Browsing by Subject "New York City"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Accessibility to Essential Medicines in New York City by Zip Code Income Levels and Boroughs
    (University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2014) Aronson, Yan; Addo-Atuah, Joyce
    Access to essential medicines is fundamental to medication adherence, continuity of care and hence population health outcomes and overall quality of life. Disparities in the availability and the cost of these medications in New York City, especially for low income neighborhoods, would compound the underlying health disparities in these neighborhoods. This study examined the physical and financial accessibility to 8 of the 150 Most Frequently Prescribed Drugs in New York, 2 each for Asthma, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Hyperlipidemia, 4 conditions that are among the top 10 most costly conditions in the United States. The study did not find any significant differences in mean drug prices between the high, medium, and low income neighborhoods in the City. However, the significantly different income levels and uninsured rates across neighborhood income strata in the City (p<0.001 for both), coupled with the high disease burden and other underlying disparities in low income neighborhoods, would point to potential affordability challenges for needed medications in these neighborhoods. On the other hand, significant differences in mean prices between the 5 City boroughs were found for 3 of the study drugs: Advair® , p=0.009; Amlodipine 10mg, p<0.001; and Lisinopril 10mg, p=0.046. No such significant differences were observed for the mean prices of the other 5 study drugs-Proventil HFA,® Metformin HCL 500mg, Glipizide ER 5mg, Simvastatin 20mg, and Atorvastatin 10mg. The study findings did not also suggest that drug prices are dictated by the number of pharmacies in a neighborhood. Further studies would be needed to better understand the complexities associated with the accessibility of essential medicines in New York City. These studies could include qualitative ones which would examine the perceptions and experiences of City residents with respect to the accessibility of prescribed medications as the basis for targeted interventions directed at promoting access to needed medications for all New Yorkers.
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    Developing densely: Estimating the effect of subway growth on New York City land uses
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2011) King, David
    In the early twentieth century, New York City’s population, developed land area, and subway network size all increased dramatically. The rapid expansion of the transit system and land development present intriguing questions as to whether land development led subway growth or if subway expansion was a precursor to real estate development. The research described in this article uses Granger causality models based on parcel-level data to explore the co-development of the subway system and residential and commercial land uses, and attempts to determine whether subway stations were a leading indicator of residential and commercial development or if subway station expansion followed residential and commercial construction. The results of this study suggest that the subway network developed in an orderly fashion and grew densest in areas where there was growth in commercial development. There is no evidence that subway growth preceded residential development throughout the city. These results suggest that subway stations opened in areas already well-served by the system and that network growth often followed residential and commercial development. The subway network acted as an agent of decentralization away from lower Manhattan as routes and stations were sought in areas with established ridership demand.
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    The Difference that Seeing Makes: Homelessness and Visuality in Urban Ecology
    (2020-07) Goldfischer, Eric
    This project examines the impact of green urban development on the visibility of homelessness and the lives and livelihood of people experiencing it in New York City. Images of homelessness have long played an outsized role in the geography of urban development. In particular, photography of those living without a home has both presaged displacement and produced discourses that play upon racialized images to produce harmful notions of safety, policing/crime, and public space, all of which impact the city’s development priorities. But in recent years, New York City’s development model has shifted extensively to focus on environmental sustainability, an emphasis that, on the surface, has little to do with homelessness. This dissertation asks: How does the anti-homelessness at the heart of urban development shift when the development agenda cares the most about green spaces, horticulture, and sustainability metrics? In addressing this question, the dissertation relies on a research partnership with Picture the Homeless, a grassroots homeless-led organization in NYC that focuses on the importance of “picturing” homelessness in its full systemic context as a key component of social justice work. Building on this partnership and utilizing community-based research methods, ethnography, and semi-structured interviews with urban designers and local policymakers, I argue that we should understand homelessness in urban ecology through a frame of “green anti-homelessness.” Green anti-homelessness, I show, works in two key ways: By using horticulture and green design to mitigate, rather than destroy, the visibility of homelessness, and by shifting the value of urban spaces towards a narrow definition of urban sustainability that precludes many forms of ecologically-beneficial grassroots activities such as can recycling or reusing materials for survival. These findings demonstrate the importance of the relationship between urban ecology and homelessness, and open future pathways for further research on green anti-homelessness, the images associated with it, and broadened understandings of urban sustainability.
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    Spatial regulation of taxicab services: Measuring empty travel in New York City
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) King, David A.; Saldarriaga, Juan Francisco
    Taxicabs are ubiquitous in cities throughout the world, and the industry is going through regulatory change with the growth of app-based services. In the United States, where taxicabs are typically regulated locally, licenses determine where taxis can pick up passengers. This means that for trips that end outside of licensed boundaries taxicabs are prohibited from picking up passengers and are forced to make “deadhead” return trips. This research estimates empty taxi travel associated with spatial restrictions on passenger trip origins in New York City. In 2012, New York introduced a special taxi category intended to improve taxi access in areas of the city considered underserved by taxicabs. The new green taxicabs, as they are called, can drop off passengers anywhere in the city but are restricted from picking up passengers in the central business districts and at any of the region’s airports. Using detailed trip data for each taxi ride, we estimate that up to 500,000 kilometers per week of deadhead travel are associated with restrictions on pick up locations, and more than 20 percent of all green taxicab trips end in an area where the driver is prohibited from picking up a new passenger.
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    Spatiotemporal effects of proximity to metro extension on housing price dynamics in Manhattan, New York City
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2021) Guan, ChengHe; Tan, Mark Junjie; Peiser, Richard
    Investment in public transportation such as a metro line extension is often capitalized partially into housing values due to the spatiotemporal effects. Using housing transaction data from 2014 to 2019, this paper studies the Second Avenue Subway or Q-line extension in New York City’s Manhattan borough. Multiple metro station catchment areas were investigated using spatial autocorrelation-corrected hedonic pricing models to capture the variation of housing price dynamics. The results indicate that properties in closer proximity to the Q-line extension received higher price discounts. The effect varied by occupancy type and building form: condominiums experienced the highest price discount, while walk-up and elevator co-ops experienced a price premium. After controlling for location variations, we observed price discounts on the westside and price premiums on the eastside of the Q-line. Residential properties within 150 m west to the Q-line extension received the highest price discount post operation, while on the eastside, properties in the same proximity received the highest price premium. The anticipation effect varies by distance to metro extension stations, both before and after the operation of metro line extension. We discuss the disruption of metro construction on the housing market depending on housing type, location variation, and changes over time.
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    Using location-based social network data for activity intensity analysis: A case study of New York City
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2019) Laman, Haluk; Yasmin, Shamsunnahar; Eluru, Naveen
    Location-based social networks (LBSN) are social media sites where users check-in at venues and share content linked to their geo-locations. LBSN, considered to be a novel data source, contain valuable information for urban planners and researchers. While earlier research efforts focused either on disaggregate patterns or aggregate analysis of social and temporal attributes, no attempt has been made to relate the data to transportation planning outcomes. To that extent, the current study employs LBSN service-based data for an aggregate-level transportation planning exercise by developing land-use planning models. Specifically, we employ check-in data aggregated at the census tract level to develop a quantitative model for activity intensity as a function of land use and built-environment attributes for the New York City (NYC) region. A statistical exercise based on clustering of census tracts and negative binomial regression analyses are adopted to analyze the aggregated data. We demonstrate the implications of the estimated models by presenting the spatial aggregation profiling based on the model estimates. The findings provide insights on relative differences of activity engagements across the urban region. The proposed approach thus provides a complementary analysis tool to traditional transportation planning exercises.