Sustainability and the City: New Kensington CDC's Sustainable 19125 Initiative

New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), an organization long dedicated to revitalizing the East Kensington, Fishtown, and Port Richmond neighborhoods of Philadelphia, launched an urban sustainability initiative in 2009 called "Sustainable 19125." The initiative's goal is to make the 19125 ZIP code the most sustainable ZIP code in the city

Determinants of Youth Poverty: A Zip Code Analysis

Estimation of Gini coefficients for various age groups indicates that Kentucky youth population is at risk. The paper determines the factors affecting youth poverty, employing Zip Code data. Analysis of outcomes provides suggestions for the policymakers to limit youth poverty in Kentucky.youth, poverty, Zip Code, gini coefficient, lorenz curve, logit model, Food Security and Poverty, I32, I39, R11,

Are Peer Effects Present in Residential Solar Installations? Evidence from Minnesota and Wisconsin

There are geographic differences in the rate of adoption of residential photovoltaic (PV) solar. Are adoption rates in small scale localities (counties and zip codes) influenced by previous, nearby adoptions? This paper adds to the literature on Peer Effects with an analysis of Minnesota and Wisconsin zip codes. I use residential adoption data from the OpenPV Project in an empirical analysis of social interactions. My findings indicate that there is a small but significant effect of nearby adoptions at the zip code level. These peer effects are shown to be nuanced by policy incentives such as the XCEL Solar Rewards Program. I additionally engage in a case study analysis of the relationship of some localities

A Network Model of Alcoholism and Alcohol Policy

The evolution of alcohol dependence in populations of people on different social networks is studied. Two models are studied. One is the evolution of the states of individuals on hypothesized social structures from a rewired connected caveman model. This model spans a range of social structures (networks) from very ordered to effectively random with small world structures in between. The second model is a zip-code-level model which uses data from a recent survey in Delaware. The model is a discrete model using 10 zip codes. The results show that the evolution of alcohol dependence, as governed by the simple rules that we use, depends sensitively on the network structure and a hypothetical treatment regime

Cost-Effectiveness of Stronger Woodframe Buildings

We examine the cost-effectiveness of improvements in woodframe buildings. These include retrofits, redesign measures, and improved quality in 19 hypothetical woodframe dwellings. We estimated cost-effectiveness for each improvement and each zip code in California. The dwellings were designed under the CUREE-Caltech Woodframe Project. Costs and seismic vulnerability were determined on a component-by-component basis using the Assembly Based Vulnerability method, within a nonlinear time-history structural-analysis framework and using full-size test specimen data. Probabilistic site hazard was calculated by zip code, considering site soil classification, and integrated with vulnerability to determine expected annualized repair cost. The approach provides insight into uncertainty of loss at varying shaking levels. We calculated present value of benefit to determine cost-effectiveness in terms of benefit-cost ratio (BCR). We find that one retrofit exhibits BCRs as high as 8, and is in excess of 1 in half of California zip codes. Four retrofit or redesign measures are cost-effective in at least some locations. Higher quality is estimated to save thousands of dollars per house. Results are illustrated by maps for the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions and are available for every zip code in California

An autoregressive approach to house price modeling

A statistical model for predicting individual house prices and constructing a house price index is proposed utilizing information regarding sale price, time of sale and location (ZIP code). This model is composed of a fixed time effect and a random ZIP (postal) code effect combined with an autoregressive component. The former two components are applied to all home sales, while the latter is applied only to homes sold repeatedly. The time effect can be converted into a house price index. To evaluate the proposed model and the resulting index, single-family home sales for twenty US metropolitan areas from July 1985 through September 2004 are analyzed. The model is shown to have better predictive abilities than the benchmark S&P/Case--Shiller model, which is a repeat sales model, and a conventional mixed effects model. Finally, Los Angeles, CA, is used to illustrate a historical housing market downturn.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS380 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Residential exposure to aircraft noise and hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases: multi-airport retrospective study

Objective: To investigate whether exposure to aircraft noise increases the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular diseases in older people (≥65 years) residing near airports. Design: Multi-airport retrospective study of approximately 6 million older people residing near airports in the United States. We superimposed contours of aircraft noise levels (in decibels, dB) for 89 airports for 2009 provided by the US Federal Aviation Administration on census block resolution population data to construct two exposure metrics applicable to zip code resolution health insurance data: population weighted noise within each zip code, and 90th centile of noise among populated census blocks within each zip code. Setting: 2218 zip codes surrounding 89 airports in the contiguous states. Participants: 6 027 363 people eligible to participate in the national medical insurance (Medicare) program (aged ≥65 years) residing near airports in 2009. Main outcome measures Percentage increase in the hospitalization admission rate for cardiovascular disease associated with a 10 dB increase in aircraft noise, for each airport and on average across airports adjusted by individual level characteristics (age, sex, race), zip code level socioeconomic status and demographics, zip code level air pollution (fine particulate matter and ozone), and roadway density. Results: Averaged across all airports and using the 90th centile noise exposure metric, a zip code with 10 dB higher noise exposure had a 3.5% higher (95% confidence interval 0.2% to 7.0%) cardiovascular hospital admission rate, after controlling for covariates. Conclusions: Despite limitations related to potential misclassification of exposure, we found a statistically significant association between exposure to aircraft noise and risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular diseases among older people living near airports

Unauthorized Immigrants in California: Estimates for Counties

Estimates changes in unauthorized immigrant populations between 2001 and 2008 by county and zip code, including percentage of total population. Discusses the challenges of obtaining accurate counts and implications for policy

The Importance of Broadband Provision to Knowledge Intensive Firm Location

Despite the volume of literature afforded knowledge work and innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), few studies have examined the importance of ICTs to knowledge industries and the impact of their availability on firm location decisions. This study will evaluate the relative importance of ICTs to knowledge intensive firm location for select US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Spatial econometric estimation techniques are used to construct models from ZIP code level data that describe the relative importance of broadband to knowledge intensive industries, as defined in this study. A global model is constructed for all relevant ZIP code areas across the continental U.S and the results are compared to metropolitan specific models. In addition to demonstrating variations by metropolitan area in the relative importance of broadband provision, the results suggest that broadband deployment initiatives will have varied outcomes on knowledge intensive firm growth and the subsequent change in the industrial composition of regional economies in future years.