Human Geography Commons^™

A New Long Island: Demographic, Economic, And Social Transformations In New York City's Historic Suburbs, 1990 - 2016 (Revised), Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines key socioeconomic and demographic trends in New York City and Long Island from 1990 to 2016.

Methods: The findings reported here are based on data collected by the Census Bureau IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series), available at http://www.usa.ipums.org for the corresponding years and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Results: The Long Island suburbs have grown significantly more diverse in the early twenty-first century. The total number of non-Hispanic Whites in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties is in steady decline, as is their share of Long Island’s total population. Latinos and Asians, on the …

Aesthetic Perception Of Urban Spaces: New York, Timur Pozhidaev

Theses and Dissertations

Aesthetic perception is an important field of interest in many aspects of everyday human life. It affects individual and social unconscious behavior and is strongly related to the decision-making processes in the human mind. The current study can serve as an important prototype for planning purposes and social and environmental justice among the regional units of New York City. With the current scientific sphere lacking a comprehensive methodology for assessing social superstructure, an aesthetic framework has the potential for success in evaluating the aspects of sustainable and resilient urban development.

Gentrification In Upper Manhattan? Demographic And Socioeconomic Transformations In Washington Heights/Inwood, 1990-2015, Lawrence Cappello

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the impact and extent of gentrification in the Washington Heights/Inwood area – traditionally one of Manhattan’s most quintessential Latino neighborhoods.

Methods: This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml).

Results: The Latino community of Washington Heights/Inwood is not being displaced in any meaningful way. While there has certainly been an increase in the number of wealthy non-Hispanic Whites over the last decade, as of 2015 Latinos maintained the …

A Smartphone App Survey To Encourage Sustainable And Healthy Travel Mode Choices, Paul Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Can access to carbon footprint and health [calorie and fat burn] information influence transportation behavior? Survey methods are used in conjunction with a smartphone GPS mobile app to measure transportation tendencies in weekdays – weekends, and willingness to undertake modal shift based on app experience over one week.

Repurposed Spaces In Berlin And Johannesburg, Rebecca Kukla

Theses and Dissertations

Berlin and Johannesburg are repurposed cities, which were spatially designed to enforce a defunct social order, and which now must be used in new ways by new residents. Through a reading of several sites in each city, I examine how repurposed urban spaces and their inhabitants shape one another.

On The Nature Of Transportation, Ofir J. Klein

Theses and Dissertations

Just as cities have changes, so too have the conversations regarding them. To understand complex phenomena, often one breaks them down into elemental parts. The city is no different. By taking note of these buildings blocks, one is then led into higher order concerns. As the literature shows, these higher order, first order, concerns are denominated by the categorical "labor concerns," and even "housing concerns." In order for scholars to highlight and further their dialogue within their discipline, they draw upon different methods, methodologies, and studies more generally to make a case for the first order concern. This expands the …

Inheritances Of Injustice/Transference Of Freedom: An Intimate Project On Black Women's Intergenerational Relationships And The Consequences Of The Punishment System, Whitney Richards-Calathes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project centers the multi-generational familial relationships between system-impacted Black women, mapping and uncovering the ways in which incarceration and practices of punishment impact, shape, hurt, and displace Black femme lineages. Through a qualitative lens and a specific focus on the current social and political landscape of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines the ways Black women are impacted by carceral ideology; from punitive definitions of Black womanhood, to the surveillance on Black femme familial intimacy and the rupture of Black women’s sense of home and place. Understandings of mass incarceration are frequently male-centered and most analyses of Black women’s system …

Understanding The Construction Of Accessibility And Mobility: Non-Car Transportation In St. Louis, Missouri, Hannah N. Shumway

Geography Honors Projects

This research examines disadvantaged populations’ accessibility and mobility in the non-car transportation system in St. Louis. By employing mixed methods, this research investigates accessibility and mobility through three distinct scholarly lenses: physical infrastructure and proximity, individual experiences, and political processes. The thesis synthesizes the analyses from these three approaches in order to provide holistic policy recommendations for creating more equitable transportation systems in St. Louis and beyond. Empirical findings show that neighborhoods with lower median incomes and lower percentages of white population in St. Louis are less accessible for biking and walking, with highly variable public transit accessibility. Bike system …

No. 37: Validation Of The Hcp Survey Tool For Measuring Urban Food Insecurity: An Item Response Theory Approach, Vonai Charamba, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe

Hungry Cities Partnership

There is some controversy on the applicability of the summand-based Household Food Security Assessment Score (HFIAS) and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) as measures of food insecurity in urban areas in the Global South. These measures were primarily designed for measurement in rural communities where food insecurity itself was first identified and is still predominantly conceptualized. The objective of the research reported in this paper is to assess the internal and external validity of the HFIAS and the HDDS in determining food insecurity levels in an urban context, using HCP data for urban households in Windhoek, Namibia. Validation was performed …

No. 32: Wet Market Vendor Profits In Nanjing, China: A Spatial Analysis, Xinxan Qi, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Wet markets play an important role in urban food security in many Asian countries. Existing research pays more attention to the wet market food accessibility of urban residents and less on the business operations and profits of wet market vendors. Based on a survey of 1,119 small food enterprises in Nanjing, this study employs the spatial analytical method Geodetector to explore spatial variations in vendor profits in Nanjing. The study shows obvious spatial differentiation in the profits of wet market vendors across the city and draws several conclusions. Profitability is mainly related to the demographic features of vendors, their business …

No. 17: Inclusive Growth And Small-Scale Food Vending In Nanjing, China, Zhenzhong Si, Taiyang Zhong

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report should be read in conjunction with HCP Report No.1: The Urban Food System of Nanjing, China (Si et al 2016) and HCP Report No. 9: The State of Household Food Security in Nanjing, China (Si and Zhong 2018). The first report provides contextual background on the history, demography, and economy of Nanjing. It also contains a review of existing studies on Nanjing’s changing food system. The second summarizes the results of the household food security survey conducted in Nanjing in 2015. It provides essential information on the food purchase patterns of urban residents and highlights the importance of …

No. 15: The State Of Household Food Security In Kingston, Jamaica, Robert Kinlocke, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Adonna Jardine-Comrie, Beth Timmers, Therese Ferguson, Cameron Mccordic

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report provides an analysis of results from a household food security survey conducted in Kingston, Jamaica, by the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP). It documents the state of food insecurity in households across selected communities in the Kingston Metropolitan Area. It should be read in conjunction with HCP Report No. 4: The Urban Food System of Kingston, Jamaica (Thomas- Hope et al 2017), which provides more detailed background and context for the results discussed here.

No. 14: The State Of Household Food Security In Bangalore, India, Jyothi Koduganti, Charrlotte Adelina, Mohanraju Js, Shriya Anand

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report presents and analyzes the findings of a household food security survey conducted by the IIHS and the Hungry Cities Partnership in Bangalore, India, from April to September 2016. Surie and Sami (2017) provide essential contextual background for this report on Bangalore’s history, demography, economy, and changing food system. This report describes the survey and presents and discusses its findings. It then analyzes the food security situation and food system functions in Bangalore. The report thus provides solid background information for future research on Bangalore’s food system and lays the foundation for comparative studies with the other cities of …

No. 27: Social Protection And Urban Food Systems, Gareth Haysom, Issahaka Fuseini

Hungry Cities Partnership

This discussion paper examines development implications for food and nutrition when cash transfer interventions intersect with food system changes, particularly in urban areas where food is predominantly accessed through the market. South Africa is used as a case study because of its advanced social protection system as well as the rapid food system changes it is experiencing that are similar to those in other cities in the Global South. The authors consider the possible nutritional transition-related consequences for society, as well as the livelihood-related consequences for the poor when cash transfer systems, such as that of the South African social …

No. 25: The Climate Change-Food Security Nexus: Intergovernmental Frameworks And Hyper-Experimentation In Cities, Carrie L. Mitchell, Joanne Fitzgibbons, Kristen Regier, Siya Agrawal

Hungry Cities Partnership

In this discussion paper we detail the challenges of tackling the food security-climate change nexus in an era of hyper-experimentation in cities. We detail how the challenge of addressing food security and climate change at the international scale has opened the metaphorical door for urban experimentation, or interventions in the processes of city building at the local level taken by state and non-state actors. Yet, today’s urban experiments differ significantly from their historical counterparts. We detail examples from planning history to contextualize the differences between historical and contemporary urban experimentation. Through a review of three global and national urban experiments, …

No. 29: Modes Of Governance Of Street Food Vending In Nanjing, China, Ning Dai, Taiyang Zhong, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

In the Global South, the informal food economy is both a source of income for disadvantaged urban groups and an accessible source of food for consumers. Yet governance of this economy has commonly been restrictive in Southern countries including China. Consequently, in China there has been an antagonistic relationship between vendors and chengguan (China’s city management officers). This antagonism has been studied by researchers and reported by Chinese media. This discussion paper uses semi-structured interviews with street food vendors to evaluate how recent policy reforms have affected vendor-chengguan relations and vendor livelihoods in Nanjing. It identifies a non-confrontational relationship …

No. 28: Urban Food Deserts In Nairobi And Mexico City, Jeremy Wagner, Lucy Hinton, Cameron Mccordic, Samuel Owuor, Guénola Capron, Salomón Gonzalez Arellano

Hungry Cities Partnership

Recent conceptualizations of “food deserts” have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated food sourcing behaviour in relation to household poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues to evolve, there has been little empirical evidence to test whether these associations hold in cities of the Global South. This discussion paper empirically tests the premises of three iterations of the urban food desert concept using household survey data collected in Nairobi, Kenya, and Mexico City, Mexico. …

No. 24: Achieving Urban Food Security Through A Public-Private Hybrid Food Provisioning System: A Case Study Of Nanjing, China, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush, Xianjin Huang, Steffanie Scott, Menglu Yan, Shuangshuang Tang, Xiang Zhang

Hungry Cities Partnership

Private and public markets are two models of urban food retailing governance. This paper examines the public-private hybrid model of urban food provisioning system and its governance in Nanjing, China. Based on data from surveys, non-structured interviews, and bibliographical material analysis, we examine the public-private hybrid model and its linkages with urban food security. Our analysis shows that the public-private hybrid model of food markets and its governance ensures a relatively high-level urban food security in Nanjing. We argue that the hybrid food market governance system effectively integrates public and private capital into a government-supported and regulated, small-business-based system in …

No. 33: Containing The Informal Food Sector In Windhoek, Namibia, Lawrence Kazembe, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Policy responses to the growth of the informal food sector in African cities vary from benign neglect to active destruction. The eradication of street food vending is the dominant mode of governance. Alternative approaches that recognize the inevitability of informality and the role of the sector in making food accessible to the urban poor have begun to emerge. One is an enclose-and-contain model, which creates spaces for trading and seeks to confine trading to these spaces through active policing outside them. This strategy has been pursued in Windhoek but has been compromised by consumer demand that is not satisfied by …

No. 30: Governing The Informal Food Sector In Cities Of The Global South, Graeme Young, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

The role of the informal food sector in the urban food system cannot be appreciated or understood without the compilation and analysis of systematic and representative data on the activities of informal enterprises across a city and along food supply chains outside it. At present, there are significant gaps in the knowledge base about the character, operation, and roles of the informal food sector; a pre-requisite for sound and supportive governance. This paper presents evidence on the relative importance of the informal food sector and discusses various methodologies for improving the knowledge base. It identifies the challenges and opportunities facing …

No. 36: The Interface Between Urbanization, Gender And Food In The Global South, Liam Riley, Belinda Dodson

Hungry Cities Partnership

The interface between urbanization, gender and food in the Global South offers a vantage point from which to think through the integrated nature of contemporary development challenges from both the structural elements of urban poverty and the ways in which urban residents navigate their cities. The starting point of this paper is that there is insufficient research from the vantage point where all three of these concepts interface, even as there is a rich body of literature at the interface of each pair of elements (e.g., gender and urbanization, gender and food, food and urbanization). This paper draws attention to …

No. 35: The Food Safety And Food Security Nexus In The Urbanizing Global South, Jodi Koberinski, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Hungry Cities Partnership

Socioeconomic and structural changes in the global food system, driven by rapid urbanization in the Global South, shape the nature and scale of food safety problems as well as the strategies designed to cope with them. These changes create new challenges for ensuring food security, given that food safety is an essential dimension of food security. By reviewing existing studies, this paper summarizes three key types of contaminant (microbiological, chemical, and physical) that compromise food safety. With analyses of three cases (avian flu, genetic modification contamination, and melamine-tainted milk) in the Global South, the paper explores how food safety is …

No. 31: Motivations And Challenges Of Youth Entrepreneurs In Maputo's Food Markets, Cameron Mccordic, Ines Raimundo

Hungry Cities Partnership

Amidst a growing youth unemployment crisis spreading across Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a pressing need for effective policy intervention, based on sound research, to support young people’s entry into labour markets. As urban labour markets continue to catalyze the growth of national economies in the Global South, the inclusion of youth entrepreneurs in the food retail sector in Maputo has become an important but largely unstudied phenomenon. This paper assesses the demographic and entrepreneurial characteristics of this population through a vendor survey of 504 youth entrepreneurs (those aged 35 years and younger) operating small-scale food enterprises in the Mozambican capital. …

No. 26: Supermarkets And Informal Food Vendors In Windhoek, Namibia, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Much of the literature on urban food systems has focused on the expansion of supermarkets and their ability to reach urban consumers. However, the current pace of urbanization and rising urban poverty have been accompanied by a major upsurge in informality and a growing role for the informal food sector. One of the persistent arguments in the literature on supermarkets is that the expansion of modern retail undermines the informal food sector. Critics of this argument suggest that there are two conditions under which this may not occur: first, when there is spatial differentiation with supermarkets servicing higher income areas …

No. 16: Inclusive Growth And The Informal Food Sector In Cape Town, South Africa, Godfrey Tawodzera, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

This report on the informal food sector in Cape Town is the third on the city’s food system published by the Hungry Cities Partnership in collaboration with the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. The earlier reports provided background and context on the nature of the food system (Haysom et al 2017) and the importance of the informal food sector in household food consumption (Crush et al 2018). Additional context is provided by HCP Discussion Paper No. 23, which situates this research in relation to literature on the South African informal economy in general, and the …

No. 24: Achieving Urban Food Security Through A Public-Private Hybrid Food Provisioning System: A Case Study Of Nanjing, China, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush, Xianjin Huang, Steffanie Scott, Menglu Yan, Shuangshuang Tang, Xiang Zhang

Hungry Cities Partnership

Private and public markets are two models of urban food retailing governance. This paper examines the public-private hybrid model of urban food provisioning system and its governance in Nanjing, China. Based on data from surveys, non-structured interviews, and bibliographical material analysis, we examine the public-private hybrid model and its linkages with urban food security. Our analysis shows that the public-private hybrid model of food markets and its governance ensures a relatively high-level urban food security in Nanjing. We argue that the hybrid food market governance system effectively integrates public and private capital into a government-supported and regulated, small-business-based system in …

No. 23: Food Vending And The Urban Informal Sector In Cape Town, South Africa, Godfrey Tawodzera

Hungry Cities Partnership

In South Africa, the informal food sector is either criminalized or ignored, despite the important role it plays in the economy in terms of employment, income generation, food distribution, and general livelihoods. This paper assesses the nature, operations, strategies, and challenges of the informal food sector in Cape Town. Data was collected through a survey of over 1,000 informal food vendors in the city. Survey results indicate that most of the enterprises were single-owner businesses, financed from personal savings, and started by owners seeking employment, independence, and improved financial security for their families. Most businesses had little or no access …

No. 34: The Political Economy Of Informal Food Vending In Kingston, Jamaica, Robert Kinlocke, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope

Hungry Cities Partnership

Small-scale food enterprises occupy a critical space in the food system of Kingston, Jamaica. While smallscale food retailers serve the entire population, they are disproportionately relied on by poor urban households. The nodes and networks of retailers play an important role in the value and commodity chain by providing access to comparatively cheap food but are often affected by economic vagaries and state-level regulation, among other factors that potentially challenge the sustainability of trade. These issues are potentially offset by a highly dynamic system where entry into the trade is maintained by the high levels of unemployment and limited alternatives. …

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

According to the popular press, expensive cities are being overrun by "ghost apartments"- condominiums owned by wealthy foreigners, but used as investments rather than being rented out to local residents. This article points out that such apartments are in fact a very small percentage of housing supply, even in some cities that are supposedly overran with such condos. More importantly, the existence of new “ghost apartments” does not justify exclusionary zoning policies. If a city popular with foreign investors discourages construction of new housing, investors are likely to purchase older housing units, outbidding local residents for those units. In this …

Maroon Colonies And New Orleans Neutral Grounds: From A Protosuburban Past To A Postsuburban Future, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This essay examines New Orleans maroon colonies as a precursor to the postsuburban constellations that shape the contemporary urban landscape. These communities served as the original neutral grounds where Africans, Afro-Creoles, and Native Americans created spaces beyond the purview of slave owners and government authorities. These protosuburban enclaves anticipated the vibrancy and prolificacy of the “global urban periphery” that Roger Keil describes in his research. They also inform twentieth- and twenty-first-century efforts by black New Orleanians to carve out their own urban neutral grounds: spaces resistant to the hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and neo-Bourbonism, as manifested in the traditions of …