Current Neighborhood Research Articles

Stuck in Unhealthy Places: How Entering, Exiting, and Remaining in Poor and Nonpoor Neighborhoods Is Associated with Obesity during the Transition to Adulthood.

Adolescents from poor versus nonpoor neighborhoods are more likely to become obese during the transition to adulthood. It is unclear whether this pertains to all adolescents from poor neighborhoods or only those who remain in disadvantaged settings. Further, it is unknown how neighborhood poverty entries and exits are associated with obesity. Using census and interview data from 12,164 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health participants, I find that those who consistently live in poor neighborhoods are more likely to become or remain obese by adulthood than those who never live in poor neighborhoods. Exiting severe neighborhood poverty curtails this risk, while entering and remaining in neighborhood poverty in adulthood increases it. These patterns are more pronounced for young women and robust to adjustments for health behaviors and selection bias. Findings support accumulation of risks and social mobility perspectives and highlight how previous and current neighborhood contexts are relevant for health.

A filter-and-fan approach with adaptive neighborhood switching for resource-constrained project scheduling

This paper presents an effective heuristic algorithm based on the framework of the filter-and-fan (F&F) procedure for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). The proposed solution methodology, called the filter-and-fan approach with adaptive neighborhood switching (FFANS), operates on four different neighborhood structures and incorporates improved local search, F&F search with multiple neighborhoods and an adaptive neighborhood switching procedure. The improved local search, in which a new insert-based move strategy and new time compression measurement of schedules having the same makespan are embedded, is utilized to identify a local optimum and a basic move list. The F&F search, aimed to further improve the local optimum, applies multi-neighborhood filter and fan strategies to generate compound moves and a neighborhood-switch list in a tree search fashion. When the current neighborhood cannot further improve the local optimum, the adaptive neighborhood switching procedure picks the most potential neighborhood for the next run of the local search procedure. The entire solution procedure is autonomous and adaptive due to its variable search range depending on the project sizes and characteristics. Computational results and comparisons with some state-of-the-art algorithms indicate the effectiveness and competence of the proposed FFANS.

Walkability, Land Use and Physical Activity

Physical activity (PA) promotes healthy life and contributes to sustainable development. In this paper, we rely on the Utah Household Travel Survey data and analyze the determinants of PA in terms of neighborhood land use, accessibility to transportation, and socio-demographic status in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States using four-component walkability indices at various geographic scales. We find that PA is associated with neighborhood land use and social demographic status, including the compact design of the neighborhood. The results also indicate that land use mix is insignificant, and that current neighborhood design only supports people’s 20-min walk. The spatial lag model reveals significant spatial autocorrelation of PA but the barely improved R2 validates the dominant effect of neighborhood land use and social demographic status on people’s walking behavior.

Environmental Correlates of Recreational Walking in the Neighborhood.

To assess environmental correlates of neighborhood recreational walking. The study used a cross-sectional survey. The study was conducted in the local community. Participants were adults who recently relocated and walk for recreation in their current neighborhood. The outcome measure was participant-reported neighborhood recreational walking in participants' prior neighborhood. Exposure measures were (1) participant-reported social and environmental characteristics of the prior neighborhood and (2) geographic information system-derived environmental characteristics assessed within a buffer around participant's prior address. Participants reporting current neighborhood recreational walking (n = 231) were characterized by whether they walked for recreation in their prior neighborhood. Associations between neighborhood characteristics and neighborhood recreational walking were assessed using logistic regression. Neighborhood recreational walking was associated with perceptions of the presence of recreational facilities (odds ratio [OR] = 2.49, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.29-4.84), interesting things to see (OR = 2.82, 95% CI = 1.46-5.45), and others being active (OR = 3.56, 95% CI = 1.80-7.05), and was inversely associated with concerns about crime (OR = .40, 95% CI = .20-.77) and traffic (OR = .43, 95% CI = .22-.87). This behavior was associated with objectively measured presence of walking trails (OR = 3.58, 95% CI = 1.07-4.46), percentage of street length with speed limits ≤25 mph (OR = 1.31 for 10% increase, 95% CI = 1.08-1.61), and percentage of tree canopy coverage (OR = 1.55 for 10% increase, 95% CI = 1.12-2.14). Recreational walking may be influenced by environmental factors that support a safe, enjoyable, and social experience, attributes that are not necessarily prioritized in transportation walking. Outcome and exposure specificity are important when studying recreational walking.

A Life Course Approach to Understanding Neighbourhood Effects

Many theories on so-called neighbourhood effects – effects of the residential context on individual outcomes such as employment, education, and health – implicitly, or explicitly suggest lagged effects, duration effects, or for example, intergenerational effects of neighbourhoods. However, these temporal dimensions of neighbourhood effects receive only limited attention in the empirical literature, largely because of a lack of suitable data. The increasing availability of geo-coded, longitudinal, individual-level data now leads to more research which takes these temporal dimensions and time effects into account. This paper argues that it is time for an overarching framework to better understand the temporal dimension of neighbourhood effects. We propose a conceptual model that uses the life course approach as a framework to integrate the various elements of time in current neighbourhood effects theories. The life course approach emboldens the study of full individual life course biographies over time, taking into consideration multiple parallel life careers (such as education, household, housing, work, and leisure) and their relative importance to individual outcomes. A large advantage of the life course approach to neighbourhood effects is that it does not only allow us to incorporate residential neighbourhoods into individual biographies, but also allows us to study the effects of (and interactions with) other social and spatial contexts on individual outcomes.

WeNA: Deterministic Run-time Task Mapping for Performance Improvement in Many-core Embedded Systems

Many-core embedded systems will feature an extremely dynamic workload distribution where massive applications arranged as an unpredictable sequence enter and leave the system at run-time. Efficient mapping strategy is required to allocate system resources to the incoming application. Noncontiguous mapping improves system throughput by utilizing disjoint nodes, however, the increasing communication distance and external congestion lead to high power consumption and network delay. This paper thus presents an enhanced noncontiguous dynamic mapping algorithm, aiming at decreasing interprocessor communication overhead and improving both network and application performance. Communication volumes are utilized to arrange the mapping order of tasks belong to the same application. Moreover, expanding parameter of each task is developed which directs the optimized mapping decision comparing to the current neighborhood and occupancy information. Experimental results show that our modified mapping algorithm Weighted-based Neighborhood Allocation (WeNA) makes considerable improvements on Average Weighted Manhattan Distance (8.06%) and network latency (9.8%) in comparison with the state-of-the-art algorithm.

Longitudinal associations of neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics and alcohol availability on drinking: Results from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)

Neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics and alcohol availability may affect alcohol consumption, but adequate longitudinal research to support these hypotheses does not exist. We used data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) (N = 6163) to examine associations of changes in neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and alcohol outlet density, with current, weekly, and heavy daily alcohol consumption in hybrid effects models. We also examined whether these associations were moderated by gender, race/ethnicity, and income. Increases in neighborhood SES were associated with decreases in the probability of current alcohol use after adjustment for age, gender, race/ethnicity, individual SES, marital status and time since baseline [probability ratio (PR) per SD increase in neighborhood SES = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.96.0.99)]. Increases in liquor store densities were associated with increases in weekly alcohol consumption [ratio of weekly drinks per SD increase in outlet density = 1.07, 95% CI (1.01.1.05) for men, PR = 1.11, 95% CI (1.01.1.21) for women]. Relationships between current alcohol use and neighborhood SES and between weekly beer consumption and neighborhood SES were generally stronger among those with higher incomes. Neighborhood socioeconomic context and the availability of alcohol may be important for understanding patterns of alcohol use over time, and for targeting interventions and policies to reduce harmful alcohol use.

Neighborhood Racial Composition, Institutional Socialization, and Intraracial Feelings of Closeness among Black Americans

Relying on nationally representative data from the most recent wave of the National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA), the current study examines how past and present neighborhood racial composition is associated with feelings of closeness toward black Americans, black Africans, and black West Indians. In addition, this research tests whether race-based socialization messages received from caregivers or religious socialization messages explain this relationship among a sample from the adult black US population. The findings show that past neighborhood composition is associated with present feelings of closeness toward black Americans and black West Indians but are not associated with close feelings toward black Africans. Current neighborhood racial composition is not associated with feelings of closeness toward any of the groups. Racial socialization messages are associated with closeness towards them all but are found to be largely a function of having a two-parent family during childhood. Religious socialization is also associated with intraracial feelings of closeness. Results suggest that neighborhood racial composition is important to help facilitate positive feelings toward others who share the same race but a different ethnicity.

Racial Composition Over the Life Course: Examining Separate and Unequal Environments and the Risk for Heart Disease for African American Men.

Studies have demonstrated the effects of segregated social and physical environments on the development of chronic diseases for African Americans. Studies have not delineated the effects of segregated environments specifically on the health of African American men over their lifetime. This study examines the relationship between life course measures of racial composition of social environments and diagnosis of hypertension among African American men. We analyzed cross-sectional data from a convenience sample of African American men seeking health care services in an outpatient primary care clinic serving a medically underserved patient population (N=118). Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between racial composition of multiple environments across the life course (eg, junior high school, high school, neighborhood growing up, current neighborhood, place of employment, place of worship) and hypertension diagnosis. The majority (86%) of participants were not currently in the workforce (retired, unemployed, or disabled) and more than half (54%) reported an annual household income of <$9,999; median age was 53. Results suggest that African American men who grew up in mostly Black neighborhoods (OR=4.3; P=.008), and worked in mostly Black environments (OR=3.1; P=.041) were more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension than those who did not. We found associations between mostly Black residential and workplace settings and hypertension diagnoses among African American men. Findings suggest exposure to segregated environments during childhood and later adulthood may impact hypertension risk among African American men over the life course.

Realizing Racial and Ethnic Neighborhood Preferences? Exploring the Mismatches Between What People Want, Where They Search, and Where They Live.

The housing search process is an overlooked mechanism in the scholarly research that seeks to understand the causes of persistent racial residential segregation in the United States. Past research has explored in detail the preferences people hold in terms of the racial and ethnic composition of their neighborhoods, and more recently some have also examined the correspondence between racial and ethnic neighborhood preferences and current neighborhood racial/ethnic composition. But an intermediate stage—the racial/ethnic composition of where people search—has not been investigated. We analyze a subsample (n = 382) from the 2004–2005 Chicago Area Study to demonstrate the value of systematically studying the matches—or mismatches—between preferences, search locations, and neighborhood outcomes. We find that for whites, not only their current neighborhoods but also the neighborhoods in which they search for housing have larger percentages of whites than they say they prefer. In contrast, blacks—and to a lesser extent Latinos—search in neighborhoods that correspond to their preferences, but reside in neighborhoods with a larger percentage own group. Logistic regression analyses reveal that mismatches are associated with both a lack of information and inadequate finances, but also may be due to socially desirable responding for whites in particular. Our results provide suggestive evidence of the importance of unpacking the search process more generally and draw attention to what are likely to be productive new future data collection efforts as well as an area potentially ripe for policy interventions.

Sustained cooperation by running away from bad behavior

For cooperation to evolve, some mechanism must limit the rate at which cooperators are exposed to defectors. Only then can the advantages of mutual cooperation outweigh the costs of being exploited. Although researchers widely agree on this, they disagree intensely about which evolutionary mechanisms can explain the extraordinary cooperation exhibited by humans. Much of the controversy follows from disagreements about the informational regularity that allows cooperators to avoid defectors. Reliable information can allow cooperative individuals to avoid exploitation, but which mechanisms can sustain such a situation is a matter of considerable dispute. We conducted a behavioral experiment to see if cooperators could avoid defectors when provided with limited amounts of explicit information. We gave each participant the simple option to move away from her current neighborhood at any time. Participants were not identifiable as individuals, and they could not track each other's tendency to behave more or less cooperatively. More broadly, a participant had no information about the behavior she was likely to encounter if she moved, and so information about the risk of exploitation was extremely limited. Nonetheless, our results show that simply providing the option to move allowed cooperation to persist for a long period of time. Our results further show that movement, even though it involved considerable uncertainty, allowed would-be cooperators to assort positively and eliminate on average any individual payoff disadvantage associated with cooperation. This suggests that choosing to move, even under limited information, can completely reorganize the mix of selective forces relevant for the evolution of cooperation.

Diagnostic accuracy of self-reported racial composition of residential neighborhood

PurposeTo examine the diagnostic accuracy of self-reported measures of individuals' perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of their communities with objective data (i.e., census) as the criterion standard and assess differences in concordance in subjective and objective measures of segregation by race and ethnicity. MethodsWe examined data from 943 adult community health center visitors in Suffolk County, New York to assess differences between self-reported racial composition of current neighborhood and 2010 U.S. Census data. A cross-sectional convenience sample was obtained; questionnaires were used to compare participant responses about the racial composition of their current neighborhood and their town of residence. ResultsRespondents who self-identified as white were more likely to self-report racial composition of their neighborhood consistent with 2010 Census estimates. Relative to census estimates, 93.1% of blacks overestimated the proportion of their current neighborhood that was black, and 69.8% of Hispanics overestimated the proportion that was Hispanic. ConclusionsThere were statistically significant differences between the participants' self-reported neighborhood racial composition and census data across race and ethnicity groups. Future studies are needed to validate self-reported measures of individuals' perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of their communities to examine the association between individual segregation experience and health.

An Adaptive Histogram Equalization Based Local Technique for Contrast Preserving Image Enhancement

The main purpose of image enhancement is to improve certain characteristics of an image to improve its visual quality. This paper proposes a method for image contrast enhancement that can be applied to both medical and natural images. The proposed algorithm is designed to achieve contrast enhancement while also preserving the local image details. To achieve this, the proposed method combines local image contrast preserving dynamic range compression and contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE). Global gain parameters for contrast enhancement are inadequate for preserving local image details. Therefore, in the proposed method, in order to preserve local image details, local contrast enhancement at any pixel position is performed based on the corresponding local gain parameter, which is calculated according to the current pixel neighborhood edge density. Different image quality measures are used for evaluating the performance of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides more information about the image details, which can help facilitate further image analysis.

The roles of outlet density and norms in alcohol use disorder

BackgroundAlcohol outlet density and norms shape alcohol consumption. However, due to analytic challenges we do not know: (a) if alcohol outlet density and norms also shape alcohol use disorder, and (b) whether they act in combination to shape disorder. MethodsWe applied a new targeted minimum loss-based estimator for rare outcomes (rTMLE) to a general population sample from New York City (N=4000) to examine the separate and combined relations of neighborhood alcohol outlet density and norms around drunkenness with alcohol use disorder. Alcohol use disorder was assessed using the World Mental Health Comprehensive International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI) alcohol module. Confounders included demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, as well as history of drinking prior to residence in the current neighborhood. ResultsAlcohol use disorder prevalence was 1.78%. We found a marginal risk difference for alcohol outlet density of 0.88% (95% CI 0.00–1.77%), and for norms of 2.05% (95% CI 0.89–3.21%), adjusted for confounders. While each exposure had a substantial relation with alcohol use disorder, there was no evidence of additive interaction between the exposures. ConclusionsResults indicate that the neighborhood environment shapes alcohol use disorder. Despite the lack of additive interaction, each exposure had a substantial relation with alcohol use disorder and our findings suggest that alteration of outlet density and norms together would likely be more effective than either one alone. Important next steps include development and testing of multi-component intervention approaches aiming to modify alcohol outlet density and norms toward reducing alcohol use disorder.

The influences of past and present residential locations on vehicle ownership decisions

This study explores the relationship between historical exposure to the built environment and current vehicle ownership patterns. The influence of past exposure to the built environment on current vehicle ownership decisions may be causal, but there are alternative explanations. Households may primarily select to live in neighborhoods that facilitate their vehicle ownership preferences, or they may retain preferences that they have developed in the past, irrespective of their current situations. This study seeks to control for these alternative explanations by including the built environment attributes of households’ past residences as an influence on vehicle ownership choices. We use a dataset from a credit reporting firm that contains up to nine previous residential ZIP codes for households currently living in the 13-county Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan area. Results show that past location is significant, but of marginal influence relative to the attributes of the current location. From a practical perspective, our results suggest that models that include current but not past neighborhood attributes (also controlling for standard socioeconomic variables) can forecast vehicle ownership decisions reasonably well. However, models that include both current and past neighborhood attributes can provide a more nuanced understanding of the built environment’s potentially causal influences on vehicle ownership decisions. This better understanding may provide more realistic forecasts of responses to densification or other travel demand management strategies.

‘Wilding' in the West Village: Queer Space, Racism and Jane Jacobs Hagiography

AbstractIn urban studies, New York's West Village is famous for two principal reasons: as the paradigmatic ideal neighborhood in Jane Jacobs' influential The Death and Life of Great American Cities and as the site of one of the 1960s' great urban uprisings, the Stonewall riot in 1969. Today––largely because of the mixed‐use urban qualities celebrated by Jacobs––the West Village is one of New York's most desirable residential areas, yet it also remains an essential part of the city's queer geography. In this article, I analyze the persistent demonization of the area's queer youth of color by local neighborhood groups to argue that Jacobs' celebrated notion of natural surveillance (or what she called ‘eyes on the street') is fundamentally unsuited for a fluid queer space like the contemporary West Village. First, I historicize the current neighborhood tensions in the context of racialized media reporting of homophobic hate crime. Second, the discourses deployed in contemporary media of ‘wild' youth terrorizing the Village are examined. Finally, with reference to the forced closure of the African American bar Chi Chiz, I illustrate how the symbolic nightlife economy remains a key target in the city's regulation of queer space.

Particle-resolved dynamics during multilayer growth ofC60

Using large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations, we investigate the nonequilibrium surface growth of the fullerene ${\text{C}}_{60}$. Recently we have presented a self-consistent set of energy barriers that describes the nucleation and multilayer growth of ${\text{C}}_{60}$ for different temperatures and adsorption rates in quantitative agreement with experiments [Bommel et al., Nat. Commun. 5, 5388 (2014)]. We found that ${\text{C}}_{60}$ displays lateral diffusion resembling colloidal systems, however it has to overcome an atomlike energetic step-edge barrier for interlayer diffusion. Here we focus on the particle-resolved dynamics, and the interplay between surface morphology and particle dynamics during growth. Comparing ${\text{C}}_{60}$ growth with an atomlike system, we find significant differences in the evolution of the surface morphology, as well as the single-particle dynamics on the growing material landscape. By correlating the mean-squared displacement of particles with their current neighborhood, we can identify the influence of the different time scales that compete during growth and can pinpoint the differences between the two systems.

Spatial sorting of African Immigrants in the French Public Housing Market

This paper documents the existence of sorting patterns based on region of origin in the French public housing market (HLM). We provide evidence that first-generation African immigrants who benefit from the program tend to live in poorer neighborhoods than their French-born counterparts, once controlled for the broader geographical area of residence. This differential is comparable in magnitude to the one observed in the private rental market, even though the pricing of a public rental is almost uncorrelated with its location characteristics. Whereas we cannot rule out the possibility that this sorting partly reflects the specificity of African immigrants’ housing demand, we mitigate this concern by using information on the HLM offers that were previously rejected by the households and on the households’ declared level of satisfaction regarding their current neighborhood. Given that about half of African immigrants live in HLM (against one sixth of the non-immigrant population), this finding has possibly strong consequences on African immigrants’ segregation and welfare in France.

The unmet demand for walkability: Disparities between preferences and actual choices for residential environments in Toronto and Vancouver.

Individual preferences for residential location, neighbourhood character and travel options are not always met. The availability and cost of housing and several other factors often require compromise. The primary objectives of this study were to examine neighbourhood preferences, quantify unmet demand for more walkable environments and explore associations between the built environment, travel behaviour and health after controlling for neighbourhood preference. A web-based, visually oriented residential preference survey was conducted with 1,525 adults in the Greater Toronto Area and 1,223 adults in Metro Vancouver aged 25 and older (5.8% and 11.8% of total potential recruits, respectively). Participants were randomly selected from a pre-recruited panel across a range of objectively calculated walkability and income levels at the forward sortation area level. Depending on the neighbourhood design attribute, between 45% and 64% of residents in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver strongly preferred living in walkable settings, compared with between 6% and 15% who strongly preferred auto-oriented places. Of participants who perceived their current neighbourhood as very auto-oriented, between 11% and 20% of City of Toronto participants and 6% and 30% of City of Vancouver participants strongly preferred a very walkable neighbourhood. Residents of highly walkable neighbourhoods reported walking significantly more for utilitarian purposes, taking public transit more frequently and driving fewer kilometres. Strong preferences for walking and transit-supportive neighbourhoods exist in two of Canada's largest metropolitan regions, with considerable unmet demand observed for such environments. The findings provide evidence for policies that enable walkability and inform market analysis, planning and regulatory approaches that better align with the supply and demand of more walkable neighbourhood environments. Providing increased opportunities for active transportation can have positive impacts on health-enhancing behaviours.

Accurate multiple network alignment through context-sensitive random walk.

BackgroundComparative network analysis can provide an effective means of analyzing large-scale biological networks and gaining novel insights into their structure and organization. Global network alignment aims to predict the best overall mapping between a given set of biological networks, thereby identifying important similarities as well as differences among the networks. It has been shown that network alignment methods can be used to detect pathways or network modules that are conserved across different networks. Until now, a number of network alignment algorithms have been proposed based on different formulations and approaches, many of them focusing on pairwise alignment.ResultsIn this work, we propose a novel multiple network alignment algorithm based on a context-sensitive random walk model. The random walker employed in the proposed algorithm switches between two different modes, namely, an individual walk on a single network and a simultaneous walk on two networks. The switching decision is made in a context-sensitive manner by examining the current neighborhood, which is effective for quantitatively estimating the degree of correspondence between nodes that belong to different networks, in a manner that sensibly integrates node similarity and topological similarity. The resulting node correspondence scores are then used to predict the maximum expected accuracy (MEA) alignment of the given networks.ConclusionsPerformance evaluation based on synthetic networks as well as real protein-protein interaction networks shows that the proposed algorithm can construct more accurate multiple network alignments compared to other leading methods.