Geography Education

Income maps of every neighborhood in the U.S. See wealth and poverty in places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami, and more.

When guerrilla-geographer Daniel Raven-Ellison travels, he always keep his eyes peeled for unexpected works of art that creatively subvert culture, rules, and politics and force us to see...

Not all cultural landscapes are officially sanctioned by city planners or government officials.  These landscapes of resistance are often poignant critiques on society and represent the mulitplicity of voices within places.  There isn't one "Geography" with a capital G of a given place, but many geographies.  Many people and demographic groups interact and use the same place in distinct ways and the meaning of that place is socially mediated within the cultural landscape.   

Tags: art, landscape, culture, place, unit 3 culture.

As upscale, high-rise condos and hipster bars opened nearby, longtime customers joked: Is this really still “the ’hood”? Not anymore.

 

In a gentrifying neighborhood in Washington D.C. that was historically African-American, Fish in the ’Hood was an iconic restaurant that captured the feel of the area.  Just this May, the storefront restaurant was renamed Fish in the Neighborhood.

Questions to Ponder: Why?  Does it matter?  What does it mean?

"Residential segregation by income has increased during the past three decades across the United States and in 27 of the nation’s 30 largest major metropolitan area, according to a new analysis of census tract and household income data by the Pew Research Center.  The analysis finds that 28% of lower-income households in 2010 were located in a majority lower-income census tract, up from 23% in 1980, and that 18% of upper- income households were located in a majority upper-income census tract, up from 9% in 1980."  This interactive map allows the user to explore the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. Read the article associated with this map.

Whoa, check out Trulia Local - A visual way to explore crime, schools, home prices, and local data.

 

The map above was generated to display the areas within a 30 minute commute of Rhode Island College in Providence.  This site generates commuting maps and other layers that are especially pertinent for home buyers---schools, crime stats, property values and local amenities.  This is GIS data brought to the real estate shopping community, but consider this a project in the making.  One of the best exercises to get to know a place holistically is to shop for housing and make some locational analysis decisions.

A heartfelt & moving story of how instruments made from recycled trash bring hope to children whose future is otherwise spiritless.

Melani Smith is Director of Planning and Urban Design at downtown Los Angeles based Meléndrez, a landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design firm. Melani’s…

Nielsen Prizm is a tool used by companies to analyze their customers spending habits, lifestyle choices and spatial patterns.  Using their Zip Code Look Up feature, you can search any zip code to g...

This is an interesting glimpse into how market research analysts view neighborhoods, geography and spatial analysis.  This economic and cultural data has a wide range of uses (albeit with some serious limitations). 

Tags: socioeconomic, neighborhood, place, economic, consumption, spatial, mapping. 

This map is a fantastic geovisualization that maps the spatial patterns of languages used on the social media platform Twitter.  This map was in part inspired by a Twitter map of Europe.  While most cities would be expected to be linguistically homogenous, but London's cosmopolitan nature and large pockets of immigrants influence the distribution greatly.

   

Tags: social media, language, neighborhood, visualization, cartography.

"Jane Jacobs is variously known as the guru of cities, an urban legend—“part analyst, part activist, part prophet.” In the more than forty years since the publication of her groundbreaking book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), her influence has been extraordinary—not only on architects, community workers, and planners but also on Nobel Prize–winning economists and ecologists. As one critic recently put it, “Jacobs’s influence confirms that books matter. It isn’t easy to cite another writer who has had a comparable impact in our time.” A couple of years ago, she won the top American award for urban planning, the Vincent Scully Prize. This in itself was unusual, not only because she regularly vilifies planners, but also because with the exception of the Order of Canada and a few other prizes, she typically turns down awards—some thirty honorary degrees, including one from Harvard. Jacobs herself wasn’t interested in finishing university—she went to Columbia for just two years."

While touring Kevin Babola's art studio yesterday, I found this thought-provoking piece entitled ‘Political Landscapes.’ I greatly enjoyed my conversation with the artist about the political, economic and urban visions that went into this painting.  The conceptual idea behind this painting started when the artist was exploring the neighborhoods of New Bedford, MA and noticed how a sense of place can change very quickly. I dare say most cities have areas similar to the one portrayed here where the socioeconomic character changes very abruptly. While physically it might be very easy to cross from the side of the street with tenements to the neighborhood with single family homes, making that transition permanent is incredibly difficult.

 

Questions to ponder: what leads to cities having abrupt changes in the urban fabric? What might this chasm represent to people on either side of the divide? How does this impact the neighborhood institutions (schools, local government, etc.)?  Please visit the artist's webpage at: http://www.kbolaillustration.com

KV: Development of a high end apartment complex in a low income area would force pre-gentrification people out of the neighborhood. The taxes would get raised to amounts that make it difficult for these people to afford. However, the people in charge of this project are ignoring the consequences and focusing on the 5 million dollars tax break. 

 

SD: This sign went up in to 2006 protest the mills-to-condo developments in Providence, Rhode Island.  Click here to see the photographer's work.