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I recently completed an Advanced Spatial Analysis course for my MS, Urban Informatics program in which I visualized racialized poverty and affluence in the city of Boston and explored the relationship between residential parcel-ownership and affordability. The project was ultimately realized in the form of a physical folio to display the series of maps and argument for policy to cap rent at 30% of 5-year ACS median household income for a given census tract.

Heat Map that indicates which areas have the highest density of ownership for parcels within racially/ethnically concentrated areas of poverty. Created with R, ArcGIS Pro, and Illustrator.

Physical folio created to compile and display the series of maps as a final deliverable. Designed with InDesign and created by hand.

Map showing the distribution of racialized poverty and racialized affluence within the city of Boston.

The project began as an attempt to recreate a similar study conducted by Taylor Shelton for the Louisville, Kentucky to see if similar patterns existed in Boston. His paper used critical GIS to challenge traditional characterizations of areas of concentrated poverty, and he sets up standards for the terms racially/ethnically concentrated areas of (relative) poverty, or RECAP/RECArPs, and racially/ethnically concentrated areas of (relative) affluence, or RECAA/RECArAs.

The argument made by this study is similar to that of Taylor Shelton, namely that poverty and affluence cannot be defined by areal units like RECAPs or RECAAs and are created instead through flows of capital. Concentrated poverty is not characterized by the isolation of residents, but rather by the extraction of resident’s limited resources by the affluent.

The image above shows my hands flipping through the folio made to compile and display the series of maps.

Map showing the relationship between my proposal to implement rent caps and RECAP/RECArPs in Boston. Created with R, ArcGIS Pro, and Illustrator.

Hot Spot Analysis indicating which parts of RECAP/RECArPs in Boston have statistically higher or lower than expected owner-occupancy. Created with ArcGIS Pro and Illustrator.

Map showing connections between residential parcels in RECAP/RECArPs and the listed address of their owners. Created with R, ArcGIS Pro, and Illustrator.

Pair of maps in development for an impact rate of return analysis of environmental justice. Created with R, ArcGIS Pro, and Excel.

Ten maps created to visualize the ten raw datasets collected to create the model.

Conversion from raw data / aerial units into square kilometers to allow for standardization in data reporting

I worked on a team with Professor Pedro M. Cruz from Northeastern University's Center for Design and faculty from MIT's Senseable City Lab and created visualizations for research into the relationship between access to urban amenities and usage of urban amenities in cities across the United States.

Maps that visualize an urban amenity access measure (left) and an urban amenity usage measure (right) created by MIT Senseable City Lab for each census block group on a 15 minute walkshed from the geometric center of each block group. I repeated this visualization for sixteen cities across the U.S, and the visualizations were made with ArcGIS Pro and Illustrator.

Preliminary visualization for my research assistantship that I designed and coded in Processing.

This series of graphs and maps were created to propose that the MBTA take a more active role in the development of equitable transit-oriented development around Greater Boston. The green line extension into Somerville and Medford has exacerbated displacement of lower income residents, and service increases along the Fairmount Line corridor are ripe to produce similar effects if the agency doesn’t encourage affordable housing growth along the corridor.

Left: Dot density map showing the distribution of households by annual income along the future site of the MBTA Green Line Extension in Somerville and Medford from 2013 to 2020. Right: Dot density map showing the distribution of households by annual income down the Fairmount Corridor in Boston from 2013 to 2020. Created by manipulating ACS data in R and visualizing with ArcGIS Pro, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

Map showing the potential of high ridership bus stops for transit-oriented development. Featured at the 2023 Transportation Research Board annual meeting in DC. Created with GTFS data from the MBTA, analyzing in R, geolocating and visualizing in ArcGIS Pro.

For my mapping strategies information design studio, I combined my memories of this part of Michigan with land use and other environmental raster datasets to create an imaginary map. I used Photoshop, ArcGIS Pro, Google Earth, and Illustrator to visualize these memories.

As the director for Scout Labs — the team specializing in service and spatial design within the student-run design collaborative at Northeastern — I’ve overseen research on how food insecurity manifests itself in Boston and on Northeastern’s campus. We put on a research pop-up at Scout’s annual conference to test the models we built for community engagement to ultimately present to our partners: the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the Mayor’s Office of Food Justice, and the Center for Design at Northeastern.

At the pop-up, we had five distinct stations / activities. Some were more drawing-heavy, another resembled a traditional survey, and others were more tactile. Through a variety of engagement methods, we were able to gather an impressive amount of data about food insecurity on campus as well as bring to light stories about how food fits into the lives of participants.

The image above was taken in the middle of our pop-up, and shows our team engaging with visitors.

Ultimately our team responded to prompts from the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics by creating opportunities for community members to share their stories and lived experiences. Designing a variety of models allowed visitors to choose the engagement tool with which they felt most comfortable.

Map created for visitors to engage with by indicating distance between their home and food access points to test if people travel further for culturally-relevant food.

Image of participants interacting with our activity Spill the Beans, in which users allocate stress, joy, and priority beans to indicate what role food plays in their lives.

For my undergraduate capstone in Architectural Studies, I took a deep dive into the community fridge network that was established in the city of Boston during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first booklet I created, Lessons from our Fridges, catalogues the nine community fridges in operation. The second booklet, Proposals for our Fridges, puts forward tips to integrate fridges more successfully into the community and culminates in a redesign of the Jamaica Plain community fridge.

Image showing the two booklets created as a part of the capstone project -- the right booklet is retrospective, and the left booklet is forward-looking.

Collage created of the area around the Roslindale community fridge while cataloguing fridges in Boston. Created with Photoshop.

Lessons from our Fridges folds out into a map that shows the food resource network across the city of Boston. Created with ArcGIS Pro and Illustrator.

It includes community fridges, non-profit food resources like food pantries, grocery stores, and convenience / liquor stores. During my research for the project, I found that food resource maps I could find online were outdated and incomplete, so I created the map by combing through Google Maps and the Greater Boston Food Bank database.

I categorized points as a grocery store if it carried any form of fresh produce and as a convenience or liquor stores if not. The map shows how the current community fridge network does not especially serve neighborhoods with higher food insecurity rates, nor do fridges tend to act as food resources for residents in areas that lack resources. What are community fridges designed to do if not to provide resources to areas that disproportionately need them?

Image showing the Proposals for our Fridges booklet as converted into a fold-out poster.

Spread showing the prototype for a more engaging community fridge. Created with AutoCAD, Rhino, and Illustrator.

Proposals for our Fridges answers the question I asked after cataloguing the community fridge network in the city of Boston: What are community fridges designed to do if not to provide resources to areas that disproportionately need them? The booklet is filled with ideas to make community fridges into keystones for gathering and engaging with community members.

Axonometric diagram showing a complete redesign of the community fridge in Jamaica Plain. Created with AutoCAD, Rhino, and Illustrator.

This map was created as an urban morphology investigation for a research paper exploring the relationship between the city of Lisbon and the site of the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition / Parque das Nações neighborhood. The site is separated at grade from the lower income neighborhoods of Olivais and Moscavide by rail and vehicular infrastructure. The Calatrava-designed Lisboa Oriente station in the neighborhood enables the site to exist as an island with access to the city center and the airport by the metro line built for the Expo.