Thesis Prospectus

As the weeks wage on during fall quarter, time begins to press a specific research question for my thesis prospectus. There is only a small amount of scholarly literature available on the land use planning effects of micro architecture, but there are plenty of government documents. I was able to find a very interesting article by Martin John Brown. Martin is a Portland citizen who decided to do a market study of ADU's with and without permits (I mentioned the article in a previous post). I am going to use the same methodology that Martin exercised to create a similar market study of Olympia. My research question is: What is the ratio of permitted to un-permitted ADU like structures in Olympia? I am hoping to gain access to RMLS data and research how many houses list ADU like descriptions and then do a random sample of (say 30) structures with ADU like descriptions and see how many of these structures are permitted with the City of Olympia. This will allow me to characterize if people are getting around the permitting process in order to build ADU structures. Based on my findings I will perform case study research on Portland, Seattle, and Santa Cruz (cities with progressive building/zoning codes) to create recommendations for the City of Olympia to increase the permits issued for people building ADUs. My theory is that people want and are building ADUs, but are avoiding permitting due to restrictive code and upfront costs of impact fees. The research will verify if this is the case, and interviews with community members will help us to better understand the results. That's all she wrote for now. Let me know if you have any ideas about the project!