demarcated, floor plans are difficult to access, and not all building entrances are marked as entrances. Fire evacuation maps for buildings are often the most complete publicly accessible maps of buildings, but they are not consistently drafted: some lack room labels, some entrances do not have maps near them, and they rarely give the location of an exit relative to the exterior of the building and what floor it is. This project is important because it highlights a hidden geography of students on campus. Maps of building interiors are for more than just students with mobility or vision impairments, these maps are also for international or transfer students, as well as freshmen who have no bearing on how to navigate campus buildings. It will also benefit visitors to campus, allowing them to more efficiently move across campus and understand what tools and barriers are where. This is an important contribution to disability studies, as there is little coverage or practical application of what changes campus navigation needs so that it may be more accessible.

Seattle and many other cities are developing they are investing in and exploring integrating new public spaces. However some of these spaces either intentionally or unintentionally have elements that attract some parts of the population and deter other parts of the population. These elements may be natural and man-made structures, or even the traits that the surrounding area gives the public space. To look at different approaches to public spaces I considered both spaces in Seattle and in Paris to determine what traits make these spaces more comfortable and inviting and what traits seem to deter people from the area. I hypothesize that an open area with multiple purposes aimed at different age groups, that incorporates natural elements and is surrounded by mixed use and mixed age buildings creates the most inviting and comfortable spaces that feel accessible for everyone in the city. Many urban scholars such as Jane Jacobs and Le Courbusier have discussed the accessibility and feeling of urban public spaces as well as some films such as Playtime and Downtown 81. To do this research I reviewed many urban scholarly texts, considered films that explored public spaces, and considered many public spaces in both Seattle and Paris. My findings in the research can help plan future urban public spaces to be more inclusive and comfortable for everyone in a city. 

Over the last decade Seattle has seen the most dramatic population growth of any large American city. The accompanying rapid change in urban form of the city has been called staggering by longtime Seattle natives, causing a state of worry not unlike the feeling of solastalgia, a neologism that describes a form of mental or existential distress caused by environmental change. Longtime citizens can be forgiven for feeling as though their home has been irreparably changed in a way that doesn’t name them as a benefactor. But what has the effect of this rapid change had on the homeless community? Can a stable and strong sense of place have positive influences on the day to day lives of the homeless individuals? Can we facilitate a stronger sense of place as part of our response to the homelessness crisis in Seattle? My study examines the link between sense of place and stability in homeless individuals through interviews with individuals from within the homeless community, hearing perspectives from tiny house villages, tent cities, and the streets of Seattle. Through these conversations I demonstrate the impact that sense of place has on social stability, especially in times of rapid change to the urban environment, and how sense of place differs depending on the method of temporary shelter. The resulting study builds a better understanding of the intersectionality of the existential effects of placelessness in the homeless population, the differences between being homeless in a variety of spaces, and the meaning and significance of place making to people without a place.

Homelessness is traumatic. Without shelter, people become more vulnerable to physical, emotional, and psychological harm. For unhoused people, traumatization often manifests in behaviors and vulnerabilities that are incredibly difficult, sometimes dangerous, for service providers to manage. At this time, many social services have acknowledged the importance of trauma informed care, hereafter referred to as TIC, a framework that takes into account the impact of past trauma and the resulting coping mechanisms adopted. My research, an independent study with the Law, Societies, and Justice and Disability Studies programs, aims to understand TIC’s potential to effectively manage the behaviors and address the needs of traumatized clients. Through interviews with service providers caring for young adults experiencing homelessness, I argue that young adult homeless service providers are currently unable to fully address the needs of their clients with histories of traumatization due to a combination of individual, structural, and systemic barriers. As a means to address this, I am in the process of creating a trauma-informed safety and accountability program at ROOTS Young Adult Shelter. The program is informed by interagency interviews and will address trauma, manage behaviors, and support direct service staff in homelessness services through a combination of restorative justice, support group, and individual support models. The efficacy of this program will be researched in relation to safety, accountability, and recidivism. This research has the potential to be widely applicable within social services, particularly shelters. It takes extensive research on the impact of trauma and TIC and applies into an expansive program that providers can use to address the behavioral needs of their clients. Further, it provides qualitative and quantitative research on the implementation of TIC in shelter spaces.

My research explores the experiences of cleaning and maintenance workers at the University of Washington, and the connections that these realities have to the labor rights movement. The UW has a long history of labor issues and related labor justice campaigns that have taken place on campus. How can we understand worker experiences through the lense of labor activism? This research creates an easily accessible platform for workers’ voices to be heard, as well as to display the work they have been involved in regarding labor justice. In this presentation I also showcase student activism in support of campus workers, and show the effectiveness and strategy of different campaigns. This project employed a mixed-methods approach and was centered around qualitative interviews of participants, as well as surveys of workers and activists focused on their perceptions and experiences. The research was executed through one-on-one meetings with participants, concentrating on qualitative empirical methods. It was centered on the UW Seattle campus. My findings indicate that collaboration between student activists and campus unions has proved to be greatly beneficial to winning labor rights campaigns, and also in creating community in the labor movement. My research also indicates that the vocalization of workers’ needs facilitates the empowerment and strengthening of labor communities on campus. This research is significant because it emphasizes the urgency of improvements of labor conditions at the university, and offers solutions involving activism that have been highly impactful throughout the years. This research informs future labor rights campaigns, creates awareness in the public sphere, and influences future policies surrounding labor rights at the university.

Green burial focuses on the interment of the body of a dead person in a fashion that supports decomposition so that the body can be naturally recycled. Green burial has grown exponentially within the past ten years and are now offered by hundreds of providers across the U.S., making it an increasingly popular alternative to conventional funerary customs, such as casket burial and cremation. While recent research has explored the conditions under which the green burial industry has become normalized and competitive, and the types of predictors of green burial support, we know little about the experience of participants and the characteristics of green burial ritual. To what extent have funeral participants internalized the industry’s goals of conservation and fostering an emotional bond with nature? Do green burial rites reinforce community among the living as with conventional funeral rites? Or does the ritual appeal mostly to participants sympathetic to environmentalism? To answer these questions, I conducted ethnographic interviews with green burial workers and participants and observations of green burial rituals. The results of my study furthered our understanding of the green burial as a growing social movement and new meaning making enterprise and revealed how supporters derived distinctive meaning within green burial.