Joe Weber

Bringing Time Back In: A Study on the Influence of Travel Time Variations and Facility Opening Hours on Individual Accessibility

Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space-time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility.

Evaluating the effects of geographic contexts on individual accessibility: a multilevel approach

Centrality within a city and neighborhood characteristics have often been used as indicators of access to employment and services in statements about urban form and accessibility, but there are reasons to question the appropriateness of doing so. This paper evaluates the importance of geographic context within the urban environment (both location within cities as well as neighborhoods characteristics) for individuals in Portland, Oregon. Because conventional accessibility measures cannot incorporate individual characteristics, space-time individual accessibility measures were used with multilevel modeling to isolate the effects of individual level variations from that of geographical context. The results show that the influence of context on individual accessibility is weak, as accessibility tends to reflect individual and household characteristics rather than the local urban environment. Accessibility cannot be determined from location within cities, or from land uses around an individuals home, implying that the use of urban design to influence accessibility is inappropriate.

Individual accessibility and distance from major employment centers: An examination using space-time measures

Abstract. Distance has often been assumed to be an influence on intraurban accessibility, whether in traditional proximity-based measures of accessibility, or through expectations about distance-minimizing travel behavior and the logic of the monocentric model. This paper examines the importance of distance from major employment centers to individual accessibility in Portland, Oregon, using space-time accessibility measures computed using GIS. The results of this research indicate that distance from these locations has mixed results on individual accessibility. This appears to reflect the importance of time, both the time of day activities are scheduled as well as time constraints, to individual activity patterns.

Why do so few minority people visit national parks? Visitation and the accessibility of "America's Best Idea".

It has been said that national parks are “Americas Best Idea,” they are among the most famous and instantly recognizable places in the country, and they attract visitors from all over the world. Yet visitors to these sites are overwhelmingly white. A number of theoretical perspectives have been proposed for the absence of minority visitors, including socioeconomic marginality, differing cultural norms, and the lingering legacy of discrimination, but geography is not one of the usual explanations. Given the strong associations between particular regions of the country and the locations of parks, as well as the uneven spatial distribution of population, the absence of geography as an explanation is striking. We examine this issue with the expectation that geography is an important part of the explanation for low minority visitation rates. Put simply, do potential minority visitors live anywhere near national park units? Are they more likely to visit the ones to which they live nearest? This study uses the geographic concept of accessibility to examine the spatial relationships between national parks and potential minority visitors. Accessibility was measured using driving times between each of 285 parks and county populations, with the results compared to a visitation database compiled for fifty-one park units. There is clearly a relationship between park visitation and the location of minority populations, in the sense that racial or ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented at closer and smaller national parks.

The Nature of Urban Growth and the Commuting Transition: Endless Sprawl or a Growth Wave?

The concept of an urban growth wave expanding outwards is used to examine the commuting characteristics of residents of recently developed housing areas within the 50 largest US metropolitan areas at multiple points of time between 1980 and 2000. The results show that not only do areas of recent housing booms have longer commuting times and differing socioeconomic characteristics than older parts of the cities, but this commuting time will subside as these areas age (although average commuting times may rise for the entire metropolitan area). Like a growth wave, a commuting transition move outwards and therefore newer growth areas (or sprawl) should be considered as a temporary stage in the ongoing process of urban growth. Focusing on building cycles avoids the pejorative sprawl label and reconceptualises this sort of low density, auto-dependent urban form as a normal part of the urban growth process.

Old Ways, New Impacts: Race, Residential Patterns, and the Home Foreclosure Crisis in the American South

The full impact of the U.S. housing crisis is still unfolding, with growing evidence that low-income groups and racial minorities have suffered the worst effects of foreclosure. This article addresses the spatial distribution of mortgage foreclosure in a Southern county that is residentially segregated in terms of race and wealth. We collected data manually from legal notices and public access property records between 2008 and 2011 and then used three basic approaches for analysis: visual identification, hot spot detection, and polygon-based spatial autocorrelation. We found that foreclosure activity followed the race–wealth divide by being heavily concentrated in older black neighborhoods, clustered in some white exurban developments, and largely absent from wealthy white areas. The results indicate that blacks and whites experience different patterns of foreclosure and that the housing crisis exacerbates geographical patterns of residential segregation.

Everyday Places on the American Freeway System

The Interstate Highway System is one of the largest civil engineering works in the United States and a crucial component of urban transportation systems. Despite its inescapable presence, it has received relatively little attention from cultural geographers. Although some work has shown how people and communities have adapted to this highway system, it has also been seen as uniform and homogenous, and therefore lacking any real places, or even any sense of place. This paper argues that this view is an oversimplification that fails to acknowledge the diversity of places that exist on freeways. Instead, freeways can be seen as an assemblage of a very large number of places. While these places are generic in that they do not have proper names and rarely show up on official maps, they exist everywhere throughout the system. This paper will examine and discuss some of the kinds of generic places that can be found on the Interstate Highway System and other freeways. These should be investigated in greater detail, not just to enrich our knowledge of everyday places but for the insights we may gain into the meanings associated with freeways and automobile travel within our highway-based transportation system.

Employment Sprawl, Race and the Journey to Work in Birmingham, Alabama

Studies of residential sprawl have shown that longer commutes are typical for residents of these areas, but the effect of sprawling workplace locations on journey to work patterns has not yet been closely examined. This paper uses commuting data from the 1990 and 2000 Census Transportation Planning Package to examine the impact of employment sprawl on commuting, and its differing impacts on black and white workers within Birmingham, Alabama. This analysis finds that workers who commute to sprawling areas travel shorter distances, often spend less time commuting, are less likely to drive alone, and are more likely to bike and walk, though they do not earn as much as workers in urban areas. This suggests the possibility that workers may be able to reduce their commutes as more jobs relocate to sprawling areas. However, increased sprawl may result in increased commutes for black workers if they are not able to adjust their residential location, as shown by their longer commutes to jobs in sprawl locations.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Future of the National Park System in a Racially Diverse America

Abstract The U.S. National Park System contains places of world-renowned beauty and tremendous historical significance that represent some of the central values and experiences in American culture, democracy, and freedom for everyone, for all time. However, the vast majority of visitors to these parks are white, which has increasingly been seen as a problem as it suggests a lack of full participation by all members of society. While there are several perspectives on low minority visitation, it is possible that park policies or interpretation may not appeal to, or may unintentionally exclude minority visitors. This study examines how efforts to expand the inclusiveness and representativeness of the park system may affect its geography. Recent National Park Service plans to commemorate the Civil Rights movement are examined with the goal of understanding how the geography and purpose of the park system may be changed over time. The expansion of the park system into cultural themes will likely necessitate a continual expansion of the number and kinds of park units.

Women foreclosed: a gender analysis of housing loss in the US Deep South

Women were a focus of subprime lending during the housing boom, increasing their risk of mortgage foreclosure during the Great Recession of 2007–2011. Following Valentines (2007) call for a feminist geography on interactions between social categories and geographic patterns, this article investigates housing loss among women foreclosees in a southern US county with a history of residential segregation. We collected foreclosure data manually from legal notices and municipal property records, compared foreclosures with home mortgage rates for couples, sole men, and sole women homeowners between 2008 and 2012, and then combined the information with census tract data for GIS analysis. Women homeowners typically foreclosed within five years of buying modestly priced homes, which were mostly concentrated in African-American neighborhoods close to the county seat. Women were significantly more likely to foreclose than other homebuyers, a new twist on gender and race inequalities in US homeownership that increased during a recessionary economy. This foreclosure activity followed historical patterns of residential segregation, with privilege and disadvantage in juxtaposition with social hierarchies of race and class. We conclude that housing loss in the US South is complicated by racial history and the subordinate status of ‘women alone’ in the residential mortgage market.