Update on Project Activities
The team did not meet this week outside of class, but we came into this week with a lot of insight and direction as to what information and data we need to acquire in order to move our project forward. Janice suggested that we use specific streets in District 6 and analyze whether the LTS biking metric can help improve these streets and make them safer for bikers as well as pedestrians. As a group, we have been researching the applications of LTS to intersections to get an idea of what would be considered a safe intersection versus an unsafe intersection. We have also been gathering information from other bikeability metrics, such as Long Beach and Copenhagen, in order to get an idea of what actually works and what is actually a reachable improvement for intersections in San Francisco specifically, since San Francisco has many physical features that make applying LTS fairly difficult. Since our meeting with David from the Stanford Geospatial Center on Friday, we have been searching for mapping data that would be useful for the creation of our GIS map. Stanley and Derek have put together a rough dataset with all pertinent street and intersection information critical for completing our map. Hopefully, SFMTA gets back to us with mapping data on intersection activity that would be applicable to evaluating whether an intersection has suitable characteristics for the amount of traffic fluctuating through it. David also shared a few links with us that use Carto and AGO as a guide for web mapping our data that we find. Plus a tutorial on how to get the street intersections from the street line data. What We Learned and Observed I think that the most important thing we learned and observed this week was that making our GIS map is the easy portion of the project. The most challenging component is finding legitimate data that we can actually apply to our project. There are many different sets of data about biking routes and improvement of overall biking comfortability, so it is challenging to find the exact data we need to mold our GIS map. Now that we have some specific direction from Janice regarding what information we need to acquire, gathering information and data have become a lot more feasible for the group. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward At this point, we have successfully divided up the research that each group member will do regarding the pitfalls of LTS and are currently filling out our final PowerPoint and final scope of work. Since we have a draft of a GIS map, we can now try to incorporate other interactive features within our map and make it more user friendly and understandable for audiences. Getting all of the information and data together now will make forming our final draft of the project a lot easier. Considering our pace on completing the project was slow at first because of how broad our topic is, finally narrowing down the things we need to research will allow for faster understanding and direction for finalizing our project deliverables. Update on Project Activities
This week, we are moving forward on the survey portions that we can complete without being able to actually survey the community. During our last trip in Salinas, our meeting with the stakeholders (Building Healthy Communities and Code Enforcement) led us to realize that our survey previously was insufficient to capture the nuances of the housing state. Therefore, we spent the rest of the trip reassessing the neighborhoods with this new information in mind, but we were not able to collect any data. However, this was still useful because now we know how to better cater to the needs of the community. Although the process to build the best survey possible is very long, we want this project result to be as valuable as possible to the city and to be more than just a thought experiment. Therefore, we will take the time needed to adjust our survey. Jonathan from the City of Salinas has also sent us some GIS data from the city’s databases on physical property characteristics for each parcel, which has structural elements such as the number of bedrooms, age of the house, and more that could be useful for an initial analysis of whether the Alisal could qualify for some of the grants they are interested in. This file also has the parcel boundaries for the Alisal area, so our data from the survey will need to fit within these boundaries for it to be integrated back into the database. Additionally, Jonathan mentioned that he has been thinking about best practices around sustainability and would like us to consider more deeply issues like parking, transportation, affordability and their intersection with housing. If we were to build more high density, which is very sustainable, would this still be comfortable? With the lack of public transportation and parking in Alisal, how could the city respond with regard to these public services if they were to build more housing? How would this affect sustainability? What We Learned and Observed Because we did not have a site visit this week, there isn’t as much new information for us to absorb. However, we have learned that we need to consider all the factors at play when it comes to housing such as the issues of transportation mentioned above and also the overcrowding that can occur in public spaces if more housing is built. The trip to the Stanford educational farm was also informative as it helped us learn more about ways to make urban areas more sustainable through city gardens and the self-sufficiency that comes with planting your own food. We observed that because of the historical inequities of the Alisal area, as Carol discussed with us during our trip to Carmel last week, we need to be sensitive of what the community really wants and understand the difficulties surrounding a very comprehensive survey of all the neighborhoods. Since volunteers will be surveying their own communities, and possibly their own neighbors, and given the current political climate on issues of immigration and deportation, there may be some nervousness on the residents' part to let other people assess their housing. If building codes aren't met, we want to make sure that residents who may be forced out still have resources to support them in finding another home. This will be a tremendously long process, since the City is limited in its capacity currently to help these residents, so we do not want to shake things up too much. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward In the next week, we need to fully process the new GIS data we’ve been given by Jonathan and decide if there are additional variables that we would like from the GIS team at Salinas. Looking over the data will also tell us what information they are missing and should be added to the housing survey. We might also make some summary statistics on what is in the GIS data since they will give us and the City more context on the overall state of housing. Because we did not collect survey data last time, we may need to schedule another field visit if possible. However, the requirements noted by the community groups (having Spanish speakers and community members accompanying us during surveying, and really having the community do the survey instead of an outside group) might make this more difficult. We would like to respect the community’s wishes, so we will do our best to provide some analysis to the City even if we cannot collect data now. We will also be meeting to begin working on the final presentation and completing the portions that we can do now. Jonathan will also be giving us feedback on our first survey, so we will have to further make some changes on the survey before we hand it over to the community groups. Lastly, we will start incorporating the issues of sustainability and transportation into our final analysis and report, using the GIS data that we were given and also through our own research of the literature that already exists. Update on Project Activities
Though this week started a little bit slow, after we conducted our first field day last Friday, Adina and Chris with one group member discussed how the first field day went and how to continue moving forward. First, we went over the field day itself and the survey so far. We presented the digital version of the survey to Adina and Chris, and they offered feedback throughout the week so we could finalize the survey. Adina shared the online survey with a semi-public organization, Commute.org, that may help with distribution. Unfortunately, they will not be able to do so until March 9th, which means the responses gathered would be too late to influence our pilot study. We then went on to discuss how to gather more responses and fine tune our administration process. Chris and Adina suggested first standardizing the way in which we choose businesses to survey, to make sure it is consistent and we don’t bias our results in any way. They also suggested that we survey next at Redwood City, which we intended to do on Thursday. Though we were not able to do it this past week, two group members surveyed at the University Avenue area, and were able to gather two physical responses from retail businesses in about two hours, which is slower than our rate last Friday. However, they found that people were generally very receptive to the project and handed out many information cards to workers in about half of the businesses on University Ave. Tomorrow, more group members are planning to make the trip to Redwood City to continue expanding the survey catchment area. What We Observed and Learned Surprisingly enough, we generally noticed that people were easy to approach and talk about their commute. Over the two survey days, we noticed a variety of different responses though we approached folks at work. Some people were quick to express their opinions and were able to take about 10 minutes to answer the paper version of the survey. A greater number of people expressed a lot of interest in answering the survey, but because they were at work, they said that they would be happy to take the online survey on their own time. After we realized that the majority of people had this response, especially in the food and beverage sector, we printed out smaller, less ink-intensive cards with the link and our contact information so we could disseminate the link to more people. However we did realize that we had more luck surveying people in person in the retail sector, simply because they were able to step away from their work. Though we tried asking workers in busy businesses if there were folks on their breaks that were able to take the in-person survey, people were more open to receiving the link information. We crossed our fingers hoping that they would eventually take the survey after we left the business. Other options for “closing the loop” is re-scheduling a time to come back and survey workers in that particular business or incentivizing folks with random Amazon gift card drawings. We will continue to test our survey methods these next 2 weeks, but we have had some successes in getting both physical and online responses in these past two survey outings. As a whole, folks seemed pretty despondent about the likelihood of the 101 ever having better traffic conditions, and some focused on the deteriorating condition of the road in their commute such as the presence of potholes on the road. In terms of the survey format, we made many shifts according to Chris and Adina’s suggestions and to folks responses during the survey times. For example, we changed a lot of the questions to not being required on the online form since there were a bunch of places that folks preferred not to fill out. When we gave our 101 Express Lanes pitch, we realized that the trifold handout that we made was invaluable with its visuals in explaining the concept of express lanes to workers. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward During field days, we have not been able to get as many in-person responses as we would have liked in the past two outings. Considering we only have 8 responses so far and are aiming for a minimum of 30 to analyze in our final report, our number of survey days and our survey methodology could use improvement. However, with some contacts that Adina and Chris can provide with extra volunteers to help us collect more surveys and potential help from business organizations find a way to speed up surveying, we will be able to adequately present a concise presentation on survey results and methodology. Regardless, what we have tested thus far and our literature review will remain a large bulk of our final report to our community partners as we pass our this project to them. In the coming weeks as we continue to survey, we will simultaneously work on the final report and will analyze survey responses nearer the end of these ten weeks. Another major factor to consider is the diversity of respondents. In these past two weeks, we only had the opportunity to survey folks in the Palo Alto area which is not representative of the population we want to hear from. Therefore looking forward towards these next two weeks, we will focus our efforts on expanding our survey area. While our survey will be scaled up on, we still want our results to be somewhat representative of the San Mateo worker population. In this back half of the quarter communication within the group has lapsed as the quarter as become busier, but this has been brought to our attention as we have begun to operationalize our surveying. We’re excited that our community partners are optimistic for our efforts in this project, however our capacity in these final weeks will solely be focused on creating a scalable survey model to continue getting worker responses in San Mateo County. Update on Project Activities
We continued to work with our ArcGIS map this week including transforming the excel data into the comma separated format readable by ArcGIS and have begun trying different options for the data visualization aspect. We’re having some difficulties using ArcGIS online, so we are getting in contact with the GIS center person (another David), and trying to set up time with him to help us figure out how to make the platforms work. Downloaded Tableau software for data manipulation. Tableau is a software designed to take in large amounts of data and help users better navigate, then visualize it. Though we’ve just begun trying out the tool, we hope that with it, we will be able to better break down the large data sets we’ve been given and visualize them in graphical form. We’re communicating with Dave (our partner) to better coordinate what the results of our Tableau analysis will be. What We Observed and Learned After converting our data into an ArcGIS readable format we discovered all the options there are for the visualization aspects of the data. From individual points to heat maps there are a variety of options for displaying the same data. ArcGIS also has tools like deriving new locations which could prove informative for things like potential puma locations. In discovering all these possibilities, we also learned that it might take more time to fully utilize all that ArcGIS has to offer. After our field day last week, we’ve been working to really put all of our work in context. Specifically, we’re trying to see how we could frame our final project deliverable and report around the concepts of land management and balance between urban and wildlife communities. Since the bulk of our project is fairly straightforward (just data organization and visualization), putting it into the right environment is key to building our understanding of the significance of our work. On a side note, we learned that one of our partners, Tanya, is also working to compile a large database of camera trap data in the Peninsula. At this point we are unsure if she is working on visualizing the data (putting it into ArcGIS or similar). We also don’t know if she will be finished within the timeframe of our project. However, we feel that if we got the chance to work with all of Tanya’s (clean) data, we could see something interesting. Working with that data is almost certainly outside of our original project scope, but the prospect is exciting! Critical Analysis/ Moving Forward With regards to our ArcGIS visual, now that we have minimized the data to its core essentials and have transformed it into a readable format for ArcGIS, what remains are the decisions on how to display the information and what information to focus on. In order to decide this we need to relook at who our target audience is and what point the information is trying to get across. The major things to keep in mind are: How understandable/ readable the maps are - In thinking about this, size and color will come into play as well as decisions about borders and transparency. What seem like aesthetic decisions only will play a role in how easy the maps are to understand. How effectively the map portrays the story we want to tell about the data - We should probably show the maps to some friends who know nothing about the project before we finish it to make sure that it is understandable at all levels of knowledge on the subject. Is there enough/ not too much information to get the point across - While more data means more extrapolations from the data set, more data can also just mean more confusing. We need a good balance of interesting points but not too many that the key points are muddled by inconsequential ones. David has been addressing the interdisciplinary aspect of our project (reaching out to various community members), but unfortunately was out of commission for health reasons this week. Because of this, we were set back on getting qualitative research on the community stakeholders’ opinions. This has caused some frustration on David’s part because of trying to balance external deadlines with responsibilities to the group and to the stakeholders and with taking care of one’s self. This, of course, is a common point of learning, but as this is a project with people outside of Stanford involved, it has reinforced the importance of taking care of yourself in advance and communicating with partners should an error come up so that we stay on track. To that end, a small part of what we’ve learned this week has certainly been simple work dynamics and how to manage responsibilities with delays. During our field trip to the farm this week, Patrick brought up an issue that was echoed by Ramona on our field day in the county park. People - particularly in minority communities - experience a profound disconnection to nature, their food, and by extension the communities to which they are linked. Parks, like farms, are seen as being isolated entities apart from people’s actual lived experience in cities. The consumption of public parks has been commodified much in the same that food has; a prepackaged experience that can be accessed cheaply and without thought for the process involved. Also similar to food, the low access to good quality spaces has impacts on community health and mental wellbeing. The challenge to link people and nature is prevalent, and the absence of this connection is at the root of many issues our society faces today from public health to a sense of community. The work to undo problematic and systemic approaches to both wild and domesticated ecosystems must apply to both parks and our food systems as the problems are intrinsically linked, as are their solutions. Update on Project Activities
This week we primarily focused on finalizing and prototyping our project documents. We created our handout that we handed out to folks on El Camino Real on our first survey session, and we finalized and printed out our survey. We also digitized our survey so we could reach more folks during the survey period. Our site is under construction, but we linked and posted our contact information on the site. This was a pivotal week in beginning our survey period, and we will continue to iterate on our documents as needed. What We Observed and Learned Our survey field was mostly in the rain from 3pm-5:30pm on Friday, which proved beneficial because of decreased store traffic. Sales and customer interactions took precedent over survey interactions but any interruptions in survey completion were simply breaks not endpoints. Employees mostly responded positively to our requests, despite being on the clock. This might have to do with the mom & pop style management near California Ave in Palo Alto. Stores broke down into two categories food and retail services. Interactions with the former were heavily influenced by the presence of customers since food preparation demands full attention and hands on meal assembly. One individual mentioned that he couldn’t complete the survey because the store was shorthanded and he needed to cover multiple roles. Retail however proved more flexible because cashiers or receptionists typically had less demanding tasks to complete. Perhaps an added benefit was the customer service focus intertwined within these roles. Several individuals even asked follow-up questions about survey purpose. Overall nobody rejected brochures after declining to complete the paperwork. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Moving forwards, we plan to expand our survey areas to other stretches of El Camino. This will require significantly more planning than our first field day, which was readily accessible. Seeing as none of us have cars, we plan to use Caltrain to commute to our next few survey locations. Furthermore, after testing the survey on each other and on actual workers and receiving no negative feedback, it would be helpful to meet with Chris and Adina again to discuss next steps. We also need to establish continued contact with business organizations, to allow us to reach more people. Though we sent an initial email this week, we have yet to receive a response and should follow up soon. Overall, the structure we had of having a field day of about 3 hours seem like a manageable and effective time commitment. However, there are certain things we must do to make our survey more streamlined so we can collect an adequate number of responses. None of the people we talked to today had any problems with the survey when we asked— however, it was certainly slow going. Over the span of 2.5 hours, we collected 5 confirmed survey responses, and handed out 6 additional brochures. It is very unlikely that all 6 of the people we gave brochures to will fill out the survey on their own time— with luck perhaps 1 or 2 will. However, this puts as at 6-7 responses per trip, which means a significant number of field days in the future. Some ways to streamline this process we decided on after our first day are as followed: 1. Avoid verbal surveys if possible— the person we spoke to at Pieology agreed to take the survey verbally, as she needed to have her hands clean to prepare food. However, administering the survey this way took over half an hour, using a significant amount of her time. Moving forward, it may be helpful to leave the survey for food workers to take when their shift ends and picking up the survey the next day. We could also ask if any folks are on a break and are able to complete the survey then. 2. Pick slow moving times— though we were unhappy about the rain at first, it proved to be a huge blessing. Almost all of the businesses we visited were nearly empty, allowing workers time to complete the survey. Moving forward, we should keep this in mind, visiting stores during slow hours, on rainy days, and entering stores that appear more empty or slow moving. One thing we noticed is certain stores— such as repair shops or food places— have more constant work, as even when there are not customers, workers must still complete tasks. It would be best to offer these locations brochures, while focusing on in person surveys at empty retail locations. 3. Use incentives— something we are considering looking into going forward, mentioned by the economic planner who visited class, is offering Yelp reviews to locations we visit. This way, we can make sure that the survey is a reciprocal relationship, and make sure people have a good experience filling it out it. 4. Splitting up— conducting the survey really was a one person process. Moving forward, it might be more useful if the people out in the field that day start at a central location, then work outwards in opposite directions, allowing us to cover more ground. |
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