Selected Readings on Ethnicity, Family and Community

Selected Readings on Ethnicity, Family and Community; compiled by Mary E. Kelly, Central Missouri State University, and Thomas W. Sanchez, University of Nebraska- Lincoln

Innovations and Development in Urban Planning Scholarship and Research (Editorial)

Urban planning is characterized by involving a wide range of experts from a variety of fields. Therefore, planning research draws upon each of these fields in how it interprets an examines the natural and built environment as elements of human settlement activities. As a small professional and academic discipline incorporating aspects of design, policy, law, social sciences, and engineering, it is understandable that research outcomes are published in a broad range of academic outlets. It is useful for us to reflect on our research intentions, processes, and outcomes, which is also referred to as ‘research about research,’ with a focus on the scholarly products of urban planning academics. We can do this by examining our methodologies, subdomains, application of research to practice, research impact, and bibliometrics. The purpose of reflecting on our research helps us better understand research processes and the resulting body of urban planning research and scholarship as a whole

Income Distribution, City Size, and the Role of Public Transportation

This article presents an income inequality analysis for all 1990 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The analysis is concerned with whether public transportation has a detectable influence on levels of urban income equality. Because public transportation systems are generally designed to link residences with employment locations, higher levels of transit service provision, all other factors being equal, should be associated with higher employment rates and more uniform distributions of economic gains. The research presented here was influenced by an analysis originally performed by Haworth, Long, and Rasmussen (1978). Along with there study, few analyses have tried to evaluate policies that affect income distribution. The results of this analysis provide a macroscopic view of the efficiency and effectiveness of urban transportation investments with respect to urban income inequality

Land Use and Growth Impacts from Highway Capacity Increases

This analysis examined the historical relationship between land use changes and the location of capacity increasing highway projects in the State of Oregon from 1970 to 1990. Aerial photography for 18 cities was used to delineate the extent of urban development in each time period. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to assemble the data. Using this data, a logit regression model tested the significance of geographic variables such as proximity to highway projects, land use zoning classification, city size, and other spatial characteristics. The analytical methods used in this study incorporated a set of commonly used techniques to assess highway impacts on urban development patterns. The results suggest that for the 18 selected cities, the spatial measures performed well in predicting the location of urban development from 1970 to 1990. In addition, the results of the logit regression model indicated that controlling for other location factors, urban development had not clustered along state high project corridors as was suspected

Distinguishing city and suburban movers: evidence from the American Housing Survey

Journal ArticleA significant amount of research has concentrated on the process of urban decentralization. Resulting patterns of urban development have far-reaching effects on land use, transportation, regional fiscal structure, public services and facilities, economic development, and social equity. Because planning processes are being developed to attempt to revitalize the urban core, it is important to know which households may be deciding to relocate to the central cities and why. A discriminant analysis is used to explore the similarities and differences among movers to central cities and suburban locations drawn from metropolitan samples of the 1989 through 1991 American Housing Surveys. The analysis compares the reasons for relocation, demographic differences, and metropolitan characteristics between central-city-to-suburb movers and suburb-to-central-city movers. The results indicate that these two groups are very similar in some respects and that some metropolitan-area characteristics may play a role in urban residential decentralization patterns

Transit access analysis of TANF recipients in Portland, Oregon

Journal ArticleLittle evidence exists regarding the relationship between transit service availability and the ability of welfare recipients to find stable employment. While policymakers continue to assert that increased public transit mobility can positively affect employment status, there is little empirical evidence to support this theory. It. is generally assumed that public transit can effectively link unemployed, carless persons with appropriate job locations. From these assumptions stems the common belief that if adequate transit were available, the likelihood of being employed would increase. Hence, the call for more transit services to assist moving welfare recipients to gainful employment. Current available evidence is anecdotal, while general patterns of transit access and labor participation remain relatively unexplored

Urban Planning Academics: Tweets and Citations

This article discusses the relationship between Twitter usage and scholarly citations by urban planning academics in the U.S. and Canada. Social media and academic publications may be considered separate activities by some, but over the past decade there has been a convergence of the two. Social media and scholarship can be complementary not only when social media is used to communicate about new publications, but also to gather research ideas and build research networks. The analysis presented here explores this relationship for urban planning faculty using data for faculty who had active Twitter accounts between March 2007 and April 2019. Measures of Twitter activity were combined with Google Scholar citation data for 322 faculty with Twitter accounts. As expected, the results highlight that there are different patterns of Twitter activity between junior faculty and senior faculty both in terms of proportions of each rank using Twitter as well as activity levels on the social media platform. The results also suggest that Twitter activity does not have a statistically significant relationship with overall scholarly productivity as measured by citation levels

Are planners prepared to address social justice and distributional equity?

Journal ArticlePlanners have stated their commitment and responsibility to assure fairness in community and regional planning activities. Evidencing this is an abundance of literature on the theoretical perspectives of social justice and planning ideals. But is this stated concern for social justice and equity reflected in the training that professional planners receive in US graduate planning programs? Unfortunately, it has not been translated into providing practical methods to measure and assess fairness that can be applied in the field. While such methods exist and have been researched by related disciplines, planning has fallen short of developing and incorporating them into curricula along with transportation, demographic and economic analysis methods

Residential location, transportation, and welfare-to-work in the United States: a case study of Milwaukee

Journal ArticleThis article addresses two questions about spatial barriers to welfare-to-work transition in the United States. First, what residential and transportation adjustments do welfare recipients tend to make as they try to become economically self-sufficient? Second, do these adjustments actually increase the probability that they will become employed? Analysis of 1997-2000 panel data on housing location and automobile ownership for Milwaukee welfare recipients reveals two tendencies: (1) to relocate to neighborhoods with less poverty and more racial integration and (2) to obtain a car. Results from binary logit models indicate that residential relocation and car ownership both increase the likelihood that welfare recipients will become employed. These findings suggest that policies should aim to facilitate residential mobility for low-income families and improve their neighborhoods, rather than simply move them closer to job opportunities. The findings also suggest a critical role for transportation policy in reducing unemployment

Periodic Atlas of the Metroscape: Lassoing Urban Sprawl

This issue\u27s atlas compares the metroscape with four other metropolitan areas (San Antonio, Columbus, Charlotte, and Orlando). Using 1990 and 2000 census block group data, density classifications were used to show patterns of urban (3 ,000+ persons/ sq.mi .), suburban (1 ,000 to 3,000 persons/sq.mi .), exurban (300 to 1,000 persons/sq .mi.) , and rural (/sq.mi.) growth. While the metroscape experienced significant population growth from 1990 to 2000, compared to the other four, it realized the smallest loss of rural lands and significantly less suburban and exurban style development as well. By comparison, Orlando - the other metro area in the sample using urban containment policies - realized significantly more outward development