Read the Report on “The neighborhoods we live in: Comparisons by race and income in Southern California”

In this Report, we are particularly interested in how economic resources and racial/ethnic status might interact to affect access to various types of neighborhoods. Thus, whereas a particular racial/ethnic group may tend to live in a neighborhood with less favorable conditions compared to another group, the question we ask is whether economic resources can diminish this gap? Specifically, do greater economic resources for racial/ethnic groups that are typically more disadvantaged (e.g., Blacks, Latinos) similarly provide them access to similar neighborhoods as they might for more advantaged groups such as White residents?

This Report therefore focuses on the characteristics of neighborhoods occupied by members of racial/ethnic groups based on different levels of income. For example, we compare the characteristics of the neighborhoods of high income white residents to those of high income black residents to high income Asian residents to high income Latino residents. Likewise, we compare the neighborhoods of different racial groups based on other income levels (very low income, low income, medium income, etc.). We also compare within racial/ethnic groups: for example, do high income Blacks live in different neighborhoods compare to low income Blacks? In short, to what extent do race and economic resources—either separately or in tandem—affect the type of neighborhoods that residents are able to access?

Download the full report here (.pdf)

Quarterly Report on Business Relocations in Southern California

Business recruitment has long been one of the most popular strategies for state and local economic development in the US, but little is understood about the precise physical location of business moves, such as the surrounding neighborhoods and how far away a firm relocates.  This Report takes a spatially precise approach toward analyzing business relocations in the seven-county Southern California region from 1997-2014. We analyze moves within cities and across city boundaries, as well as the characteristics of the neighborhoods which businesses leave – and move to.

Download the full report here (.pdf).  Register for the webinar covering this report on 8/15/2017 here.

Read the Report on Business Relocations in Southern California: Moves within and across cities and neighborhoods?

Business recruitment has long been one of the most popular strategies for state and local economic development in the US, but little is understood about the precise physical location of business moves, such as the surrounding neighborhoods and how far away a firm relocates.  This Report takes a spatially precise approach toward analyzing business relocations in the seven-county Southern California region from 1997-2014. We analyze moves within cities and across city boundaries, as well as the characteristics of the neighborhoods which businesses leave – and move to.

Explore the web app on Business Relocations in Southern California

Click here for a web mapping application that allows you to explore dynamics of business relocation across city boundaries in Southern California.   This application corresponds to MFI’s Quarterly Report “Business Relocations in Southern California: Moves within and across cities and neighborhoods?”

Quarterly Report on Relationships Between Housing, Business, and Open Space

This research explores the notion of urban accessibility, defined as the spatial separation between dwelling units and 32 types of destinations including shopping, open space, and public services. Using data on the roughly five million residential land parcels in Southern California, we use network analyses and multilevel regression modeling to determine what it is about homes that make them more or less accessible to a wide variety of destination types. In most places across the region, older homes, smaller homes, and multifamily residences have a positive relationship to accessibility; however this varies widely across counties and cities.

Read the Report on What makes housing accessible to everyday destinations in Southern California?

Changes to the urban built environment have impacts on the social and ecological footprint of cities and regions long beyond their original planned lifespan. In particular, urban sustainability, transportation energy use, and community well-being and cohesiveness are largely determined by development decisions that led to the way our cities are arranged. This research explores the notion of urban accessibility, defined as the spatial separation between dwelling units and 32 types of destinations including shopping, open space, and public services. Using data on the roughly five million residential land parcels in Southern California, we use network analyses and multilevel regression modeling to determine what it is about homes that make them more or less accessible to a wide variety of destination types. In most places across the region, older homes, smaller homes, and multifamily residences have a positive relationship to accessibility; however this varies widely across counties and cities.

Download the full report here.

Explore the web app on the Relationships between Housing, Business and Open space

Click here for a web mapping application that allows you to explore the notion of urban accessibility, defined as the spatial separation between dwelling units and 32 types of destinations including shopping, open space, and public services for cities throughout Southern California. This application corresponds to MFI’s Quarterly Report “What makes housing accessible to everyday destinations in Southern California?”

Read published research on what makes housing accessible to everyday destinations in Southern California?

Publication:

Kane, Kevin, John R. Hipp, and Jae Hong Kim. (2017). “Analyzing accessibility using parcel data: Is there still an access-space trade-off in Long Beach, California? The Professional Geographer 69:3, 486-503.

Abstract:

This article analyzes the impact of changing housing and neighborhood characteristics on the accessibility of neighborhood businesses using Long Beach, California, as a case study. Although advocates of smart growth and New Urbanism encourage land use mixing, aggregate-level analysis can be too coarse to pick up on fine-grained aspects of urban streetscapes. This study uses assessor parcel records and a point-based business establishment data set to analyze city-wide patterns of accessibility from individual dwelling units to thirty-one types of neighborhood businesses, including grocery stores, service shops, drug stores, doctor’s offices, and banks. Regression results compare parcel-level and neighborhood-level drivers of accessibility between 2006 and 2015 to gauge the aggregated effect of recent economic, demographic, and built environment changes on this aspect of urban spatial structure. Larger homes in older, multiunit buildings and higher income neighborhoods show substantial increases in accessibility to most establishment types, suggesting a trend toward both greater accessibility and larger dwelling units—despite the traditional trade-off between access and space. Although gradual increases in home and business density increased overall accessibility over this period, weaker neighborhood-level results indicate that this trend is less pronounced in high-poverty and non-white areas.

Quarterly Report on Jobs-Housing Balance in Egohoods in Southern California

WebMapHousingEgoA challenge for any region is matching the location of where residents live and where jobs are located.  On the one hand, residents typically prefer not to be too close to industrial or commercial sites. On the other hand, residents typically do not want to be too far from jobs, as this implies longer commute times.  And longer commutes overall aggregate to an overtaxing of the transportation system.  Thus, the “balance” between the location of jobs and housing is of considerable interest to policy makers and scholars. In this Report, we study the relationship between the location of jobs and the residential location of potential workers.  We distinguish between two related concepts.  First, jobs-housing ratios capture locations that are particularly job-rich versus locations that are job deserts.  Second, jobs-housing imbalance captures locations that have a big difference between the number of jobs and workers.

Explore this report using our web mapping application.

Or, you can download the full report here.