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• The associations between availability of greenness and COVID-19 outcomes are examined. • Availability of greenness is associated with lower rates of COVID-19 infection. • Availability of greenness has limited effects for ameliorating COVID-19 related inequity. • The findings provide working hypotheses for effectively designing nature-based interventions. Human exposure to greenness is associated with COVID-19 prevalence and severity, but most relevant research has focused on the relationships between greenness and COVID-19 infection rates. In contrast, relatively little is known about the associations between greenness and COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, which are important for risk assessment, resource allocation, and intervention strategies. Moreover, it is unclear whether greenness could help reduce health inequities by offering more benefits to disadvantaged populations. Here, we estimated the associations between availability of greenness (expressed as population-density-weighted normalized difference vegetation index) and COVID-19 outcomes across the urban–rural continuum gradient in the United States using generalized additive models with a negative binomial distribution. We aggregated individual COVID-19 records at the county level, which includes 3,040 counties for COVID-19 case infection rates, 1,397 counties for case hospitalization rates, and 1,305 counties for case fatality rates. Our area-level ecological study suggests that although availability of greenness shows null relationships with COVID-19 case hospitalization and fatality rates, COVID-19 infection rate is statistically significant and negatively associated with more greenness availability. When performing stratified analyses by different sociodemographic groups, availability of greenness shows stronger negative associations for men than for women, and for adults than for the elderly. This indicates that greenness might have greater health benefits for the former than the latter, and thus has limited effects for ameliorating COVID-19 related inequity. The revealed greenness-COVID-19 links across different space, time and sociodemographic groups provide working hypotheses for the targeted design of nature-based interventions and greening policies to benefit human well-being and reduce health inequity. This has important implications for the post-pandemic recovery and future public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhoods are salient contexts for youth that shape adolescent development partly through informal social controls on their behavior. This research examines how immigrant concentration within and beyond the residential neighborhood influences adolescent alcohol use. Residential neighborhood immigrant concentration may lead to a cohesive, enclave-like community that protects against adolescent alcohol use. But heterogeneity in the immigrant concentrations characterizing the places residents visit as they engage in routine activities outside of the neighborhood where they live may weaken the social control benefits of the social ties and shared cultural orientations present in enclave communities. This study investigates whether the protective influence of residential neighborhood immigrant concentration on adolescent alcohol consumption diminishes when youth live in communities where residents collectively are exposed to areas with more diverse immigrant concentrations. This study tests this contention by analyzing survey and geographic routine activity space data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, and the 2000 census. The sample includes 793 adolescents (48.7 % female, 16.5 % foreign-born Latino, 42.5 % US-born Latino, 11.0 % black, 30 % white/other) between the ages of 12 and 17 who live in 65 neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Immigrant concentration among these neighborhoods derives primarily from Latin America. The results from multilevel models show that immigrant concentration protects against adolescent alcohol use only when there is low neighborhood-level diversity of exposures to immigrant concentration among the contexts residents visit outside of their residential neighborhood. This research highlights the importance of considering the effects of aggregate exposures to non-home contexts on adolescent wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we extend research on neighborhood social isolation by (1) examining residents of disadvantaged and advantaged communities and (2) considering the character of neighborhoods where people conduct routine activities away from home. We contend that social isolation is experienced by residents of both highly disadvantaged and highly advantaged neighborhoods because the two groups spend time in largely nonoverlapping parts of the city. Individual and neighborhood race-ethnic dynamics exacerbate such social isolation. Data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey show that social isolation is experienced by residents of all areas of the city, whether highly disadvantaged or advantaged. African Americans, Latinos and residents of areas with many Latinos suffer additional penalties in the social isolation of disadvantage in where they conduct routine activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This article explores whether the use of LiDAR data in detecting transport network obstructions shortens the time required to reach disaster sites. It presents a method for doing this using LiDAR data collected in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) before and after Hurricane Katrina. It involves identifying all the LiDAR data points that lie within transport links (e.g., highways or streets) and performing blockage detection analysis with the Quick Terrain Modeler (QT Modeler) software. After performing this blockage detection, routing analysis was performed to determine the effect of these obstructions on the time needed to reach 30 randomly chosen locations in the study area from the centrally located City of New Orleans Fire Station. The results show that the use of LiDAR data in emergency response situations can significantly reduce the response times for first responders to reach disaster sites. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC on 11 September 2001, Muslims or Muslim-looking people in the USA have experienced a significant increase in hostility and hate violence. The anti-Muslim hate crimes have affected the lives of these people of color in significant ways. In this article I seek to recover part of the post-September 11 experiences of American Muslims that were obfuscated by the dominant anti-Muslim master narrative, which conflated the Islamic faith with terrorism and constructed all Muslims as dangerous anti-American outsiders. I explore a way of telling stories about these experiences using the expressive power of geospatial technologies. Using the experiences of a Muslim woman in Columbus (Ohio, USA) as an example, I describe how the technological spaces afforded by geographical information systems (GIS) may be used to illuminate the impact of the fear of anti-Muslim hate violence on the daily lives of Muslim women and to help articulate their emotional geographies in the post-September 11 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As the literature on trail development suggests, recreational trail projects can generate conflicts and controversies, particularly when built on abandoned rail corridors through developed areas. These conflicts are often understood as “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) reactions, suggesting a spatial proximity to conflict which increases as one draws closer to the proposed trail. This research seeks to understand local residents’ perceptions and reactions to recreational trail development in the City of Delaware (Ohio, USA). It addresses two spatially infused questions: Does the potential for conflict related to trail development increase as people live closer to a potential trail (the NIMBY factor)? Can important qualitative factors about favorable and unfavorable land uses including potential recreational trail sites be defined using a participatory methodology and then represented in GIS? The study used a mixed-method approach to collect and analyze qualitative data from a group of local residents. Each participant was interviewed and asked to sort 19 pictures related to trail development. After each of the sorts, participants were asked to explain why they ranked the pictures the way they did. Results of the picture sorts were then analyzed using Q method and mapped with GIS. The results show that spatial proximity matters in the context of trail development and potential NIMBY reactions to trails. Significant differences were found in the picture sorts that reveal the importance of proximity and location, although in a manner contrary to the assumptions in the writings on rails-to-trails. Through combining qualitative methods, Q analysis and PPGIS analysis, the research shows that qualitative place-based studies are capable of generating insights about the complexities of situated geographic change such as recreational trail development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space-time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data on residential energy consumption from large nation-wide surveys in 1990, 1997, 2005, and 2015 to assess the racial inequality in residential energy consumption. The results indicate that the overall inequality in energy consumption/cost varies little over the past 25 years while showing widespread energy poverty in the U.S. In terms of racial differences, African-American households are more vulnerable than white and Asian households, and about one-third of them lived in energy poverty by 2015. However, the share of households in energy poverty witnessed the greatest growth among white households during 1990–2015. In addition, the energy burdens of different racial groups vary greatly with respect to energy types, end-use demands, and regions, given the differences in climate and households' socio-economic characteristics. The study suggests that besides low-income African-American households, urgent attention should be given to the increasing number of white households in energy poverty. • There is widespread energy poverty in the U.S. over the past 25 years. • African-American households are more vulnerable than white and Asian households. • Energy poverty witnessed the greatest growth among white households during 1990–2015. • Racial energy burden varies greatly regarding energy types, end-use demands, and regions. • Urgent attention should be given to the increasing number of white households in energy poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we extend recent research on the spatial measurement of segregation and the spatial dynamics of urban crime by conceptualizing, measuring, and describing local segregation by race-ethnicity and economic status, and examining the linkages of these conditions with levels of neighborhood violent and property crime. The analyses are based on all 8895 census tracts within a sample of 86 large U.S. cities. We fit multilevel models of crime that incorporate measures of local segregation. The results reveal that, net of city-level and neighborhood characteristics, White-Black local segregation is associated with lower violent and property crime. In contrast, local segregation of low income from high income households is connected with higher crime, particularly neighborhood violence., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)