David Rain

Eaters of the Dry Season: Circular Labor Migration in the West African Sahel

The Changing World of Cin Rani The Walked-Across Land Land-Use Change Along the Environmental Margin From Caravan to Bush-Taxi A Population in Motion Migrants Livelihoods Rural Community Perspectives Walking into the Next Century

Neighborhoods and fertility in Accra, Ghana: an AMOEBA-based approach

Fertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this article is to evaluate the way in which neighborhood context might shape reproductive behavior in Accra. In the process, we introduce several important innovations to the understanding of intraurban fertility levels in a sub-Saharan African city: (1) Despite the near explosion of work on neighborhoods as a spatial unit of analysis, very little of this research has been conducted outside of the richer countries; (2) we characterize neighborhoods on the basis of local knowledge of what we call vernacular neighborhoods; (3) we then define what we call organic neighborhoods using a new clustering tool—the AMOEBA algorithm—to create these neighborhoods; and (4) we then we evaluate and explain which of the neighborhood concepts has the largest measurable contextual effect on an individual womans reproductive behavior. Multilevel regression analysis suggests that vernacular neighborhoods are more influential on a womans decision to delay marriage, whereas the organic neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status better capture the factors that shape fertility decisions after marriage.

Connecting the Dots Between Health, Poverty and Place in Accra, Ghana

West Africa has a rapidly growing population, an increasing fraction of which lives in urban informal settlements characterized by inadequate infrastructure and relatively high health risks. Little is known, however, about the spatial or health characteristics of cities in this region or about the spatial inequalities in health within them. In this article we show how we have been creating a data-rich field laboratory in Accra, Ghana, to connect the dots between health, poverty, and place in a large city in West Africa. Our overarching goal is to test the hypothesis that satellite imagery, in combination with census and limited survey data, such as that found in demographic and health surveys (DHSs), can provide clues to the spatial distribution of health inequalities in cities where fewer data exist than those we have collected for Accra. To this end, we have created the first digital boundary file of the city, obtained high spatial resolution satellite imagery for two dates, collected data from a longitudinal panel of 3,200 women spatially distributed throughout Accra, and obtained microlevel data from the census. We have also acquired water, sewerage, and elevation layers and then coupled all of these data with extensive field research on the neighborhood structure of Accra. We show that the proportional abundance of vegetation in a neighborhood serves as a key indicator of local levels of health and well-being and that local perceptions of health risk are not always consistent with objective measures.

Defining neighborhood boundaries for urban health research in developing countries: a case study of Accra, Ghana

The neighborhood has been used as a sampling unit for exploring variations in health outcomes. In a variety of studies census tracts or ZIP codes have been used as proxies for neighborhoods because the boundaries are pre-defined units for which other data are readily available. However these spatial units can be arbitrary and do not account for social-cultural behaviors and identities that are significant to residents. In this study for the city of Accra, Ghana, our goal was to create a neighborhood map that represented the boundaries generally agreed upon by the residents of the city using the smallest available census unit, the enumeration area (EA), as the base unit. This neighborhood map was then used as the basis for mapping spatial variations in health within the city. The first step in demarcating the boundaries was to identify features that limit a persons movement including the major roads, drainage features, and railroad tracks that people use to partially define their neighborhood boundaries. Once an initial set of boundaries were established, they were iteratively modified by walking the neighborhoods, talking to residents, public officials, and others. The resulting neighborhood map consolidated 1723 EAs into 108 neighborhoods covering the entire Accra metropolitan area. Results indicated that the team achieved 71% accuracy in mapping neighborhoods when the neighborhood keyed to the survey EA was compared with the response given by the interviewees in the 2008–2009 Womens Health Survey of Accra when asked which neighborhood they lived in.

Using remotely sensed data to map variability in health and wealth indicators in Accra, Ghana

Accra, Ghana is a developing world city with pronounced disparities in health and wealth. This research focuses on mapping variations in health and wealth disparities within Accra using very high resolution remotely sensed imagery. Using the 2000 Ghanaian census at the enumeration area (EA) level and a multispectral, Quickbird image with a spatial resolution of 2.4 m, we examine our ability to map small area, spatial variations in health and wealth indicators. Regression trees are used to map variations in built up area and vegetation within the city. Results indicate that there is a strong correlation between indicators of wealth and health including cooking fuel type, population density, and percentage of women with secondary education level, with remotely sensed estimates of vegetation and built up area at the both the EA and the neighborhood level.

COMMUTING DIRECTIONALITY, A FUNCTIONAL MEASURE FOR METROPOLITAN AND NONMETROPOLITAN AREA STANDARDS

The daily journey to work is ubiquitous in American life. Portraying commuting behavior graphically at the subcounty level, however, has been hampered by technical obstacles. With desktop GIS and new analytical tools, the spatial particulars of commuting can be given clarity. This paper explores the use of a spatial statistic, the mean weighted direction of journey-to-work flows, to aggregate and depict commuting at the census tract level for the purpose of delineating metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. Using 1990 census data for Iowa, tract-to-tract flow vectors and resultant vectors are calculated and drawn for each census tract, and a set of functional areas for the state is produced. The research suggests that the concept of commuting directionality is a community characteristic requiring further attention. Directionality may be a useful component in a census-tract-level national settlement classification system made possible with disaggregated data and annual updates through the American Communi...

Agency, access, and Anopheles : neighborhood health perceptions and the implications for community health interventions in Accra, Ghana

Background Social and environmental factors are increasingly recognized for their ability to influence health outcomes at both individual and neighborhood scales in the developing urban world. Yet issues of spatial heterogeneity in these complex environments may obscure unique elements of neighborhood life that may be protective or harmful to human health. Resident perceptions of neighborhood effects on health may help to fill gaps in our interpretation of household survey results and better inform how to plan and execute neighborhood-level health interventions. Objective We evaluate differences in housing and socioeconomic indicators and health, environment, and neighborhood perceptions derived from the analysis of a household survey and a series of focus groups in Accra, Ghana. We then explore how neighborhood perceptions can inform survey results and ultimately neighborhood-level health interventions. Design Eleven focus groups were conducted across a socioeconomically stratified sample of neighborhoods in Accra, Ghana. General inductive themes from the focus groups were analyzed in tandem with data collected in a 2009 household survey of 2,814 women. In-depth vignettes expand upon the three most salient emergent themes. Results Household and socioeconomic characteristics derived from the focus groups corroborated findings from the survey data. Focus group and survey results diverged for three complex health issues: malaria, health-care access, and sense of personal agency in promoting good health. Conclusion Three vignettes reflecting community views about malaria, health-care access, and sense of personal agency in promoting good health highlight the challenges facing community health interventions in Accra and exemplify how qualitatively derived neighborhood-level health effects can help shape health interventions.

The women of Kano: internalized stress and the conditions of reproduction, Northern Nigeria

Kano State in northern Nigeria has been presented as a region which has undergone adaptation to rapid demographic growth without adverse ecological effects (Mortimore 1993a). The population has grown by natural increase and by in-migration, fueled partially by growth of the Kano urban and peri-urban zones and sustained by manure-fed upland and irrigated lowland agriculture. This paper presents demographic data for Kano State, collected through the 1990 Demographic and Health Survey (Macro International 1992) for Nigeria, to explore some possible demographic consequences of the population growth observed there. Covered will be sections on womens work and mobility, child nutrition and mortality, birth intervals, and weaning age. By presenting this data, I will suggest two points. First, there is perhaps an alternate hypothesis to the rosy though incomplete picture presented by Mortimore and others. The agricultural transformation in Kano seems to have put progressively more stress on women as domestic producers, which reflects in the demographic data. Second, there is a need for more temporally and spatially robust datasets on health and demography, as well as more concerted efforts to link, via more integrated analyses, agricultural production and health outcomes.

Book Review: Oxford Essential World Atlas

Angotti, Tom, and Sylvia Morse, eds. 2016. Zoned Out! Race, Displacement and City Planning in New York City. New York: UR Books. Beatley, Timothy. 2000. Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities. Washington, DC: Island Press. Jackson, Kenneth. 1987. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Katz, Bruce, ed. 2000. Reflections on Regionalism. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Kunstler, James Howard. 1993. The Geography of Nowhere. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kunstler, James Howard. 1998. Home from Nowhere. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Defining Neighborhood Boundaries for Urban Health Research: A Case Study of Accra, Ghana

The neighborhood has been used as the unit of analysis for a variety of studies including health, wealth, and ethnic diversity (Yen and Kaplan 1998; Diez Roux 2001; Morland et al. 2002; Weiss et al. 2007; Agyei-Mensah and Owusu 2009; Santos et al. 2010). While this unit of analysis is acceptable to many social science researchers, defining what a neighborhood is has been left up to the individual researcher. In many cases a proxy such as the census tract, ZIP Code or other pre-defined unit of analysis is used. Using a pre-defined unit of analysis reduces the amount of work involved and allows for comparisons to be made between the phenomenon under study (i.e., health, wealth, race) and the information for which the unit was created (i.e., census demographic variables). While allowing for a more straightforward, simpler study, predefined units do not always represent socially meaningful areas that are of symbolic significance to residents or the actual neighborhood boundaries that residents would use to describe their neighborhood. In addition, the choice of the neighborhood unit can affect the results of any study because of the modified areal unit problem (MAUP) (Openshaw and Taylor 1979). Therefore, choosing the appropriate neighborhood boundaries is an important part of any neighborhood study.