Current Projects
Carolyn L. Cartier
- China's Spatial Administrative Hierarchy: State Power in Practice
- Culture on the Edge: The Emergence of Arts Districts in Hong Kong
Michael J. Dear
-
Cultural ecologies of the U.S. / Mexico Borderlands: involves a survey of the 2,000-mile border (on both sides) to assess the rise of a 'post-border' culture. Party funded by the National Geographic Society.
-
Comparative urbanism: to assess the extent to which the precepts of the 'Los Angeles School' of urbanism apply to other world cities. A project of USC's Southern California Studies Center.
-
El surgimiento de Bajalta California (The rise of Bajalta California): a book on the emergence of the world city-region that lies on either side of the border between California (U.S.A.) and Baja California (Mexico). Undertaken in conjunction with researchers at the Universidad Aut.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Roderick C. McKenzie
Laura Pulido
My current research centers on exploring the racial subjectivity of ethnic Mexicans and Latinos in the US both historically and in the contemporary period. I am going about this in two ways. First, I am interested in examining how the racial position and identity of Mexicanos have changed over time and space. Accordingly, I have chosen a series of historical and spatial moments in which Mexicanos’ racial subjectivity changed, either through their own agency, the state, or the desire of others. Examples include WWII, the 1960s Chicana/o movement, suburbanization, and the development of new Latino communities in the southeastern US. The second way in which I seek to understand the racial position of Latinos is by examining them in relation to other racial/ethnic groups, in this case, African Americans. As two of the most subordinated racial/ethnic groups in the US their interactions are key indicators of changes in the larger racial formation and how white dominance functions.
John P. Wilson
Click here for a complete listing of projects by Dr. Wilson at the GIS Research Laboratory.Jennifer Wolch
Disparities in Access to Parks and recreation Resources in Southern California, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
This study will achieve a number of specific aims including (a) characterizing the demand for and supply of park resources in Los Angeles County, (b) document the level and sources of park funding to better understand inequities in the distribution of park resources, and (c) explain disparities in the distribution of park resources using spatial regression models. A variety of methods will be used to accomplish these aims including an examination of city budgets and policies, the collection of social and built environmental variables using GIS, and the completion of a web audit and key informant surveys to describe the availability of physical activity programming in parks.
Role: Principal Investigator
USC Center for Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer, NIH
The Center addresses the physiologic, metabolic, behavioral, genetic and environmental influences on obesity, metabolic health and cancer risk with a focus on minority children. The center supports 3 projects, support cores, training and pilot studies. Project 1 will compare 40 African American and 40 Hispanic adolescents for various metabolic parameters and then examine the effects of a 16-week strength training intervention. Project 2 will model changes in insulin resistance, physical activity, mood, and what physical activity means to 50 African American girls and 50 Latina Girls across the pubertal transition from Tanner Stage 1 to Tanner Stage 3, while determining how the impact of puberty induced insulin resistance on physical activity is mediated by mood and meanings of physical activity and investigating any ethnic differences. Project 3 will use data from over 6,000 children to assess the effects of the neighborhood built environment on obesogenic trajectories and explore whether individual and contextual variables modify the association between the built environment and obesogenic trajectories.
Role: Co-Investigator Project 3
Neighborhood Predictors of Urban Trail Use, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
This project will identify and test environmental predictors of urban trail use and moderate to vigorous physical activity. Predictors will include features of the trail landscape and the surrounding neighborhood, and social features of the surrounding neighborhood. The environmental predictors will be determined using Geographic Information Systems and observational assessments. Physical activity will be measured using accelerometers in a sample of 500 adults.
Role: Co-Investigator
Green Visions Plan Phase II, Watershed Conservation Authority
The Green Visions Plan for 21st Century Southern California is a joint venture by regional land conservancies to develop a comprehensive habitat conservation, watershed protection, and recreational opportunities plan for southern California. Phase II of this project will provide: (1) a range-corridor plan for habitat conservation; (2) watershed characterization and hydrological models; (3) recreational gap analysis; and (3) prototype GIS decision-support tools.
Role: Principal Investigator
Historical Ecology of Southern California’s Coastal Wetlands, US Sea Grant Program
The long-term goal of this research is to develop an understanding of the historical extent and function of our wetland, riparian, and terrestrial resources, how they have changed through recent human history, and how local physiography affects the distribution of habitat types. As a first step toward achieving this long-term goal, the proposed project aims to develop the tools and local capacity to reconstruct the historical condition of southern California’s coastal estuaries and lagoons.
Role: Co Investigator