Symbolic and material landscapes of race

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-219).Since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, the country has struggled with questions regarding the salience of racial inequality. While the days following Katrina harshly illuminated these inequalities, the election of the country's first black president indicated that we had made great strides toward racial equality and many hoped that we would move forward in this struggle. Yet the ensuing redevelopment of New Orleans indicates that we still have a long way to go not only in acknowledging that racial inequalities exist but also in understanding their root causes and how they shape our visions for change. This dissertation takes up the issue of emplaced racial inequality in the redevelopment of New Orleans and considers its implications for the theory and practice of planning. It questions how race operates in and is constituted by space and how space shapes racial experiences. It asks what blacks have to say about their urban experience and what their visions for change are. By comparing blacks' and whites' views regarding the redevelopment of the city, this research explores their epistemological differences and questions which worldviews are reinforced or undermined by the state. Sited in post-Katrina New Orleans, this research compares blacks' and whites' experiences in three neighborhoods - Treme, Lakeview, and the Lower Ninth Ward. It asks why, given the common history of Katrina, residents in these neighborhoods have such different visions for their futures. It explores how blacks make sense of their racial experiences and use space and their emplaced social networks to overcome the racial disparities they face. By elevating these narratives, this dissertation argues that not only are blacks' and whites' visions for redevelopment distinctly different, but that blacks' visions potentially offer to planning critical understanding of the connections between individuals and communities, between communities and urban space, and a more just and equitable way of reconstructing the city. My critique, from the empirical work presented in this dissertation, is that planning not only fails to fully consider these ideas, but that it obfuscates blacks' worldviews and therefore contributes to an unequal urban sphere.by Anna Livia Brand.Ph.D

Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration.

How predictable are life trajectories? We investigated this question with a scientific mass collaboration using the common task method; 160 teams built predictive models for six life outcomes using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a high-quality birth cohort study. Despite using a rich dataset and applying machine-learning methods optimized for prediction, the best predictions were not very accurate and were only slightly better than those from a simple benchmark model. Within each outcome, prediction error was strongly associated with the family being predicted and weakly associated with the technique used to generate the prediction. Overall, these results suggest practical limits to the predictability of life outcomes in some settings and illustrate the value of mass collaborations in the social sciences