United States Cities Research Articles

Air Pollution, Social Disadvantage, and Walking in Six United States Cities: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Air Pollution, Social Disadvantage, and Walking in Six United States Cities: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Bicyclist Safety Behaviors in an Urban Northeastern, United States City: An Observational Study.

Bicycling is gaining popularity in the United States, and laws and safety recommendations are being established to keep bicyclists safer. To improve road safety for bicyclists, there is a need to characterize their compliance with road laws and safety behaviors. Adult bicyclists were observed at three high-traffic intersections in Boston, MA, with state recommendations of wearing a helmet and riding in a bike lane. State law compliance for displaying reflectors during the day and of a front light and a rear light/reflector at night, obeying traffic signals, and giving pedestrians the right of way was also observed. Variables were compared between personal and shared/rented bicyclists and analyzed by time of day. A total of 1,685 bicyclists were observed. Because of the speed of the bicyclists and obstructed views, only a sampling of 802 bicyclists was observed for reflectors/front light. Overall, 74% wore a helmet, 49% had reflectors/front lights, 95% rode in bike lanes, 87% obeyed traffic signals, and 99% gave the right of way to pedestrians. Compared with shared bicyclists (n = 122), personal bicyclists (n = 1563) had a higher helmet-wearing behaviors (77% vs. 39%, p = .0001). Shared bicyclists had a higher (p = .0001) compliance with reflectors/lights (100%) than personal bicyclists (39%, n = 265). Boston bicyclists ride in bike lanes, obey traffic signals, give pedestrians the right of way, and wear helmets while having suboptimal compliance with light/reflector use. Educational programs and stricter law enforcement aimed at these safety behaviors should be part of the effort to improve safety for all road users.

Grounding Police Accountability and Performance in Context: A Comparative Study of Stop and Frisk Between New York City and Taipei City

SummaryThe linkage between accountability and performance is not always positive. This study proposes that contextual factors affect the accountability–performance link. The central question we explore in this research is how citizens' trust and police culture influence the link between police accountability and performance. We conducted in‐depth interviews and compared the stop and frisk practices in both New York City in the United States and Taipei City in Taiwan, which are located in different contexts. The article concludes that both citizens' high level of trust and an open police culture improve the performance return of accountability pressure. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Climate Change and Water Resources: Some Adaptation Tools and Their Limits

Climate change will affect both the long-term availability and the short-term variability of water resources in many regions; these impacts may already be manifest in some places (Solomon et al. 2007). As economists interested in climate change, our research requires understanding not just the physical impacts of climate change on water resource systems, but also how these physical impacts on water resources influence human behavior. The combination of physical and behavioral responses will determine the ultimate economic impact of a changing global climate. Some behavioral responses are potentially adaptive. For example, many cities in the northeast United States are planning and constructing green and gray infrastructure in the aftermath of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy to mitigate the impacts of future strong storms, which are expected to occur with greater frequency. Climate-resilient neighborhoods and city initiatives have been funded by foundations, state agencies, federal agencies, and international institutions worldwide. But what do we really know, empirically, about the degree to which adaptation to a challenging new hydrological regime through infrastructure mitigates its impacts? The state of California has invested billions of dollars in pipelines and other infrastructure since 1960 to buffer the drier south against weather shocks, but during the current extreme drought, that system has delivered little water to southern California farms and cities. Projects like these may also encourage water-intensive agricultural and urban development— economists demonstrated this type of effect more than two decades ago in response to flood control and drainage projects in the Mississippi Delta (Stavins and Jaffe 1990). Thus, infrastructure-related solutions are potentially losing propositions when the distribution of extreme events shifts to the right, and infrastructure based on the old distribution draws additional people and assets into harm’s way. Such behavioral reactions to infrastructure investments must be accounted for when projects are planned. Even if individual regions and countries make optimal decisions about water infrastructure investments, taking expected future climate and behavioral impacts into account, infrastructure investments where countries share water resources are unlikely to be efficient. Recent research suggests that countries may not adequately consider the welfare of downstream riparians when they place dams on international rivers—the ability of countries to partially discount the costs of these large water projects by exporting some negative impacts downstream appears to encourage dam construction upstream of international borders (Olmstead and Sigman 2015). Even if dams reduce vulnerability to weather shocks locally, do they make things worse for residents of countries further downstream? The net welfare impacts of these potentially adaptive investments will depend on the answer to questions like this one. Water prices and markets are additional potential adaptation mechanisms. How well do these institutions currently deal with water scarcity? Unfortunately, marginal water prices in the municipal sector tend to be lower, on average, in the western United States than in humid regions (Bell and Griffin 2011)—when water is scarce, the sympathies of water managers may lean more toward maintaining affordability for existing uses (agricultural, industrial, and residential) than toward recovering the full opportunity cost of water supply, which might prompt locally (and politically) painful changes in existing water uses. If prices are to be used to manage future scarcity or increases in variability, we need a better understanding of how current barriers to inefficient pricing can be overcome. Water markets have emerged in some arid regions—the western United States, Australia, and Chile, for example. Activity in these markets has typically been limited, making it difficult for economists to draw any firm conclusions about how much they have really mitigated the economic impact of water scarcity. Preliminary evidence suggests that U.S. western water markets have moved water from lower-valued agriculture to higher-valued urban uses over the past 20 years, though trading volumes remain low (Brewer et al. 2008). Water rights trades by sector for 12 western states between 1990 and 2010 are described in Fig. 1. The highest volume of trading has occurred in Arizona, California, and Texas, with most demand coming from cities. Fig. 2 shows the variation in prices across trades. Prices tend to be highest for trades from agricultural to urban uses and lowest for trades within the agricultural sector.

Persistent Chaos of Measles Epidemics in the Prevaccination United States Caused by a Small Change in Seasonal Transmission Patterns.

Epidemics of infectious diseases often occur in predictable limit cycles. Theory suggests these cycles can be disrupted by high amplitude seasonal fluctuations in transmission rates, resulting in deterministic chaos. However, persistent deterministic chaos has never been observed, in part because sufficiently large oscillations in transmission rates are uncommon. Where they do occur, the resulting deep epidemic troughs break the chain of transmission, leading to epidemic extinction, even in large cities. Here we demonstrate a new path to locally persistent chaotic epidemics via subtle shifts in seasonal patterns of transmission, rather than through high-amplitude fluctuations in transmission rates. We base our analysis on a comparison of measles incidence in 80 major cities in the prevaccination era United States and United Kingdom. Unlike the regular limit cycles seen in the UK, measles cycles in US cities consistently exhibit spontaneous shifts in epidemic periodicity resulting in chaotic patterns. We show that these patterns were driven by small systematic differences between countries in the duration of the summer period of low transmission. This example demonstrates empirically that small perturbations in disease transmission patterns can fundamentally alter the regularity and spatiotemporal coherence of epidemics.

Assemblages of the Dead: Interpreting the Biocultural and Taphonomic Signature of Afro-Cuban Palo Practice in Florida

Anthropologists encounter what are commonly called “Santería skulls” in United States cities with large populations of Caribbean immigrants. These human skulls are frequently found within cauldrons, stained with wax, soil, or animal blood, and associated with mercury, beads, sticks, and faunal remains. To interpret these assemblages, anthropologists should consider them within the African diaspora cultural and religious contexts in which they were created and deposited. These contexts include not only the belief system of Ocha (Santería) but also the less well-known Palo. These Afro-Cuban religious formations can result in different material cultural signatures, and the patterns exhibited by the so-called Santería skulls are more consistent with Palo than Ocha. Informed by data from Florida forensic anthropology cases (n = 42), we synthesize a regional biocultural and taphonomic signature of related Palo practices. This study informs both anthropological investigations, and the cultural treatment of these extraordinary assemblages. There is, in reality, no such thing as a Santería skull, but it is only by incorporating diverse data that anthropologists can reach this conclusion.

The Flashiest Watersheds in the Contiguous United States

Abstract The authors identify the flashiest watersheds in the contiguous United States based on frequency of discharge peaks exceeding 1 m3 s−1 km−2. The entire digitized record of USGS instantaneous discharge data is used for all stream gauging stations with over 10 years of data. Using the 1 m3 s−1 km−2 threshold, the flashiest basins in the contiguous United States are located in urban areas along a swath of states from the south-central United States to the mid-Atlantic and in mountainous areas of the West Coast, especially the Pacific Northwest. The authors focus on small watersheds to identify the flashiest cities and states across the country and find Tulsa, Oklahoma; Baltimore, Maryland; and St. Louis, Missouri, to be the flashiest cities in the contiguous United States. Thunderstorms are major agents for peak-over-threshold flood events east of the Rocky Mountains, and tropical cyclones play a secondary role, especially in the Southeast. West Coast flood events are associated with winter storms. Flooding west of and within the Rockies is linked to steeply sloped terrain and compact watersheds. East of the Rockies, urban areas dominate flashy watersheds. The authors find that watersheds northeast (downwind) of city centers are flashier than other urban watersheds, consistent with the downwind maximum in rainfall found in many urban regions. They examine anomalous flood response in the Illinois–Missouri region; St. Louis is among the flashiest cities in the United States, while Chicago is among the least flashy. Their flashiness map is compared with other measures of flooding, including flood damage and National Weather Service flash flood reports.

Self-reports of prescription opioid abuse and diversion among recreational opioid users in a Canadian and a United States city.

To explore behaviors related to prescription opioid abuse and diversion in individuals who self-reported past recreational (nonmedical) opioid use. A questionnaire was developed and included in two abuse potential clinical studies conducted in Canada (Toronto, ON, August 2010 to January, 2011) and the United States (Salt Lake City, UT, February-May 2011). Recreational opioid users. Self-reported behaviors related to prescription opioid abuse and diversion. The questionnaire was completed by 174 participants in the Canadian study and 80 participants in the US study. Most participants reported that they used prescription opioids for nonmedical purposes a few times a month. Most had taken their first prescription opioid between the ages of 12 and 24 years and the two most common reasons were to treat pain or to feel high/stoned. When asked about specific opioids taken for nonmedical purposes in the past year, oxycodone, acetaminophen with codeine, and morphine were commonly used by both cohorts, whereas hydrocodone use was substantially greater in the US cohort versus the Canadian cohort. Participants reported various tampering methods and routes of administration, with swallowed whole, crushed and snorted, and chewed/crushed and swallowed as the most prevalent. Most participants indicated taking other drugs with prescription opioids to get high, most commonly marijuana and alcohol. The most common sources for obtaining prescription opioids were family/friends. Two cohorts of recreational opioid users from Canada and the United States reported similar experiences with various prescription opioids and indicated a predominance of diversion from family/friends.

Optimization of Maintenance Planning for Water Distribution Networks under Random Failures

AbstractCost-effective and preventive maintenance for water distribution networks (WDN) is essential for the sustainable and reliable use of water resources. In this work, mathematical models were developed and optimization procedures were used for optimal WDN maintenance planning under random failures. A conditional probabilistic measure known as conditional expected supply impact (CESI) was derived, which took into account both WDN infrastructure conditions and dynamic customer demands. To seek an optimal WDN maintenance plan, an integer programming problem was formulated to minimize the CESI measure with binary decision variables and budget constraints. The mathematical models and optimization approach were demonstrated using a regional WDN in a large United States city. Genetics algorithms (GA) were applied to solve the optimization problem and find the optimum maintenance plan for the WDN. The optimum plan averaged a reduction of CESI by 60%.

Invention in the United States City System

This article draws on several empirical regularities underlying central place theory (CPT) to enhance understanding of the uneven distribution of invention in the U.S. city system, especially the immense array of specializations that comprise national technological advance. CPT depicts city systems as collections of places in which functions expand in number as city size increases. Small cities have few functions and large cities many. A long-term hierarchical system is successively inclusive if large cities have all of the functions of smaller cities and some additional ones. The functions investigated here are 399 patent classes distributed across 366 U.S. metropolitan areas in the period from 2000 to 2011. Evidence is strong that patent classes with large numbers of awards are widely spread across the city system. This leads to the average sizes of places active in generating patents in the robust classes to be significantly smaller compared with the average sizes of areas that generate patents in unusual classes. Small cities are tied to national technological advance through the generation of patents in the most active and ubiquitous inventive specialties. Inventors in large cities are more likely to invent in unusual domains. Bigger areas are significantly more diversified compared with smaller ones. The system is not, however, strictly successively inclusive. Whereas 88.3 percent of all patent class–area pairs are generated in at least 50 percent of equally sized and bigger areas, only 20.5 percent of pairs are 100 percent strictly hierarchical.

The Hilliness of U.S. Cities

What is a hilly city, and which cities are hilliest? This study outlines a basket of methods for quantifying the differential hilliness of U.S. cities. We rank the 100 largest cities in the contiguous United States, using a selection of eight methods to evaluate their comparative hilliness. We then reflect on how four key “modes of encounter” with terrain shape human perceptions of urban hilliness: visual, pedestrian, automotive, and imagined/conceptual. Varying priorities among these different modes of encounter shape which of our indices may best correlate with lay understandings of urban hilliness or particular policy problems. We conclude with implications of this work for contemporary geographic scholarship and suggestions for further research, particularly with regard to the political and economic effects of hilliness.

Effects of Alcohol and Sexual Prejudice on Aggression Toward Sexual Minorities.

This study was the first to test the moderating effect of acute alcohol intoxication on the relation between heterosexual men's sexual prejudice and perpetration of aggression toward gay men and lesbians. Participants were 320 heterosexual men aged 21-30 recruited from a large southeastern United States city. Participants completed a measure of prejudice toward sexual minorities and were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental groups within a 2 (Beverage: Alcohol, No-Alcohol Control) × 2 (Opponent Gender: Male, Female) × 2 (Opponent Sexual Orientation: Homosexual, Heterosexual) design. Following beverage consumption, participants were provoked via reception of electric shocks from a fictitious opponent. Participants' physical aggression was measured using a shock-based aggression task. The association between sexual prejudice and aggression toward the gay male opponent was stronger among intoxicated, relative to sober, participants. This pattern of association was not observed among participants who competed against the heterosexual male, heterosexual female, or lesbian opponent. Findings provide the first experimental evidence that alcohol intoxication moderates sexually-prejudiced aggression toward gay men. These data offer a first step toward understanding how alcohol facilitates bias-motivated aggression. Such knowledge contributes to the empirical foundation needed to guide the development of interventions for alcohol-related aggression toward sexual minorities.

Measuring a neighborhood affluence-deprivation continuum in urban settings: Descriptive findings from four US cities

In the United States (US), the area-based measure of neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics used in health research varies considerably from one study to another. However, it is unclear whether different area-based measures capture the same or differen

Influence of climate on the environmental and economic life cycle assessments of window options in the United States

Life cycle assessments (LCA) of building materials often exclude the use phase due to variability in buildings and difficulties in isolating energy use for specific components of a building. For this study, a basic single-pane window was selected as a baseline to compare to two basic double-pane windows and four energy-efficient windows in a single-family home. Seventeen United States cities were investigated to represent 17 climate regions. Using energy simulations, along with life cycle inventory and economic data for windows, a cradle-to-grave LCA and life cycle cost (LCC) analysis were conducted. Environmental and economic impacts are normalized and weighted to identify the best overall performing windows. Environmentally, the low-solar gain windows always performed best due to the reduction in electricity needs, whereas economically they performed best in warmer climates but high-solar gain windows performed best in cooler climates. Thirteen of the seventeen cities had window options with a payback period less than five years when all retrofitting option were compared. When projecting the impacts of retrofitting a large number of homes, it was found that metro Atlanta could reduce CO2 emissions by about a half a million metric tons of CO2 annually with any of the energy efficient window choices.

Emergency department and inpatient health care utilization among patients who require interpreter services.

BackgroundLimited English proficiency is associated with health disparities and suboptimal health outcomes. Although Limited English proficiency is a barrier to effective health care, its association with inpatient health care utilization is unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the association between patients with limited English proficiency, and emergency department visits and hospital admissions.MethodsWe compared emergency department visits and hospitalizations in 2012 between patients requiring interpreter services and age-matched English-proficient patients (who did not require interpreters), in a retrospective cohort study of adult patients actively empanelled to a large primary health care network in a medium-sized United States city (n = 3,784).ResultsPatients who required interpreter services had significantly more Emergency Department visits (841 vs 620; P ≤ .001) and hospitalizations (408 vs 343; P ≤ .001) than patients who did not require interpreter services. On regression analysis the risk of a first Emergency Department visit was 60 % higher for patients requiring interpreter services than those who did not (unadjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.6; 95 % confidence interval (CI), 1.4-1.9; P < .05), while that of a first hospitalization was 50 % higher (unadjusted HR, 1.5; 95 % CI, 1.2-1.8; P < .05). These findings remained significant after adjusting for age, sex, medical complexity, residency and outpatient health care utilization.ConclusionsPatients who required interpreter services had higher rates of inpatient health care utilization compared with patients who did not require an interpreter. Further research is required to understand factors associated with this utilization and to develop sociolinguistically tailored interventions to facilitate appropriate health care provision for this population.

Pizza: Teaching US History through Food and Place

Pizza serves as a powerful example of historical themes such as immigration, cultural exchange and urbanization. In the post-WWII United States, Trenton, NJ, and other cities were gradually being transformed by suburbanization, the rise of fast food, and changes in family living related to women's entry in large numbers into the paid workforce. This case study of an Italian neighborhood in Trenton, Chambersburg, and its well-known pizza restaurants offers teachers a model for using the history of food and place to investigate their own communities.

Types and Beauties: Evaluating and Exoticizing Women on the Midway Plaisance at the 1893 Columbian Exposition

ON THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE OF THE 1893 Columbian Exposition, outside parameters of White City and just a short jaunt from iconic Ferris Wheel, stood a theater patronized by old men and wicked youths who watched, in a bleary-eyed ecstasy, Oriental athletes of stage as they danced, toyed with cigarette, and by their smiles gave a Persian Parisian charm to anomalous entertainment.1 Colorful descriptions of Midway Plaisance heavily populated souvenir books commemorating Chicago Worlds Fair. Filled with photographic portrait types, landscape scenes, and ebullient commentary, souvenir books simultaneously reproduced and shaped experience of fairgoer (See Figure 1). As a cultural text constructed by and for a white, masculine American subject, souvenir book reveals objectives and weaknesses of hegemonic projects in United States during nineteenth century. In particular, representations of female bodies on Midway Plaisance illuminate intersecting discourses of race and gender.As a combination and juxtaposition of White City and foreign villages of Midway Plaisance, Columbian Exposition functioned as an expression of national identity. Hegemonic forces in Chicago and United States at end of nineteenth century shaped imagining of nation, and Exposition served as a powerful tool for their project.2 Robert Rydell asserts that Worlds fairs propagated ideas and values of country's political, financial, corporate, and intellectual leaders and offered these ideas as proper interpretation of social and political reality.3Alan Trachtenberg identifies powerful perpetuators of national as established, propertied, and wealthy elite who aimed to subsume subaltern under banner of 'peace, prosperity, progress and patriotism.'4 Indeed, Chicago business interests and financial leaders who lobbied to bring fair to city elected Exposition's board of directors. In turn, fair's administration used White City to showcase a grand vision of American and human progress.5While operating as mechanisms of hegemony, expressions of national unity like Columbian Exposition nevertheless belie internal contradictions. Lauren Berlant cautions that a national still inherits tensions that exist in national space. Although political legitimacy depends upon the cultural expression of national fantasy, narratives of national identity mask inherent conflict.6Indeed, numerous domestic tensions plagued last decade of nineteenth century. Lingering cultural and economic differences between North and South frustrated post-Reconstruction politics. Rural America engaged in widespread political mobilization as Populist movement gained ground. Meanwhile, labor skirmishes erupted in United States cities; Chicago itself would serve as site of infamous Pullman strike year following Fair. The social climate was further exacerbated by racial anxieties surrounding influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. To top it off, a severe economic depression overcame United States very year of Columbian Exposition.7 Economic instability, racial anxiety, and political uncertainty contributed to a contentious national environment.Frank Ninkovich contends that domestic issues and United States' uncertain role in international arena combined to create significant identity crisis during 1890s. The resulting anxiety took form of hyper-aggressive nationalist public opinion known as jingoism.8 Trachtenberg similarly argues that late nineteenth century elites in business, politics, and culture were working to win hegemony over dissident but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks and women.9 The ruling class during final years of nineteenth century, therefore, fashioned dominant narratives of national identity as a way of dealing with nation's internal tensions. …

Deconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity: The Roles of Antifemininity, Subordination to Women, and Sexual Dominance in Men's Perpetration of Sexual Aggression.

The aim of this investigation was to examine a theoretically based mechanism by which men's adherence to antifeminine norms is associated with their perpetration of sexual aggression toward intimate partners. Participants were 208 heterosexual men between the ages of 21-35 who had consumed alcohol in the past year. They were recruited from a large southeastern United States city. Participants completed self-report measures of hegemonic masculinity (i.e., antifemininity, sexual dominance), masculine gender role stress, and sexual aggression toward an intimate partner during the past 12 months. Results indicated that adherence to the antifemininity norm and the tendency to experience stress when in subordinate positions to women were indirectly related to sexual aggression perpetration via adherence to the sexual dominance norm. Thus, the men who adhere strongly to these particular hegemonic masculine norms may feel compelled to be sexually aggressive and/or coercive toward an intimate partner in order to maintain their need for dominance within their intimate relationship. Implications for future research and sexual aggression prevention programming are discussed.

Food safety inspections results: A comparison of ethnic-operated restaurants to non-ethnic-operated restaurants

This study examined the proposition that cultural differences between ethnic-operated restaurants in high tourism areas of the United States (US) compared to non-ethnic operated restaurants explains the differences in food safety and sanitation inspection scores in five US cities considered popular tourism destinations. It was hypothesized that ethnic-operated restaurants, composed of people from different cultural norms than that of the indigenous US population, would result in significantly higher rates of critical regulatory violations than non-ethnic-operated restaurants. Food safety inspection data was obtained from five cities in the west, mid-west, east and two from the south for the years 2009 and 2010. Results confirmed the hypotheses that ethnic-operated restaurants have significantly higher rates of inspection and critical violations. Implications for regulators, trainers, ethnic restaurants and organizations seeking to manage diversity are discussed.

Optimization of multipollutant air quality management strategies: A case study for five cities in the United States

Developing regional air quality management strategies is a difficult task because formation of air pollutants is interdependent and air quality at different locations may have different responses to emissions from common sources. We developed an optimization-based model, OPtimal integrated Emission Reduction Alternatives (OPERA), which allows for identifications of least-cost control strategies for attaining multipollutant air quality targets at multiple locations simultaneously. To implement OPERA, first, sensitivities of air quality to precursor emission changes are quantified. Second, cost functions of emission reductions are estimated using a cost analysis tool that includes a pool of available control measures. The third step is to determine desired reductions in concentrations of air pollutants. The last step is to identify the optimal control strategies by minimizing costs of emission controls using the sensitivities of air pollutants to emission changes, cost functions, and constraints for feasible emission reduction ratios. A case study that investigates ozone and PM2.5 air quality in the summer of 2007 for five major cities in the eastern United States is presented in this paper. The results of the OPERA calculations show that reductions in regional NOx and VOC as well as local primary PM2.5 emissions were more cost-effective than SO2 controls for decreasing ozone and total PM2.5 concentrations in the summer of 2007. This was because reductions in SO2 emissions would only decrease PM2.5 concentrations, and reductions in primary PM2.5 emissions were more cost-effective than SO2 emission controls.Implications: We developed an optimization-based model, OPtimal integrated Emission Reduction Alternatives (OPERA), which allows for identification of least-cost emission control strategies for attaining multipollutant air quality targets at multiple locations simultaneously. A major strength of OPERA is its flexibility, which allows for changes in air quality regulations, involving agencies, study regions, and so on, to be readily incorporated. Overall, it has been demonstrated that OPERA is useful in developing least-cost emission control strategies for achieving multipollutant air quality targets at multiple locations simultaneously and could be useful for policymakers developing integrated air quality management plans.