City Agencies Research Articles

Building and Sustaining Community Partnerships: An Organizational Network Analysis in a Low-resource Neighborhood.

Launched in 2012, the Claremont Healthy Village Initiative (CHVI) is a partnership focused on fostering community collaboration, addressing the social determinants of health, and reducing health disparities. Partners include local community centers, schools, after-school programs, health care providers, a health insurer, city agencies, tenant associations, resident leaders, elected officials, and other stakeholders. To understand the development and value of collaboration within the CHVI from the perspective of multiple partners. Using a community-based participatory research approach, we worked collaboratively with the CHVI leaders, we used paper-and web-based surveys grounded in social network theory were administered in 2017 and 2018. Questions focused on relationships between organizations that are part of the coalition. Our analysis included responses from organizations that participated in the survey at both points in time. Network measures such as density, degree centrality, and node characteristics were used to understand information sharing, referral, and collaboration among the participating organizations. Additional data included stake-holder interviews. Coalition partners increased connectedness with one another over the course of the study, with significantly greater density of relationship and bi-directional partnerships in the follow-up survey. Of the three types of interactions, referrals showed a trend for highest density change. Trust levels were highest among organizations with a local physical presence. Social network analysis provided visual and quantitative information that helped reinforce relationships and identify opportunities to improve connectedness and collaboration among diverse community partners, helping to support the coalition's goals and objectives.

SMART ENVIRONMENT INDEX PREDICTION OF SMART CITY USING POLYNOMIAL REGRESSION

Smart Environment refers to environment where pollution is detected, predicted, classified and solved using smart tools and technology such as using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, cloud service, and machine learning algorithms. Episodic environment index prediction allows governments and local city agency to detect pollution in environment at a premature stage to initiate proper steps. Advancements in machine learning, sensor, and camera technology have endorsed us to do that, which can benefit millions of cities and its citizens indeed. This paper describes a new method for smart environment index prediction based on index of five others smart city components using polynomial regression. This research mainly works with the Smart Cities Index dataset. We attempted numerous steps to select feature and to filter its contents to make them more apposite for selected regression algorithm. Our approach unites several feature selection techniques, outlier detection technique, polynomial degree selection technique, and random state selection technique, which outcomes in a reduction of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) to 0.0000000140, 0.000000000000000322, and 0.0000000179 respectively and rise R2 to 1.0 for prediction. This method can be a valuable tool for smart environment index prediction from smartness of various components of a city, thus drastically reducing survey or other related works.

Participatory mapping to address neighborhood level data deficiencies for food security assessment in Southeastern Virginia, USA

BackgroundFood is not equitably available. Deficiencies and generalizations limit national datasets, food security assessments, and interventions. Additional neighborhood level studies are needed to develop a scalable and transferable process to complement national and internationally comparative data sets with timely, granular, nuanced data. Participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) offer a means to address these issues by digitizing local knowledge.MethodsThe objectives of this study were two-fold: (i) identify granular locations missing from food source and risk datasets and (ii) examine the relation between the spatial, socio-economic, and agency contributors to food security. Twenty-nine subject matter experts from three cities in Southeastern Virginia with backgrounds in food distribution, nutrition management, human services, and associated research engaged in a participatory mapping process.ResultsResults show that publicly available and other national datasets are not inclusive of non-traditional food sources or updated frequently enough to reflect changes associated with closures, expansion, or new programs. Almost 6 percent of food sources were missing from publicly available and national datasets. Food pantries, community gardens and fridges, farmers markets, child and adult care programs, and meals served in community centers and homeless shelters were not well represented. Over 24 km2 of participant identified need was outside United States Department of Agriculture low income, low access areas. Economic, physical, and social barriers to food security were interconnected with transportation limitations. Recommendations address an international call from development agencies, countries, and world regions for intervention methods that include systemic and generational issues with poverty, incorporate non-traditional spaces into food distribution systems, incentivize or regulate healthy food options in stores, improve educational opportunities, increase data sharing.ConclusionsLeveraging city and regional agency as appropriate to capitalize upon synergistic activities was seen as critical to achieve these goals, particularly for non-traditional partnership building. To address neighborhood scale food security needs in Southeastern Virginia, data collection and assessment should address both environment and utilization issues from consumer and producer perspectives including availability, proximity, accessibility, awareness, affordability, cooking capacity, and preference. The PGIS process utilized to facilitate information sharing about neighborhood level contributors to food insecurity and translate those contributors to intervention strategies through discussion with local subject matter experts and contextualization within larger scale food systems dynamics is transferable.

The transgressive art of walking: entanglements of urban activism and tourism in South Tel Aviv

ABSTRACT This article studies the entanglement of urban activism and educational tourism, considering its constraints and potential for political agency, as manifested in guided walking tours of south Tel Aviv. Through an analysis of the historical and geographical context of south Tel Aviv, the article emphasises the necessity of a spatial analysis for unpacking the politics of racial fear and the reception of asylum seekers. In parallel, the article emphasises the connections between seemingly distinct conflicts, cultures, and geographies, which need to be better understood in urban studies. It further stresses the need for innovative methodologies to unpack strategies of political participation, belonging, and agency in cities shaped by the exchange and flow between multiple geographies and by the looming presence of the past.

Deaths of Despair and Population Aging in Missouri

ABSTRACT Recent declines in life expectancy in the US, especially for middle-aged White persons, have called attention to mortality from deaths of despair – deaths due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau, this paper examined deaths of despair by race/ethnicity, age, cause of death, birth cohort, and sex in Missouri. We focused on Area Agencies on Aging as geographic units of interest to increase usefulness of our findings to public administrators. Deaths of despair began trending up for all age groups beginning in 2007–2009, with the sharpest increases occurring for Black or African American non-Hispanics beginning in 2013–2015. The most dramatic increases occurred for the population age 50–59 in St. Louis City and Area Agency on Aging regions in southern Missouri. For older adults, considerable variation in rates, trends, and cause of deaths of despair is evident across the state.

School-centered community development: Lessons from Baltimore’s 21st century school buildings program

ABSTRACT This article uses the case of Baltimore’s 21st Century School Buildings Program (21CSBP) to investigate the potential of leveraging a school facilities investment for community development. We find that school facilities investments have the potential to catalyze community development along four domains: social, institutional, economic, and physical. However, existing market conditions and community trust and social cohesion can facilitate or constrain whether and how schools catalyze community development. Leveraging school building investments for community development hinges on a clear vision and staff capacity for implementation. Finally, definitional, geographic, and jurisdictional divides between school districts and city agencies can complicate the potential for cross-sector connections at the neighborhood level. Our findings underscore the possibilities of school facilities investments and community schools for supporting community development and affirm the deep-seeded challenges that stakeholders face to work as collective stewards of a shared social agenda for school and neighborhood change.

Application of an Ordinal Probit Regression Model in predicting emergency response rates in the Fire Department of New York City.

This article introduces the use of an Ordinal Probit Regression Model to predict emergency response rates in the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) when data are of the count-type variety and ordinal. The main objective of this article is to model the effects of boroughs, emergency incident types, and the volume of emergency incidents (counts) on response rates for the years 2010-2016. The model framework discusses the model selection criteria when the proportional odds assumptions for ordinal models are no longer valid, and a model in which scale effects are allowed to vary among emergency incident types is preferred. This statistical insight can be used by elected officials and city agencies to evaluate FDNY's emergency response availability, capability, and operational performance in order to improve emergency services in the five boroughs.

Construct and predictive validity of the AAPI-2 in a low-income, urban, African American sample

BackgroundThe Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory – 2 (AAPI–2) is a widely used assessment of parenting attitudes associated with child maltreatment for research, clinical services, and program evaluation. The overrepresentation of African Americans in child welfare systems paired with a substantial body of research describing the contextual, cultural, and ethnic differences in African American parenting underscore the need to assess the validity of assessment tools in specific populations. ObjectiveThis study specifically addresses the construct and predictive validity of the AAPI –2 form A (pre-test) within an urban, low-income African American sample.Participants and Setting: The AAPI –2 was collected as an evaluation tool for a free parenting class administered by a non-profit child abuse prevention agency in a large mid-Atlantic city and de-identified for this study. Participants identified as Black (n = 218) and resided within city limits. The majority were female (72 %) and unemployed (52 %), where 22 % were married or partnered. MethodsConstruct validity of the measures was assessed via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) of the developers 5– factor model and, due to the complexity of the model (40 items and 5 subscales), fit indices of each individual subscale were also assessed. To assess predictive validity for child maltreatment, participant scores were matched to CPS records. ResultsThe developers 5– factor model was less than optimal fit for the data. When assessed individually, the E– Power and Independence subscale revealed a poor fit, where D– Role Reversal was a good fit, with remaining 3 subscales a fair fit. There were no associations between AAPI–2 scores and CPS records. ConclusionsThe uneven fit of the 5 subscales of the AAPI–2 with this sample suggests varying success in measuring the underlying constructs. Further, the lack of predictive validity in this sample recommends a nuanced interpretation when used as a risk assessment tool. The specific applications of the subscale constructs are discussed.

School-Centered Community Development and a Quest for Spatial Justice: Exploring Competing Theories of Action in Baltimore

The role of public education and schools in the struggle for spatial justice is underappreciated because school and neighborhood improvement have largely been viewed as distinct processes. This article builds a conceptual and empirical argument to explore the intersections of spatial and educational justice specifically in community development practice. We draw on qualitative data collected from a study of Baltimore’s twenty-first Century School Buildings Program and center meso-level actors – city agencies and the school district – to analyze how divergent theories of action that undergird community development can challenge cross-section implementation and coordination. We also reflect on potential pathways to align and integrate schools into community development practice. Our analysis contributes to understanding across disciplines by incorporating schools in the constellation of actors in community development practice, and in doing so augments foundational theories of urban justice and community development.

A Radiological Emergency Health and Safety Plan for City Agencies Without First Response Responsibilities.

In New York City, the citywide radiological response plan charges 4 primary agencies with various roles and objectives: police, fire, health, and environmental protection. These agencies perform essential functions such as criminal investigation, life safety, public health, and environmental assessments. In the late phase of an incident where components of remediation and recovery have been initiated, other municipal agencies that had not previously planned to respond to a radiological incident may be expected to supply various levels of support. To prepare the personnel of these other agencies to respond to a radiological incident expeditiously, a Radiological Health and Safety Plan (RHASP), was developed as an appendix to an existing Citywide Health and Safety Plan. RHASP is designed for an agency-wide health physics program that provides 4 key components of radiation safety: (1) training to understand the hazard, (2) framework for a personnel radiation dose measurement program (dosimetry), (3) environmental surveillance of the site for worker and public protection, and (4) radioactive waste control. These components of RHASP are supported by 2 functions inherent in successful radiation safety programs: documentation and quality assurance of the collected radiation safety data. In this article, we discuss the components of RHASP and the potential challenges to its successful implementation.

Innovations in Fatality Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Innovations in Fatality Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

John Darwin: Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830–1930 and Christina Reimann and Martin Öhman: Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World: Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940

Article John Darwin. Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830–1930; and Christina Reimann and Martin Öhman (Eds.). Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World: Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940 was published on April 13, 2022 in the journal New Global Studies (volume 0, issue 0).

Responses to Lake Michigan water level rise: Trends in exposed sand cover at North Avenue Beach, Chicago

From 2013 to 2020, water levels in Lake Michigan rose from an all-time low to the highest levels observed in nearly four decades, causing shoreline changes throughout the Great Lakes. These changes are particularly noticeable at North Avenue Beach in Chicago, an artificial beach where federal, state, and city agencies have mitigated rising waters by importing sand and constructing groins. Using spring season aerial imagery from 2012 to 2020, we calculated beach area for each year and compared sand cover loss between years to water level change per the USGS station located just south of the study area. Analysis reveals year-to-year loss in sand cover since 2013, with the largest single-year change occurring between 2018 and 2019. An inverse relationship with a slight lag exists between water level and these beach area changes. We calculated sand-groin distances from 2000 to 2020 to identify north–south effects. Of the six beach cells separated by groins, the northernmost two cells failed over the study period, and experienced the largest individual sand-groin distance losses. We modeled inundation to investigate whether the sand loss was explainable by lake level change alone, with particular attention given to hardened shoreline implemented north of the beach in 2015. Observed sand cover loss markedly exceeded predictions from the inundation modeling. In addition to water level changes, a local response to shoreline modification and obstruction of sediment transport at this site may influence sand cover.

CitySurfaces: City-scale semantic segmentation of sidewalk materials

While designing sustainable and resilient urban built environment is increasingly promoted around the world, significant data gaps have made research on pressing sustainability issues challenging to carry out. Pavements are known to have strong economic and environmental impacts; however, most cities lack a spatial catalog of their surfaces due to the cost-prohibitive and time-consuming nature of data collection. Recent advancements in computer vision, together with the availability of street-level images, provide new opportunities for cities to extract large-scale built environment data with lower implementation costs and higher accuracy. In this paper, we propose CitySurfaces, an active learning-based framework that leverages computer vision techniques for classifying sidewalk materials using widely available street-level images. We trained the framework on images from New York City and Boston and the evaluation results show a 90.5% mIoU score. Furthermore, we evaluated the framework using images from six different cities, demonstrating that it can be applied to regions with distinct urban fabrics, even outside the domain of the training data. CitySurfaces can provide researchers and city agencies with a low-cost, accurate, and extensible method to collect sidewalk material data which plays a critical role in addressing major sustainability issues, including climate change and surface water management.

Opportunities to Increase Wellness for Persons Experiencing Homelessness: Understanding How Agencies in the Twin Cities Address Homelessness and Health

This study examined agency strengths and areas of opportunity to further develop services that improve the wellbeing of people experiencing homelessness. Specific aims of this study were to understand health-related services offered to persons experiencing homelessness, particularly to better understand what’s happening, what’s working well, and areas for improvement. Eight individuals representing eight different agencies were interviewed. Using the qualitative analysis technique of axial coding, researchers identified a total of eight common themes. These themes included systems and their complexities, the benefits and limitations of funding, nutrition education gaps and needs, services that promote client health, the significance of safety to clients and how agencies promote safety for clients, barriers to housing, and the impact of COVID-19 on agencies. The identified themes highlight agency strengths and areas of opportunity to further develop services to promote client wellbeing. The identified strengths could inform current practice and opportunities for further development could inform program development and funding initiatives. Future research is needed to examine client health outcomes after utilizing agency services, how agencies can provide culturally tailored services particularly around food, and the efficacy of the hotel model implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global City Agency and Multilevel Governance in China

Abstract Over the past few decades, cities have become increasingly active in global climate governance. Although most research on city agency has focused on democratic (often Western) cities, the climate-related activities of Chinese cities in global city networks have also expanded, raising the question of whether cities from nondemocratic political systems can be international actors or whether they are merely extensions of their national governments. This article examines how the Chinese Party-state’s institutions and governing instruments shape cities’ global agency and how these structures impact the work of various city networks operating in China. To this end, it analyzes policy reports, documents, and original interview data collected from city network representatives. The findings demonstrate that city networks in China walk a fine line between their door-opening function for cities to global climate governance and their role as transmitters of the central government’s gatekeeping function, thereby sustaining the hierarchical control structures of the Chinese Party-state.

Urban climate-health governance: Charting the role of public health in large global city adaptation plans

Over the last decade many large world cities have scaled up efforts at climate adaptation, a primary focus of which is protecting population health. With extreme weather disasters increasing worldwide, public health agencies are among local institutions under greatest stress; the Covid-19 pandemic has only heightened pressure on these agencies. Yet the limited literature examining adaptation actions across world cities suggest few, mainly high-income cities report health-related adaptation, while city public health agency engagement in adaptation has received little research attention. In this comparative review, we aimed to characterize the public health role in the adaptation plans of 22 large cities pre-identified as highly health-adaptive, by examining five health-associated adaptation activities chosen as “promising practice” based on evidence synthesized from evaluation research and practical experience: (i) hazard and vulnerability mapping; (ii) extreme weather preparedness and response; (iii) extreme heat plans (including heat early warning); (iv) non-heat early warning (e.g., flooding, vector-borne disease); and (v) climate-health monitoring and outcome surveillance. We found most (90%) city adaptation plans reported actions in at least three of these five activity areas. However, only 73% of these health-focused plans reported involvement of a public health agency (though the share was higher for cities in low- and middle-income countries). We detected differences across the five activities, including an ascending pattern of public health engagement starting with heat plans and including activities such as preparedness and mapping as health agency involvement increased. We also identified substantial presence of other city agencies–notably urban planning, emergency management and public utilities–in implementing these health-associated activities. With every world region likely to experience more widespread and intensifying climate impacts, and growing pressure on local public health agencies in conjunction with the Covid-19 pandemic, we identify opportunities for enhancing public health engagement in climate adaptation in large cities with a view to scaling up their ability to contribute to climate adaptation goals.

Advertising Professions and Territorial Attractiveness: Analysis of the Determinants of the Decisions of Agencies Location in Cameroonians Cities

This work seeks to analyze the determinants of the establishment of advertising consulting agencies in Cameroonian cities to the detriment of others. The goal is to understand why certain Cameroonian cities attract advertising consulting agencies. The methodological approach consisted, in the identification of the headquarters of these companies, in consulting the regulatory texts approving the advertising professions, the websites and Facebook pages of various agencies recognized by the National Council for Advertising and advertising posters of companies founded abroad. We had to carry out an observation in order to identify the cities-headquarters of the agencies approved in Cameroon by the National Council of Advertising in 2021. The analysis consisted in grouping together these agencies by headquarters city. As for the axis of interpretation, it led to find the elements of attractiveness that include the cities of Douala and Yaounde identified as major basins of location of these agencies. Theoretically, the research is based on the sociology of professions and the theory of the attractiveness of territories, in particular the approach of the New Geographical Economy of Paul Krugman. The results show that there is a total of 56 advertising consulting agencies, therefore 43 for the city of Douala alone, that is, 76.78% and 07 in Yaounde, that is, 12.5%. This concentration of advertising consulting agencies in these two cities is due to multiple reasons. Most of the agencies founded by the nationals settle massively in Douala and Yaoundé in order to win customer. In fact, the main advertisers have their headquarters in these cities, as much for the multinational agencies, the establishment; mainly in Douala is guided by the presence in this town of customers/companies acquired by the parent companies internationally in order to support them in their communication campaigns.

Analisi Faktor-faktor yang Mempengaruhi Kinerja Keuangan Usaha Mikro Kecil dan Menengah (UMKM) di Kota Medan


 
 
 
 Micro, small and medium enterprises have a major contribution to the national and regional economy, thus sustainable empowerment are constantly needed. This study aims to determine the effect of capital (X1), business age (X2), and credit loan (X3) on the performance of micro, small and medium enterprises (Y) in Medan City. 50 business managers were selected as the research sample based on the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using questionnaire, and were analyzed by using Multiple linear regression analysis processed in the SPSS program. The results demonstrated that capital and credit loan had a significant effect on business performance (p < 0.05). On the other hand, business age had no significant effect on business performance (p > 0.05). These findings indicate that regardless of how long a business has been established, the main determinants of its performance are capital adequacy and the access to credit services. These two significant factors should be the priority in the program of small business empowerments by the government of Medan City or related agencies.
 
 
 

A Century of Family Budget Counseling

This article will review family social work’s concern with budget counseling, an aspect of financial capability, during the century following World War I, based on articles appearing in the major family social work journal, Families in Society; publications of its sponsoring organization; standard budgets published with the participation of family social work agencies in many cities; handbooks and textbooks intended for social workers; and other sources.