| 11.520: A Workshop on Geographic Information Systems |
| 11.188: Urban Planning and Social Science Laboratory |
| Name | Title | Abstract | |
| 1 | Jose Antonio Correa Ibarguengoitia | Locating a Second Airport for Mexico City | There has been talk of building a second airport in Mexico City over the last 30 years. Until now, all the proposed alternatives have been held back by various motives. This project wishes to explore suitable sites for a second airport. The requirements for an airport location are enormous my site analysis will center on three: (1) Distance: Within 10 miles of the city center (which is the average distance in the U.S. between airports and city centers). (2) Population: Within that area, in those municipalities with a population density in the bottom quartile. (3) Topography: The FAA establishes there shouldn’t be heights above 150 ft. in a 10,000 ft. radius for certain types of airports. I use that criteria through a raster analysis of surrounding heights. A buffering and thematic map for the first two criteria will be used to determine suitable sites. A raster analysis for the third criteria will round off useful locations and determine whether past proposed locations fit with this analysis. |
| 2 | Eric Minikel | Explaining the Discrepancy Between Accessibility and Commute Time in the Bay Area | Accessibility indices compiled by the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) reflect the number of jobs proximate to a given Traffic Analysis Zone. In theory, these indices should correlate tightly with the U.S. Census’s travel-to-work data. In this project, I compare the accessibility to commute times and find that in some parts of the Bay Area, discrepancies emerge: areas where people are commuting relatively long distances even though many jobs are available nearby, or where people are managing short commutes despite the dearth of jobs nearby. I examine income and age as possible demographic factors which might correlate with or help to explain this discrepancy. |
| 3 | Karla Renata Flores Romero | Immigration Characteristics for Boston and Surrounding Towns | Given the fact that Boston is well known as a cosmopolitan city –fueled by a large number of educational institutions-, this project focuses on exploring the immigration patterns for Arlington, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Newton, Revere, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, Winchester and Winthrop. The foreign born population has been classified in naturalized citizens and not citizens in order to look at the similarities/differences of each group regarding the value of the land in which they live, their proximity to colleges and universities and other infrastructure facilities such as hospitals and public transportation systems. The data used for this purpose is from the 2000 US Census and MassGIS. |
| 4 | Analorena Ramos Maltes | Imigration Characteristics for Boston and Surrounding Towns | In my project, I would like to explore immigrant communities in the Boston area (5 city area). I think it would be interesting to find where these communities are concentrated (i.e. in clusters, just in a general area) and see whether certain nationalities are predominantly present in a certain community or town. I would also like to explore the distribution of immigrants by age to see if there is a pattern (i.e. whether younger people live in Boston, rather than neighboring cities, etc.) For this project, the census data will be crucial as well as other data sets containing information on immigration (country of origin, etc.) |
| 5 | James Madden | Bikinis on Buses, Shorts on Subways: MA Beaches and Public Transit | The Greater Boston area has an excellent public transit system. It also has a number of public beaches. But, are those beaches accessible by the MBTA? What improvements could be made to increase beach access by transit? To explore these questions, I analyze the proximity of public beaches to transit stops on the MBTA’s bus, subway, commuter rail, and ferry services. I also explore the adequacy of bus lines serving beaches using Saturday ridership as a proxy for capacity. Finally, I recommend new connections and improved service in the three regions of South Shore, Harbor, and North Shore. |
| 6 | Lyndz Steeves | Dudley Triangle Demographic Changes: A period of change, 1980-2000 | Once the Dudley Square Neighborhood Initiative was created in 1984, major urban changes were planned for the Dudley Triangle of the Roxbury neighborhood. The Dudley Triangle is bound by Dudley Street on the Northeast, Alexander Street on the East, Quincy Street on the South; and Blue Hill Avenue on the West. I will preform a case study on the changing demographics of the block groups within the Dudley Triangle and those block groups which share a boundary with this area. Using US Census data from GeoLytics, Road files from MassGIS, and thematic map methodology, I will be able to explore changes in the racial makeup, medium household incomes, and the rates of renter v. owner occupied units in this area of Roxbury from 1970-2000. The DSNI is a neighborhood initiative that aims to revitalize the Dudley Square neighborhood while preventing gentrification usually associated with urban renewal. To date 400 low income housing units have been built on the once abandoned 1,300 parcels of land, and I will be studying effects of this neighborhood initiative over a 30 year period. |
| 7 | Andrew Gulbrandson | Reinventing Route 1: A New Mode for the MBTA's 2nd Most Popular Route | The #1 bus is the MBTA’s second most popular non-BRT route (combined weekday and weekend ridership). Given the high levels of congestion along its route, which primarily consists of Massachusetts Ave, it may be preferable for the MBTA to adopt a different mode of transit operating on its own right of way. This study will examine route characteristics such as income, population density, job counts (if available) and quantity and diversity of land use types along the proposed 5-mile long (approx) route from the Savin Hill Red Line T stop to the Central Square Red Line T stop by examining what lies within a 300m buffer of the route itself, as well as a 600m buffer of (potential) station locations. These characteristics will be compared with the same data from the Blue Line subway (heavy rail, about 6 miles long) and the 4.25 mile long section of the Green Line “B” branch of light rail from the Blandford Street stop to Boston College stop. Based on the comparative analysis, a decision will be made as to whether or not Route 1 could support an alternate mode of transport, financial resources and political will notwithstanding. |
| 8 | Lauren Lambie-Hanson | Hoosier Casinos: Demographics of Host Communities | Indiana legalized riverboat gaming in 1993. Since then, riverboat casinos have popped up along the Ohio River and Lake Michigan, as well as in small lakes in the middle of the state. Casinos are sometimes used as an economic development strategy to promote tourism and create jobs. Seeking these benefits, economically distressed communities may be more likely to allow casinos to be developed. In my project, I will analyze Census demographics (namely unemployment, poverty, household income, and dominant employment sectors) to compare the jurisdictions in Indiana with casinos to those without casinos to see if there are statistically significant differences between these two groups. For riverboat casinos opened in the 1990s, I will check to see if their host communities showed any noticeable trends in these variables between the 1990 and 2000 Census reports. |
| 9 | Slaven Razmilic | Housing Values, Income and Commuting: An Exploratory Approach to Population Income Sorting in the Boston Area | This project is an exploratory evaluation of the Alonso-Muth-Mills Model for spatial equilibrium in cities. The model describes the relationship between housing prices and distance to the city’s central business district (CBD). Further extensions incorporate transportation costs and technologies that can yield better explanations for housing prices and population income sorting at different distances from the city center. I use block group aggregates from the Census 2000 to estimate comparable indexes for housing values and transportation strategies and relate them to income and distance to CBD. The model predicts the centralization of the poor and the suburbanization of the rich under the assumption that the income elasticity of demand for land is greater than the elasticity of the time cost of commuting with respect to income. However, the existence of a convenient and affordable network of public transportation and the fact that different income groups use different transportation strategies, will probably yield further theoretical support for the income sorting pattern that the city shows. |
| 10 | Patrick Michael Lynch | Boston's Liquified Natural Gas Terminal | This project looks at the Boston area’s Natural Gas infrastructure with particular focus on current and proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) receiving terminals. To reach the current terminal in Everett, a super-tanker filled with super-cooled natural gas sails into Boston Harbor every 10 days, going dangerously close to downtown and residential neighborhoods in the inner harbor. The project uses GIS tools to help analyze current and proposed future sites by estimating the potential affected population from an accident. Further, it looks at income distribution around the shipping route, sensitive sites such as schools or environmentally sensitive areas, and potential disaster relief sites such as hospitals and fire stations. |
| 11 | Christopher Charles Grillo | MBTA Commuter Rail and Massachusetts Highway Congestion | The Massachusetts highways system if fraught with many externalities that adversely impact users (e.g., congestion) and the larger Metropolitan Community (e.g., noise, pollution, and other non-financial costs). Many believe that a modal shift from individual passenger vehicles to mass transit will be necessary to improve the economic and environmental sustainability of Metro Boston. This project asks a simple question: Does the availability of commuter rail service alone lead to a decrease in highway usage? |
| 12 | Sung Kim | Migration to New Jersey | For this final project, my interest lies in the distribution of New Jersey residents who have migrated to their current residence, by county. By narrowing down portions of the 2000 Census Data, I am able to isolate six points of interest: Born in state of residence, Born in other state, Born in US territory, and Foreign Born. I will create thematic maps of each of these criteria and then look further into the Foreign Born to create thematic maps delineating citizenry along the same boundaries of counties. |
| 13 | Kristal Michael-Ann Peters | Feasibility Study of 299 Broadway Ave, Somerville | Star Market at 299 Broadway Ave in Somerville was closed in January 2008. The East Somerville City Board recently held a public meeting with local residents to discuss options for what should replace this establishment. Community members suggested that they would like to have an establishment such as a convenient store, or a hardware store, or an “ethnic” supermarket located at the now vacant site. This project looks at such establishments already in existence in the Somerville area and associated factors which may have contributed to their siting and success. Factors to be looked at include: surrounding population density, proximity to public transportation and major roadways, and proximity to other businesses. A comparison between the 299 Broadway Ave. site and those of other successful establishments will be made to determine what sort of establishment may be most feasible for the site. |
| 14 | Praveen Subramani | Placing a New Restaurant in the Boston Area | Over 60% of new restaurants, delis, and food shops close within three years of opening. This sobering statistic is well known by experienced restaurateurs, many of whom agree that location is overwhelmingly the most important factor for success in the restaurant industry. I plan to use ArcGIS software in conjunction with census data, road and public transportation data, and demographic statistics of cities in the Boston area to inform a selection of an upscale Boston area restaurant targeted at prosperous, working young people (in the age group of 25-40 or so). In placement of the new restaurant, I am seeking land that is characterized by high population density (particularly a high concentration of the employed young people), accessible through major roads and public transportation (I will create buffers around major roads and subway stops), and is zoned as commercial but located near dense residential areas with high median household income (to target people with large disposable income). Furthermore, I may examine the contribution of other factors such as daily traffic and daytime employment (available through Census Data such as the ‘Journey To Work’ Tables) to gather an idea of how different neighborhoods are used and how density changes throughout the day. Finally, I will account for logistical considerations such as land acquisition and cost, minimum square footage requirements, and availability of parking. Then I will compare the results of the final suitability analysis to an existing raster of restaurants in MA to select ideal sites that have not yet been heavily capitalized upon. The final result of the project will be an informative thematic map that could significantly assist a restaurateur in placement of this new restaurant. Of course, there are other subjective considerations in restaurant placement such as character of neighborhoods and presence of other similar restaurants, but this analysis represents a major first step in assessing objective demographic data for this extended site suitability analysis. |
| Name | Title | Abstract | |
| 1 | Courtney Sung | Chinatowns: Examining an Immigrant Neighborhood in Boston and San Francisco | Ethnic neighborhoods often provide much of the unique flavor found within our cities. The ethnic neighborhood that seems to have transcended state and country borders, moreover, is that of Chinatown. What this project proposes to assess are the similarities and differences between two of the most well-known Chinatowns in Boston and San Francisco. I would like to compare and contrast their demographic information: age distribution, population density, housing density, relative income levels, access to transportation, and land use (specifically housing and commercial usage) in the context of their cities. I will be using mostly U.S. Census Data in addition to MassGIS and CaSIL information. Is there something inherently comparable between these neighborhoods? What are the socio-economic patterns in common? Having worked at the Asian Community Development Corporation in Boston Chinatown this summer, I would be interested in seeing whether collaboration between Chinatown organizations across the nation is actually compatible and effective. |
| 2 | Yeseul Kim | Targeting the Disadvantaged Youth: Recruitment for the Leadership Training Institute (LTI) | The Leadership Training Institute (LTI) is a non-profit organization that serves underprivileged, minority students in the greater Boston area with mentorship and leadership development. As a part of our publicity and recruitment efforts, LTI attempts to visit high schools and give information sessions. However, as MIT students, our time is limited and we would like to focus our efforts and only target schools with the most disadvantaged students. Using data from MASS GIS and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, I plan to conduct a suitability analysis on high schools in the Boston and Cambridge area. We will restrict our search to public schools with high minority percentages, in the Boston and Cambridge jurisdiction, and within 2 miles from MIT. |
| 3 | Julie Iris Stein | Gentrification and Commuting Times | For my final project, I will explore whether there is a correlation between gentrification and decreased commuting times to Central Business Districts. I expect to find that higher income people will have recently moved into more central city locations that shorten their commutes to work. I will use Census data from 2000 and 1990 to look at the relationship among Income, Housing Tenure and Year Householder Moved into Unit, and Journey to Work (Commuting) variables. I will look at data from New York City and Westchester County. This question has policy implications on securing affordable housing in cities as energy and transportation costs start to rise significantly and these central locations become more attractive to high-income persons (who are able to bid up the rent). |
| 4 | Amy Jacobi | White Flight in NJ: Have the Suburbs Changed? | In my fairly rural town of Cranbury, we experienced a period of fast growth in the late 1990s, which brought more diversity to our town. This goes against the general trend of affluent whites moving to the suburbs. For this project, I analyzed changes between population statistics in Central New Jersey in order to see changes in population patterns in traditionally white areas. |
| 5 | Diana Jue | Analyzing the Relationship between Power Plants and Demographic Variables in China | Some of China’s grossest polluters are its coal-fired power plants. I propose to analyze the relationship between the locations of power plants and various demographic variables in the areas where they are located. More specifically, I will analyze infant mortality, migration, and changes in income over one decade. I plan to compare the differences in these variables between counties with coal-fired plants and counties renewable-energy plants, as well as the differences between counties with coal-fired plants and counties with zero power plants. Understandably, I will be careful with the data because there are many factors beside power plants that affect these factors. The data I am using are from Carbon Monitoring for Action Database (CARMA) and China’s 1990 and 2000 Census (county level). I will overlay the power plants on the Census data, create thematic maps, conduct basic database calculations both in MS-Access and ArcGIS, and perhaps utilize some raster spatial analysis techniques. My data will be represented both visually and in a table. |
| 6 | Daniel Daou Ornelas | Mexico City's Watershed Analysis | Ten years ago a plan for the city suggested flodding the dried lake bed located in the northeastern area of the metropolitan region surrounding the airport. The plan had several benefits including: (1) Recovering an area deemed as an ecological disaster, (2) Recharging the underground water table, (3) Generating enough incentives to relocate the airport, (4) Creating jobs on the poorest region of the city, (5) Helping clean the city's polluted atmosphere and regulate its weather, (6) Creating attractive real estate by providing the city with a new waterfront. From all these benefits, the purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact a new water front could have in the amount of developable sites within the city. |
| 7 | Laura Humm Delgado | Fast Food Restaurants in Immigrant and Low-Income Neighborhoods | My project is an examination of local immigrant neighborhoods, fast food restaurants, and whether there is a relationship between the two. This project will present a spatial analysis of the location of fast food restaurants, the concentration of them, and their relation to immigrant neighborhoods, while also looking at income levels within those neighborhoods. To carry this out, I will identify and locate all fast food restaurants in Cambridge and Boston and map them using geocoding in ArcGIS. I will also use 2000 U.S. census data for Cambridge and Boston block groups to identify which areas have higher immigrant populations and what the income levels of these areas are. With this data, I will create thematic maps, as well as a map with a buffer around the fast food restaurants. I will then identify which block groups intersect a buffer and compare the composition of those block groups to the overall composition of the cities. My hypothesis is that fast food restaurants target immigrant and low-income neighborhoods and this will be spatially apparent in both Cambridge and Boston. |
| 8 | Sonia Nijhawan | Exploration of the South Asian Indian Population in the United States: Areas of Residence and Income | Within the past decade, the South Asian Indian population residing in the United States has exploded. Just from 2000 to 2007 alone, the population experienced a growth rate of 53%, the highest of any Asian American population group in the US. For my 11.188 final project, I plan to study certain patterns exhibited by this rapidly growing population. In particular, I will be exploring: areas of residence and income. My workspace will consist of the entire United States. These are the questions and sub-questions I would like to consider and learn more about: (1) Areas of Residence: In what areas of the United States do Indians tend to live? North vs. South/ East vs. West In big cities or smaller cities? and (2) Income: Do Indians tend to be one of the wealthier races in the United States? I will compare income of the Indian population to the income of other ethnic groups in the United States. My analysis will be done on the nation-wide level, with data being split on the county level. The two main files that will be used in my analysis are: (1) United States shapefile and (2) Census Datasets (from SF3). |
| 9 | Daniel McLaughlin | Map the Vote: A Spatial Analysis of the 2004 Presidneital Election in an Ohio County | After the debates have ended and last of the ads has aired, elections are won and lost on the ground. Getting out the vote is perhaps the most important part of a presidential campaign, especially in competitive states where every vote counts. By combining precinct-level results from the 2004 presidential election with individual voter registration records, which contain turnout and party affiliation data, I examine how a particular election played out in Delaware County, Ohio. Geocoding the addresses associated with voter registration records allows the data to be located and correlated with census data, which may have explanatory or predictive power with respect to registration and turnout. I explore the effect of other possible factors in voting behavior, such as distance to the polling place. |
| 10 | Stephanie Shin | Proposals for New MIT Saferide Routes | MIT students use MIT’s Saferide services on a daily basis. However, two common problems arise on two particular routes, Boston West and Boston East, during the peak hours of 6 to 8pm. The first problem is related to Saferide’s reliability. Although there is a schedule that determines at what time Saferide will be at each stop, factors such as weather and traffic prevent Saferide from being on time. In addition, the current Saferide routes during this specific time frame could be optimized by taking into account which stops have a higher demand, and also by eliminating certain stops or making less popular stops available by request only. Doing so will save time by cutting down the time it takes to complete each loop by about 15 minutes, which will make Saferide more efficient and accurate. It may also help relieve the overcrowding that occurs, since shorter routes means that there will be more opportunities every hour to take Saferide. I plan to use data from MASSGIS and information from the MIT Parking and Transportation Office, along with my own observations, to propose new routes for Boston West and Boston East. |
| 11 | Wonho Seo | ||
| 12 | Richard Suarez | RowNYC: Locating New Community Boathouse Developments in New York City | The history of rowing in the United States has been deeply rooted in New York City, with some of the earliest regattas taking place on the Harlem River. In an effort to redevelop Manhattan’s waterfront greenery, the first community boathouse in over 100 years was brought to the Harlem River to bring back the sport of rowing to what once was a capital of rowing. For my project, I hope to find possible locations for the development of new boathouses in New York City. Since a community boathouse already serves parts of Harlem, I hope to locate a boathouse near midtown Manhattan that will serve more Manhattan residents, as well as some Queens and Brooklyn residents. I will look to locate the boathouse in an area of average to high median household income, near multiple subway lines, and near many high schools in an effort to serve the most people. Data will be obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s SF3 data, as well as from the NYS GIS Clearinghouse and the Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository. Selected sites will be overlayed onto a Google Earth image of the area to get a better sense of distance to subway lines surrounding areas. |
| 13 | David Stiebel | Detroit's Plight | The demographics of Detroit and its suburbs have changed dramatically over this time period. My project will analyze the movement of Detroit's residents over the last few decades. I will seek to answer how certain communities came to reside in their current locations, and why Detroit's various ethnic and religious communities (black, white, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) are currently so segregated. I will also see whether or not the changing demographics are correlated with political election results, poverty rates, housing values, and education rates. |
| 14 | Jingsi Xu | Site Selection for Senior Center in Cambridge Using Spatially Weighted Score | For the Homework 2-senior center selection, we set different aspects of criteria including accessibility to future center site, safety, land use, safety, etc. To pick up the final location, we used spatial intersect joins among layers with acceptable sites, and got several pieces of land in the map as final choices. My concern is if we want to add more criteria to the process, what if none of the sites would meet the needs or the local government would have other concerns and won’t be satisfied with our analysis result. So I would like to use another method to select acceptable sites for senior centers. In general, I would like to use spatially weight score as alternative to our original method. This means instead of excluding the less favorable land out of the map, we could give scores to different pieces of land, and the higher, the more favorable. Take accessibility to the major roads in the city, we can divide the distance range from 200 to 1000 meters into five levels, and then give each level scores from 5 to 1. For each of the criteria, the score system would be set in the same way. Finally, by giving different weights to each criterion layer and then adding them up, we can obtain a map with scores and the piece of land with the highest score would be ideal. And in this way, all the city scale would be evaluated through this method. Based on the original analysis and spatially weighted score analysis, I would like to compare the results between these two methods, and give evaluation to which one could give a more ideal result for site selection problems. |
| 15 | Sarah Madden | Site Suitability of the MBTA Green Line Extension | My project will consider the MBTA Green Line extension north into Somerville and Medford, looking at the initial recommended stops along the proposed path in the context of population density, proximity to other forms of transportation, and commuting patterns. The current phase of the Green Line Extension Project is focused on finalizing the best route and station locations for the new transit service, so it is timely to look at this site problem now. The stated goals of the project are "to increase mobility, encourage public transit usage, improve regional air quality, ensure a more equitable distribution of transit services, and support opportunities for sustainable development." This GIS analysis will consider site suitability concerns for the route of the line and the individual proposed T stops, producing a series of thematic maps based on population density and commute pattern types, and comparing and contrasting these areas with similar patterns on other MBTA T lines. |
| 16 | Sandra Padilla | Access to Health in the Boston Area’s Low-Income Communities | It has been well documented that the health of families in poverty is much worse than people at middle and high income levels. Easy access to health care, jobs, day care, grocery stores and much more is important for maintaining good health. Yet, low-income communities suffer from the worst access to these vital resources. In the past decade, the public health profession has started to get involved land use and transportation issues, noting that these factors play a huge role in access for these families. For my project, I map household income and other indicators of poverty and juxtapose this information with the location of basic needs. I also map public transit to find the role of MBTA in ameliorating this situation. |
| 17 | Sarah Parker Nusser | Comparing the spatial location of donors and votes in the context of California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative. | This project will analyze the major funding contributions ($10,000+) generated in each county in support of or in opposition to Proposition 8, including total funds donated and funds donated over time leading up to election day. It will compare this data to the Prop 8 voting outcomes in each respective county and draw conclusions on whether wealthy donors impacted voting outcomes in their home counties (another way of saying this: did donors receive the desired return on their investment). The project will also assess the possible significance of funding provided by donors from states outside of California. |
| 18 | Nancy Gonzales | Continuation of Senior Center Suitability Analysis | Given the variety of criteria we used to find the best suitable location for the senior center such as proximity to major roads, TRI sites, poor senior density, I will be adding to the criteria total senior population and proximity to public transportation. Although making the senior center accessible to poor seniors is important, it is also important to take into consideration the total amount of seniors and where the majority is located. I would like to compare information to see if this new criteria will challenge the sites that already seemed best suitable and whether proximity to public transportation will strengthen the final choice for the site. |