Modern cities are complex systems, evolving at a fast pace. Thus, many urban planning, political, and economic decisions require a deep and up-to-date understanding of the local context of urban neighborhoods. This study shows that the structure of openly available social media records, such as Twitter, offers a possibility for building a unique dynamic signature of urban neighborhood function,...

BACKGROUND Street-scale urban design policies are recommended to increase physical activity in communities. Our purpose was to examine U.S. public support for local street-scale urban design features and policies. METHODS Analysis is based on a cross-sectional national sample of adults (n = 4682) participating in the 2006 HealthStyles mail survey. RESULTS About 57% of adults rated local str...

Based on a gender equity perspective and within a pluralistic civil society, women should have equal rights for presence in and use of urban open spaces. Despite this, various factors decrease their presence including inappropriate design of space, as well as socio-cultural obstacles. Since women’s major place of presence and activity has traditionally been in or near home, neighborhood open s...

Currently, green rating systems are mainly utilized for correctly sizing mechanical and electrical systems, which have short lifetime expectancies. In these systems, passive solar and bio-climatic architecture, which have long lifetime expectancies, are neglected. Urban rating systems consider buildings and services in addition to neighborhoods and public transportation as integral parts of the...

In this paper I simulate neighborhood level political migration dynamics following a change in neighborhood racial composition using SimPolSeg, an original agent-based modeling software program. SimPolSeg simulates agent behavior according to the Migration-Polarization (MP) theory of partisan sorting (Anastasopoulos 2014a). Dynamic simulations using SimPolSeg demonstrate how non-white migration...

Although the neighborhood microsystem is recognized as an important domain for adolescent development, relative to the family and peer contexts, neighborhood factors have been understudied in relation to adolescent substance abuse. In addition, recent research suggests that risk factors for adolescent substance use may differ for African Americans when compared to Caucasian youth. This study in...