Concrete Oasis: Measures of Accessibility & Equity in the Distribution of Public-Serving Amenities Across U.S. Cities

Abstract

The phrase Concrete Oasis offers an oxymoronic depiction of the modern city: a vast industrial landscape, replete with competition and inequality, yet one simultaneously over-flowing with resources and amenities holding the potential to improve the public good. From libraries and parks to hospitals and schools, these entities provide economic, social, and health-related benefits for city residents. In this thesis, I investigate whether those amenities actually reach all city residents by mapping the geographical accessibility of each resource to both household income and racial identity. I further derive correlations that describe how distributions of each amenity type vary nationally using property data from the 38 most populous U.S. cities. I then test three historical factors—partisanship, latitude, and city founding date—to explore plausible origins for resource and spatial inequality. Through a combination of large-scale graph analysis and sociological theory, my research reveals that the majority of amenities are most accessible for wealthier and whiter neighborhoods, but also investigates potential middle class neglect and the relative lack of amenities in racially integrated areas. I propose partisanship and latitude as possible historical contributors to inequitable amenity distributions with respect to income, and city founding date to those with respect to race. Finally, I discuss approaching future urban planning through a lens of redistributive inequality as a means to establish long-term structural support of amenities for those who need them most.