In FY24, CBE researchers have been awarded a number of grants and contracts for projects that include a community engagement component, defined as “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial creation and exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity,” by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In FY24 (July 2023 – June 2024), CBE researchers were awarded 17 grant and contract awards,…
Person: Jan Whittington
2024 Climate Solutions Symposium
The Inaugural CBE Climate Solutions Symposium took place on May 23, 2024. The event began with a reception and poster session, followed by an invited lecture “Every Project is a Climate Opportunity” with Don Davies, PE, SE and Joan Crooks. 36 research posters were submitted and accepted to the symposium. The posters covered a range of topics, from affordable housing in Indonesia (Bella Septianti, Architecture/Design Technology), to CLT and structural steel comparative lifecycle assessment (Mira Malden, Community, Environment, and Planning)….
Economic resilience during COVID-19: the case of food retail businesses in Seattle, Washington
Sun, F., Whittington, J., Ning, S., Proksch, G., Shen, Q., & Dermisi, S. (2023). Economic resilience during COVID-19: the case of food retail businesses in Seattle, Washington. Frontiers in Built Environment, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2023.1212244
Abstract
The first year of COVID-19 tested the economic resilience of cities, calling into question the viability of density and the essential nature of certain types of services. This study examines built environment and socio-economic factors associated with the closure of customer-facing food businesses across urban areas of Seattle, Washington. The study covers 16 neighborhoods (44 census block groups), with two field audits of businesses included in cross-sectional studies conducted during the peak periods of the pandemic in 2020. Variables describing businesses and their built environments were selected and classified using regression tree methods, with relationships to business continuity estimated in a binomial regression model, using business type and neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics as controlled covariates. Results show that the economic impact of the pandemic was not evenly distributed across the built environment. Compared to grocery stores, the odds of a restaurant staying open during May and June were 24%, only improving 10% by the end of 2020. Density played a role in business closure, though this role differed over time. In May and June, food retail businesses were 82% less likely to remain open if located within a quarter-mile radius of the office-rich areas of the city, where pre-pandemic job density was greater than 95 per acre. In November and December, food retail businesses were 66% less likely to remain open if located in areas of residential density greater than 23.6 persons per acre. In contrast, median household income and percentage of non-Asian persons of color were positively and significantly associated with business continuity. Altogether, these findings provide more detailed and accurate profiles of food retail businesses and a more complete impression of the spatial heterogeneity of urban economic resilience during the pandemic, with implications for future urban planning and real estate development in the post-pandemic era.
Jan Whittington featured on The Whole U
Jan Whittington was featured in the UW Insider newsletter, with a story on “The Whole U” website. The story is entitled “Creating eco-friendly infrastructure design: Meet Jan Whittington” and discusses Jan’s experience and path to working at the University of Washington, along with the Urban Infrastructure Lab and her other current work. Read the story here.
Urban Infrastructure Lab Report on High-Speed Rail
The Urban Infrastructure Lab researchers have released a report on a Cascadia region high-speed rail project. College of Built Environments faculty Jan Whittington and Qing Shen were authors on the report, along with 3 Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Urban Design and Planning students (Siman Ning, Haoyu Yue, and Chin-Wei Chen), and a Master of Urban Planning candidate (Richard McMichael). This report examines the successes and lessons learned from existing high-speed rail projects in Europe and Asia, including 50 hours of interviews…
College of Built Environments Faculty and Student receive Husky Sustainability Awards 2023
The Husky Sustainability Awards recognize individuals and groups across all University of Washington campuses who lead the way for sustainability at the University of Washington. This is the 14th year awards have been given by the UW Environmental Stewardship Committee. The Husky Sustainability Awards are given to students, faculty and staff from the Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses who show impact, initiative, leadership and dedication around sustainability. Congratulations to the recipients from the College of Built Environments, who are listed below….
Are We Prepared for the Economic Risk Resulting from Telecom Hotel Disruptions?
Armbruster, Ginger; Endicott-Popousky, Barbara; Whittington, Jan. (2012). Are We Prepared for the Economic Risk Resulting from Telecom Hotel Disruptions? International Journal Of Critical Infrastructure Protection, 5(2), 55 – 65.
Abstract
Large and small businesses in Seattle, Washington, as in most urban centers across the United States, increasingly rely on telecom hotels and related telecommunications centers to conduct business operations. What would be the economic impact to these businesses if a natural or man-made disaster were to make this infrastructure unavailable for a significant period of time? How long would it take for the owners of small businesses, which provide the foundation for economic recovery, to give up and move away? Are metropolitan regions prepared for this risk? This paper draws on publicly available reports of telecom hotel investments to examine the economic risks that such telecommunications hubs pose at the regional scale. New York City and Seattle are two urban areas that depend on key investments in telecom hotels. In the Pacific Northwest, these assets are located downtown, primarily in the center of the urban real estate market of Seattle. Although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were directed at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, collateral damage to a major telecommunications hub brought outages during and after the attacks that highlighted the serious risk posed to small- and mid-sized businesses from disruptions in telecommunications service. The Seattle case study illustrates the potential to learn from the experience in Lower Manhattan and apply this knowledge across the United States. Regional economic analysis of the benefits of and the means to protect small- and mid-sized businesses can provide the basis for strategic investments that minimize economic loss and reduce the recovery time. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Telecommunications Hubs; Telecom Hotels; Business Continuity; Risk
When To Partner For Public Infrastructure?
Whittington, Jan. (2012). When to Partner for Public Infrastructure? Journal Of The American Planning Association, 78(3), 269 – 285.
Abstract
Problem, research strategy, and findings: Public agencies traditionally request bids and award contracts to private firms after infrastructure designs are complete (bid-build). They also increasingly partner with private firms, often by folding capital improvements into a contract to design and build (design-build). The latter involves much more than the mere transfer of design work to the private sector, such as time to completion; the merits or problems of design-build strategies can, thus, be difficult to isolate. This article presents a method for doing so. Together with the development of a theory of contracting, the comparative analysis of two very similar highway overpass projects, one design-build and the other bid-build, demonstrates how so-called transaction cost economics can clarify the details of partnership cost-effectiveness. Takeaway for practice: Transaction cost analysis disaggregates and evaluates the costs of completed projects, accounting for factors typically external to economic analysis. My approach reveals tradeoffs between variables of interest to planners, such as the pace of delivery, public participation, environmental compliance, and the transfer of risk of cost overrun to the private sector.
Keywords
Design & Build Contracts; Bridges; Infrastructure (economics); Transaction Costs; Construction Contracts; Public-private Sector Cooperation; Transportation Planning; Design-build; Evaluation; Infrastructure; Public–private Partnership; Transaction Cost; Vertical Integration; Contracting Process; Privatization; Firm; Services; Reverse; Lie; Public-private Partnership
Threats to Municipal Information Systems Posed by Aging Infrastructure
Armbruster, Ginger; Endicott-Popovsky, Barbara; Whittington, Jan. (2013). Threats to Municipal Information Systems Posed by Aging Infrastructure. International Journal Of Critical Infrastructure Protection, 6(3-4), 123 – 131.
Abstract
State and local governments across the United States are leveraging the Internet and associated technologies to dramatically change the way they offer public services. While they are motivated to capture efficiencies, the public entities increasingly rely on information systems that are dependent on energy and related civil structures. This reliance is incongruous with the widespread awareness of aging infrastructure - decaying for lack of investment - in cities across the United States. Important questions that come up in this environment of persistent expansion of the use of digital assets are the following: What threat does aging infrastructure pose to governmental reliance on computing infrastructures? How are local governments responding to this threat? Are the solutions posed appropriate to the problem, or do they pose new and different threats? This paper uses a case involving the disruption of a local government data center due to the failure of an electrical bus to illustrate how the threats of aging infrastructure grow, quietly and steadily, into emergencies, on par with the catastrophic events encountered in the context of critical infrastructure protection. The decisions precipitating the disruption are routine, borne of circumstances shared by agencies that are pressed to maintain services with scarce resources. Patterns of capital investment and management explain the emergence of crises in routine operations. If, as in the case described in this paper, deferred maintenance motivates public agents to explore private cloud services, then governments may solve several problems, but may also be exposed to new risks as they enter into arrangements from which they are unable to exit. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Aging Infrastructure; Municipal Data Center; Capital Improvement; Interdependence
Free: Accounting for the Costs of the Internet’s Most Popular Price
Hoofnagle, Chris Jay; Whittington, Jan. (2014). Free: Accounting for the Costs of the Internet’s Most Popular Price. UCLA Law Review, 61(3), 606 – 670.
Abstract
Offers of free services abound on the Internet. But the focus on the price rather than on the cost of free services has led consumers into a position of vulnerability. For example, even though internet users typically exchange personal information for the opportunity to use these purportedly free services, one court has found that users of free services are not consumers for purposes of California consumer protection law. This holding reflects the common misconception that the costs of free online transactions are negligible when in fact true costs may be quite significant. To elucidate the true costs of these allegedly free services, we apply a transaction cost economics (TCE) approach. Unlike orthodox economic theory, TCE provides a framework for analyzing exchanges in which the price of the product seems to be zero. Under a TCE analysis, we argue that information-intensive companies misuse the term free to promote products and services that involve numerous nonpecuniary costs. In so doing, firms generate contractual hazards for consumers, ignore consumer preferences for privacy, and mislead consumers by creating the impression that a given transaction will be free. While psychological research and behavioral economics may support an outright ban of free offers because of their biasing effects, TCE suggests reforming governance structures to place the business risks associated with free transactions more firmly in the hands of businesses. We suggest alterations to governance structures such as the Federal Trade Commission's Guide Concerning Use of the Word Free (FTC Guide) to curb the incentives of firms to raise transaction costs for consumers. The FTC Guide provides support for two of the consumer protection measures we propose: first, a requirement that free service providers clearly disclose that such providers seek users' personal information in exchange for those services, and, second, the establishment of a regular price before providers can market a service as free. We further argue that the recognition of users of free services as consumers for purposes of consumer protection law would better align incentives and ensure users access to legal redress against some of the most popular services on the Internet. Lastly, we suggest the adoption of alternative governance structures designed to reduce the cost of transacting by curbing the collection of personal information from consumers of free services and by enhancing the rights of consumers to govern the dispersal of personal information from free online services to third parties.
Keywords
Free Internet Service Providers; Internet Usage Monitoring; Transaction Cost Theory Of The Firm; Internet Privacy -- Law & Legislation; Law; United States. Federal Trade Commission; Vertical Integration; Privacy