university of washington - gis project
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Economic Development: Future Employment
Opportunities in Neighborhoods of Low
Socio-Economic Status in Tacoma, WA
Natasha Boyde
Initial Goals
• Is Poverty in Tacoma under-served by employment opportunities?• Identify areas of concentrated poverty• Find vacant commercial parcels within walking and
biking distance of these areas to create jobs• Reduce commuting to jobs• Increase walkability of a neighborhood
self-sustaining community
Literature ReviewFinding the Problem• America’s “car culture” has decentralized jobs• Deindustrialization, gentrification, economic decline• Suburban sprawl causing decline in neighborhoods into low-
income and poverty• Spatial mismatch of jobs to people• Unemployment relates to more variables than poverty and
income• Lack of jobs exacerbates economic problems and concentrates
poverty in an area• Lack of mobility
Literature ReviewIdentifying Solutions• Factors of accessibility to jobs:• Education• Discrimination• Transportation• Physical accessibility• Mixed Use development• Commercial AND Industrial development
• Walkable neighborhoods• Dense, compact, urban cities
Revised Goals
• Expand demographic research from poverty to Socio-economic Status• Commercial AND Industrial parcel analyses• Biking and Walking networks• Hot Spot Analysis
Data Collection• Census.gov• 2000 Census data (SES variables)• Block Group Polygons
• WAGDA• Tacoma Streets• Parcel Polygons & Land Use Attributes
• City of Tacoma• Bike Paths & Bike Ways
• GIS Labs• Pierce County Basemap• City of Tacoma Boundary
MethodsSES Index• Variables: • Race• Poverty• Linguistic Isolation• Education• Single mother households• Unemployment• Kitchen & Plumbing facilities
Standardizing SES Variables• Calculate a rate, the mean and standard deviation of each
variable• Create a standard score for each variable:
• Example: Mean poverty rate is .08 and standard deviation is .02
• ((PovRate - .08) / .02)
Calculating SES score• Classify each variable’s Z-score• Create a new field called SES Index• Field calculator to add each variable’s Z-score
Total SES score for each block group•Join to Block Group polygons•Create Choropleths •Convert Block Groups into points •Hot Spot Analysis
Issue #1: Hot Spot Analysis
IDW Interpolation of SES
Find Low SES Neighborhoods:Re-Classify
Creates new polygons to extract low SES neighborhood polygons
Network Analyses
• Create new fields -“WalkTimeMinutes”-“DriveTimeMinutes”
•Create Network Datasets for Walking & Biking•Create start points in each neighborhood•Create Service Areas:-Bike Time: 10 minutes-Walk Times: 10, 15, 20 minutes
Hilltop Bike Service Area
Salishan Walk Service Area
Parcel Analyses• Add Parcel polygons and
attribute table to map -JOIN
• Create new fields in parcel attributes:-Commercial, Industrial, Vacant-0 for no, 1 for yes
• Used SQL queries to select vacant parcels within each service area network
Issue #2:Salishan Parcel Analysis
• Not enough vacant parcels in Salishan
• Decided to find under-utilized parcels
Under-utilized Parcel Analysis
• Got Zoning polygons from Natasha H.
• Used SQL Queries to find parcels that were being used for something other than what they were zoned for.
Results
• Lowest SES neighborhoods: Hilltop & Salishan• Several vacant parcels in Hilltop• Not many vacant parcels in Salishan• Many under-utilized parcels in Salishan, mainly
Industrially zoned
Reflections• Index skills• Introduced me to Salishan• Urban planning and housing projects• Cluster analysis• Use of many tools• Last-minute analyses
Future Research• 2010 Census data• Sidewalks• Car Ownership Data• Tacoma Housing Authority
ReferencesCurran, Winifred (2007). ‘From the Frying Pan to the Oven’: Gentrification and the Experience of Industrial Displacement in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn. Urban Studies, Vol. 44, No. 8, 1427-1440.Elliott, Donald L. (2008). A Better Way to Zone. In A Better Way to Zone: Ten Principles to Create More Livable Cities (pp. 137-211).
Washington, DC: Island Press.Huber, Peter (2000). How Cities Green the Planet. In Hallowell, Christopher & Levy, Walter (Eds.), Listening to Earth (pp. 53-63). New York:
Pearson Longman.Jackson, Kenneth T. (1985). The Drive-in Culture of Contemporary America. In The Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
(pp. 246-271). New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.Kelly, Stephanie B. (2004). Community Planning: How to Solve Urban and Environmental Problems. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc.Steuteville, Robert (2004). New Urban Neighborhoods Make Big Gains. New Urban News, 9(1): 1, 3-6. Retreived from
http://newurbannetwork.comWang, Fahui and Minor, W. William (2002). Where the Jobs Are: Employment Access and Crime Patterns in Cleveland. In Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 92 (3), 435-450. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.orgWilson, William Julius (1994). Citizenship and the Inner-City Ghetto Poor. In van Steenbergen, Bart (Ed.), The Condition of Citizenship (pp. 49-
65). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Wilson, William Julius (1997). From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos. In When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (pp. 3-24).
New York: Vintage Books.