Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mapping and Modeling Clandestine Activities Affecting Urban Expansion

这个博士论文研究项目将分析秘密活动如何，在哪里，以及在多大程度上影响城市扩张。博士生将开发和测试可用于识别与城市发展相关的行动的方法，这些行动不符合共同利益，例如在环境敏感地区的城市扩张会增加洪水，减少供水，并产生其他不利影响。该项目将加强对某些人口群体处于不利地位的城市条件后果的了解，项目结果将提供新的信息和见解，政府官员、非政府组织、社区团体和城市居民可以利用这些信息和见解，更好地了解和应对秘密活动造成的环境威胁。该项目将促进学术、政府和社区组织之间有意义的互动。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。秘密活动深刻地影响着全世界的城市化进程，往往造成严重的不利环境后果。然而，这种形式的城市化已证明是难以衡量和观察的，而且在土地系统分析中忽略了它们所起作用的过程。因此，在城市规划中，秘密的、非正式的城市化在很大程度上仍然是不可见的，正式的政府很难加以管制。为了进行这个项目，博士生将采用先进的计算和卫星图像分析，并将进行密集的民族志工作，以明确可探测的景观模式与创造它们的秘密过程之间的联系。她将审查影响地块或社区一级城市化的秘密土地交易，并检验假设，以确定是否可以在景观规模上发现这种活动。学生将从一系列来源收集和评估社会环境数据，包括对关键参与者的访谈、城市变化的遥感、数字化和地理参考的土地使用记录（当地政府已将非正式城市化纳入合法财产登记），以及有关投票和城市服务提供的辅助数据。她将采用三种不同的建模方法来测试城市化模式中秘密变量的重要性。虽然这个博士论文研究项目将侧重于墨西哥城的发展，但这项研究将为处理包括美国在内的许多其他国家与秘密活动有关的非正式发展提供新的见解和方法。

This doctoral dissertation research project will analyze how, where, and to what degree clandestine activities influence urban expansion. The doctoral student will develop and test methods that can be used to identify actions associated with urban development for actions not in the common interest, such as urban expansion within environmentally sensitive areas that increases flooding, decreases water supplies, and has other adverse impacts. The project will enhance understanding of the outcomes of urban conditions that disadvantage some segments of the population, and project findings will provide new information and insights that can be used by governmental officials, non-governmental organizations, community groups, and urban residents to better understand and respond to environmental threats posed by clandestine activities. The project will facilitate meaningful interactions among academic, governmental, and community-based organizations. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.Clandestine activities profoundly influence urbanization worldwide, often with significant adverse environmental consequences. Such forms of urbanization have proven difficult to measure and observe, however, and processes though which they have functioned have been ignored in land-system analysis. As a result, clandestine, informal urbanization remains largely invisible in urban planning and is difficult for formal government to regulate. To conduct this project, the doctoral student will employ advanced computing and satellite imagery analyses and will conduct intensive ethnographic work to make explicit the links between detectable landscape patterns and the clandestine processes creating them. She will examine the clandestine land transactions that influence urbanization at a parcel or community level and test hypotheses to determine if such activity can be detected on a landscape scale. The student will gather and assess socio-environmental data from a range of sources, including interviews with key actors, remote sensing of urban change, digitized and geo-referenced land-use records where local government has incorporated informal urbanization into legal property registries, and ancillary data regarding voting and urban service provision. She will employ three different kinds of modeling approaches to test for the significance of clandestine variables on urbanization patterns. Although this doctoral dissertation research project will focus on development in Mexico City, the research will provide new insights and approaches for dealing with informal development related to clandestine activity in many other nations, including the United States.