Geography Commons^™

Mapping Staten Island: A Field Study Guide, Nerve Macaspac

Open Educational Resources

This is a guide for the field study and urban lab as partial requirements for GEG 260 Urban Geography at CUNY College of Staten Island. The field study introduces students to spatial ethnography and offers an opportunity to observe, experience and examine a range of spatial urban phenomena that they have learned in the classroom within actually-existing urban environments. Designed as a collaborative activity, students will work in teams in exploring and examining the built environment on-site and then produce multimedia deliverables to capture their reflections throughout the field study using creative and experimental methods. The collaborative and experimental design …

The Eviction Landscape In South Carolina, Ethan Magnuson

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the South Carolinian eviction crisis from the perspective of radical geography. South Carolina was chosen for the severity of its crisis and the lack of research at a sub-state level. Court records of eviction filings from 2019 were geocoded and tested for spatial clustering, which was clearly visible. Plaintiff names were used to identify the most frequent filers and distinguish landlords by type. At the census tract level, eviction filing counts were compared with neighborhood characteristics using negative binomial regression, and most were found to be significant in South Carolina. …

Socastee Interview, Participant #08, March 31, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #04, March 30, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #03, March 26, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #01, March 26, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by CCU students.

The Legacy Of Car-Share And Light-Rail Transit For Mobility And Accessibility Improvements In Economically Marginalized Neighborhoods In The New York Metro Area, Kyeongsu Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the value of the car-share program and a new light rail system with respect to their impact on mobility and accessibility improvements in economically and transportation access-wise marginalized neighborhoods in NYC and its adjacent communities. It consists of three main essays that took deep dives into how each new service or system altered mobility or accessibility for those in need. The first essay (Chapter 2) investigates car-share vehicle utilization rates of the Zipcar across NYC. It assesses the utilization rates by vehicle type, service location, time period, and weekday usage compared to weekend activity. With a multivariate …

No. 53: Changing Priorities In Urban Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis, Bruce Frayne, Truzaar Dordi, Cameron Mccordic, Naomi Sunu, Clare Williamson

Hungry Cities Partnership

The study of urban food security has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. This evolution has been punctuated, and catalyzed, by insights into the dynamic transformation of food systems in cities across the Global South. The evolution of this field provides an important vantage point for understanding both the dynamic transformation of urban food systems as well as the lens through which that transformation has been understood. This investigation of the field adopted a bibliometric methodology, blending quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques, to assess the dynamic evolution of the literature over time. The methodology included a quantitative analysis of …

No. 51: State-Led Localization Of Food Provisioning And Food Security In Urban China, Taiyang Zhong, Steffanie Scott, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Food localization has been extensively studied and advocated in Western countries, focusing on its oppositional stance to food system globalization, long food supply chains and agribusiness, the disconnect between producers and consumers, and a desire to reconnect urban consumers with small farmers in the hinterland of cities. More recently, these localization models have been taken up by international agencies and others and “exported” to the Global South. Rapid urbanization in the Global South has led to a major and growing crisis of food insecurity, which these models and approaches are ill-equipped to address. Hence, it is important to examine other …

No. 50: Food Security And Poverty Reduction Programmes In A Cape Town Community: A Qualitative Study, Sarah Duncan

Hungry Cities Partnership

Despite increased engagement with public programmes, low-income urban South African communities continue to experience high levels of food insecurity. More needs to be known about why progress in poverty alleviation and food security has plateaued (Shisana et al 2013). This discussion paper is based on a qualitative study that investigated how food insecure female-headed households in a Cape Town community made use of state (national) and local (government, NGO and community-led) poverty reduction programmes and social networks in their pursuit of food security (Duncan 2016). It revealed the study participants as skilled survivors who carefully navigated their environment, using both …

No. 52: Assessing Supermarket Patronage In Matola, Mozambique, Cameron Mccordic, Bruce Frayne, Naomi Sunu

Hungry Cities Partnership

As an indicator of a broader nutrition transition, the supermarketization of urban food systems in the Global South has become a growing area of research interest. While the rising dominance of supermarkets in urban food systems has been noted in several primate cities in the Global South, there have been few investigations into the spatial and demographic characteristics that may govern the patronage of supermarkets in smaller secondary cities. This paper assesses the supermarketization trend via an investigation of supermarket patronage in a secondary city through a 2014 household survey of Matola, Mozambique. Using a combination of descriptive statistics and …

No. 23: Inclusive Growth And The Informal Food Sector In Windhoek, Nambia, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush, Tobias Shinyemba

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report presents the results of the first comprehensive survey of Windhoek’s rapidly-growing informal food sector. As such, it aims to shed light on the food system of Windhoek, Namibia’s capital and largest urban centre. The report is part of a research programme on food security in cities of the Global South by AFSUN and the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) and builds on earlier publications on Windhoek’s food system including:

- The State of Food Insecurity in Windhoek, Namibia (Pendleton et al 2012);

- The Supermarket Revolution and Food Security in Namibia (Nickanor et al 2017);

- Urban Informal Food …

No. 49: Urban Food System Governance And Food Security In Namibia, Jonathan Crush, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe

Hungry Cities Partnership

Namibia’s transition to an urban society is occurring extremely rapidly and with it has come a transformation of urban food systems, changes in diets and food consumption patterns, increased undernutrition and overnutrition, and the rapid growth of non-communicable diseases. This paper examines the policy response of the Namibian government to the nutrition transition and double burden of malnutrition with particular reference to urban centres and populations. The national government assumes responsibility for all food security and health-related programming, while local government’s mandate is largely confined to non-food related management issues such as housing, transport and sanitation. The paper shows that …

No. 46: Hunger, Anger, And Strangers: Precarious Status And Food Insecurity Among Refugees And Asylum Seekers In South Africa, Jennifer Kandjii

Hungry Cities Partnership

This discussion paper analyzes the impact of a multiplicity of actors, policies, and practices on the food security of refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s urban spaces. Building on recent work that focuses on the legal production of illegality, institutionalization of precarity, and the reproduction of bordering practices by the state and citizenry, the paper reviews how South Africa’s migration governance processes coalesce with societal xenophobic tendencies to shape food security outcomes for forcibly- displaced populations. The discussion paper aims to fill a policy and research gap through understanding the experiences of displaced persons at the intersection of food …

No. 47: Urban Food Security And Household Shocks In Nairobi, Kenya, Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Jonathan Crush, Samuel Owuor

Hungry Cities Partnership

Even though urban poverty is a key component of the development agenda in Nairobi with a focus on job creation, provision of basic infrastructure (such as roads and clean drinking water), food security has traditionally been omitted by city planners and managers despite its centrality to people’s health and wellbeing. One of the consequences of the lack of integration of food security into development planning is that emergency food preparedness planning has not been viewed as a priority. Rather, emergency procedures are only enacted when a food emergency is already in progress. This discussion paper demonstrates that female-centred households, households …

Looking For Better: A History Of Black Southern Migrations, Selena Sanderfer Doss

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

A broad overview of migrations affecting black southerners is presented, including the Atlantic slave trade, the domestic slave trade, colonization movements to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Exoduster movement, the Great Migration, and the Return South migration. Emigrants convey their experiences and motivations through testimonies and personal accounts. Surviving the trauma of forced migrations, black southerners organized numerous migration movements both outside and within American polities in search of better opportunities. In the late 20th century, black southerners also initiated a return migration to the American South and have since achieved notable socioeconomic and political progress.

No. 48: Covid-19 And Emergency Food Security Policies In Urban China, Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to spread worldwide, threatening people’s health as well as their food security. Yet, empirical research investigating its impacts on food security is scant. Limited attention has been paid to the local food security management implications of an infectious disease pandemic. To narrow these gaps, this study investigated the development of emergency food policies in Wuhan and Nanjing in China and households’ food security, based on a combination of online surveys of household food security and policy document analysis. This study shows that COVID-19 and associated quarantine measures caused many households to experience food insecurity. There …

Will Zoning Fix Itself?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Typically, zoning artificially limits housing supply, thus increasing housing costs. One possible defense of this system is that zoning can fix itself- that is, that when rents and housing costs become unusually high, politicians will deregulate and thus reduce housing costs. This article suggests that such a happy result is unlikely; instead, where housing costs spiral out of control, voters and politicians are likely to make regulation even more strict out of a fear of gentrification.

Political Economy Of The Production Of Heritage Space In A Centro Histórico: Attracting Real Estate Capital, Expelling People. The Case Of Cartagena (Colombia), Camilo Rey-Sabogal

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Cartagena is a South American city whose historical built environment has been recognized as a World Heritage Site due to the preservation of elements of the Spanish military architecture of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This recognition promoted a tourist and real estate boom in the Centro Histórico and, as a result, its inhabitants have faced gentrification dynamics that are expelling them to other areas of the city. During the last 15 years, these dynamics have shown a strong acceleration. Therefore, the Centro Histórico is experiencing, on the one hand, huge inflows of capital for the purchase of properties …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …

Effects Of States’ Laws On Youth Physical Activity Participation And Obesity Prevalence, Chae Young Chang

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The alarming prevalence of obesity and lack of physical activity among adolescents led to immediate policy action to address these concerns. Accordingly, many states introduced and enacted their own legislation to encourage physical activity in schools. Few studies have explored the effectiveness of the new legislation, however, especially at the state level. To answer the fundamental question of whether policy is effective and to describe the varying effects of state obesity policies, this study analyzed the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System from 2007 to 2017. Using the difference-in-differences method, this study found that legislative efforts to encourage physical activity had …

Profitable Retail Customer Identification Based On A Combined Prediction Strategy Of Customer Lifetime Value, Yinglu Sun, Dong Cheng, Subir Bandyopadhyay, Wei Xue

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

As a fundamental concept of customer relationship management, customer lifetime value (CLV) serves as a crucial metric to identify profitable retail customers. Various methods are available to predict CLV in different contexts. With the development of consumer big data, modern statistics and machine learning algorithms have been gradually adopted in CLV modeling. We introduce two machine learning algorithms—the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) and the random forest (RF)—in retail customer CLV modeling and compare their predictive performance with two classical models—the Pareto/NBD (HB) and the Pareto/GGG. To ensure CLV prediction and customer identification robustness, we combined the predictions of the …

Volunteer Urban Environmental Stewardship, Emotional Economies Of Care, And Productive Power In Philadelphia, Alec Foster

Faculty Publications - Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Recent efforts to increase urban forests and greenspaces rely on the volunteer labor of individuals and environmental nonprofits. The estimation of market values has often justified urban greening. These neoliberal approaches to urban environmental governance have been heavily critiqued, revealing the uneven power relationships and urban environments that result. This paper aims to move beyond such critiques by exploring how the reproduction of urban nature can be valued outside of the market. Fieldwork with volunteers participating in environmental stewardship in Philadelphia revealed their participation was motivated by intense emotional attachments to their neighborhoods, other participants, and nonhuman others, leading me …

Gentrification As An Institution Of Injustice: Understanding The Displacement Of Low-Income Families And Erasure Of Culture, Diana Hernandez

CMC Senior Theses

In the last decade, gentrification has become a world-wide strategy for capital accumulation, but is one that disproportionately prioritizes corporate interests over community interests. Although often disguised as a form of urban revitalization, gentrification economic renewals lead to higher rent prices that consequently pushes poor communities out of their home and makes urban spaces geared towards affluent middle-class families only. Gentrification is not a natural phenomenon, but is instead a man-made project that is rooted in capitalism and neoliberal understanding of the market economy. This paper explores the roots of creating profit by means of privatization, especially when discussing housing. …

A Systematic Method For Measuring Gentrification Using Building Permits Data: A Washington D.C Case Study, Andey Fomil

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Gentrification can significantly alter the socioeconomic, demographic, and commercial aspects of a city. It is a complex process that transforms the characteristics of entire neighborhoods, modifying not only the observable physical aspects, but also the community structure. Traditional quantitative gentrification measurement approaches assess the process through analysis of Census demographic indicators coupled with field visit analysis of the physical built environment. This study proposes a new gentrification measuring approach that combines traditional Census indicators with a new indicator in the form of City Building Permits. Two GIS spatial analysis techniques are utilized to evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of the …

On The Acceptance Of Urban Beavers In Martinez, California, Zane A. Eddy

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

As ecosystem engineers, beavers construct complex riparian and wetland habitats that benefit many other species, including endangered salmonids. Through their landscape alterations, beavers also promote increased groundwater recharge and provide refugia during wildfires and high flow events by impounding water and allowing it to spread across the landscape. Prior to the North American colonial fur trapping campaigns, there were between 60 and 400 million beavers in North America. By the beginning of the 20th century, beavers were extirpated from many parts of the continent, however through human efforts, their population has since rebounded to between 10 and 15 million. The …

Putting Policy In Its Place: Policy Enactment And Engagement Through A Multiscalar Policy-Shed Framework, Barbara L. Maclennan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this research is to examine the spatial components integral to policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. The research uses solid waste as a case study to explore a multiscalar GIS policy-shed framework. To this end, the goal of this dissertation is to examine the spatial nature of public policy. The research applies spatial concepts and multiscalar methodological applications embedded within GIS and geovisualization to explore the complex spaces surrounding public policy implementation and evaluation.

Expanding The Boundaries Of Food Policy: The Turn To Equity In New York City, Nevin Cohen, Rositsa Ilieva

Publications and Research

Policymakers acknowledge that the food system is multidimensional and that social determinants affect diet-related health outcomes, yet cities have emphasized programs and policies narrowly connected to food access and nutritional health. Over the past fifteen years, the boundaries of food governance have expanded to include a wider range of issues and domains not previously considered within the purview of food policy, like labor, housing, and education policies. This paper illustrates the processes by which this shift occurs by presenting the case of New York City, which has broadened its food governance to a larger set of issues, requiring cross-sectoral initiatives …

Applying The Food-Energy-Water Nexus Approach To Urban Agriculture: From Few To Fewp (Food-Energy- Water-People), Silvio Caputo, Victoria Schoen, Kathrin Spect, Baptiste Grard, Chris Blythe, Nevin Cohen, Runrid Fox-Kämper, Jason Hawes, Joshua Newell, Lidia Poniży

Publications and Research

Many studies examine the correlation between the use of resources such as water, energy and land, and the production of food. These nexus studies focus predominantly on large scale systems, often considering the social dimensions only in terms of access to resources and participation in the decision- making process, rather than individual attitudes and behaviours with respect to resource use. Such a concept of the nexus is relevant to urban agriculture (UA), but it requires customisation to the particular characteristics of growing food in cities, which is practiced mainly at a small scale and produces not only food but also …

A Methodological Framework To Evaluate Community Perceptions Of Economic And Safety Impacts Attributed To Highway Bypass And Widening Projects, Karla Diaz-Corro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transportation practitioners have proposed the construction of highway bypass and widening projects in rural communities to address traffic-related problems that include noise pollution and congestion, among others. In the past, the construction of bypass projects has led community residents to raise concerns about potential decreases in business activity for businesses located along the bypassed road. For transportation organizations, it is essential to understand the economic, social, and safety impacts of transportation projects in terms of public perceptions as public input is a required part of the project planning phase. Moreover, it is recommended that agencies perform retrospective analyses of project …