Human Geography Commons^™

No. 15: International Migration And Food Insecurity In Urban Namibia, Lawrence Kazembe, Godfrey Tawodzera, Ndeyapo Nickanor

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

Food security and migration have emerged as key development challenges in Namibia. Internal migration, where people move from rural areas to urban centres such as the capital, Windhoek, has been given a great deal of research and policy attention. However, there is a dearth of research on the relationship between international migration and food security in the country. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the nexus between international migration and household food security in Windhoek. Drawing on data from a city-wide household food security survey of the city, the paper compares the food security status of international …

No. 14: Food Insecurity And Irregular Labour Migration From Northern Malawi To South Africa, Anil Dhakal

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

The factors influencing migration decisions from Malawi to South Africa have changed with the end of contract migration to the mines and the new normal of irregular migration of both men and women to work in other sectors of the South African economy. Food insecurity is now one of the main drivers of migration as migrants seek to earn income to remit to family in Malawi to purchase food and to invest in agriculture. Food insecurity is normally associated with rural households, but this paper shows that it is also a driver of migration to South Africa from urban Malawi. …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Staying Power: The Struggle For Space And Place In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Erin E. Lilli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at how gentrification touches down, at the neighborhood and individual scale, in Crown Heights and reproduces experiences of racial inequality in home and place. Taking an historical materialist approach and drawing on residential oral histories, this study frames these reproductions of racial inequality as always-in-tension with ongoing acts of resistance from Black homeowners, renters, and long-term residents. Specifically, the research explores the conditions under which Black residents of a predominantly Afro-Caribbean neighborhood acquire and maintain—and in some cases lose—their housing and sense of place and belonging. These residents resist the varied tactics of anti-Blackness such as landlord …

Towards Sociobiogeochemistry: Critical Perspectives On Anthropogenic Alterations To Soil Nitrogen Chemistry Via U.S. Urban And Suburban Development, Christopher D. Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ecological impacts of changes to land use are relevant to concerns about climate change, eutrophication of waterbodies, and reductions in biodiversity. As a foundational component of ecosystem functioning, changes to soil biogeochemistry have significant effects on overall ecosystem health. With cities continuing to grow and develop in extent, the impacts of urbanization and suburbanization on soils are of particular concern. Despite a wide range of natural climatic and geologic conditions, several factors have driven similar patterns of land transformation and management across the United States. In particular, federal initiatives including the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, …

Tragedi Kebudayaan Dan Objektivasi Hubungan Manusia: Sebuah Refleksi Mengenai Pemikiran Georg Simmel, Kevin Nobel Kurniawan

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

This article attempts to describe Simmel’s intellectual thoughts, particularly those related to the mode of human relationship. By applying a systematic literature review, this article demonstrates the uniqueness of Simmelian thought in comparison to other major classical sociological thinkers, like Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. For Simmel, a macro-level analysis on societal culture can be carried out by focusing on the micro dimension of the everyday life. In this context, Simmel speaks of the tragedy of culture that transpires through the process of objectification, where relationships become increasingly impersonal. At the end, this article provides a commentary on …

A Study Of Multimodal Accessibility Equity And Spatio-Temporal Relationships Between Transit, Job Density And Modal Split, Seyedsoheil Sharifiasl

Planning Dissertations - Archive

In North American cities, the land use and transportation systems are associated with low-density, suburban-type urban development, where the built environment contributes to a mobility pattern that is extremely reliant on automobiles. Several studies in the past decades have documented noticeable and concerning patterns of unjust and unsustainable transportation in this context. As a result, for those population groups with limited access to private transportation, this form of urban structure is equivalent to limited access to opportunities, leading to various environmental and social problems. These problems exacerbate inequities in access to transportation, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. From a sustainable development …

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 …

A Tale Of Two Working Landscapes, Sage C. Sutcliffe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Still Got The Blues - No Time But Here, No Place But Now: Geographies Of Art & Activism In The Work Of Clyde Woods., Jake Mace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The fight against displacement and dispossession in the increasingly inequitable process of reterritorialization is arguably the most pressing struggle of the modern city – and it is articulated through cultural production as much as through political debate and economic development. Yet research that is at the nexus of critical, urban, and cultural studies and which explores the resistant potential of countercultural production rather than the hegemonic impact of mainstream cultural production is underdeveloped. Clyde Woods’s blues epistemology offers a guide to reading cultural production of marginalized groups as maps of meaning that offer alternative visions of the past, the present, …

Land Tenure And The Urban Institutional Politics Of Sustainability: How Sustainability "Lands" In The Relationships Between Global North And South Contexts., Lindsey Connors

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability is not simply a moral concept but is essential for human survival, and the tensions inherent in sustainable development bear repercussions that are increasingly placed onto the poor and powerless (Redclift 1987). While sustainability has become a relevant concept for urban knowledge and research especially in the global South, much of our urban sustainability knowledge is shaped by research and typologies from the global North (Nagendra et al. 2018; Parnell & Robinson 2017; Roy 2005). This dissertation considers the spatial transferability of sustainability knowledge from a relational perspective (Massey 2002). Sustainable development can be understood from this perspective as …

No. 08: Young People’S Mobilities, Farming Aspirations And Engagements In Northern Ghana, Siera Vercillo, Bruce Frayne

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

Development policies targeting young people and African agriculture tend to focus on their abandonment of the sector and the need to attract new generations to agricultural activities through its commercialization. This paper points to potential gaps in such interventions by investigating the diverse mobilities, aspirations, and engagements of young people in farming, through a qualitative case study in rural northern Ghana. Our study also challenges the prevalent assumption of African farmers’ movements from rural to rural areas, from rural to urban areas, and out of farming altogether, as we found evidence of young people migrating from urban to rural areas. …

Robert X House Collection, Dan Bonenberger, Brooke Boyst, Franklin Haywood, Carrie Malas, Jaclyn Panter, Ian Tomashik, Laura Waskiwicz, Taylor Williams, Austin Martin

Digital Heritage Preservation Collection

This collection examines the Robert X House at 18827 Keystone Street in Detroit, Michigan, a significant site in the history of the Nation of Islam and the broader narrative of Black empowerment and civil rights in mid-20th century America. Originally built in 1951 as a modest Federal Housing Administration (FHA) minimum ranch-style home, the property was purchased by Robert Davenport (later known as Robert X), an influential leader in the Nation of Islam. The house became a hub for religious instruction, community-building, and activism.

Robert X, a former boxer and musician, became a prominent figure in Detroit’s Nation of Islam …

No. 07: The Sdgs, Migrant Remittances And Food Security In Jamaica, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

This paper raises questions about the implications of migration for inclusive social development in Kingston, Jamaica. This is based on an assessment of the relationship between remittances and food security at the household level. Emphasis is placed on whether remittances have made a difference in reducing the food insecurity associated with poverty and thus could contribute to inclusive social development. A city-wide survey of Kingston based on a sample of households in communities spanning different socioeconomic sectors was conducted to provide the data. Three indicators were used to measure food security/insecurity. Since there were the highest levels of food insecurity …

No. 06: Incomplete Documentation, Isolation And Food Security Among Central American Migrants In Mexico City, Tiana Bakić Hayden

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

This paper examines some of the factors that contribute to food insecurity among the growing populations of Central American migrants who reside in Mexico City. It contributes to a growing body of literature that focuses on the relationship between migration and food security by analyzing the specific challenges faced by migrants who are (semi)permanently settled in an urban area (rather than border region). The main argument of this paper is that although many of the challenges faced by migrants are parallel to those faced by low-income citizens and internal migrants in Mexico City, transnational migrants face unique challenges that contribute …

No. 05: Migrant Women’S Food Insecurity Experiences In The Breadbasket Of Ghana, Jemima Nomunume Baada, Moses Kansanga, Joseph Kangmennaang, Isaac Luginaah

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

Migration has become a safety net for smallholder farmers across Africa in response to rapidly deteriorating climatic conditions and the resulting low agricultural productivity. In semi-arid northern Ghana, especially the Upper West Region, many people migrate to rural farming communities in the Middle Belt of the country – popularly referred to as Ghana’s breadbasket – to meet their food security needs. In recent times, there has been an increase in the involvement of women in these migration patterns. This notwithstanding, many studies on migration and food security in Ghana continue to focus on the experiences of households or male migrants, …

Kulpmont Pocket Park Survey Results, Matt Mcmullen, Shaunna Barnhart, Steve Motyka

Student Project Reports

No abstract provided.

No. 57: Pandemic Precarity And Food Insecurity In Urban Ghana During Covid-19, Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Bernard Owusu, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban households in the Global South has not yet been adequately explored, despite an emerging consensus that impacts of the pandemic were more severe in urban than rural Africa. This paper addresses the knowledge gap by examining the relationship between pandemic precarity and food insecurity in Ghana’s urban areas during the pandemic in 2020. The data comes from the World Bank (WB) and Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Survey. Using a sub-sample of 1,423 urban households, the paper evaluates household experiences of the pandemic. Our findings show that household demographic characteristics …

No. 58: Wild Foods, The Nutrition Transition And Urban Food Security In Northern Namibia, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

Rapid urbanization and food system transformation in Africa have been accompanied by growing food insecurity, reduced dietary diversity and an epidemic of non-communicable disease. While the contribution of wild and indigenous foods (WIF) to the quality of rural household diets has been of longstanding attention, research on their consumption and role amongst urban households is much more recent. This paper focuses on the consumption of WIF in three towns in northern Namibia with close ties to the surrounding rural agricultural areas. Based on data from a household survey of food sourcing and consumption patterns in 2018, the paper shows that …