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11.188: Urban Planning and Social Science Laboratory |
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Name |
Title |
Abstract |
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1:
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Clio SL Macrakis |
SNAP benefits in the Boston area |
The Boston Area (here defined as Boston, Newton, Cambridge, Belmont, Arlington, and Somerville) represents people from a range of economic backgrounds; 22% of Boston’s population lives below the poverty line, 6% higher than the national average (Boston Redevelopment Authority, March 2014). As a result, there are several hundred food providers that accept SNAP benefits in the area. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamps Program, provides low-income individuals and families with a stipend for groceries. Food providers who accept SNAP benefits include food markets, farmers’ markets, convenience stores, and gas stations, the latter two of which sell very few fresh foods. Food deserts emerge as neighborhoods in which very few fresh food options are available for purchase with SNAP benefits. This project analyzes the current distribution of food providers that accept SNAP benefits compared with areas of low median household income and distance from T stations, and recommends locations for additional providers in food deserts. |
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2: |
Scott
R Middleton |
Bicycle/Pedestrian
Infrastructure and Gentrification in Boston |
Recent
debates in American cities have shown that the humble bike lane can highlight
tensions between city residents: new and old; rich and poor; white and black.
Bicycle infrastructure is often thought of as an indicator of gentrification
or a harbinger of a new population influx. Worse yet, bike lanes may be seen
as a sign that cities are more willing to invest in gentrifying neighborhoods
than other areas with similar transportation needs. As a city that has
experienced both a large degree of gentrification over the last decade and a
large expansion of its bicycle infrastructure network since 2007, Boston is
an ideal candidate for testing these ideas. To
investigate this issue, I have identified shapefiles
detailing the existing Boston bicycle network (mostly built since 2007) and
Boston Bike’s proposed bicycle plan (both the five-year and thirty-year
versions). I applied a weighting scheme to the various types of bicycle
infrastructure and created a normalized “bike score” for each of the city’s
200 U.S. Census tracts. By comparing these scores to demographic data from
the 2000 Census and the most recent American Community Survey results, I plan
to draw a comparison between the siting of bicycle infrastructure in Boston
and a measure of gentrification in the city. My hypothesis is that cities
invest more heavily in bicycle and pedestrian facilities in rapidly
gentrifying areas than areas not experiencing a major demographic shift. |
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3: |
Jessie
Lee Heneghan & Noelle Marcus |
The
Spatial Characteristics of Non-Voting in Los Angeles County |
There currently exists a lot of information on the individual reasons why people don’t vote, which include being too busy, lack of interest, being out of town, forgetting, and disliking the candidates, among other reasons. While this aspect of non-voting has been looked at rather extensively in the available literature, this is just one perspective or viewpoint on non-voting, which misses a whole host of other factors that contribute to the phenomenon of non-voting. There is significantly less information related to the spatial and socio-demographic characteristics of non-voting. In our project, we will be looking at the rates of non-voting by registered voters, and the general population, and comparing that information to other relevant factors of that population at the block group level including density (urban vs. rural population), median household income, racial makeup, female to male ratio, and other characteristics we find to be relevant or significantly related to non-voting. Through this project, we hope to show the spatial significance or impact on non-voting, in order to add to our current understanding of what affects voter turnout from a broader perspective of place and demographics that goes beyond individual motivations. |
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4: |
Jenny
Lin |
Twitter and Urban Patterns |
Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without borders. The social media platform receives up to 500 million 140-character tweets a day. These tweets contain a wealth of information about people’s lives and behavior. What can tweets tell us about urban patterns in cities? This project examines urban patterns in Los Angeles using data from geolocated tweets. The tweets were collected in a two-day period using the Twitter Streaming API. The first component of the project will explore traffic patterns. An effort will be made to compare the results from this study to live traffic information from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Google Maps. The second component of the project involves analyzing the sentiment of tweets in each census tract and examining possible relationships to demographic and economic data. |
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Name |
Title |
Abstract |
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1:
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Fay Vogel Strongin |
Analyzing
a Community Land Trust Strategy in Houston's Third Ward |
This
project explores the criteria one might use to inform a land acquisition
strategy for an affordable housing focused community land trust in the
northern Third Ward of Houston, a historically and current-day African
American neighborhood. The project is responding to a rapid process of
gentrification and displacement that is underway in the Third Ward and to the
desires of community groups there to find ways of directing commercial,
economic and housing development in ways that benefit current and long-term residents
instead of displacing them. A community land trust is one possible strategy
as it uses an unconventional ownership model to enable permanently affordable
housing with a community governance structure. This project explores multiple
considerations that could make particular geographic areas advantageous for
land acquisition for a CLT, including: clusters of historic homes, clusters
of owner-occupied homes, clusters of new development, clusters of undeveloped
(vacant) lots, property values, and proximity to public transportation. |
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2: |
Liana
M Banuelos |
Vulnerability
to Climate Change Impacts in Boston |
Warwick,
Rhode Island is a coastal community of approximately 80,000 that has been
historically impacted by coastal storms and other large-scale flooding
events. This region is susceptible to climate change impacts, especially
rising sea levels and increased frequency of precipitation and natural
disasters. It follows that certain areas within Warwick will have a higher
risk of flooding due to their proximity to large bodies of water -- most
notably Greenwich Bay and the Pawtuxet River -- and elevation. The aim of
this project is to: (1) establish a working definition for vulnerable
populations and map their location within Warwick; (2) use flood data to map
regions that are particularly vulnerable to flooding against zones with high
density of vulnerable populations; (3) compare these high risk areas to the
regions identified by Warwick residents as particularly vulnerable to flood
risks; and (4) prepare a report that can be used to inform municipal
planners, politicians, and stakeholders of the perceived and projected
risks. |
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3: |
Matthew
O Archer |
Redistricting
and Gerrymandering: An Overview of the Practice in North Carolina |
Central to the United States’ representative democracy is the practice of redistricting, in which territorial districts are drawn to ensure that groups of citizens are represented in the legislative process. Although the ultimate goal of this process is to guarantee that individuals within a community are equally represented, problems tend to arise when defining the community that comprises a district. To overcome this problem, districts are drawn to ensure commonalities within demographics and political ideology. However, this process can be manipulated through gerrymandering - redistricting to unfairly gain political power within the legislative process. This manipulation can be witnessed throughout history and results in the systematic reduction of the representation and political power of certain demographic groups while advancing that of other groups. To understand this process, I have decided to analyze the redistricting process in North Carolina to determine where gerrymandering occurs, what demographic they tend to affect, and the outcomes that usually arise from this manipulation. To do this, I will conduct a longitudinal analysis of redistricting in the state from 1990 to present day to analyze how districts have changed and to see the movement of populations from one district to another. Furthermore, I will look at the change in political representation of block groups as districts are redrawn despite continuity in demographics and population to determine what, if any, groups are being politically undermined. Ultimately, this project will provide an overview of the North Carolinian redistricting process and determine which populations are negatively affected by it. |
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4: |
Sasha
Crandall Fleischman |
Transit
Access and Race in Boston |
I
seek to examine the relationship between transit accessibility and race in
Boston. I will use race data from the US Census and transit data from MassDOT, and perform raster analysis to produce a
distance-based metric of transit service (i.e. proximity to bus, subway,
or commuter rail stops) and compare this accessibility across four
communities: the general population, the White population, the
African-American population, and the Hispanic/Latino population. I
hypothesize that transit access, particularly
to rail, will be better in predominantly White areas, and worse in
predominantly Black and Hispanic/Latino areas. |
|
5: |
Johanna
R Greenspan-Johnston & Micaela Hall |
Applying a Nolli Approach to Public Space in Cambridge |
In 1738, Giambattista Nolli published a map of Rome, which depicted the city by differentiating public and private space. Nolli considered open spaces such as roads and gardens to be public, but also the interiors of public buildings, such as churches. The revolution in viewing the urban environment in this manner was that it did not simply reflect the built objects that constitute the landscape, but spoke to an individual's experience of traveling on the ground of the city and the spaces that a person can and cannot inhabit. Using GIS data from the City of Cambridge and the US Census, this project applies similar criteria to examine the urban form of the City of Cambridge. In light of the ever-evolving urban environment, Nolli’s original metrics are used as a base but altered in numerous ways to address the definition of publically accessible space in the modern city. Spaces that are considered public change depending on philosophy as well as who is navigating the city and when. Ultimately the project aims to explore how various ways of reading the urban form relates to non-physical urban issues such as equity, health and safety. |
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6: |
Xiaoyuan Ren & Sydney Brooks Beasley |
Rural
drinking water quality data in India |
In
rural India, there are several prevalent diseases related to poor water and
sanitation, such as malaria, typhoid, and dengue. In order to monitor the
water quality and design effective interventions, a wide scale monitoring
effort has been implemented. The National Rural Drinking Water Quality
Monitoring and Surveillance Programme was launched
in February 2006 to regulate and mandate testing of all drinking water
sources. All drinking water labs must report their test results digitally on
the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS). However,
despite such a wealth of information, the analysis of this database is
extremely limited. This project explores this missing link between water
monitoring practices taken by the government (shown by the amount of water
quality monitoring stations, the level of trainings conducted and the
treatment efforts in play) and the eventual water quality performance (mostly
shown through sanitation conditions and contamination levels). More
specifically, water quality performance and agency actions are mapped at the
district level in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, and the
correlation between good water quality and stronger monitoring systems is
explored. A final site suitability analysis is conducted based on the
understanding of this correlation, and the sites where new policy and new
technology would have the most impact on water quality performance are
identified as potential test sites for new research. |
Last modified: 4 May 2016 by MYC
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