Assignment 7- Detailed project plan - Emilie Falguières
1. Presentation
It has been demonstrated that decision makers in the 1950s used highways construction in
order to separate communities or to isolate them. Highways intersections were built for
example in the middle of black communities or Highways were built between black and
white communities.
The purpose of the project is to demonstrate how urban policies and interstate highways
in the 1950s were constructed mainly in black communities and in order to increase
segregation.
2. Literature

Chi Guangqing, Parisi, Domenico, Highway expansion effects on Urban racial
redistribution in the post-civil rights period, Public Works Management& Policy,
2011
http://www.academia.edu/1404899/Highway_Expansion_Effects_on_Urban_Racial_Redi
stribution_in_the_Post_Civil_Rights_Period
This research uses census data for 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 to examine the role
that highway expansion plays for the redistribution of black and latinos communities. The
paper looked at the communities in the metropolitan area of Milwaukee in the Wisconsin.
The interest here is not the result of the research, which demonstrates that the
concentration of Latinos and black communities have expanded after the construction of
highways. The paper used data for highway expansion segments and census tract.
They quantified the spatial relationship of census tracts to highway expansion segments.
They used a series of distance buffer zones to select the distance to highways and
therefore in order to express the potential exposure of highways. In this study the
researchers divided the census tracts into seven groups based on their distance to the
corresponding nearest expansion segments. They finally used regression analysis to
estimate the effect of highway expansion of urban racial redistribution.

Ritters Kurt H., Wickham, James D., How far to the nearest road?, Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment, Vol.1, No.3, April 2003
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3867984
The project looks at the impact of road proximity on land areas. The authors
calculated the proportion of land area that is located within nine distances from the
nearest road and mapped the results. They use overlay tool with 4 different map showing
each different data. They created a gridded road map in which each cell recorded the
smallest window size that contained a road. Data summaries were prepared by overlaying
road-distance grid with land-cover, watershed and ecoregion maps. Finally they tabulated
the road distance. Note: I did not understand very clearly how they created the gridded
road map.

Mark Crowell, Kevin Coulton, Cheryl Johnson1, Jonathan Westcott, Doug
Bellomo, Scott Edelman, and Emily Hirsch, An Estimate of the U.S. Population
Living in 100-Year Coastal Flood Hazard Areas, Journal of Coastal Research,
Vol.26, No.2, 2010
In this project, the authors estimated the US population living in coastal area and that
is subjected to the 1% annual chance coastal flood.
They combined census data with the national digital flood hazard database and the
boundaries for two different zones.
The authors were able to determine U.S population subject to the 1 % annual chance
coastal flood. GIS unions were performed to spatially combine the coastal flood hazard
areas with census block groups. In order to determine the population within a coastal
flood zone, the authors multiplied the block-group population density by the square –mile
area of the coastal flood zone.

X. Ben Wu and Daniel Z. Sui, GIS based lacunarity analysis for assessing Urban
residential segregation, Texas A&M University, retrieved from:
http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0667/p0667.htm
The authors created a GIS procedure, using Arc view spatial analyst called multi-scale
lacunarity analysis for measuring segregation. This method allowed them to measure
different pattern of segregation. The lacunarity index is another method for measuring
segregation, different from the dissimilarity index. The authors used this index and
calculation as well as census data with census tracts converted to raster data, to measure
segregation in Houston between 1980 and 1990.
3. Data:
Data layer 1
Data layer 2
Interstate Highways for Project Tufts Geoportal
ESRI
Data
US. Census Tracts 1950
Social explorer
Population
Percentage
Black
Percentage
White
Analysis steps
Concentration of black population living next to a highway in 1950: spatial analysis
 First, I will isolate the tracks that are located close to the highway in the main
cities in the United States. For that purpose I could use the select by location tool,
which would select the tracks that intercept the highways.
 I could split the tracks into 4 or 5 groups according to their distance to the nearest
highway or intersection. For this purpose, I could use proximity tools such as
buffer.
 I could also use the overlay analysis in order to find which highways are in certain
communities. I am not sure which particular tool of overlay I could use to isolate
areas around intersections.
 Regarding the concentration of black population living close to an interception.
For this analysis, the ideal would be to find data on intersection points. With the
intersection data, I will use the select by location tool to select parcels that are within a
certain distance from the intersection.
Quantification of the analysis
 First, I could create a distribution function with the percentage of black
population on the X axis and the number of tracts on the Y axis for each city.
Thereafter, I will calculate the mean and the standard deviation from the mean.
The objective will be to see if the tracts which intersect a highway or within a
close distance to the highway are far or close to the mean. I will assume that the census
track populations were uniformly distributed.

In order to measure the concentration of black population versus the white
population would be to use an index of different standard deviation above or
below the mean. After having taken the percentage of black/white in each parcels
that are close to a highway, I will look at how far from the mean of black/white
distribution in the metropolitan area they are situated in order to draw a
conclusion.
Analyzing the impact of highway on segregation
Another way to analyze the problem of highways in the 1950s would be to take
individually each intersection in the main cities and to measure levels of segregation
around them. If all the main cities have too many intersections, I would pick 4 or 5 cities,
and isolate the tracts or counties in which there is an intersection. I would then calculate
the dissimilarity index.
The second step would be to calculate the amount of dissimilarity after 10 years using the
1960 census. Indeed, the highways may have prevented black communities to expand
towards white communities. They may have also pushed white communities away from
those areas, increasing segregation.
The index of dissimilarity is calculated as such (source:
http://enceladus.isr.umich.edu/race/calculate.html) :
This index measures the evenness with which two mutually exclusive groups are
distributed across the geographic units that make up a larger geographic entity; for
example, the distribution of blacks and whites across the census tracts that make up a
metropolis. Its minimum value is zero and its maximum value is 100.
Suppose:
bi = the black population of the ith areal unit, e.g. census tract
B = the total black population of the large geographic entity for which the index of
dissimilarity is being calculated.
wi = the white population of the ith area unit, e. g. census tract
W = the total white population of the large geographic entity for which the index of
dissimilarity is being calculated
Then the index of dissimilarity measuring the segregation of whites from blacks
(1/2) SUM (bi /B – wi / W |
Regression analysis
I was also thinking about the possibility to do a regression analysis in order to look at the
effect of the increase in percentage of black population in a track on the probability for a
policy maker to construct a highway or a highway intersection in the 1950s.
Poster
To include in the project:
 Charts and tables
 Three or four maps on different cities.
One map would demonstrate how highways intercept black communities.
Two maps could demonstrate the change in segregation.