Current Research
Healthy, Sustainable, and Equitable Cities
Climate change has been recognized as the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century. The direct and indirect mechanisms through which climate change affects human health will impact most populations in the next decades and thus put the lives and well-being of billions of people at increased risk, especially the health and well-being of socially and economically disadvantaged populations. The proposed study, led by Dr. Stav Shapira, Dr. Maya Negev, and Dr. Anat Rosenthal, examines inequalities in the impacts of climate-related risks on the health and welfare of vulnerable populations in the Negev as the relate to systemic structural barriers, the built environment, and the transport system, and identify ways to minimize these risks.
The project adopts a mixed-methods approach to examining climate-related health risks. Building on 10 focus groups and a quantitative survey, the study explores how different populations perceive climate-related health risks and their relations to the built environment, transport system, community, healthcare system, and local and national governments. The outcomes will allow developing a comprehensive understanding of the sources and manifestations of inequalities in climate-related health risks and the policies to mitigate such disparities.
Accessibility Sufficiency
Many studies on transport equity have analyzed disparities in access to destinations between different population groups. In this project, together with Dr. Karel Martens and Dr. Aviv Cohen-Zada, we challenge this disparity approach and propose an alternative: analyzing accessibility insufficiencies. We argue that disparity analyses fall short on two accounts, they hide ingroup variation and compare accessibility levels between groups without addressing whether these levels actually allow people to engage in daily activities. The proposed sufficiency approach avoids the former and addresses the latter by setting an explicit sufficiency threshold for accessibility.
Empirical analyses for 49 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas using geospatial and statistical methods confirm the problematic nature of disparity analyses. One of our studies shows that a systematic sufficiency analysis reveals large inequities in accessibility, regardless of the exact sufficiency threshold employed. In another study, we show that accessibility insufficiency among people relying on transit is strongly concentrated in the first 10–30 km ring around the metropolitan core. The third paper in the project shows that transit system performance is shaped most strongly by transit vehicle revenue miles, mixed land uses, and activity centering. Importantly, the size of these effects varies by the employed sufficiency threshold, suggesting that transportation and land use factors affect transit performance at different spatial scales.
The outcomes from this project underscore the need for researchers and planning practitioners to move away from seemingly neutral disparity analyses toward equity analyses of insufficiencies. Though this move implies inevitably normative, and thus politically difficult, decisions, such analyses enable professionals to systematically identify transport inequities as input for regional transport plans. They may also be used to prioritize already proposed interventions based on their contribution to a reduction in accessibility insufficiencies.
Related Publications
Martens, K., Singer, M. E., & Cohen-Zada, A. L. (2022). Equity in Accessibility: Moving From Disparity to Insufficiency Analyses. Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(4), 479-494.
Singer, M. E., Cohen-Zada, A. L., & Martens, K. (2022). Core versus periphery: Examining the spatial patterns of insufficient accessibility in US metropolitan areas. Journal of transport geography, 100, 103321.
Singer, M. E., Cohen-Zada, A. L., & Martens, K. (2023). Examining the performance of transit systems in large US metropolitan areas. Transportation, 1-23.
Cognitive Impairments and Travel
Transport agencies have been investing large sums toward implementing universal designs aimed at providing access to public transport for people with a wide range of abilities. These efforts can draw on a large body of literature addressing the travel needs and characteristics of the elderly and people with physical impairments. Much less is known on the travel characteristics of people with cognitive impairments, including mental, intellectual, and developmental impairments. As a result, the public transport systems that emerge fail to accommodate the needs of all individuals, regardless of their abilities.
This project addresses this gap and examines the travel behavior of individuals with cognitive impairments and their barriers to using public transport. Using online questionnaires. The project identifies the types of trips people with cognitive impairments make and the modes they use for these trips. The analysis asks what impairment-related and service-related factors influence public transport use among people with cognitive impairments. Building on the outcomes, the research aims to develop the concept of ‘cognitive mainstreaming’ as a way to identify, develop, and implement policy-relevant guidelines for priority-setting in transportation decision making that address the mobility needs of people with cognitive impairments.
Housing and Transportation Affordability
The high costs of housing and transportation are a major problem in the US and the world over. The more individuals pay on housing and travel, the less they have available for other necessary goods like food, education, and healthcare. Issues of affordability are especially acute among low-income and renter households, who struggle to find adequate housing or maintain employment due to transportation problems.
This project examines various aspects related to housing and transportation costs and affordability in major US metropolitan areas. The analyses combine data from a variety of publicly-available sources, including the US Census, the US Environmental Protection agency, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and more. The project examines costs and affordability as a factor of neighborhood built environment, regional housing supply, distances to transit service, levels of transit accessibility, among others.
Related publication
Singer, M. E. (2021). How affordable are accessible locations? Location affordability in U.S. urban areas with intra-urban rail service. Cities, 116: 103295.
Geographies of Disabilities
Since the late 1960s, welfare agencies have made it their policy to move from institutional housing to housing in the community. These deinstitutionalization efforts aim to improve the care that welfare dependent individuals receive and to help them better integrate in society. However, not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) attitudes often make it very difficult to site land uses intended to serve people who are treated by welfare agencies. While a large body of research focuses on opposition to siting human services facilities, the majority of cases do not face rejection.
This project adds to the literature by focusing on the support factors that allow siting human services facilities without opposition or that enable overcoming opposition if such arises. The first part of the project built on interviews with managers of group homes in Jerusalem and statistical analyses to examine why some facilities encounter opposition while others do not. A second leg of this research asks how land-use regulations in different countries support or hinder siting human services facilities.
Related publication
Singer, M.E., and Rosen, G., (2019). Rethinking responses towards group-homes: Inclusionary legislation, supportive municipal attitudes, and place-based opposition. Social and Cultural Geography, 20(3): 344-366.