Urban Planning Design GIS

Joseph Seman PortFoli O

1. Philosophy

4. The South End Improvement Corporation

8. Knox, N.Y.

10. The Seattle Trails Alliance

14. The NYSDEC

2. Curriculum Vitae

16. The NYS Canal Corps

18. Graduate Thesis

20. Climate Action Associates

Contents

/////Urban PlanningDesign

Regional Planning

GIS

Philosophy

Urban Planning and Design are outlets for communities, and by extension, people to envision their

potential and work within their means to realize their goals. My main focus as a planner is to

positively impact communities by helping to make them livable, equitable, and sustainable

through sound planning and collaborative implementation. My goal is to Influence change in

favor of under-represented communities and empower others to become agents of change within

their own communities. Whether through accommodating growth, transforming neighborhoods, or

getting the most out of a once thriving site but now vacant brownfield, I believe in creating plans

and environments that work in favor of those who need it the most.

I value my ability to simplify and visualize this information in a way that makes it accessible to the

community members and stakeholders it impacts most. By doing this I can empower people to use

this information to improve their communities and lives. My education and

professional experience have prepared me to implement change

through planning and design with the understanding that the

contributions I make in an individual project can have

lasting impacts on a community.

Philosophy ////

EDUCATION

The State University of New York at Albany

2013-2015MRP: Urban and Regional Planning

2013-2015Graduate Certificate: Urban Policy

2013-2015Graduate Certificate: GIS and Spatial Analysis

2011-2013BA: Urban Planning and Design

awards

Planning Excellence Award for Outstanding Student Project, 2015The New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association

CONTACT INFORMATION

Joseph Seman6-October-1988

T:518.965.0957 E:JosephSeman1@Gmail.comJosephSeman1 Addr:1609 N. 46th St, Seattle, WA

SOFTWARE SKILLS

Geospatial

ArcGIS QGIS ERDAS IMAGINE

Architectural

SketchUp

AutoCAD

Revit

Image Processing

Adobe Photoshop Gimp

Adobe Lightroom

Vectoring

Adobe Illustrator

Others

Eclipse

Adobe InDesign

Open Office

Microsoft Office Suite

Curriculum

Vita

e ////

Work Experience

Climate Action Associates LLC, Albany N.Y. 2015

GIS Project Manager (July-November)

Internships

The South End Improvement Corporation 2015

Urban Planning Design Intern (May-September)

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation 2015

Environmental Planning GIS Intern (February-June)

Volunteer Experience

Seattle Parks and Recreation August 2016-

Trails Program Volunteer Coordinator Present

Seattle Trails Alliance August 2016-

Social Media Content Coordinator Designer Present

Town of Knox, N.Y. 2015-2016

Urban Planner (October-February)

Albany County

1220

2 Ar

ea C

ode

The South End

Intern | Disposition Plan

Location: Albany, New York

Project details: The South End Improvement Corporation (SEIC) is a not-for-profit, communitybased housing organization serving the South End of the City of Albany. In 2015 the newly-formed Albany County Land Bank was acquiring a considerable number of properties in the South End without having developed disposition plans for these properties or garnering neighborhood involvement. Our work involved researching vacant and abandoned properties, organizing community meetings to engage and educate the public on the benefits of a whole-block approach to development, and to deliver a unified vision of the future use of theseproperties to the AlbanyCounty Land Bank.

South End Parcels

Albany Housing Authority Properties

Albany County Land Bank Properties

Habitat for Humanity Properties

Underutilized Properties and Properties of Interest

Vacant Properties and Underutilized Parking Lots

HARP Properties South End Parcels

South End Historic District

Schuyler Mansion

Howe Library

Historic District and Buildings of Historic Signi�cance

Land Uses and Community Assets

Library

Schools

Fire Department

Church - Parsonage

Light Industrial District

Neighborhood Commercial District

Multi-Family Medium Density Residential

SEIC ////

Greening Opportunities

Vacant and underutilized lots discourage investment and encourage crime. Therefore, it is absolutely critical to clean up such lots, either through side-lot programs or comunity greening programs that are spearheaded by the Albany County Land Bank. Initiatives like these are tremendous opportunities to create green space throughout the South End, knit together Lincoln Park with the community, and increase the overall quality of life and access to community amenities. Lincoln Park

Pocket Parks

The South End would greatly benefit from the infusion of optimally placed pocket parks throughout the community. Pocket Parks would improve the livability within these areas while also becoming anchors for future investment.

SEIC ////

Location: Knox, New York

Project details:

In 2015 the Town of Knox began the process of reviewing and updating its 1995 Comprehensive Plan. I volunteered with the town to assist in the process and lent my expertise where it was needed. Aspects of my work included updating section 4 of the 1995 Comprehensive Plan, which detailed the socioeconomic demographics and housing characteristics of the town, and illustrating key statistics by recreating and updating maps, graphs, and charts from the 1995 Comprehensive Plan.

Volunteer | Comprehensive Plan Update

10 min.

5 min.

10 min.

13 min.

7 min.

13 min.

11 min.

7 min.

0 min.

Legend

Convenient Store Without Gas

Convenient Store With Gas

Post Office

Convenient Store Without Gas 2 Mile Bu�er

Convenient Store With Gas 2 Mile Buffer

Post Office 2 Mile Buffer

Location

of

Barns

and Outbuildings

Driving Distance to Local Amenities

Knox, NY ////

Location: Seattle, Washington

Project details:

Upon arriving in Seattle, I wanted to learn more about my surroundings and familiarize myself more with the city. In order to achieve this goal Icontacted the coordinator of the Seattle Trails Program to lend my services in whatever capacity they needed. Since then I have taken the lead on volunteer outreach, event coordination, updating trails documentation, and even testing mobile applications. Through volunteering with the Trails Program I have also taken up work with the Seattle Trails Alliance, which is a not-for-profit board that represents the interests of walkers, hikers, commuters, foresters, pedestrians,runners, and neighbors who support trails in Seattle.

Typical TrailSelection withPlant Association

DRAFT

Seattle Parks and Recreation Trail Construction and Maintenance Standards

Volunteer | A Little Bit Of Everything

Social Media and Brand Marketing

The Seattle Trails Program operates and maintains over 100 miles of soft surface trails throughout Seattle. With a staff of only two the program heavily relies on volunteers to maintain the trail system. My focus has been to coordinate existing volunteers and to enhance the Seattle Trails social media presence in order to build a stronger volunteer network.

Seattle

Trails

////

Work Hand-In-Hand With Volunteers

The Seattle Trails App

The Seattle Trails app came together as a result of the 2016 AT&T and Seattle IT Department Hackathon. The app allows users to view trails throughout Seattle which are color coded by steepness, obtain driving locations to desired trails, and report issues with trail conditions. I have worked on the graphics for the app as well as testing the beta version for Android.

Seattle

Trails

////

0 < 0.5 Percent

0.5 < 2 Percent

2 < 10 Percent

10 Percent or Greater

Fresh Water Streams and Rivers Percent Impervious Surface

by Catchment

Legend

Location: Albany, New York

Project details: The Habitat Restoration Section within the NYSDEC's Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Marine Resources was in the formative stages of initiating a statewide, coordinated habitat restoration program. Due to limited funding and staff time, the program was designed to be delivered in a landscape context to provide the greatest benefit for the least cost and effort. My work included conducting landscape-scale aquatic and terrestrial habitat condition assessments, updating and recreating maps from the Nature Conservancy that depicted current habitat assessment indicators for New York State, integrating GIS and remote sensing tools into the program's activities, and to resesarch and present a concise overview of existing state and national assessment methods, including applicable tools for assessing habitat condition in New York State.

Intern | Habitat Restoration Analysis

Fresh Water Streams and RiversRisk of Flow Alteration from Dam Water Storage

2 < 10 Percent Low RIsk

10 < 30 Percent Moderate Risk

30 Percent and Greater High Risk

NYS DEC ////

Location: Albany, New York

Project details:

The 2014 UAlbany Fall Planning Studio worked with the New York State Canal Corporation as they launched the planning process to update the New York State Canal Recreationway Plan. Aspects of work included reviewing what has been accomplished to date, developing and implementing the public input process and stakeholder engagement workshops, recordation and analysis of themes and topics that emerged from thepublic input process, and translating these themes and topics into recommended goals, objectives, and strategies for the plan. The studio members were awarded with the 2015 Planning Excellence Award for Outstanding Student Project by the New York State Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Planning Studio | Opportunity Analysis

Greene County

East

Durham

NYS Canal Corps ////

Greene County

East

Durham

Graduate Thesis | Linking Rural Brownfields to Community Revitalization

Location: Greene County, New York

Project details:

This paper explored the feasibility of using an area-wide brownfield remediation approach that utilized both land trusts and a land bank. Rather than addressing these sites individually, an area-wide approach provided an opportunity to systematically consider the challenges related to multiple brownfields andincorporate site-specific assessment and cleanup into larger community revitalization efforts. Greene County, New York was used in this paper as a case example of an aging rural industrial economy that is auto-dependent and highly decentralized with high vacancy rates and concern over community disinvestment. The results of this paper showed that an area-wide approach that utilizes a land bank/land trust partnership with oversight and coordination provided by Greene County would greatly benefit the community by addressing vacant, underutilized, delinquent, and/or contaminated properties from their initial identification through the final uses.

Gradua

te Thesis

////

CLIMATE ACTION ASSOCIATES LLC

GIS Project Manager | Web Application

Location: Albany, New York

Project details:

Climate Action Associates LLC is a software technology and sustainability consulting firm dedicated to bringing the power of advanced technology to bear on practical on-the-ground sustainability challenges. Climate Action Associates are currently developing a Utility Energy Registry (UER) which will function as a publishing platform designed to help U.S. electric and gas utility companies provide energy performance metrics to communities in a structured way. I was tasked with developing and maintaining the UER's geodatabase, implementing quality assurance procedures for the geodatabase and crowd sourced utility data, and performing analytics on the utility data to ensure that aggregated community consumption totals were in line with the New York State Public Service Commission's consumer privacy standards.

In 2016 NYSERDA championed the UER as a flagship program for NYS and was awarded $453,067 from the U.S. Department of Energy in order to create a replicable and nationally scalable model.

The UER allows users to access gas and electric utility data at the state, county, zip code, and community levels. Data can also be arranged by month and year which allows for energy monitoring over time.

CAA ////

DATA

Initially the data was collected from each utility company in New York State. Going forward data will be uploaded on a monthly basis by utilities and will automatically populate the UER, giving up-to-date and timely information.

Schenectady

County

Albany Cou

nty

Rensselaer County

Saratoga

County 9.1%

5.0%

0.7%2.3%

% INCREASE IN PV INSTALLATIONS FROM 2014 TO 2015

Solarize NY

While with Climate Action Associates I also worked on the Solarize NY campaign which was a state-wide effort led by NYSERDA to improve the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of energy systems in New York State at the local level. I worked closely with the Saratoga, Schenectady, Rensselaer, and Albany chapters of Solarize NY to identify and map key indicators for their campaigns.

CAA ////

Schenectady

County

Albany Cou

nty

Rensselaer County

Saratoga

County 9.1%

5.0%

0.7%2.3%

% INCREASE IN PV INSTALLATIONS FROM 2014 TO 2015

Thank you for taking the time to review my portfolio. If you have any

questions, or would like to discuss any piece of what I presented here further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Joseph Seman

T:518.965.0957 E:JosephSeman1@Gmail.comJosephSeman1 Addr:1609 N. 46th St, Seattle, WA