Geography Commons^™

Do Americans Support More Housing?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

An analysis of opinion poll data on housing issues. The article finds that Americans generally believe that their community needs more housing of all types, but are more closely divided about whether such housing should be in their own neighborhoods. The article further finds that members of minority groups, lower-income Americans, and younger Americans are more pro-housing than older, affluent whites.

Tiny Houses (Revisited): Geography Of Tiny House Villages For The Homeless In The United States, Yetimoni Kpeebi

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The increasing adoption of tiny house villages as a solution to homelessness in the United States (US) underscores the need for comprehensive tracking and documentation of their locations, physical attributes, and social characteristics. This is vital to assess their effectiveness, providing advocates and policymakers with the information needed to optimize outcomes, and ensure these initiatives truly benefit the homeless population. While initial efforts were made in 2019 to establish a database for these villages (Evans, 2020), this study represents an improvement by presenting an updated database that reflects the growing popularity of tiny house villages for the homeless. Building upon …

Riverview Community Park Commoning Plan, Haley B. Keene

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Riverview Community Park began as an illegal DIY skatepark in the Maymont neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Now, although it is a city park, it is still entirely managed by volunteer community groups (skateboarders, the neighborhood Civic League, and a community garden) who view the park as a creative, experimental community-led spatial project. Due to a dearth of communication between the three groups, the park has suffered political strife between the groups and a chaotic physical atmosphere. This plan utilizes a commons governance framework and participatory, asset-based community design to usher in a new era of enhanced collaboration, common narratives, and …

Whose Vote Is It Anyway? A Geospatial Analysis Of The California Voter's Choice Act Ballot Drop Box Criteria In Santa Cruz County, Judith Heher

Master's Projects

The way Californians vote is changing. While some of the laws surrounding these changes are close to a decade old, the events of 2020 surrounding the November Presidential Election and the COVID-19 pandemic both accelerated and expanded the adoption of contactless voting approaches such as vote-by-mail and the ballot drop box. Neither tool is new to California voters. Vote-by-mail was introduced to the state in 1962 (CA Secretary of State, unknown) and ballot drop boxes were first used in 2014 (Sherman, 2020). In 2016 California Senate Bill 450 (SB-450, 2016) was signed into law. Also known as the Voters Choice …

A Tale Of Two Working Landscapes, Sage C. Sutcliffe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Designing A Transdisciplinary, Critical Place-Based Ethnic Studies Curriculum Around A Historic Black Neighborhood In St. Louis, Sarah Mcvoy Miller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Black neighborhoods have played a critical role in creating safe spaces and fostering resistance for Black individuals (Fullilove, 2016; Haymes, 1995). However, systemic racism has contributed to negative outside perceptions of Black spaces (Faber, 2021; Imbroscio, 2021). Further, stigmatizing language has helped to justify the displacement or erasure of these spaces (Faber, 2021; Porter & Yiftachel, 2019; Safransky, 2014; Slater, 2009; Yiftachel, 1998). Despite the contributions that Black communities have made and continue to make, common curricula often exclude positive stories about Black communities (Epstein, 2009; Ross, 2017c; Zinn & Macedo, 2005). In this dissertation, I propose a curriculum based …

Editors' Note, Nirupama Devaraj, Bharath Ganesh Babu

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Reviewers And Referees

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Submission Guidelines

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 26, Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Urban Flood And Its Correlation With Built-Up Area In Semarang, Indonesia, Risty Khoirunisa, Bambang Darmo Yuwono

Smart City

The expansion of urban areas is closely related to environmental problems such as changes in land use, flooding, and land subsidence. Semarang is a city with reasonably rapid development and a high land change experiencing floods and land subsidence. This paper will discuss land transformation caused by urban growth and its implications. It uses a combination of geospatial techniques and cloud computing Google Earth Engine (GEE) to carry out mapping over a large area without being constrained by computer capabilities. This study found that the built-up area in 2010 occupied 36.27% of the city, and it went up to 59.79% …

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

No. 13: Supermarkets In Mexico And The Mexico City Metropolitan Area: Logics Of Territorial Insertion And Socio-Spatial Inequalities, GuéNola Capron, SalomóN GonzáLez Arellano, Linda Moreno

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

The paper analyzes the logics of expansion and spatial distribution of supermarkets at three scales: global, national (Mexico), and especially metropolitan (Mexico City), from rich to poor spaces and social categories. It seeks to understand how supermarkets, in a country like Mexico where they initially target mainly the middle class, reproduce or mitigate socio-spatial disparities. We conclude that they are a factor both of mitigation (due to a relatively good distribution in the metropolitan space) and of reproduction of inequalities (due to the segmentation of the offer). In the case of Mexico City, the situation of oligopoly by the company …

Nonprofit Accountability: Effects Of Subsector On Online Accountability, Ibrahima F. Yaro, Trent A. Engbers

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Scandals within the nonprofit sector over compensation and management have increased calls for nonprofits to demonstrate accountability. Many organizations have responded by disclosing information online and providing tools that allow web-based interactions with stakeholders. The literature on nonprofits’ online accountability has found that the level of nonprofit online accountability is affected by their size, age, asset, revenue, and location, but hasn’t been examined in terms of how subsector influences online accountability. Through a web-content analysis of fifty-five nonprofits, this research investigated how subsector (arts and culture, education, health, and human services) influences online accountability using a framework of four types …

A Systematic Review On The Ecosystem Services Provided By Green Infrastructure, Daniel Jato-Espino, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro, Vanessa Moscardó, Leticia Bartolome Del Pino, Fernando Mayor-Vitoria, Laura Gallardo, Patricia Carracedo, Kristin Dietrich

Faculty Publications

Urbanization and climate change are endangering the sustainability of public spaces through increased land artificialization, ecological fragmentation, reduced resource availability, and limited accessibility to natural and seminatural areas. Properly managing Green Infrastructure (GI) can contribute to mitigating these challenges by delivering multiple provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural Ecosystem Services (ES). This would facilitate the implementation of strategically planned GI networks in cities for urban regeneration purposes. In this context, this study developed a systematic review on the ES provided by GI using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. The analysis of 199 eligible articles indicated …

Rethinking Resident Perceptions Of Tourism In British Columbia, Canada, Jarrett R. Bachman, Erin Hodgins, Michael W. Lever

ICHRIE Research Reports

This joint academic/practitioner report segments British Columbia, Canada residents to provide destination managers with new ways to better understand resident perceptions of tourism. The data collection was conducted in April and May of 2022 and had a total of 2,265 valid responses. It was also a practical objective to conduct this research in a manner that is repeatable in jurisdictions beyond British Columbia. This report has confirmed five distinct categories of residents’ perceptions toward tourism, including socio-cultural, economic, environmental, job/career, and Indigenous impacts. In addition to the categories of impacts, a cluster analysis has revealed six clusters of residents based …

No. 12: Rural-Urban Transition And Food Security In India, Chetan Choithani, Abdul Jaleel Cp, S Irudaya Rajan

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

As a growing proportion of world’s population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include cities and towns in the past few years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North and large cities, and shows a lack of adequate understanding of the urbanization-food security nexus in the small towns of the Global South. This paper aims to correct this bias. With a focus on India where urban …

State Of Urbanization In Nepal: The Official Definition And Reality, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari, Shiva Gautam

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepali government’s official delineation of several human settlements as new urban areas has been questionable because many important criteria such as urban infrastructure and services, open space, population density and economic viability are not thoroughly analyzed while defining what is urban. Many settlements in Nepal officially defined as urban, often driven by political considerations, are operating in the rural framework forming ruralopolises. This paper analyzes various criteria needed for defining urbanization that are internationally accepted to assess Nepal’s official definition of urban settlements. Urban areas have been expanding in Nepal at the cost of agricultural, forest, and shrubland land uses. …

Converting Vacant Lots To Parks: Shamokin Survey Results, Matt Mcmullen, Shaunna Barnhart

Student Project Reports

No abstract provided.

Toward One Health: A Spatial Indicator System To Model The Facilitation Of The Spread Of Zoonotic Diseases, Daniel Jato-Espino, Fernando Mayor-Vitoria, Vanessa Moscardó, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro, Leticia Bartolome Del Pino

Faculty Publications

Recurrent outbreaks of zoonotic infectious diseases highlight the importance of considering the interconnections between human, animal, and environmental health in disease prevention and control. This has given rise to the concept of One Health, which recognizes the interconnectedness of between human and animal health within their ecosystems. As a contribution to the One Health approach, this study aims to develop an indicator system to model the facilitation of the spread of zoonotic diseases. Initially, a literature review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement to identify relevant indicators related to One Health. The …

The Elements Of Access: Designing Equitable Public Transit To National Forests, Abigail L. Johnson

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper asks what factors make a transportation system to a national forest appealing and accessible for people of color, Hispanic and Latino people, and people of a lower socioeconomic status. I use a conjoint analysis survey experiment to measure the favorability of transit-system attributes and compare favorability between local parks and Coconino National Forest as well as between racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. The findings of the study indicate no significant difference between preferences for traveling to a local park versus Coconino National Forest. This study does find that potential transit users favor a no-cost transit option over having …

No. 10: Linking Food Security With Development, Inequality And South-South Migration, Jonathan Crush, Sujata Ramachandran

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

In this paper, we draw attention to the ignored linkages between food security, inequality, and development with respect to South-South migration. Building on core arguments reflecting on these ties and empirical studies from diverse sending and receiving contexts, we outline five distinctive ways in which these multidimensional relationships and interactions operate. The first aspect assesses how inequality of opportunities and outcomes affects food security to shape migration aspirations and movements. The second aspect discusses how food insecurity in a variety of conflict and crisis circumstances acts as the main determinant and precipitant of forced migration. The third aspect addresses migrant …

No. 11: An Exploratory Study Of The Food Security Of Displaced Venezuelans In Ecuadorian Cities During Covid-19, Taymi Milan, Cheryl Martens

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

The displacement of over 7 million Venezuelans is reconfiguring urban contexts in Latin America. Ecuador is the third largest receiving country for Venezuelan migrants. The absence of state migration policies combined with the worsening economic situation across the region has had a significant impact on migrant food security. Although food security and migration have been studied extensively in Latin America, their intersectional relationships remain under-researched. This paper draws on a systematic review and focus group research to analyze the food security conditions of displaced Venezuelans in urban con- texts in Ecuador and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the …

Public-Ish, Aliah Werth

Masters Theses

Climate change affects public space, and architecture must establish tenets that prioritize pedestrians in this difficult era. Greywater re-use can be a mechanism for creating shade, and in turn, public space.

As heat waves grow more intense, the vast swaths of asphalt that connect commercial zones pose greater risks to public health and to urban vitality. This thesis records the typical material, spatial, and lived conditions of strip malls in urban heat islands, and demands more from infrastructure in public-ish space.

Heat violence weaves through Los Angeles’ built form. Parking space minimums, required setbacks, and height restrictions pull buildings away …

Operation Summer Care: Territories Of The Stewardship-Hospitality Complex, George Papamattheakis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Operation Summer Care studies the expanding interest that the hospitality industry takes in the biogeophysical environment. Natural surroundings have long been an essential operational precondition of tourism in the global sunbelt, but contemporary environmental anxieties increasingly motivate different strata of hosts to take a more active role in environmental management. Usually the domain of the state, biogeophysical entities and their spaces—plants and animals, sand formations, wetlands, entire ecosystems and protected areas—are measured, ordered, and managed by actors adjacent to the tourism industry. At the same time, the socio-technical mechanisms of environmental intervention and calculation are conveniently framed as practices of …

No. 09: Emerging Digital Technologies And Cross-Border Food Remittances Of Zimbabwean Migrants In Cape Town, South Africa, During The Early Covid-19 Pandemic, Sean Sithole, Daniel Tevera, Mulugeta F. Dinbabo

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

This paper examines the emerging unexplored synergies between digital-mobile technologies and cross-border food remittances in Southern Africa. Cell phones and apps or applications for smart mobile devices offer migrants new formal ways of sending food remittances. With large volumes of cash and non-cash items flowing through it, the South Africa-Zimbabwe remittance corridor is a priority market for these new fintech companies. However, recent discussions on digital remittances have focused largely on cash transfers. Similarly, limited attention has been paid to food remittances in the broad discussion on remittances, even though cross-border food transfers are crucial for food and nutrition security …

21st Century Political Agronomy: Between Collapse And Apocalypse In The Capitalist World System, Harrison Raskin

Honors Scholar Theses

Examinations of the causal chain between ecological impacts and food shortages reveal significant impending global disturbances. This paper draws a causal link between ecological impacts and low food productivity which will lead to food insecurity and economic crises in the near term. Further, this paper argues that food insecurity may lead to the collapse of the capitalist world system. This threat is contrasted with “business as usual” climate models which, rather than depicting the collapse of the capitalist world system, depict its persistence throughout the collapse of the world ecology.