Project Titles and Abstracts - Fall 2008

Shiva Prakash

Demand analysis of the Somerville Green Line Extension

For this project, I have collected various kinds of data to analyze the spatial relationship between locations of grocery stores, WIC program offices and high-poverty areas of the city of Chicago.  The grocery store and WIC office locations were geocoded from available address information, and U.S. Census data was used to thematically map areas of high poverty concentration.  In addition, thematic maps for public assistance income and vehicle availability were prepared to add to the analysis.  Though I will not be able to assign blame or responsibility to grocery store corporations or their owners by performing this analysis, I believe that I will find that areas of high poverty concentration, high public assistance income concentration and low household vehicle availability will also be underserved by grocery stores.  Similar analyses have shown that these areas are underserved by banks and other services.

Native Hawaiian Settlement and Homeownership in the Hawaiian Islands

Since European explorers first discovered the islands in the late 19th Century, people from Europe, the United States, Asia, and many of the Pacific Islands have made Hawaii their home. With this constant merging of cultures, and especially once Hawaii was admitted to the United States as the 50th State in 1959, the Native Hawaiians seem to have faded into the backdrop of Hawaii. Like many native peoples around the world, the Native Hawaiian language and culture are slowly becoming extinct. In order to explore this issue, I am going to examine both the settlement patterns of native Hawaiians for the major islands that have data, using Census data for the ethnicity of home owners and the Hawaii Statewide GIS as a supplement. Once I have made this map, I will look at the age of housing stock in the areas of with the highest concentration of Native Hawaiians to try and discern if the current places that most Native Hawaiians live are due to movement caused by the influx of people or if they are age-old areas that families have lived for a long time.

Site suitability analysis for a green-collar workforce development program in Lynn

The Lynn Coalition for Green Development recently submitted a “Pathways out of Poverty” grant application to develop a green jobs program in their community. I would like to use GIS to see if a workforce training program focused on skills for “green industries, “ such as energy efficiency and urban retrofits, is appropriate for this city, while also proposing a potential neighborhood for locating the training center within the city of Lynn.

Richard Campbell Mayer

Travel Habits in the Boston MSA

As employment patterns and communication technologies change the way residents interface with the urban environment, I am interested in looking at how residents in the Boston MSA travel within the region depending on their place of residence.  By looking at metro zones as characterized by the MAPC, I want to explore the various modes and travel times of the residents to see what patterns emerge about propensity to use alternative transportation and whether the proximity to alternative modes of transportation in the different metro zones affects travel time for workers in the Boston MSA.

Implications of Market Relocation for Cartagena Neighborhoods

As part of an effort to better organize its main marketplace and improve traffic flows, the City of Cartagena has decided to move part of the market’s vendors and operations to a new site on the outskirts of the city.  As the market provides food for 80% of Cartagena’s inhabitants, the location of the market has major implications for local people, particularly those with minimal resources.  In this project, I will determine the neighborhoods that are most affected by this move in terms of proximity to the market, and what their demographic characteristics are.  I will pay particular attention to the new bus rapid transit line, its station points, and use a raster analysis of proximity to these points from the various neighborhoods.  Finally, I will overlay the various maps depicting neighborhood information (percentage of low income inhabitants, percentage of Afro-colombian residents, and percentage of inhabitants involved in the informal economy) developed by the National Statistical Department of Colombia behind my analysis, in order to highlight what kind of neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by the market relocation.

New York City Housing Authority Development Opportunities in Brooklyn, New York under the Choice Neighborhoods Program

The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) has announced the availability $113 million in housing development funds through a new program called the “Choice Neighborhood Initiative”. The program will focus on revitalizing housing in high poverty areas where there is also an opportunity to address educational needs of the community. The initiative would challenge public, private and nonprofit partners to extend neighborhood transformation efforts beyond public housing and link housing interventions more closely with school reform and early childhood innovation. The New York City Housing Authority (“NYCHA”) would like to participate in the program as it postulates that areas of high concentration of poverty that also have available land for development would include properties owned by NYCHA. Disposing of this land would generate revenue for NYCHA, provide new affordable housing opportunities, diversify the income profile of the areas surrounding NYCHA properties, and improve access to quality education in the neighborhood. In order to have a competitive application, NYCHA has to prove that there are development opportunities on NYCHA-owed land that are also in areas of concentrated poverty (defined by 40% or more households being below the poverty line according to the 2000 Census). I would need NYCHA ownership and building footprint data in addition to poverty rates by neighborhood to find the three most ideal sites for new housing and/or school development. I also would need to buffer around NYCHA building footprint data by 60 feet as that is the minimum distance window to window for any new development.   

Exploring the Determinants of Greenmarket Locations in Brooklyn, NY

Greenmarkets are open-air farmers’ markets run by the nonprofit group, the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC) that sell fresh produce and other goods grown by regional farmers. My project will examine the spatial patterns of Greenmarket locations in the borough of Brooklyn in relation to demographic information, access to public transportation (specifically, the subway), and proximity to local business improvement districts. The goal of the project will be to explore and understand the factors that play a role in determining the location of Greenmarkets. I will use thematic maps to examine the demographic information of white and black population groups, looking specifically at median household income, poverty status, and population density. I will also look at the Greenmarkets’ proximity to subway stops and business centers using buffer/overlay tools, and the characteristics of populations located within those buffers.

Exploring the Impact of Surrounding Neighborhood Demographics on Public High School Performance in Prince George's County, MD

For my project, I would like to explore the relation between quality of education and demographics of the surrounding area in my home county of Prince George's County, MD. Despite being the wealthiest majority African American county in the country, public education and its quality remains to be a major issue there. I will investigate public high school statistics across the county, including dropout rate, average SAT scores, and employment rates, and note how they correlate with surrounding neighborhood (public high school district) demographics, including: median household income, homeownership, ethnicity, poverty rate, and education level obtained. The first sets of data (about each high school) can be found on the county education website, while the second sets of data I will obtain from the 2000 U.S. Census. I will then chart these sets of information against one another and comment on any correlations I find. From this work, I will gain a better of understanding of the degree to which neighborhood demographics correlate with local public high school performance.

I propose to work with the MIT Community Innovators Lab on a project to study the feasibility of establishing a cogeneration facility in the town of Springfield, MA.  The project will consist of analyzing a series of case studies of best practices in the use of municipally owned cogeneration plants as well as public - private partnerships that can develop around the implementation of Cogeneration plants within large institutions in Springfield. The GIS portion of the project will consist of site suitability analysis for the location of the Cogeneration Plant.  Initial discussions have centered around the projected location being within a local hospital, Bay State Health Systems.  The initial analysis may consist of mapping the demographic characteristics of the neighborhoods in close proximity to the Hospital to generate initial estimates of demand and possible benefits to low income families.  Because the project is still in the discussion phase, the site location has not been committed to being part of the Hospital, so I am proposing to present other sites that may also be of interest to consider for situating the cogeneration plant.  The characteristics of the proposed sites would be capacity to utilize high volume of electricity to make the project financially feasible but also proximity to low and moderate income families that may be able to benefit from the provision of lower cost electricity and steam.

Gentrification, Brownstones, and Preservation in Brooklyn, NY

My project examines the linkages between historic buildings,  historic district status, and gentrification in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn’s historic building stock, it can be argued, has contributed to the borough’s success in attracting real estate development and wealthy newcomers. What does brownstone gentrification look like today, in neighborhood context and taking into account historic designation status? I will look at three key brownstone-heavy block groups and their surroundings in Park Slope, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Using data from the Census on tenure, income, race, and length of residency, as well as historic district data from the New York City Landmarks Commission, I will explore these questions.

Comparing Spatial Patterns of Facilities and Institutions in New Delhi

As the capital of India, New Delhi is densely inhabited in many aspects. This includes the population of the city, as well the availability of different facilities and institutions. Being the capital, there is an abundance of businesses and government-based buildings and offices; however, this city also provides for its local citizens through its recreational facilities and educational institutions. I will run density analyses according to location (neighborhood-like statistics) on a variety of such facilities. These categories include Recreational Facilities, Religious Facilities, Governmental Institutions, Educational Institutions as well as Businesses and Residential Areas. Performing the spatial analysis and comparing the results will help us understand how these certain facilities are distributed across the city.

Mai Thuy Tran Dang

Stories from the Vietnamese American Community In New Orleans

Utilizing video and photographs I would like to share stories from the Vietnamese American Community in New Orleans. Both the History of the Community and how the youth feel in the community growing up as Vietnamese Americans in bicultural households. I will first show the demographics and different age groups in the city utilizing thematic mapping. Then I will embed video and photographs into the file that the user would be able to click on to learn more about the community.

The New Immigrant Population in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and its Relationship to the Proliferation of Small Business.

Lawrence, Massachusetts has historically always been a city of immigrants. In the mid to late 19th century, Lawrence was flooded with European immigrant workers who populated the textile mills that fashioned it into the industrial center it became. Lawrence began to flourish for some time, until eventually its growth was halted as its industries declined in the 1950s. Soon after, Lawrence saw a large new wave of Latino immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and other countries. With this influx of new immigrants came the proliferation of small businesses in Lawrence, largely populated along Essex Street, Lawrence’s historic shopping street. This project will look at the racial and poverty demographic changes over time in Lawrence, and analyze how they correlate with the geospatial proliferation of small businesses. It will look to answer to what extent the use of small business has become an economic development tool for Lawrence’s new immigrant populations. It will examine data such as race/ethnicity, median household income values, homeownership, land use, proximity of main roads to businesses, etc.

Crime Statistics for Massachusetts Municipalities

In this project, I compare Massachusetts crime statistics from 1980 to 2003 in select municipalities. I compare the sum of violent crimes in both years, and also the sum of property crimes in both years. The data comes from the Massachusetts State Police through SPOLIVER (originally accessed through MassGIS). It is found in ESRI shapefile format as part of a .dbf database file. I characterize the crime statistics by economic indicators, such as poverty. I also characterize by location (urban, rural, etc.). In conclusion, I am comparing the different crime numbers in different municipalities by where the poverty level of its citizens and whether the crimes are occurring more in rural towns or the largest cities.

I will be examining the amount of solar radiation that particular solar panel installations receive in and around the Boston area.  Using the solar radiation tools in ArcGIS, I should be able to determine the points that receive the greatest amounts of sunlight and therefore store the greatest amount of solar energy.  Based on these results and through additional analysis using the solar radiation spatial analysis tools, I should also be able to interpolate the areas of Boston that receive the greatest sun fall based on the area’s elevation, which would assist in the process of selecting new sites for additional solar panel installations.

Art for Whom: An Analysis of Federal Funding for the Arts

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 contained $50 million of funding for non-profit arts and cultural organizations. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was responsible for allocating grants of $25,000 and $50,000 to non-profit arts and cultural organizations for the primary purpose of creating or securing jobs in creative industries. To qualify for the grants, an organization had to fit into the stimulus criteria and had to have received a grant from the NEA within the last four years. Thus, arts funding from the stimulus package was quite restricted, an idea that played out in the organizations that received funding. Where did the stimulus funding for the arts go? Which areas of the country benefited the most from the stimulus funding for the arts? Although the primary goal of the stimulus funding was to create or save jobs, increasing funding to arts organizations also increased the abilities of the arts organizations to produce art for the public. How was the public affected by the increase in funding for the arts? Who are the audiences for the arts that were supported by stimulus funding? My project examines the spatial distribution of the stimulus package arts funding to determine which communities are affected by the arts funding. My analysis focuses primarily on grants in the New England region, using data gathered from NEA grant lists, and uses 2000 census data to shed light on the composition of the areas served by the funded organizations. Some of the factors I explore are resident employment and occupation, income and poverty status, educational attainment, and racial demographics. Through my analysis, I will gain a sense of the audiences most served by the arts funding from the stimulus package.