Mai Thi Nguyen

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This invited essay discusses the closure of the PLANET listserv in March 2016 following controversy over issues of inclusivity and civil discourse, and the subsequent creation of the Planners 2040 discussion group on Facebook.1 As the original faculty members who launched Planners 2040, we appreciate the opportunity to share our perspectives regard...

In a break from the auto-oriented suburbia of the past, developers, designers, and planners have recently heralded the "new transit town" 1 as an appropriate and ethical response to the changing American household. Competition among regions for federal funding to support new fast-rail systems has become increasingly fierce. In some metro areas, the...

Growth control regulations are pervasive in local jurisdictions throughout the United States; yet there is still much uncertainty about their effectiveness in slowing down or halting growth. Moreover, there is considerable debate over whether there are unintended (or sometimes intended) exclusionary consequences that disproportionately affect minor...

This article discusses the results of a study assessing the state of disaster resilient design education at U.S. colleges and universities including architecture, building sciences, land use planning, landscape architecture, and engineering. Based on our findings, we describe proposed future directions for resilient design education, including draw...

The use of post-disaster mitigation strategies such as buyouts and home elevations as climate change adaptation and risk reduction strategies has become increasingly common. Little research to-date, however, has examined the experience of local administrators of these programs, despite the critical role they play as on-the-ground implementers. We i...

Federally funded housing buyout programs are the dominant method of government-supported retreat in the USA. Done correctly, buyouts can reduce pre-disaster vulnerability and facilitate post-disaster recovery. However, the success of buyout programs hinges on successful coordination and implementation by local administrators, who represent buyout p...

Federally funded housing buyout programs are the dominant method of government-supported retreat in the United States. Done correctly, buyouts can reduce pre-disaster vulnerability and facilitate post-disaster recovery. However, the success of buyout programs hinges on successful coordination and implementation by local administrators, who represen...

The ‘In the Shadows of Ferguson’ (ItSoF) multi-media project tells a story about how institutionalised racist housing and urban policies have shaped spatial patterns and opportunities for social and economic mobility for Black Americans in the St. Louis metropolitan area. This collaboration between an urban planning professor and a filmmaker sought...

This report evaluates the state of disaster resilient design education in the United States, to include an assessment of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and land use planning programs. Based on this assessment, we offer specific recommendations. These include: improve institutional commitment, develop new curricula models and orga...

Elected officials and bureaucrats claim that Big Data is dramatically changing city hall by allowing more efficient and effective decision-making. This has sparked a rise in the number of “Offices of Innovation” that collect, manage, use and share Big Data, in major cities throughout the U.S. This paper seeks to answer two questions. First, is Big...

Many public housing residents suffer from poor mental health and depression, which may be a function of both socioeconomic deprivation and residing in disorderly, unstable, and disadvantaged neighborhoods. While not explicitly targeting mental health, the HOPE VI program may improve public housing residents' mental health by relocating them from di...

Generally, it is assumed that the well-being of rural communities is linked to their level of resilience. However, despite the importance of community resilience, and its potential to underpin long-term economic development, assessing community perspectives regarding local conditions necessary to support resilience are often ignored during the plan...

This article examines the relationship between neighborhood quality, residential instability, employment access, location affordability, and work outcomes among individuals relocated as part of the Boulevard Homes HOPE VI redevelopment in Charlotte, North Carolina. We found that, contrary to expectations, relocation to private-market units with vou...

Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examines the relationship between informal social support and formal support services and employment outcomes among residents of a public housing development relocated as part of a HOPE VI project in Charlotte, North Carolina. Informal social supports are resources accessible through family and friends wit...

Communities engage in various ways with stakeholders around plan development. This project aims to validate quantitative content analysis scores for participation in disaster recovery plans with follow-up key informant interviews. Recovery plans from 87 counties and municipalities adjacent to the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast were collected and cont...

High-quality hazard mitigation plans may improve postdisaster outcomes in many ways, including establishing a community fact base and providing rationales for protective policies and actions. Hazard mitigation plans in eighty-four rural counties in the Southeastern United States were scored using an established protocol. To supplement quantitative...

This article explores variation in the economic integration of immigrants across U.S. metropolitan areas and tests a basic hypothesis that greater economic integration promotes regional resilience. Here we construct two quantitative indexes of occupational diversity as primary indicators of economic integration and develop a conceptual framework of...

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Immigrants suffer disproportionately from disasters because they have limited capacity to prepare for, respond to, or recover from a disaster. Unfortunately, planners and emergency managers are often inadequately trained or educated about the unique sociocultural needs and assets among immigrant groups. Hur...

A growing emphasis on interior immigration enforcement in the US has broadened the legal authority of state and local law enforcers to investigate and enforce immigration violations, thereby expanding the federal government’s interior enforcement capabilities. This study investigates how local immigration enforcement programs, such as 287g, alter t...

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Immigrants suffer disproportion- ately from disasters because they have limited capacity to prepare for, respond to, or recover from a disaster. Unfortunately, planners and emergency managers are often inadequately trained or educated about the unique sociocultural needs and assets among immigrant groups. H...

Metropolitan areas in the United States frequently finance new rail lines with local option taxes, and, as a result, rail plans and associated taxes often come before voters as ballot measures. Existing research finds that rail ballot measures are more likely to pass when taxes are linked to specific projects and planning has broad stakeholder invo...

This article investigates the framing of affordable housing by opponents and responses to this framing by local housing actors in the USA. We use a social construction approach to explore how conceptualizations of race/ethnicity, class and immigration shape opponents views and cast affordable housing tenants as deviant and undeserving, making them...

Rural areas of the United States are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters. One possible way to mitigate vulnerability to disasters in rural communities is to have a high-quality hazard mitigation plan in place. To understand the resources available for hazard mitigation planning and determine how well hazard mitigation plans in r...

In this paper, we build on the extant literature on housing social enterprises and hybrid models of public housing delivery. We trace the evolution of US housing policy toward greater hybridity, focusing on three dimensions of hybridity. Drawing from a case study of the Charlotte Housing Authority in North Carolina, we showcase two housing programs...

We investigate whether the design of the built environment encourages walking above and beyond individuals’ attitudes toward walking. With data from a regional travel survey, we use regression analyses to examine differences in neighborhood walking trips among residents with positive and negative attitudes toward walking. The results show that buil...

Despite the prominence of sports in contemporary society, little is known about the identity and personality traits of sports spectators. With a sample of 293 individuals, we examine four broad categories of factors that may explain variability in the reported amount of time spent watching sports. Using individual difference regression techniques,...

This paper reports results from a detailed travel diary survey of 2125 residents in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County - a mature, auto-oriented suburban region. Study areas were divided into four centres, typical of compact development or smart growth, and four linear, auto-oriented corridors. Results show substantial variation in the amount...

As of October 2009, sixty-seven 287(g) partnerships between local or state law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been developed in twenty-three states. The 287(g) ICE ACCESS Program facilitates the sharing of responsibility and authority for crime and immigration control between multiple agencies. It also...

 Findings from this study challenge the conventional wisdom about the motivations for local growth control. Using data of California ballot box growth controls merged with city level demographic and housing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, logit models are estimated to test four hypotheses for why communities mobilize against growth. Of the four h...

The proponents of new urbanism have claimed that neotraditional urban designs promote walking, reduce automobile dependence, and improve the quality of life for residents. However, the existing research on land use and travel behavior has not been able to support or invalidate these claims adequately because of data and methodological limitations....

Opposition to affordable housing is often motivated by home-owners’fear that their property values will decline. Responding to these fears, affordable housing advocates have claimed that there is little evidence from studies that have examined this topic to suggest that affordable housing detrimentally affects property values. Is this true? Does af...

Mobility is one mechanism used to address the federal goals of deconcen‐trating poverty and minorities. The Housing Choice Voucher Program relies on participants to make residential location decisions consistent with these goals. Our research investigates the level and impact of mobility on the neighborhood quality of voucher holders, their neighbo...

This study examines the predictors that determine Asians’ and Hispanics’ preferences for living in ethnically homogeneous communities. I hypothesize that individuals who have low socioeconomic status, are less acculturated, and have greater ethnic affiliation with co-ethnics are more likely to prefer living in a co-ethnic neighborhood. The findings...

Case Studies: Density change in five large regions Why L.A. is not Atlanta Tables W1 and W2 show how varying factors affect five metropolitan areas with large amounts of urbanized land: Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, and Detroit. In all five cases, we multiply the significant characteristics of each region against the predictive coeffic...

Immigrants and their residential outcomes are of great interest to urban researchers and policymakers. The literature, however, provides little knowledge about the residential status of immigrants with publicly subsidized housing assistance. In this article, we draw on three streams of literature—assimilation, neighborhood effects, and housing poli...