| 11.520: A Workshop on Geographic Information Systems |
| 11.188: Urban Planning and Social Science Laboratory |
Name |
Title |
Abstract |
| Elizabeth Farrelly |
Exploring the Spatial Patterns of Grocery Stores in Jamaica Plain | For my project, I would like to explore the spatial patterns of grocery stores in Jamaica Plain. I am currently working on a thesis about grocery stores and their impact on community in Jamaica Plain. My work on this project would serve to support my thesis work by providing valuable background information as well as maps that could support some of my field work. For the first part of my project, I would like to generate a comprehensive data file on all of the grocery store locations in Jamaica Plain using MS Access. I will use available city data on store location from parcel and assessment data as well as some of my own information on store location. I anticipate that this part of the project will be very time-intensive and would require me to go beyond the database techniques we have learned in class to complete the task. Once I have created this data file I will be able to make a map of all the store locations in Jamaica Plain, which will be of immense value when presenting my thesis. Additionally, I would like to use census data to explore relationships between the location of these stores and characteristics of the surrounding community including population density, age distribution, average income, and race/ethnicity information. If time and data constraints permit, I would also find it very interesting to look at the relationship between crime statistics and the store locations.
|
| Matthew Ciborowski | A New Airport for Boston | Logan Airport is quickly becoming overcrowded, and growing at a quick
rate. Growth at Logan will lead to increasing delays, new runways, and
a decrease in quality of life in the communities around Logan in the coming
years. The area around Boston has many smaller airfields (Manchester,
Providence, Hanscom, Hyannis), but most of these are too small to handle
today's larger jetliners and passengers, or too distant to be attractive
options to most Boston residents. Boston may need a new airport someday,
as expanding Logan is mostly unviable due to its pinned in location between
Boston Harbor and East Boston. |
| Angelica Weiner | Rurual and Developed Land in New Jersey | My project proposal is to take a look at rural land versus developed land in New Jersey over the past 10 years. I hope to analzye how much farming land has been sold for (housing) development and note any interesting trends, and if new conservation policies have had an impact on preserving land. |
| Anita Yip | Site Suitability Analysis for Boston Chinatown’s local branch of
the Boston Public Library |
Up until fifty years ago, Chinatown had a local branch of the Boston Public Library at 130 Tyler St. It was demolished during the heyday of Boston’s urban renewal to make way for a Central Artery ramp. Currently a small group of neighborhood activists and students called Friends of the Chinatown Library have been fighting to rebuild it for five years. The vision for a new public library is one that will serve the people of Chinatown, be a safe and inviting place for learning, and be a public space for community gatherings. The group’s key victory happened in June 2006 when the city passed its budget, including $35,000 for a feasibility study for the library. To help support their work, I will conduct a site suitability analysis for the potential library.
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| Annis Whitlow | Comparing Gentrification Pressure Around the Odunde Festival to Philadelphia Overall |
The Odunde festival in Philadelphia, an African American festival located at the western edge of South Street, has encountered opposition from some nearby residents. This opposition is blamed on gentrification and the increased presence of middle class white residents in an area of Philadelphia that had previously been mostly African American. Social capital literature suggests that individuals that differ significantly in terms of multiple social categories: e.g. race, income, and life cycle (i.e. single vs. married, children vs. no children) are highly unlikely to develop a social network. Gentrification is likely to create a shift in all three categories. Therefore, I am going to look at how the neighborhood around the festival area is changing in terms of these three indicators and whether the area is facing more or less pressure from gentrification than the rest of the city. |
| Asheley Ramsey | Child Care at MIT: The shortage of accessible center based child care to students, faculty and staff | I will show that there is a profound shortage of affordable and accessible care available to student, faculty and staff living, working and studying on MIT’s campus in Cambridge. I intend to use locations of daycare centers in Cambridge and Boston and use a 1 mile buffer to limit the set to those that are most accessible. I will create a table including the number of available slots and the tuition range for each age group and the distance from three places on campus: 77 Massachusetts Ave, Eastgate and Westgate Family apartments. I will examine the 2000 census information for the block groups surrounding and including campus to approximate the number of local children 5 and under and use estimates of MIT affiliated children 5 and under from the MIT Center for Work, Family and Personal Life as well as the Graduate Student Council. I will create several thematic maps showing distance from campus, density of young children, and median income vs tuition in order to prove the lack of child care, especially affordable child care. |
| B.Sanjay Bissessur | City-wide Broadband Access for Neighbourhoods | I would like to explore the project aiming to provide a city-wide open
wireless access in a non-profit approach that plans to make use of existing
infrastructure already owned by the city of Boston - its light poles, traffic
signals, and city buildings. The project targets to foster entrepreneurial
activity while bringing the wireless access to all neighbourhoods. I'm interested
in looking at the use of GIS for the network set-up while analyzing the
various socio-economic features of neighbourhoods in bridging any digital
divide. |
| Cassandra Roth | The Components of Small Organic Farm Success: Soil, Access and Surrounding Census Data for Listed Massachusetts Organic Farms | The growing organic food movement in the United States has led to pressure to create new organic farms, especially in New England. To be sucessful, these organic farms must be situated on good soil, have access to a market, and meet the organic standards set out by the USDA (at a minimum). To explore these issues, sucessful organic farms in Massachusetts will be analyzed for common features which may contribute to financial sustainability of the farm. We assume profitable organic farms will be listed in state organic farm association lists (approximately 40 farms have been identified). These lists will be geocoded and used along with road, census, availability of online information / advertising and soil data. This information could benefit new farms, or those considering changing their farm to organic. |
| David Lee | Providing Elderly Access in Brookline, MA | This project will support thesis research on how urban infrastructure affects the mobility and access restraints on elderly citizens in Brookline, MA. It will analyze both the location of elderly residents in the city, their proximity to shopping, services, and transit, and their effective walking radius from their homes. I will use GIS datalayers provided by the Town of Brookline, US Census Data, and topographic data. I will generate thematic maps using the GIS datalayers and census data to demonstrate patterns of living. A layer of major roads and transit networks will allow the creation of a map of walkable distance; analyzing the slope of the topographic layer will further refine this by adding a raster gradient map that weights steeper terrain to scale at a higher cost (this affects elderly citizens more than younger generations). I will conclude with a general assessment of Brookline's transportation services and how well they accommodate elderly residents, and where specific holes in accessibility exist in the town. |
| Diana Brubaker |
Examining the Impact of Subway Stops on Surrounding Property values | I’m interested in how subway stops affect surrounding property
values. I would like to look into the values of properties surrounding
current T-stops in Boston and also property values surrounding proposed
future green line stops. I may also look at old property values from the
US Census before some of the newer T-stops were built. I will create raster
grids of the property values at both times and subtract one grid from
the other to see if significant increases in property values occurred
around the new T-stops. The subtracted map will show the size and shape
of the area affected by the T-stop. Future property values surrounding
the newly planned green line extension stops can then be predicted according
the analysis of how property values have changed around Boston T-stops
in the past. |
| John Snavely | Safe Bike Routes in Cambridge | As one of the hundreds of people who bike around Cambridge, I'm always
looking for the safest route. It would be great if I had a website that
would show roads that might be dangerous, display current traffic conditions,
and allow users to upload areas of concern. This project is a mashup between
Yahoo Maps Flash component and geocoded GIS data from the Cambridge TIGER
files. I'm going to use the road size and it's proximity to commericial
and residential areas to develop a safety ranking for each road to produce
a table in ArcMap which contains TIGER geometry and my interpolated safety
rankings. This table will be output to XML and then overlayed on top of
a Yahoo map that shows current traffic conditions. Based on what the map
looks like, and the routes that it suggests, I will have to change some
of my criteria for determining "bike safety". At the end of
this process, I hope to have a web-accessible map which I can use to plan
bike routes in Cambridge. |
| Joshua Nelson | Expanding Kuala Lumpur's Fixed-Guideway Public Transit Network | Over the last ten years Kuala Lumpur has made large investments in
fixed-guideway public transit systems (monorail, heavy rail, and light
rail technologies). These systems, however, were procured under concessions
which disproportionately favored the private firms selected to plan, construct
and operate them. The government had very little say in how the projects
were implemented. |
| Laura Machala | Examining Various Transportation Amenities in the Greater Boston Area |
I am interested in exploring transportation justice issues in my thesis.
Therefore, I am interested in examining various transportation amenities
in the Greater Boston area for my final project. Specifically, I am interested
in mapping the race/national origin/ESL and income-level characteristics
of Boston neighborhoods as well as where current bus and rail services exist.
I would like to also be able to estimate commuting times given traffic and
service levels. It would also be interesting to estimate commuting cost
for residents as well as the cost to the MBTA of providing service and incorporate
this information into a map/s. I am not sure what additional data sets I
will need, although perhaps the MBTA has data that I could use. If not,
perhaps the Federal Transit Administration has data that I could use. |
| Mandeep Kaur | Accessibility Analysis for major public facilities in Chandigarh | From the planning stage in 1950’s, in the master plan and development
thereafter, there has always been a north and south divide in the city.
Most of the health care facilities, higher educational institutes, the only
university, only medical college, only technical and engineering college
are all in the north. From the environmental angle bigger open green parks
and reserved forest are also in the northern part of the city. Where as
in the south there is a higher population density, a few colleges and hospitals
and nearly no open green spaces. Per capita availability of facilities is
much lesser in the south. An important component of my project is to digitize the map, point out the location of the facilities, their concentration and view the demographic and geographic divide in the city. I will rely on the information on facilities as per the paper map of Chandigarh, population figures and ward delimitation as per census of India 2001. Thereafter, after looking at the difference in the access and distance to the facilities, I will conduct an accessibility analysis for major public facilities in the city. |
| Mark Reed | Seattle Light Rail Analysis | Currently, Seattle, WA has no public transportation system besides
ferries across Puget Sound and buses that few people ride. However, a
light rail has been advocated for many years and construction has finally
begun on one section. Many lofty predictions have been made for the number
or rail riders. It's pretty controversial. This analysis will estimate
how useful this rail, if fully extended throughout the city, would be.
This site (http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/lightrail.htm) contains
a lot of useful information about the proposed rail, including locations
of all planned stations. I will use buffers around each station in combination
with various datasets to extrapolate some rough conclusions. |
| Thomas Guerra | Socialeconomic Analysis for Zip Code in the City of San Antonio | I really want to do some sort of calculation for poverty, percentage of
teenage pregnancy, dropout rate, families with 5+ kids or something of the
nature, education experience and other information for each zip code in
the city of San Antonio. I know that this data exist because I received
a packet with information similar to this about each zip code in the city
of San Antonio my Junior Year of High School (4 year ago) and I'm sure that
like the city of Cambridge there is information out there about the city
of San Antonio too. I want to show how bad off my home zip code is/was because
it is/was really really bad. In addition if there is any information about
the amount of drug dealing around then I'd like to include that information
as well. |
| Zhiyu Chen | Spatial Study of the Poor People and Their Access to Social Services and
Transportation Facilities—Comparison Study of White, Latino and Asian |
I am interested in the spatial pattern of the poor people, and how it
is related with race (e.g., White, Latino, and Asians). Furthermore, I want
to know how this difference affects their access to social services and
transportation facilities in the city. The concept of poverty is closely
related to the notion of fair share of public resources and services. Poor
people tend to live in areas with different social services with high income
people, and different low income people from different races tend to have
different spatial and cultural patterns. I am still thinking of which city
to use as the example. I will also need to use different layers such as
land uses, roads, etc. I also need to use Census data to find the demographic
and income information. |