My name is Yasamin Khorashahi. For the past year I have had a mentorship with Michael Woodman, the Senior Planner for the City of Alpharetta. Alongside my mentorship, I have compiled a year's worth of research. My research focused on the origin of mixed use developments, and the new challenges they introduce to the American suburb. One of those challenges was a new form of gentrification, one spurred by expensive development in traditionally affordable middle-income neighborhoods. As a researcher, I ask the Essential Question: How can up and coming planners like me design and develop mixed use developments without having to restructure existing living spaces or facilitate gentrification?
The research is divided into subcategories titled What I Need to Know, What I Know or Assume, The Story of My Hunt, and What I Discovered. The first two components of my research focus heavily on determining the roots of expensive mixed use development and how it caused new wave gentrification. The Story of My Hunt explores a variety of research methods I employed to answer my Essential Question, including scientific journals, an interview with a contemporary planner, and a book on planning.
In What I Discovered, I detailed the conclusions of my research. Mixed use developments are a consumer-friendly response to suburban sprawl stemming from the post World War II automobile boom. Their steep prices come from expensive building material and an emphasis on luxury homes, which leads to gentrification. There is not a specific way to stop this, but emphases on workforce housing and government intervention in planning have served as stepping stones for up and coming planners like me to find a permanent solution to the problem.
Yasamin 4/15
