Teaching Geography Workshop 3: North America – Part 1: Boston
JIM BINKO:
North America, comprised of Canada and the United States, is one of the
most urbanized regions of the world. In this program, we visit the city of
Boston. Like most American cities, Boston is home to many ethnic
groups and here as elsewhere, these populations have taken root in
older, inner-city neighborhoods. In recent decades, many of these
neighborhoods deteriorated but as you are about to see in this case
study, cities like Boston are bouncing back.
And you will see how geographic analysis can help address some difficult
urban economic and social issues. Front and center here is Geography
Standard One: how to use maps and other geographic
representations, tools and technologies to acquire, process and
report information from a spatial perspective. Specifically we will see
how city planners in Boston used GIS--that is Geographic Information
Systems--to analyze economic and demographic data. One of today’s
objectives is to explain how maps and other graphic representations
are used to understand patterns of human activity in urban regions.
GIS is also, as we shall see, valuable in the classroom. Near Denver,
Colorado, students use GIS-generated maps to better understand the
distribution of wealth in and around that city. The Boston case study also
highlights Geography Standard Ten: The characteristics, distribution
and complexity of the Earth’s cultural mosaics and Standard 12: The
processes patterns and functions of human settlements.
After viewing the case study, you should be able to identify ways in
which communities reflect the cultural background of their
inhabitants. Successful urban-planning efforts depend on a clear
understanding of the overlapping systems that define a city.
The Boston case study you are about to see should help you recognize
some of these spatial patterns.
NARRATOR:
Boston, Massachusetts. Once a great port, it’s now a world leader in high
tech, higher education, medicine and finance. But like most U.S. cities,
Boston lost many jobs and middle-class residents to the suburbs. It’s a
regional problem-- part of the widening gap between the wealthiest and
the poorest Americans. This disparity has glaring spatial symptoms. (\rap
music loudly playing\) Left behind are inner-city neighborhoods not far
from the central business district, full of unemployed and underemployed
residents.
In the heart of the Roxbury neighborhood is Dudley Square, still the
regional hub for the city bus line. Once only downtown Boston had more
shoppers. Today it is run-down, according to developer Joyce Stanley.
JOYCE STANLEY:
Dudley has been an area that’s been neglected for a long time by the
city, um, by a lot of banks and... and the state and what we want is
something to be able to develop some of the...some of the buildings-- the
large buildings that we have in our area.
NARRATOR:
The hope is that large, restored buildings might attract new employers to
the area. It’s a gamble Boston needs to make using someone else’s
money. They desperately need jobs to combat poverty. It’s 1994 and the
city has just entered a competition. But unlike this friendly street game,
the stakes for Boston are high and the clock is ticking. Cities across the
country are vying for new federal grants for something called an
"empowerment zone"-- a special area of the worst poverty. First prize: up
to $100 million. To spearhead Boston’s effort, the mayor enlisted
Geographer Linda Haar. When Mayor Menino first asked me to begin to
work with the community to establish our empowerment zone plan, I sat
back and started to think, um, about Boston from the perspective of a...
of a geographer, um, which is my training, and I've looked at Boston, um,
along spatial lines.
NARRATOR:
To help do that, Haar’s team uses a geographic information system to
map relative poverty levels for each census tract. Unfortunately there are
too many poor neighborhoods that qualify. There are many ways to draw
the empowerment zone boundary that will decide who can and cannot
receive the employment training, development money and jobs, but some
of the choices stand out.
LINDA HAAR:
You can really define who lives in what neighborhood, uh, what is their
cultural background and where are the neighborhoods that are living in
poverty, and unfortunately they happen to have a very strong relationship.
NARRATOR:
But they're not all classic minority neighborhoods. Marty Nee is a leader
from South Boston, on the harbor, where most residents are white IrishAmericans. Well, maybe the face of poverty in Boston is not just black.
Maybe it’s not just Hispanic. Um, maybe there’s a... a broader face of
poverty that we need to look at.
HAAR:
One of the reasons for that, too, is...
NARRATOR:
The census maps bear him out and today Nee joins leaders from other
neighborhoods at a meeting called by Linda Haar. The goal: to review a
draft proposal to the federal government. Joyce Stanley presses her case
for Dudley Square and adjacent Grove Hall. Grove Hall has more social
service agencies than any other community-- Dudley, also.
NARRATOR:
The historical geography of Boston’s diverse neighborhoods is full of
conflict, but the competing leaders know they can win only by uniting and
drawing a politically inclusive map. So parts of South Boston join
Roxbury, Chinatown and other areas in the empowerment zone proposal,
but there are other factors besides race and poverty. The proposal takes
advantage of South Boston’s location relative to the city’s key
transportation infrastructure-- the harbor, the interstate highways and a
new tunnel to the airport. Adjacent neighborhoods also contain
underutilized industrial space. According to some experts, new enterprise
will succeed only if it exploits fundamental geographic advantages.
Commerce in Roxbury, for instance, should capitalize on close physical
connections to the central business district. Here, proximity can partially
compensate for a population with low worker skills-- at least that’s the
plan.
NARRATOR:
Hopeful that their proposal integrates the best economic, political and
urban geography, the Boston team meets one last time before
submission. What we have been able to do, I believe, is to incorporate all
of the important points that people have made.
NARRATOR:
They submit the proposal and begin the waiting game.
MAN (\on street\):
Hey, go up Broadway! ;_warning above: 4 frames late
NARRATOR:
Six months later the winners are announced, and Boston receives a $47
million second prize. (\men cheering\) Though less than hoped for, the
money will fund the highest priorities. Six years later and the landscape
shows signs of revitalization.
WOMAN:
Whoa! Whoa! Stay on the sidewalk!
NARRATOR:
In South Boston, this seafood processing company received federal
grants and low-interest loans to build on city land in the empowerment
zone. A key incentive is a tax credit for each resident hired from the
zone. In Dudley Square, the bus station has received a facelift. The
remodeled Fairfield Center has welcomed hundreds of government
employees. Nearby the square, these Orchard Park affordable-housing
units are scheduled for an upgrade. In adjacent Grove Hall, a large chain
constructs a new supermarket. The city offered them incentives to move
into neighborhoods they had once ignored. The hope is to bring greater
convenience and competitive prices while anchoring this small shopping
center. An intangible result of empowerment zone funding is more
cultural and psychological. Neighborhood and ethnic pride is part of the
strategy to promote self-sufficiency and growth. It’s a spirit you can feel in
places like the popular La Cocina restaurant at Merengue. This, uh,
project is like a dream come true.
NARRATOR:
Hector Piña is part of the sizeable Latino community here and with
federal loans and grants, La Cocina will expand from 22 seats into this
adjacent space for 90.
HECTOR PIÑA:
Most of the contractors are locals, so what we did was we tried to recycle
the money within the community.
NARRATOR:
In 1999, as the first empowerment zone funds start to really pay off,
Boston gets more great news. They are awarded the full $100 million first
prize by the U.S. government, along with 14 other U.S. cities. And to put
information in the database...
NARRATOR:
Now the emphasis is less on buildings and more on human development,
like teaching English as a second language and job-training classes like
this one.
INSTRUCTOR:
Everybody here has a cassette tape.
NARRATOR:
America watches to see the impact on the urban landscape.
GIL LATZ:
We’ve seen how Boston is trying to give its residents new life, but how
does it compare with the larger region of North America?
Like many U.S. cities, urban Boston has become a place where property
taxes are simply not adequate to overcome poverty. Now in cities like El
Paso, Texas, empowerment zones try to match federal funds with local
investment and economic development. At the same time, inner cities
can be attractive, central places to live for higher-income adults, but they
often push low-income residents to even less desirable areas. In U.S.
cities, "poor" often means "minority" or "immigrant."
Diversity is a defining characteristic of North American cities, but with key
regional differences. The Canadian government welcomed these
migrants to Montreal to help offset a natural decline in the French
population and pays them to learn French instead of English.
U.S. immigration policy has a different outcome. Here entrance criteria
are based largely on family unification. Canada admits migrants based on
skills, education and wealth. This contributes to less urban poverty and
fewer impoverished neighborhoods. Two other geographical reasons:
Canada builds fewer new highways to the suburbs and their zoning
discourages sprawl. More wealth stays in the cities.
The geography of North America is marked by dynamic, diverse urban
populations, each facing new challenges in the 21st century.
SUSAN HARDWICK: In some ways it’s difficult for an American to get a good geographical
look at a U.S. city. Since we're in the culture, it can be hard to get a clear
view of the impact of cultural characteristics on the urban landscape.
Foreign cities can provide some clear examples. In Jerusalem we can
clearly see the impact of cultural characteristics on particular places.
Near the walled Old City, residents live in different quarters according to
their religious beliefs. Mosques, synagogues and cathedrals stand as
visible reminders of the diversity of religions here.
Many American cities are built around a standardized grid design. In
Russia, St. Petersburg is a classic illustration of this grid pattern. It’s a
pattern that reflects authoritarian values of command and control. But
what would explain a city street plan like this? This is Tokyo-- one of the
world’s largest cities. The dense cityscape here is shaped by a very
different set of cultural preferences-- an affinity for small spaces and a
comfort with closeness. The result is visible in Tokyo’s distinctively
intricate urban landscapes.
Analyzing the processes and functions of landscapes in cities you may
have lived in can help bring geographic inquiry alive. Why did this city
come to look the way it does? What cultural processes helped shape its
unique sense of place?
One thing is certain: From Jerusalem to St. Petersburg to Strasbourg to
your hometown the dynamics of city change present challenges and
opportunities for local residents, urban planners and human geographers.
BINKO:
Recent developments in technology have opened a new world of
information and opportunities for teachers. For example, simplified, lowtech versions of GIS can be effectively used in the classroom. In our next
segment, we see an AP human geography class use GIS-generated
maps to effectively understand how urban models apply to real-world
situations.
In this activity, teacher Rick Gindele asks his students: Where are
economically distressed neighborhoods located in their home city of
Denver? From an educator's perspective, a student's native city is a good
starting point for developing geographic skills and understanding.
In this lesson, students actively engage in research, collecting, organizing
and analyzing information and reporting their findings. See if you can
identify how students can use geographic skills to interpret patterns
of distribution-- such as wealth, education and population-- in these
urban regions. Watch now as this AP human geography class uses GIS
information and the inquiry process to answer important questions about
their own community.
RICK GINDELE:
All right, let's go over the instructions real fast; you're relatively familiar
with them. But the yellow sheet there has your instructions for today. And
so let's go over the scenario. You're a member of an investigative team
that will determine 12 to 17 census tracts that are kind of struggling
economically. So, we want to see which ones will qualify for Enterprise
Community status, and there's a lot of money at stake here.
NARRATOR:
Rick Gindele's class is studying urbanization. Today's lesson moves
from theory into practice as they work on a real-world problem with realworld data. Your team has been given a whole bunch of GIS-generated
maps, all right? Some geographic information systems-generated
socioeconomic maps. So, you're going to analyze all those maps, right, to
determine and target those neighborhoods that need some serious
economic help.
GINDELE:
We watched the case study on Boston, and I thought it was just perfect,
because Denver went through the whole process that Boston did. So, I
thought, "Hey, it would be great "if I could get this GIS data "and have
them pick out those neighborhoods that are suffering economically." And
then they could match it up with what the economic development experts
in Denver came up with. Let's see how well the students can understand
some of the geographic concepts that we studied all year and then,
specifically, in our urbanization chapter from the book and this unit. Can
they tie all that together?
GINDELE:
When you're all done processing this stuff, once again, I will show you
what Denver actually came up with. And we'll see how you guys do with
what the "experts" came up with, okay? Now, your inquiry question, which
will kind of drive your thinking is: And, once again, there are time goals,
so group leaders, I will kind of come around, try to keep you on track as
far as time is concerned. All right, you have about 12 minutes to figure
out which neighborhoods you're going to target. All right, any questions?
No? Okay, go to it.
(\students begin talking\)
STUDENT:
All right, first thing we're going to do, is we'll just do them one by one.
Then we'll compare the 15 of them so that we can, uh... There's 13 maps,
so we'll just compare the 13, make a list of, like, the top five
neighborhoods. If we need the names, we have a list of the names right
here.
GINDELE:
So, if you noticed, there are maps dealing with social things, right? And
then there's economic-type maps, exactly, so those are some good
categories to start with. Yeah, excellent, you've got the map there with
the neighborhoods and it has some of the transportation routes
highlighted, right?
GINDELE:
So, Megan, how are you guys dividing this stuff up? Are you dividing up
the maps and then into any categories?
MEGAN:
Yeah. Yeah, like things that...
BOY:
Education over here, and then, like, immigration over there.
MEGAN:
And race. And this is, like, income. And then we have the, um... vehicles
together, right here. Like, those all really correspond.
GINDELE:
The whole GIS phenomenon is just really quite exciting. I can let the data
and the information and the technology do the work as far as having the
kids think spatially, because it's right there in front of them. They can see
the patterns, they can start to correlate information in different
geographic areas.
(\students conversing\)
STUDENT:
It just goes, like, right there with the river, with the industry with the CBD
and the...
GINDELE:
Well, the AP curriculum states that students really should be able to look
at these different themes and geographic concepts from a variety of
scales. So the students, with respect to this lesson, need to know and
figure out how this works on a local level and then maybe transfer that to
other North American cities and, quite possibly, other cities around the
world. So, if they have an example that's close to home, that they're
familiar with, then those concepts and those ideas should be able to stay
in their heads definitely for the long term. And then they can transfer
those concepts to other situations and other scales.
STUDENTS:
Look, it has very little, very few college graduates. Right here? ! Yeah.
We could do that. Yeah. All right, so what do we have? Did you get
Cheeseman Park? Yeah. I guess North Capitol Hill and City Park West.
BOY:
I'm thinking we're definitely going to have on this list of neighborhoods
something from up in here because those were my biggest, like, darkest
ones that we had.
GIRL:
Go ahead and highlight Auraria. But Auraria's coming up, though. Well,
the income is still really low.
GINDELE:
To bring GIS in the classroom, I think a teacher has to do a number of
things: First, they have to learn it themselves and understand what the
capabilities are for the program itself. They really need to have somebody
who's an expert and/or mentor to help them out. And then they have to
match that up with the curriculum that they're teaching and ultimately
bring in some excellent lessons that are extremely relevant to what
they're teaching in the kids' lives. And GIS allows you to do that.
GINDELE:
Pretty good, you're hired. You're going to be on the economic
development team pretty soon. All right. Okay, you guys need to stop
where you're at. So, uh, we'll see what you came up with. Now, do we
have a volunteer? So, you guys, I guess, are group one, and you're going
to... Why don't you all come up and give each other a kind of moral
support here? All right. There you go.
STUDENT:
Most of the ECs that we found were along this ring right in here on the,
you know, north, northwest... south... western side of the CBD, which is
this color right here. "Which maps were the most useful for determining
neighborhood~~ EC status and why?" Well, the top ones we said were
children living in poverty, median income. Lower the income, probably the
poorer the neighborhood is. And two-vehicle households. You'd assume
richer people usually have two cars. Why in Denver would that be a big
deal, compared to other cities in North America with respect to... We
don't have, like, a subway system or a whole bunch of cabs like New
York, so, you know, driving in a car is pretty much the main
transportation, uh, way, I guess.
GINDELE:
Okay, excellent job; give them a hand.
STUDENT:
All right, we found most of the same neighborhoods as everybody else
did. We kind of found a trend along the South Platte River that seemed to
be a reason for most of the neighborhoods. We used to explain them was
the sector model because they usually follow the industry along the river
and once the industry is gone, it converts into low-income housing. And
so most of these neighborhoods are distressed, and as a result they
probably need more education and more help than other areas.
GINDELE:
The urban models within the urbanization unit for AP are very important.
Students need to understand them and how they apply to real-life
situations. So, what a great opportunity to take this census data, um, use
GIS, map it out, so they can see how this data matches up with all the
different models that they have studied.
STUDENT:
And then using the concentric zone model, we found that you start with
the central business district, CBD, and you go, um, when you start going
out of that you have the zone of transition with the industry and the lowincome housing. And so, we found the river is right outside of the CBD,
so you had a lot of old industry that changed to low-income housing that
ended up during thresholding in the smaller... parts of the houses. And,
um, those areas get a lot of immigrants once the houses start to
subdivide and they get a little cheaper. And so, uh, we did find a large
amount of immigrants and, um, right in that area. And then, uh, the
population kind of remains there and so it kind of spread from there.
GINDELE:
Okay, excellent job. Give them a hand. (\applause\) We noticed right
away that... The first area we did was Gloveville, and that's right where I25 and I-70 come together. And that's a major transportation corridor
right there. And it's also an important area for industry. And, um, right
starting down here and coming straight up and going right there is I-25.
And that was a really big decision factor because in all these areas, that's
where we thought that they were most distressed.
GINDELE:
Okay-- hey, you guys, give them a hand. And let's show you what
Denver came up with and see how accurate you really were. You guys
were very, very close, weren't you? And just about everything that you
said in the process of understanding and analyzing these questions, you
pretty much hit it, didn't you?
GINDELE:
Everything else that you've studied all year long is involved in
urbanization. Tomorrow, when we go back over the lesson and where the
linkages are to other units in AP, we will see the connection to population,
migration, economic development, maybe urban sprawl and the impact
on prime agricultural lands. Okay, to tie it up, where are we headed with
this? Our next section of the book gets into, hey, why do cities have
certain problems that they have to deal with and overcome, right? And so
we'll look at a lot of these things and they'll be quite prevalent, right, in
these neighborhoods kind of ringing downtown-- at least mostly ringing
downtown, right? Okay, thank you.
BINKO:
In this lesson, we observed students making a serious examination of the
geography of their own urban region. GIS permits them to immediately
see spatial patterns that comprise the city, a much more visual, dramatic
and hands-on approach than reading about these trends from a textbook
alone.
Research shows us time and again that the ability of the student to
transfer learning to similar though new situations is directly correlated to
his or her understanding of the fundamental principles underlying the
data. GIS gives us the data in visual form. Inquiry provides the process
for learning fundamental geographic principles.