Estiri, Hossein. (2016). Differences in Residential Energy Use between US City and Suburban Households. Regional Studies, 50(11), 1919 – 1930.
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Abstract
This paper applies path analysis to household-level data from the US residential sector to study differences in energy consumption between self-identified city and suburban households. Results show that, on average, suburban households consume more energy in residential buildings than their city-dweller counterparts. This variation in energy consumption is due to differences in: (1) characteristics of the household and the housing unit, independently, and (2) interactions between the household and housing characteristics in the city and suburban households. Findings of this study provide new insights into how regional policies can be implemented differently in suburbs and cities to reduce energy consumption.
Keywords
Urban Form; Electricity Consumption; Land-use; Impact; Sector; Sprawl; Determinants; Appliance; Mobility; Density; Energy Use; Residential Sector; City-dwellers; Suburbanites; Households; Path Analysis; Suburban Areas; Cities; Housing; Energy Consumption; Comparative Analysis; Data Processing; Residential Energy; Suburbs; Residential Buildings; Residential Areas; Energy Policy; Regional Analysis; Regional Studies; United States--us
Huang, Ruizhu; Moudon, Anne, V; Zhou, Chuan; Saelens, Brian E. (2019). Higher Residential and Employment Densities Are Associated with More Objectively Measured Walking in the Home Neighborhood. Journal Of Transport & Health, 12, 142 – 151.
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Abstract
Introduction: Understanding where people walk and how the built environment influences walking is a priority in active living research. Most previous studies were limited by self-reported data on walking. In the present study, walking bouts were determined by integrating one week of accelerometry, GPS, and a travel log data among 675 adult participants in the baseline sample of the Travel Assessment and Community study at Seattle, Washington in the United State. Methods: Home neighborhood was defined as being within 0.5 mile of each participants' residence (a 10-min walk), with home neighborhood walking defined as walking bout lines with at least one GPS point within the home neighborhood. Home neighborhood walkability was constructed with seven built environment variables derived from spatially continuous objective values (SmartMaps). Collinearity among neighborhood environment variables was analyzed and variables that were strongly correlated with residential density were excluded in the regression analysis to avoid erroneous estimates. A Zero Inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) served to estimate associations between home neighborhood environment characteristics and home neighborhood walking frequency. Results: The study found that more than half of participants' walking bouts occurred in their own home neighborhood. Higher residential density and job density were the two neighborhood walkability measures related to higher likelihood and more time walking in the home neighborhood, highest tertile residential density (22.4-62.6 unit/ha) (coefficient= 1.43; 95% CI 1.00-2.05) and highest tertile job density (12.4-272.3 jobs/acre) (coefficient= 1.62; 1.10-2.37). Conclusions: The large proportion of walking that takes place in the home neighborhood highlights the importance of continuing to examine the impact of the home neighborhood environment on walking. Potential interventions to increase walking behavior may benefit from increasing residential and employment density within residential areas.
Keywords
Body-mass Index; Built Environment; Physical-activity; Land Uses; Epidemiology; Selection; Location; Obesity; Travel Assessment And Community; Smartmaps; Neighborhood Environment; Physical Activity; Walking
Hess, Chris; Acolin, Arthur; Walter, Rebecca; Kennedy, Ian; Chasins, Sarah; Crowder, Kyle. (2021). Searching for Housing in the Digital Age: Neighborhood Representation on Internet Rental Housing Platforms across Space, Platform, and Metropolitan Segregation. Environment And Planning A-economy And Space, 53(8), 2012 – 2032.
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Abstract
Understanding residential mobility, housing affordability, and the geography of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage relies on robust information about housing search processes and housing markets. Existing data about housing markets, especially rental markets, suffer from accuracy issues and a lack of temporal and geographic flexibility. Data collected from online rental platforms that are commonly used can help address these issues and hold considerable promise for better understanding the full distribution of available rental homes. However, realizing this promise requires a careful assessment of potential sources of bias as online rental listing platforms may perpetuate inequalities similar to those found in physical spaces. This paper approaches the production of rental advertisements as a social process driven by both contextual and property level factors. We compare data from two online platforms for the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States to explore inequality in digital rental listing spaces and understand what characteristics are associated with over and underrepresentation of advertisements in certain areas. We find similar associations for socioeconomic measures between platforms and across urban and suburban parts of these metropolitan areas. In contrast, the importance of racial and ethnic composition, as well as broader patterns of segregation, for online representation differs substantially across space and platform. This analysis informs our understanding of how online platforms affect housing search dynamics through their biases and segmentation, and highlights the potential and limits in using the data available on these platforms to produce small area rental estimates.
Keywords
Fair Market Rents; Cities; Opportunity; Residential Mobility; Online Rental Listings; Rental Housing Markets; Housing Search; Inequality
The Population Health Initiative has announced the award of 11 Tier 1 pilot grants for the spring quarter of 2022. The grants are intended to encourage the development of new interdisciplinary collaborations among investigators – and with community-based partners – for projects that address critical challenges to population health. One of the funded projects, “Residential Segregation and Pediatric Injury and Violence in Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma” includes Rebecca Walter, Windermere Endowed Chair and Associate Professor, Runstad Department of Real Estate….
The Population Health Initiative has announced the award of eight Tier 2 pilot grants, which are intended to encourage the development of new interdisciplinary collaborations among investigators – and with community-based partners – for projects that address critical challenges to population health. One of the funded projects, “Assessing National Public Housing Authority Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery of Place-based Subsidized Housing Units,” includes Rebecca Walter, Windermere Endowed Chair and Associate Professor, Runstad Department of Real Estate. Walter serves as a…
Gregg Colburn, Assistant Professor of Real Estate, co-authored a new book titled Homelessness is a Housing Problem, alongside journalist Clayton Aldern. The new book explores the factors that drive homelessness, and the cultural and economic shift that can ultimately benefit all — housed and unhoused. Colburn believes housing market conditions — specifically, high housing and rental prices, and low vacancy rates — exacerbate economic and personal challenges for society’s most vulnerable. And it’s the housing market, aided by the private…
In 2021 the College of Built Environments launched the CBE Inspire Fund, designed to support CBE research activities for which a relatively small amount of support can be transformative. The second year of awards have just been announced, supporting five projects across 4 departments within the college as they address topics such as food sovereignty, anti-displacement, affordable housing, and health & wellbeing. This year’s awardees include: Defining the New Diaspora: Where Seattle’s Black Church Congregants Are Moving and Why Rachel…
Though Transit Equity Day is just one day, the issue of equity on Seattle’s public transit is an ongoing and important conversation to Seattle and King County residents. Neighborhoods across the county have unequal access to transit lines; bus stops are often located in inconvenient or dangerous places due to oncoming traffic and lack of sidewalks; and bus schedules are irregular or sparse, with long wait times. These are just a few of the challenges folks might experience before getting…
I am interested in researching how U.S. housing policies and economics impact housing availability for people of all income levels and social groups and the successful means and methods to deliver more livable and healthy housing for those neglected by the current market-driven system. My additional interests are in production techniques that lower housing costs and increase supply to create healthy housing for people at all income levels with the least impact on the built environment.
Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Real Estate and CSDE Affiliate Arthur Acolin for being awarded a $10,000 Tier 2 seed grant for his project, “Accessory Dwelling Units as Potential Source of Affordable Housing Across Generations”. This grant is part of CSDE’s quarterly call for seed grant applications and is intended to help faculty initiate new research endeavors that have high relevance to population science and a strong chance of building towards extramural funding. Acolin will be conducting a joint project…