Researcher: Di Zhu (Geography, Environment and Society, College of Liberal Arts)
The geography of a community is not constrained by administrative boundaries. It is in essence, comprised of residents who routinely move around and interact with others, often beyond their local spatial context. One of the most challenging problems in community planning is understanding how fine-grained local regions are irregularly and dynamically organized by human movements. In partnership with MN Compass, Move Minnesota, and local planning agencies, this project will propose an integrated data-driven analytical framework to sense dynamic community structures within the Twin Cities metropolitan area from spatiotemporal human mobility networks. We will detect geospatial boundaries of communities, describe dynamic community profiles, and identify key transitions within our community structure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from this study will provide policymakers with better information on how to match programs and resources with place-based community-defined needs such as transportation, healthcare, civic engagement, affordable housing, and public safety.
Edward Goetz
Edward G. Goetz is director of CURA and a faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Ed specializes in housing and local community development planning and policy. His research focuses on issues of race and poverty and how they affect housing policy planning and development. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1988, he worked at the mayor's Office of Housing and Economic Development in San Francisco and for several nonprofit community developers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has served on the board of directors of nonprofit housing agencies in the Twin Cities, and on several regional commissions related to affordable housing and development.
He is the author of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities (Cornell University Press, 2018), New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013), Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (2003, Urban Institute Press), Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (1993, Temple University Press), and co-editor of The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era (1993, Sage Publications).
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