Doctoral Dissertation Research: Urban-Social Sustainability and Access to Employment: A Mixed-Methods Multi-Scale Approach

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Job accessibility and spatial mismatch are two major research literatures that have sought to understand employment barriers among disadvantaged populations in metropolitan areas. While much is known about job access differentiation between central-cities and suburbs, relatively little is understood about barriers at micro-geographic and individual scale levels. As U.S. metropolitan areas continue to undergo rapid socio-economic structure changes, new fine-scaled research is needed as the traditional methods and urban conceptualizations are no longer sufficient to untangle the current residence-transportation-workplace nexus that disadvantaged populations must negotiate on a daily basis. This research investigates complex understandings of job accessibility based upon the contexts of place and individual contingencies. Further, building upon conceptualizations of urban-social sustainability, the substantive connections between access to employment barriers and individual livelihood construction will be explored. To examine these issues, this project will employ a mixed-method approach. Phase 1 will use spatial statistical methods with U.S. Census transportation secondary data to observe geographic patterns of job access. In phase 2, primary data collected through semi-structured interviews will elicit insight to socio-spatial processes of job access by capturing local knowledge and alternative spatial representations. Together the data will be integrated through Geographic Information Science (GIS) and analyzed using grounded theory, statistical models, and geovisualization technologies at individual, microgeographic, and metropolitan scales. Using the Columbus (Ohio, USA) metropolitan area as the research site, the investigators expect to demonstrate the varying nature of geographical and individual barriers to employment among the working poor population.The fine-scale data utilized in this research project will help develop more complex understandings of geographical access and reveal detailed socio-spatial patterns and processes of metropolitan-area job accessibility, which are particularly important for understanding how changes in urban structure affect job accessibility, especially among the working poor. This research project also will address issues of power, knowledge, and representation in the research process; contribute to methodological and epistemological debates on the merits of alternative and mixed-methods approaches; and contribute to discourse on livelihood construction and urban-social sustainability. More broadly, this research will provide substantive knowledge for localized policy recommendations on overcoming accessibility based inequalities, and will give voice to individuals from marginalized and under-represented socio-economic groups through their role as research informants.