|
11.188: Urban Planning and Social Science
Laboratory |
| Name | Title | Abstract | |
| 1 | Fiona Tanuwidjaja | Understanding the Impact of Road Infrastructure on Cycling Accident Rates and Severity in Seattle | In
2017, a city-sponsored count of motor vehicles in Seattle showed
a similar count to the year prior, in 2016. As Seattle is one of
the largest growing cities in the United States (adding 20,000
new residents since 2016), this may be a sign that residents are
moving to other methods of transport—such as public or active
transit. Unfortunately, another city-sponsored report showed a
20% increase in road and active transit accidents in 2016, of
which several of them were considered serious injuries. This project aims to answer the following questions: 1) What areas of Seattle have large shares of pedestrian and cyclist accidents? 2) What proportion of these accidents included serious injuries? And 3) What is the link between existing road and cycling infrastructure (i.e. sharrows and dedicated bike lanes) on the accident rates? This analysis uses data from Seattle’s Open Data project. I will be analyzing a shapefile with up-to-date collision data including location, severity, number of parties involved, and method of transport (i.e. bike, pedestrian, and car). In particular, I am interested in car-bike, bike-bike, and bike-pedestrian collisions. I will then overlay a shapefile with Seattle’s existing road infrastructure elements to determine if accidents have occurred in greater proportion in areas with certain types of cycling infrastructure. To determine if routes are heavily congested (used to estimate the relative accident rate), I will incorporate data on commercial vs. residential areas and time-of-day of accidents. I will use Stata to clean the data and create new variables for the analysis (ex. an index of route congestion, an index of accident severity, and categorical values of time of day). I will also use ArcGIS’s intersect tool to merge the collision data to road infrastructure type. While this analysis is hardly completed as of now, I can already see that commercial areas have a larger proportion of serious accidents and that areas with dedicated bike lanes have relatively few accidents. |
| 2 | Lexi Sack |
Spatial
Risks for Presentation and Death
For Turtles Presenting for Vehicular Trauma at a NC Wildlife Clinic, 2005-2014 |
North
Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s
Turtle Rescue Team (TRT) is a wildlife clinic that treats wild
reptiles and amphibians. Between 2005-2014, TRT treated 1,847
patients of which 80% had incident locations that could be
geocoded. Of these, 935 turtles presented for vehicular trauma.
Over 75% of these presented from within a thirty-mile radius of
TRT. Spatial patterns were examined with data from NCDOT, NC One
Map, and USGS.Distance to protected lands. Waterways were
buffered by 800m and roads by 100m based off turtles’ nesting
habits and home ranges. Getis-Ord Gi statistic was used to
examine hot spot density and logistic regression as used to
analyze species and outcome.Most
turtles were found in developed areas. There were significantly
higher incidences in specific locations near TRT and to the
southwest. Some surrounded major road intersections. Outcomes
did not depend on road type or other spatial factors. However,
compared to other turtles presenting for vehicular trauma,
Eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) were
2.2 times more likely to be found adjacent to protected areas,
and yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta)
were 4.6 times more likely to be adjacent to protected areas and
water. The risk of vehicular mortality thus needs to be
considered for future development around these protected areas,
as well as for the potential for mitigation. However, mitigation
actions need to not only be focused on highways but on all road
types. |
| 3 | Noah McDaniel | Exploring the Food Desert Visualizing equity and food access in the Cambridge area |
Some have referred to the MIT area as a food desert. With the
closest major grocery store nearly a twenty minute walk from the
center of campus, access to fresh and healthy food can be
challenging. This project explores food access and equity in the
five-city area around Cambridge, including Arlington, Belmont,
Somerville, and Watertown. The maps were developed using travel
time data for transit, car, and walking modes from the Google
Directions and Google Place APIs. Data on population and income
levels for block groups were taken from the American Community
Survey (ACS). Each map displays a choropleth of travel time from
each block group to the nearest major supermarket, points
highlighting major and minor food distributors, and block groups
satisfying a criteria of particularly low food access and high
poverty. Initial results suggest that access to food can differ
significantly depending on travel mode choice, and that block
groups with lower median income are more likely to have less
access to supermarkets. |
| 4 | Misael Galdamez | In Search of Mexcellence: A Spatial Analysis of Taco and Burrito Joints Across the U.S. | Every Californian’s worst nightmare is moving states. But even
worse is moving and being starved of quality Mexican food. Using a
dataset from Datafiniti’s Business Database, I look at the spatial
distribution of restaurants that sell tacos and burritos across
the United States. Where is the greatest concentrations of these
restaurants, and how does their distribution relate to the size of
their Hispanic population of Mexican origin? What other spatial
patterns can be found? Note: This presentation is not an endorsement of any particular state’s Mexican food.
|
| 5 | Rohan Shah | ||
| 6 | Adriana Jacobsen | MBTA Bus Subsidizations and their Relation to Route Demographics |
The
MBTA runs over 170 buses through Greater Boston, which have
significant variation in their ridership, length, reliability,
and overcrowding. However, a performance measurement that is
less visible to the average commuter is how much it costs the
MBTA to run the route per passenger—i.e., how much each
passenger’s trip is subsidized. As it turns out, these costs
vary wildly, ranging from less than a dollar to almost ten
dollars spent per rider. Using data from the CTPS Systemwide
Passenger Survey, the MBTA Route Performance Indicators
document, and ACS data, this project delves into the demographic
patterns of the most efficient and inefficient bus routes. The
unfortunate result is that the most inefficient and costly
routes that the MBTA is running tend to service communities that
are majority high-income, white, and car-owners. To conclude,
the project will touch on some possible solutions to the transit
gaps in Boston, and demonstrate how certain service improvements
could change the commutes of many Greater Boston residents. |
| 7 | Avital Baral | An Analysis of Public Transit Accessibility in Seattle | For
my final project, I am analyzing public transit accessibility in
the city of Seattle.
Specifically, I will be looking at how proximity to public transit correlates to median household income, and high density of asian-americans and african-americans (the main racial minority groups in Seattle), respectively. The data for this project primarily comes from Seattle open GIS website and the King County open GIS website, which provide GIS information for free. I will be presenting the demographic information in the form of 3 thematic maps: one for median household income, one for percentage of Asian-Americans, and one for percentage of African-Americans. To evaluate proximity to public transit, I am currently experimenting with a couple of different approaches. The first one is making Thiessen Polygons around public transit stops,which group together areas which have the same closest point in the point layer (which in this case is a point layer of all of the public transit stops). The second one is creating a raster of the Seattle city area, with small grid cell size. Then, I will map each grid cell with its distance from a transit stop point. While I do not have full results yet, I believe that lower-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with high density of African-Americans will have lower public transit accessibility. However, I do not have a prediction for what the results will be for neighborhoods with a high density of Asian-Americans in Seattle. Historically, that community suffered from discrimination and redlining into poorer/less desirable neighborhoods. However, nowadays, Asian-Americans in Seattle have a high median income, which I predict correlates to better transit availability. |
| 8 | Kathleen Schwind | Water Shortages in California |
The increasing scarcity of freshwater around
the world is one of our most pressing issues. Highly populated
areas are often threatened by water shortages, and this trend
will only increase in coming decades. This is especially true of
California. Population increases, freshwater consumption for
residents, agriculture, and industry increases, and rainfall
decreases. The question that many policy makers and California
residents ask is: Just how bad is this situation? My final
project will seek to provide an answer. Key themes: population growth, freshwater scarcity/demand, climate change
|
| Name |
Title |
Abstract |
|
| 1 | Stephanie Nunez Dominguez | Exploring the Relationship Between MIT Development Projects and Cambridge Housing | MIT has recently taken on many development
projects (Kendall Square Initiative, University
Park Expansion, 181 Mass. Ave, Volpe Site, etc.) to expand its
campus and to help redevelop and “enrich” the surrounding
Cambridge area. This project aims to explore how MIT’s major
development projects and general presence in Cambridge relate to
social and economic issues. I hope to analyze the correlation
between housing trends (homeownership rates, housing costs,
relative price of estates, contract rent, student housing rates,
etc.) and proximity to MIT before and after major development
projects started. I will use US Census data to create thematic
maps of the area around MIT to quantitatively analyze said
correlation. I also want to take a qualitative look at the
impact of these development projects by visiting the areas
around these sites and looking into local responses to these
projects. In exploring these relationships I hope
to answer the following questions: What are current housing
trends in the areas right outside MIT? How have those trends
changed since 2000? How does MIT’s own shortage of both
undergraduate and graduate housing relate to housing trends in
the area? |
| 2 | Andreina Seijas |
Mapping Night-Time Boston: Analyzing the
Potential of Expanding the City's Hours of Operation |
Despite its vast student population and a
growing restaurant scene, Boston is known as a “sleepy town”
where services and amenities become highly restricted after
dark. The city places a strict quota on the number of alcohol
licenses available, and its public transportation network shuts
down after 12:30 am. As a result, Boston is lagging behind other
U.S. cities like New York and Washington D.C. that are looking
for ways to expand their night-time economies as a means to
create new jobs, promote tourism and enhance quality of life. The goal of this project is to explore the
spatial dynamics of night-time regulations in Boston as a means
to understand the potential of expanding the city’s nocturnal
activity. To do so, it will perform a suitability analysis to
determine the best location(s) for a pilot expansion of liquor
license hours (currently capped at 1:30 am) based on criteria
such as: zoning, safety, access to public transport and the
existing number of liquor licenses. |
| 3 | Elise Bickford | ||
| 4 | Kevin Li | How Metropolitan Statistical Area Boundaries Deviate from Settlement Patterns | Many
regional or metropolitan level statistics are done using the
Metropolitan Statistical Area, a set of boundaries defined by
the Office of Management and Budget based on county boundaries.
However, as county boundaries are seldom updated, and often
predate human settlement, particularly in the West, Metropolitan
Statistical Area boundaries often can differ from settlement
patterns considerably. This project explores places where this
is especially egregious, such as the Inland Empire and Salt Lake
City. I try clustering census blocks based on residential
density, and explore the relationship between these clusters and
commuting data from the American Community Survey. |
| 5 | Morgan Augillard | Where are the Students? Where are the dollars? A Look into New Orleans Metro School Populations and Funding | Using
financial data from the Louisiana Department of Education, this
project will examine school population change over time in the
New Orleans metro area (7 parishes: Jefferson, Orleans,
Plaquemines, St. John, St. Tammy, St. Charles, and St. Bernard).
The time periods selected reflect the years immediately before
and after Hurricane Katrina, as well as the most recent fiscal
year reporting (2015-2016). The Katrina period was selected to
begin examining the way school enrollment was affected, and see
the ways dollars have shifted away from district schools to make
way for charters. This project will attempt to draw correlations
between the shifts in population, and the shifts in dollars
spent in schools within each parish. |
| 6 | Ye Rin Chu | Agricultural staple food production in the U.S.: observing 10 year changes between 2002 and 2012 | By
2007, US produced about $330 billion worth of agricultural
commodities every year (2007 Census of Agriculture). With the
increased frequency of extreme weather, temperature, and
precipitation, how has food production changed over the years?
This
project investigates 10 year agricultural crop yield changes in
the US at county levels, between 2002 and 2012, for corn, wheat,
soybeans, and lentils. These are the four most consumed staple
crops in the world. Decreased production of these crops has
implications for both the world food price and global
consumption. The project probes whether the volume of production
has increased (or decreased) for each crop and also whether the
acres of land devoted to agricultural activities have changed
over the years. The results are displayed in thematic maps.
Overlays of precipitation and temperature changes in California
and the Great Plains facilitate examination of any correlation
with the production changes of the four crops. The main data
source of the project is USDA Agricultural Statistics Service
and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) |
Last modified: May 8, 2018 by
ldelgado
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