Emma Pattiz

The City of Boston has made a commitment to create 53,000 units of affordable housing by 2030. In order to achieve this worthwhile goal, the Mayor’s Housing Innovation Lab and the Boston Planning and Development Authority are tasked with identifying creative policy and design strategies that unlock potential sites for development and comfortably accommodate lower income Bostonians. Currently, the city is enthusiastic about the possibility of developing compact units.

Working with a teammate who undertook this research topic as part of a semester-long independent study project, we identified criteria for projects that optimize the City’s policy goals and then selected specific sites that could accommodate compact units. By locating where the program’s ideal audience is - empty nesters, graduate students, young families, and young professionals - we, again, start to realize neighborhood change and social clustering effects. Finally, we did a quick back of the envelope calculation to compare the number of standard (non-micro) units and the number of micro units that could potentially be built at each of those sites, demonstrating how smaller unit size allows for accelerated production of housing supply, thus satisfying the City’s housing goals.

Role: Researcher, Designer, Filmmaker

Tools: GIS, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Microsoft Excel

For the final project in DES 3353 Advanced Seminar in City Form: The Future of Streets at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, I worked with a team of urban planning students to design and program two local streets for a future in which society has reached 50% and 100% peak autonomous vehicle usage. In addition to the physical designs, we were asked to propose the necessary policies to finance and regulate the future of mobility. Our proposal stresses the importance of public oversight and the need to prioritize the pedestrian.

Role: Researcher, Analyst, Urban Designer

Tools: GIS, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign

As part of an interdisciplinary team of Urban Planning, Urban Design, Public Policy, and MBA students, I completed a submission to the 2018 HUD Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition. Our proposal was an intergenerational, community hub for the Dover, New Hampshire site, which we financed using LIHTC and various types of grants.

Role: Researcher, Analyst

Tools: Real Estate Financial Analysis, GIS, Illustrator

Final project for Harvard Graduate School of Design Option Studio, The Unfinished City: Envisioning 21st Urban Ideals in Tallinn’s Largest Soviet-era Housing District. 

Tallinn's Lasnamäe neighborhood was developed under the Soviet regime as a largely monofunctional housing district. The neighborhood's most notable feature is a channel the length of the entire neighborhood that was blasted into solid limestone bedrock for a mass transit system that was never implemented. When the Soviet Union fell, development in Lasnamäe came to a stop. Today, Lasnamäe is home to 120,000 people, and 70 percent of the population is ethnic Russian. The Option Studio looked at ways of better integrating this neighborhood into the city of Tallinn and improving the area's commercial prospects.

Working with a classmate, my final project looked at the way in which the repetitive super blocks and stark building typologies create a physical condition that forces isolation and lacks identity. With limited opportunity for community engagement and few primary data sources, we took to social media to find out where there are sites of social interaction and identified areas of concentration worth enhancing. 

The project aimed to reinvent a center as a place that serves a community function, amplify existing spaces of social interaction, and ease social tensions. We proposed achieving this through proposals on three scales - neighborhood, block, and building.

Link to the entire report.

Role: Urban Planner, Designer, Interviewer, Researcher, Analyst

Tools: Site Visits, Interviews, Rhino, Rhino Urban Network Analysis Toolbox, GIS, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop

While interning at WSP during the summer of 2017, I assisted with this Independent Feasibility Study of the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse, NY. The current infrastructure is approaching the end of its service life, so this study examined alternatives, including a tunnel and/or depressed highway. In addition, this study examined alternatives that would adequately provide for vehicular traffic to replace the existing I-81 viaduct through the center of the city.

Role: Urban Planner, Editor, Researcher, Designer

Tools: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign

While interning in the Planning department at WSP, I assisted with preparing a transit-oriented development desirability and readiness assessment for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority in Buffalo, NY. The assessment is a primarily qualitative exercise used to gauge the level of preparedness for new development when new transportation infrastructure is considered. 

Role: Urban Planner, Designer, Editor

Tools: Illustrator, InDesign

As part of a course at the Harvard Kennedy School, Designing Government, we were asked, "How might we prevent families from dropping out of the school registration process?" Through substantial qualitative research and interviews, we dove into the current process to understand where the user experience fails.

In the Boston Public School System (BPS), families must actively register students either in Kindergarten, or when they move into the BPS school district, as well as actively transfer students from middle school to high school (in either 6th, 7th, or 8th grades). This registration model acts as a forcing function, so we explored how well the process works by discovering and synthesizing key user data. 

Role: Urban Planner, Interviewer, Researcher, Analyst, Designer

Tools: Intercept Interviews, Stakeholder Mapping, User Journey, Service Blueprint

In my second semester Core Urban Planning Studio, I worked with a team of classmates to develop an economic development plan for East Boston. East Boston is particularly vulnerable to flooding due to sea level revel and climate change events, and immigrants make up over 50% of the population. The recommendations tried to reflect these characteristics.

Recommendations included creating jobs through a restoration economy, incorporating local vendors at Logan Airport, and developing personal financing mechanisms for families.

The assignment also asked for public service announcements, which we created in the form of post cards and posters.

Role: Urban Planner, Researcher, Analyst, Designer

Tools: Ethnographic Research, Site Visits, GIS, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign

Online community engagement research conducted in Boston's East Boston neighborhood.

As part of my second semester studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a group of fellow students and I distributed online surveys to neighborhood residents, business owners, and community representatives. We created surveys in Spanish and English and coupled the online surveys with in-person intercept interviews. We collected photographs of respondents to share on social media.

We then analyzed the responses and compared them to demographic data for the neighborhood.

Role: Researcher, Writer, Analyst

Tools: Online Surveys, GIS, Facebook, Twitter

Transportation Alternatives ideas competition for creative and innovative plans that address the inevitable public transportation shortage resulting from the L-Train shutdown in 2019.

Working with a team of fellow students, I submitted a proposal for a shuttle, dedicated lanes, a pedestrian-only 14th Street, and effective marketing.

Role: Researcher, Analyst, Designer

Tools: GIS, Illustrator

Final project for my first semester MUP studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. This project proposed a community open space in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood where the Dudley Square Bus Terminal currently sits, made possible with the implementation of an underground tunnel. The proposal built on historical research, spatial analysis, and site visits in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.

Role: Urban Planner, Researcher, Designer

Tools: Ethnographic Research, Site Visits, GIS, Rhino, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop

Hosted by the American Institute of Architects New York and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, FitCity is an annual conference on the role of design in creating healthy neighborhoods. Since 2006, FitCity has convened stakeholders from architecture, public health, urban planning, academia, and community development.

As Policy Coordinator at AIA New York, I managed the contract with the Department of Health and organized the annual conference. Each year, the conference highlighted one of the city's most pressing social issues from a design and public health perspective, including affordable housing, transportation, and gentrification.

Role: Communications, Writer, Event Curator, Budgeting, Compliance

Tools: Stakeholder Interviews, Excel, Splash