Term-project proposal instruction

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. - John Tukey

Details on your submission:

1. Due: 11:59:00 PM on March 24 (Sunday), 2019
   
2. Where: Canvas
   
3. Deliverables: Clear descriptions of your term project (1-2 pages expected in Microsoft Word or pdf).
   
4. On March 25 (Monday), we will have proposal presentations, and I will read your proposals before coming to class.

1. Overview

Through the term project, I expect you to:

1. practice your R skills,
   
2. do indepth/meaningful geographic data analysis & visualiation, and
3. showcase (i.e., communicate) your work in front of others (e.g., by oral presentation and poster on the first floor).

To achieve these goals, I ask you to include the following items in your term project at the minimum:

1. data sets from three different sources,
   
2. define your own function(s) and use for loop(s) or map functions for iterative operations,
3. create three charts (e.g., via ggplot2) and three maps (e.g., via tmap), which effectively communicate your main findings/interpretations.

As you work on your term project, you’ll find the above requirements are in fact not very challenging.

Schedules:

1. Proposal oral prsentation on March 25th (Monday).
2. Progress report: (tentatively) during the week of April 8th & 10th.
3. Final presentation on April 29th & May 1st (your team will be randomly assigned to either day)
4. Your posters will be displayed publicly (more details will follow).

To help you focus on your term project, I will do:

1. Provide feedback on your proposal,
   
2. Provide feedback on your intermidiate progress report, and
   
3. Reduce the size of HW#6 and Mini#3.

You may be wondering what you can do with R. If that’s the case, think about a project idea, for which you can easily start with ESRI products (e.g., ArcMAP). Almost every spatial data manipulation and analysis (with a few exceptions) is possible with R, so I will help you figure out packages, functions, syntax, and scripting strategies.

2. Core components that I will look for in your proposal

2.1.Background/Literature review

• Ask the following questions when you look for your topic/question
  
• Why is your chosen topic/question important, and why do we need to know about it?
  
• Given that we do not know a lot of other things, why do we need to know your chosen topic/question more than others?

2.2. Data

• Identify at least three data sets in detail on sources, variables, and their merits/shortcomings over other similar data

2.3. Analytical plans

• If you find your approaches have never been applied to study your chosen topic, emphasize it, and how those approaches will generate better output or knowledge.
  
• If you find your approaches are similar to what others have used (or standard approaches in their fields), speficy how your approaches still help us better understand your chosen topics.

2.4. Expected outcomes

• With your geograhpic analysis, what do you expect to deliver during the final presentation?
  
• In terms of formats (maps/plots) and contents (relationships of X and Y)
  
• Your outcomes need not be about causality. Correlation across space in itself is fine with me as long as they are informative/revealing.

2.5. Team members

• specify who your team members are and how you will divide your work

3. Resources

Feel free to choose any topic from your own discipline (e.g., civil/environmental engineering, geography, etc.). In case you may be interested in urban planning/studies/economics topcis, here are some resources.

Data sets often used for urban planning studies (to be updated)
1. The US Census American Community Survey 5-year estimates: use tidycensus
2. LEHD, or Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics: use lehdr
3. The US Census TIGER/Line Shapefile: use tigris
4. US EPA Smart Location Database
5. National Household Travel Survey 2017
6. Google Maps API
7. Walkscore
8. Zillow (if scraping is not feasible, their Zipcode level estimates may be fine)
9. GTFS, or General Transit Feed Specification, and its variants including GBFS, also related data - NYC citibike
10. National Transit Database
11. Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) database
12. Great Schools
13. Ride Austin: data by an Austin, TX based non-profit ridehailing company

Recent issues in urban (transportation) planning and urban economics (to be updated)
1. Gentrification, or neighborhood changes in socioeconomic status
2. Shared mobility: e.g., Uber, Lyft, dockless bikes/e-scooters, and Airbnb
3. Autonomous vehicles: e.g., Waymo’s self-driving taxis
4. Millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers: e.g., how their preferences and choices differ when they were at the same age
5. The equality of opportunity: Visualization on NYT, Does urban sprawl hold down upward mobility?
6. Spatial mismatch

Articles with insights: For latest issues and discussions on urban studies in general.
1. City lab: Search for Richard Florida.
2. Planetizen: Check Top on Planetizen.
3. City observatory
4. Urban Institute
5. Brookings Instutitute, Cities & Regions
6. Urban Land Institute Magazine
7. Pew Research Center
8. New York Times Upshot: Search for Emily Badger.

Academic journals: GT subscribes the following journals. Check their latest issues and learn about latest research outcomes.
1. JAPA
2. JPER
3. JUA
4. Urban Studies
5. JUE