Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium 2023

The Penn IUR Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium (UURC) facilitates faculty- and doctoral student-mentored, undergraduate urban-focused research. The program includes funding support for a joint research project and a semester-long, credit-bearing seminar. Below are the summaries of the five projects conducted in the 2022-2023 school year. 

Talyah Pierce, College of Arts & Sciences | Research Mentor: Jay Arzu, PhD Student, City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania

“Walkability in Northeast Philadelphia: Investigating how Walkability Influences Transportation Habits of Residents”

Northeast Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Boulevard facilitates the transportation of almost 90,000 cars everyday in Philadelphia. With talk of plans to build a subway line along the Boulevard, it is necessary to first detail how the built environment affects residents’ transportation habits. This project investigates how walkability in different regions of Northeast Philadelphia influences the transportation habits of residents, and what measures should be employed to increase the walkability of the area

Victoria Sousa, College of Arts & Sciences | Research Mentor: Amber Mackey, PhD Student, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

“Racial Policy and Agenda Instability: Measuring Shifts in Legislative Attention to Race in Michigan’s State Legislature”

With thousands of policy problems in any given political cycle, many topics never make it to the legislative agenda––despite advocacy and other sources of pressure from constituents. In the past several decades, we have seen increased mobilization and grassroots activism amongst non white populations pushing for policy action across many domains. Despite these changes, little contemporary scholarship examines variation in legislative attention to race across time. This research tracks the quantity and kinds of racialized words (as included in Mackey’s racialized language tool containing 800+ words associated with race in policy language) seen within bills and resolutions passed by Michigan’s state legislature between 2010-2020.

Khue Tran, College of Arts & Sciences | Research Mentor: Chaeri Kim, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University

“Asian American Participation in Climate Adaptation Planning: A Case Study of New York City’s Heat Adaptation Strategies”

Like many other marginalized groups, Asian Americans have to grapple with the consequences of climate change more than privileged groups. However, they remain severely understudied by environmental researchers, and this lack of existing scholarship directly impacts the amount of research-based environmental policy created to serve these communities. New York City, the city with the highest number of Asian Americans in the U.S., began strengthening its climate adaptation planning after Hurricane Sandy. My project uses it as a case study to investigate the relationship between Asian American communities and climate adaptation planning for extreme heat, an increasingly pressing concern for urban areas.

Yeeun Yoo, College of Arts & Sciences | Research Mentor: Mary Rocco, Director of Engaged Scholarship, Community Engagement and Inclusion, Barnard College

“Mutual Aid in New York City: Student-led Aid and Efforts”

Following the onset of COVID-19, mutual aid networks organized in response to the needs of local neighbors and inefficiencies of the institutions/government as they sought to respond to the crisis. These groups have focused their aid to provide sources of food, PPE, emergency cash assistance, etc. for communities across New York City. These mutual aid practices are not limited to neighborhood-based networks but also have been spearheaded by colleges and universities. This research specifically focuses on the work of the 116th Initiative of Barnard College to examine these parallels between college campus mutual aid and neighborhood-based initiatives. By analyzing the organizing and mobilizing efforts of the 116th Initiative, this study aims to develop a deeper understanding of mutual aid’s connection to student-led radical care, collective action, and community resilience.

Amy Zhang, The Wharton School | Research Mentor: Alex Li, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of California, Riverside

"Analyzing the interactive effect of race and neighborhood attributes in predicting traffic stop outcomes using Artificial Intelligence"

The police's racial bias in traffic stops leads to increased scrutiny and unfair treatment toward minority drivers during a stop. Furthermore, the neighborhood characteristics in a stop's area can add an additional layer of bias to police decisions. This study analyzes how social and built attributes interact to affect traffic stop outcomes and justifies using the Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDT) machine learning method to do so.