Human Geography Commons^™

Race-Ethnic Population Changes In Mountain West Metros, 2010-2020, Joshua Padilla, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

The 2020 census shows continuing nationwide trends in population growth when compared to the last decade. The growth of various race-ethnic groups across the country contribute to the diversification of the population in selected regions. Using the U.S. Census Bureau 2020 data prepared by William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution, this fact sheet focuses on the population changes in nine Mountain West metros.

The Desert Southwest: Population Growth 2010-2020, Kelliann Beavers, Joshua Padilla, Katie M. Gilbertson, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

In 2021 the United States Census Bureau identified the Desert Southwest as one of the fastest growing regions in the country. The Desert Southwest encompasses portions of five states (Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas) including forty counties and ten metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Using data from the Census Bureau, this fact sheet showcases population growth within Desert Southwest counties and metropolitan statistical areas from 2010 to 2020.

Festivals And The City: The Contested Geographies Of Urban Events, Andrew Smith, Guy Osborn, Bernadette Quinn

Books / Book chapters

This book explores how festivals and events affect urban places and public spaces, with a particular focus on their role in fostering inclusion. The ‘festivalisation’ of culture, politics and space in cities is often regarded as problematic, but this book examines the positive and negative ways that festivals affect cities by examining festive spaces as contested spaces. The book focuses on Western European cities, a particularly interesting context given the social and cultural pressures associated with high levels of in-migration and concerns over the commercialisation and privatisation of public spaces.

The key themes of this book are the quest for …

Mobility Of Older Adults In Mexico City: A Mixed Methods Approach, Jessica Villena Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation covers the topic of the mobility of older adults in Mexico City using a mixed methods approach. First, I looked at the literature to uncover what is known about elderly mobilities coming from the Global South. Second, I analyzed the 2017 Household Origin Destination Survey to reveal travel behavior patterns and transport mode choice of older adults in Mexico City. Third, I revealed mobility experiences from older adults living in different neighborhoods in Mexico City by conducting twenty two telephone interviews. Lastly, I created joint displays that included both previous results to better understand how the findings from …

"Ethnic" Some Days, White The Rest: Whittier, Ca As A Case Study In Mexican-American Racialization And Assimilation In Los Angeles County, Maria Gutierrez-Vera

CMC Senior Theses

Per the U.S. Census Bureau, the Latino population in the United States stands at 60.5 million. This thesis tells the story of a few hundred-thousand Mexican-Americans in Southeast Los Angeles County’s suburbs, who live in a region nicknamed the “Mexican Beverly Hills.” This is a unique site of middle-class ethnic affluence, but also a place where questions of “Hispanic” racial identity, assimilation, and belonging are played out. The Mexican Beverly Hills promises residents the fulfillment of their own (Mexican-) American Dream, but also plays into tropes of model minorities, demands assimilation and ethnic betrayal from its residents, and is the …

'Indirect Pathways Into Practice': Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses And Their Entry Into Ontario's Nursing Profession, Lualhati Marcelino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While there are several studies that highlight the quantitative and statistical profiles of internationally educated nurses (IENs) from the Philippines who migrate to countries throughout Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Canada, there is little research that delves deeply into the qualitative review and analysis of their experiences in their own words. This study addresses that gap by applying the transnational feminist concept of “global care chains” in a single case study design that explores the experience of nurses who migrated to Ontario through permanent and temporary immigration streams and were interviewed in 2011 to 2012 to …

Undersea Cables: The Ultimate Geopolitical Chokepoint, Bert Chapman

FORCES Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems

This work provides historical and contemporary overviews of this critical geopolitical problem, describes the policy actors addressing this in the U.S. and selected other countries, and provides maps and information on many undersea cable work routes. These cables are chokepoints with one dictionary defining chokepoints as “a strategic narrow route providing passage through or to another region."

Rail Fixed Guideway Systems In Western U.S. Regions, Kelly A. Beavers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research explores the policy factors influencing the intraregional development of rail transit. For the purpose of this research, policy factors include: institutional arrangements, factors associated with governance, and factors in the policymaking process. The research questions are studied in five case study MSAs within the Pacific West and Mountain West regions of the United States: Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO; Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA; and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR. The foundational problems that frame this research are the challenges of urban planning at a regional scale, specifically for transportation. The more specific challenge of transportation planning is situated within …

Population Growth In Mountain West Cities And Suburbs, 2010-2020, Dielle T. Telada, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

COVID-19 altered population growth trends within large cities and the relative growth of cities and suburbs within the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Brookings senior fellow William H. Frey suggests “that most big cities with populations exceeding 250,000 experienced lower population growth in the year the pandemic began than in the previous year.” This Fact Sheet examines annual growth rates within selected Mountain West metros and suburbs from 2010 and 2020.

Cdc Social Vulnerability Index (Svi): Nevada Counties, Vanessa Booth, Ally M. Beckwith, Kelliann Beavers, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet highlights how Nevada counties rank on the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) as defined by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ASTDR). Socially vulnerable populations are often disproportionately harmed during public health emergencies such as natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. The Geospatial Research, Analysis, and Services Program (GRASP) created the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index (CDC/ATSDR SCI) to help public health officials and emergency response planners meet community health needs during response and recovery efforts (ATSDR, 2020).

Refugee Arrivals In The Mountain West, 2017-2021, Saha Salahi, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet displays data on the influx of refugee arrivals by nation to five Mountain West States: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Refugee Processing Center data, selected from annual reports and limited to the years 2017-2021, are presented.

Homelessness Estimates In The Mountain West, 2020, Saha Salahi, Vanessa Booth, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet summarizes a recent report titled, “The 2020 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress,” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. By synthesizing homelessness vulnerability categories to the Mountain West states, this report offers data for Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

How Did Homelessness Change During The Great Recession And Recovery?, Jenny Schuetz, Matthew Ring

Policy Briefs and Reports

Job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated housing insecurity among low-income renters over the past year. Federal, state, and local policymakers have created temporary measures to help reduce displacement among people who have lost their jobs, but there is considerable uncertainty about what will happen when these temporary measures end. To gain insight into how homelessness changes over macroeconomic cycles, we examine changes in homelessness rates from 2007 to 2020. Our analysis focuses on four metro areas that were particularly hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Riverside. Overall homelessness rates declined in all metros …

Environmental Perception In Colombia's Páramo Protected Areas, Juliana Delgado

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the gap between farmers' environmental perceptions in Téquita, a small village in Colombia, and the definition of protected areas has led to a conflict for the use of natural resources. I examine if the protected area's policies have dealt with the social and ecological issues in the páramos and recognized the social construction of the landscape, farmers' identities, and their interpretations about work and land. The case study focuses on Güina High Mountain in the Guantiva-La Rusia páramo complex, which recently the Colombian government declared as a protected area. In light of anthropologist Tim Ingold's meaning of …

Monitoring War Destruction From Space Using Machine Learning, Hannes Mueller, Andre Groeger, Jonathan Hersh, Andrea Matranga, Joan Serrat

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Satellite imagery is becoming ubiquitous. Research has demonstrated that artificial intelligence applied to satellite imagery holds promise for automated detection of war-related building destruction. While these results are promising, monitoring in real-world applications requires high precision, especially when destruction is sparse and detecting destroyed buildings is equivalent to looking for a needle in a haystack. We demonstrate that exploiting the persistent nature of building destruction can substantially improve the training of automated destruction monitoring. We also propose an additional machine-learning stage that leverages images of surrounding areas and multiple successive images of the same area, which further improves detection significantly. …

Stay Put; Remain Local; Go Elsewhere: Three Strategies Of Women’S Domestic Violence Help Seeking, Janet C. Bowstead

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In published domestic violence strategies, there is a tendency to focus on service provision and service responses in each administrative location; rather than recognising the extent to which women and children move through places due to domestic abuse. Whilst a woman’s help-seeking may be local—if she has the information and resources, and judges it possible to do so—such help-seeking whilst staying put is only one of many strategies tried by women experiencing domestic violence. Women’s strategies are often under-recognised and under-respected by the very service providers which should be expected to be supporting women’s recovery from abuse. This article uses …

Neighborhood Reinvestment: A Changing Community In The Urban South, Jackson Nutt-Beers

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since the mid-twentieth century, public and private actors across the country have been identifying sources of potential capital accumulation in the United States. Shortly after the passing of the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson in the mid 1960s, many White families across the country fled the urban core for the suburbs leaving neighborhoods in the city center abandoned and without capital. During this period, Black families and other racial minority groups were forced to live in the blighted neighborhoods of the urban core due to a variety of racialized discriminatory housing practices that lead to the disinvestment of …

A Spatial Analysis Of Supply-Demand Of Public Transportation In Jefferson County, Kentucky., Nastaran Abdoli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public transportation is important as it serves individuals, especially the transit-dependent population, by providing a basic mobility service to these people and all others who rely on public transportation. This research utilized estimating public transportation demand and supply to analyze the spatial patterns of public transportation in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The study focuses on the transit-dependent population, and it considers indicators of age, poverty status, vehicle ownership, and foreign-born population with less than five years residency in the United States. This study conducted a public transit supply-demand analysis to identify areas with imbalanced supply and demand in Jefferson County at …

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

America's Best Cities: Mountain West Cities, Katie M. Gilbertson, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Fatma Nasoz

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet reports the rankings of Mountain West cities, based on perceived desirability for living, visiting, and investment. Resonance Consultancy’s “America’s Best Cities 2020,” report examines the nation’s largest cities on six key metrics: “Place,” “Prosperity,” “People,” “Product,” “Programming” and “Promotion.” Nine Mountain West cities are ranked within the top 100 in the United States.

Aspects Of Climate Change, Anthony Defusco

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Climate change continues to become a global issue, and with that, more people being affected by the harmful factors that come with it. Climate change not only effects the environment, but also has aspects of cultural and health issues. Different cultures view this problem differently than other as it affects different aspects of that culture. Health risk is on the rise as air pollution is more prominent and diseases spread. The climate is being warmed, causing extreme weather and drought. These different perspectives on global warming allow for new and unknowing people to be exposed to this issue and allow …

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. …

Nevada Population Density Maps, 2015 - 2019, Jaewon Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet reports the population distribution for the 687 census tracts in the State of Nevada between 2015 and 2019. Mapping population distribution by census tract can misrepresent population density. Oftentimes, in rural regions with low population density, large census tracts are home to a small number of people. Likewise, urban cores have many small census tracts, each with high population density. Using a method for constructing density-equalizing projections, or cartograms (i.e. maps that show statistical information in diagrammatic form) by Mark Newman and Michael Gastner at the University of Michigan, the constructed maps in this fact sheet better …

Pornography: Social, Emotional And Mental Implications Among Adolescents, William Kelly Canady

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation will explain the historical development of pornography. It will highlight four segments: 1- Porn’s impact on brain development of reward pathways, ultimately increasing the appetite for more porn. 2- Porn can be a false substitute for real intimacy, resulting in decreased sexual satisfaction with a real person and increased verbal and physical aggression. 3- Porn promotes sex trafficking, promotes multiple sex partners and reduced STD prevention. 4- A review of interventions available to assist clients in navigating a lifestyle away from pornography.

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 …

Assessing California Commercial Fishing Community Well-Being In The Context Of Marine Protected Area (Mpa) Formation, Samantha Cook

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Marine protected areas (MPAs)—defined geographic areas where fishing and harvesting activity is limited or restricted—have emerged as a popular marine biodiversity and climate resilience strategy worldwide. MPA monitoring efforts often follow MPA designation to help inform the adaptive management of MPAs and MPA networks. In 2012, California completed the largest statewide system of MPAs to date, consisting of 124 MPAs covering 16% of state waters. Following MPA implementation, the state initiated a long-term monitoring program (2019-2022) to help inform the 10-year MPA management review. This two-chapter thesis presents findings from a state-funded project to conduct long-term socioeconomic monitoring for human …

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 …

Assessing The Vulnerability Of Monterey Bay Area Seniors To Covid-19, Ethan A. Quaranta, Gerhard L. Gross

Culture, Society, and Praxis

This paper assesses the vulnerability of seniors residing in the Monterey Bay Tri-County Region to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to weakened immune systems, seniors are the most at-risk members of our community to COVID-19, and have a death rate that is three times higher than the overall death rate to COVID-19. Using standard ambulance response times from each hospital throughout the area, our objective is to determine what proportion of Tri-County seniors aged 65 and over, including those who are in nursing homes, are living independently, and cannot afford health care, were within an adequate travel time to the hospital. …

Education, Migration And Development Panel, Henri Boyi

Africa-Western Collaborations Day 2020

8 graduate students/recent graduate presentations on education, migration and development. Moderated by Dr. Henri Boyi. Reporting of panel done by current GHS students of the 2021 class. Abstracts can be found under "Africa-Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts". Presenters as follows:

Jemima Nomunume Baada, "Experiences of Social Reproduction among Migrant Women in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana"

Elmond Bandauko, "This is a Good Place to Live! Narratives and Counternarratives on Territorial Stigmatization in Harare's Informal Settlements"

Chinelo Ezenwa, "A History of 19th Century European Missionaries in Colonial Africa with Specific References to the Impact of Missionary Schools"

Rebecca Jackson, Jade Rozal, …