Work Examples

Data Analysis and Visualization

City of Arlington SocioEconomic Profile

Built primarily in Illustrator and Excel, the report utilizes American Community Survey and local economic data. This report introduced an updated format to the SocioEconomic Profiles that is still being used as a template for current iterations.

City of Arlington Unity Council Report

This report represents the effort of many individuals to clearly portray the equity and equality disparities facing the City of Arlington. My responsibilites were primarily focused on data collection and visualization. The data in this report was presented to the Unity Council in a visually similar 'data report,' designed and organized by my direction, and revised by my superiors. The initial report was used as a basis for this final report, with the assistance of a graphic designer.

Mapping Applications

City of Arlington's Development Dashboard:
Click here to view the dashboard

This dashboard was created using ESRI's ArcGIS Pro and online applications to provide an interactive experience to view the City of Arlington's open and transparent data. Everything displayed through this dashboard is publicly available through the City's Open Data website. While the Open Data website contains much more data, this dashboard specifically shows data relevant to the development process and physical development of the City of Arlington. This project has also been featured on UNHABITAT's compendium of people-centered practices, as seen HERE.

Research

Master's Thesis

Building on Spatial Mismatch: A New Review of Literature and An Example Case Study

Abstract: Barriers to employment exist at different levels for minority groups, especially those that are residentially segregated. Many studies have examined these barriers, including a physical separation between the residential location and the available job opportunities since John Kain’s 1968 Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis. However, recent studies of modal mismatch, racial mismatch, and skill or language mismatch, have been identified with significant impact on accessible employment without being including in a comprehensive review of mismatch literature. This research provides an updated literature review of Spatial Mismatch. It also includes a case study of a little studied region, Dallas – Fort Worth metropolitan area. The case study found that spatial accessibility is not significant to unemployment rates for the DFW area, however they are significant when reviewing Dallas county alone, implying a sensitivity directly to the chosen area of study. Where Spatial Mismatch may be unfounded for a larger area, inequities of access may exist for smaller divisions of area and in need of intervening policies or programs

Listed as Co-Author

Transit in Flex: Examining Service Fragmentation of New App-Based, OnDemand Transit Services

Abstract: The transportation industry may be going through its largest technological revolution in a century, with new forms of on-demand transportation capitalizing on innovations like the GPS chips to develop app-based, on-demand transportation, connecting user and driver, known alternatively as ridesourcing, ride-hailing, Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). As TNCs spring up along with other app-based, on-demand service models like ridesplitting, microtransit and E-Hail, among others, a growing number of cities are considering whether they could shed the high cost and unprofitability of running fixed route transit services through conversion to app- based, on-demand systems. Fixed route public transit has traditionally been hampered by political fragmentation, manifested in numerous geographical service gaps created by a failure of local transit agencies to plan for cross-jurisdictional services. Fragmentation can create equity concerns for residents of transit deserts, unable to access key services across the city or county line. For example, the Detroit man James Robertson spent several hours commuting to work because his job was located in a city that did not join the transit system, and his route crossed two counties—each with its own bus system. This required an untimed transfer, and a long walk (Laitner, 2015). Similarly, the Dallas Fort Worth metro region suffers from large service gaps, with Arlington and Grand Prairie both sitting outside the region’s large transit systems.
This study examines how the problem could change, or perhaps be overcome, by the onset of app-based, on-demand transportation technology. Since jurisdictional fragmentation is a problem rooted in excessive local government autonomy (Weinreich, Skuzinski, Hamidi, 2018 working paper), conceivably, this could be overcome by private services, when funded by private sources, and regulated by states and regional governments, rather than locally.

This study surveys public officials across a range of medium to large local governments and the transit agencies that serve them, revealing which ones are in the process of “uberizing” their transit systems; what steps they have/have not taken to overcome fragmentation from the past; and what policy solutions regional leaders think could be implemented to provide services more favorable to cross-jurisdictional trips. This study concludes by identifying opportunities for better coordination across services and for federal and state policy makers to incentivize coordination at the local level. The authors find that transit agency service boundaries and municipal jurisdictional boundaries had a large and negative impact on service integration across jurisdictional lines. Yet much of the funding for the myriad pilot services comes from the same sources—state and federal funds, or MPO/COG support. This study recommends stronger requirements by federal and state governments, and by MPOs, to require service integration as a condition for receiving grant funds.

Making Tolling Transparent: Analyzing Processes Used To Allocate & Distribute Toll Highway Revenue In Multiple States

Abstract: Transportation finance has become increasingly unreliable in recent years, due to the declining revenue available from the motor fuel tax, increasing auto efficiency, and political reluctance to raise taxes. Some states have relied on toll revenue and other user fees to overcome these revenue challenges. However toll roads are often unpopular, due to poor transparency stemming from uncertainty over whether tolls will be used to support the facility and the drivers who use it, or support other uses generally deemed to be socially equitable. Despite growing interest in toll finance, there is little understanding in the transportation literature of how independent local tolling agencies decide to raise and spend money. This study hypothesizes that different toll road governance models provide varying incentives to raise tolls and spend them on various purposes. This study catalogues toll roads from across the US, using state enabling legislation to classify toll roads by governance type (e.g. private, public-private-partnership, public corporation, independent regional/local special agency, independent state agency, state-managed, though there may be others). This study selects a representative sample of 60 toll roads across 20 US states, chosen based on their governance type, centerline miles, and rate of toll increase since 2007. This study examines meeting minutes, comprehensive annual financial reports and other primary sources to identify whether/how much tolls were increased/decreased, and for what purpose, identifying incentives for toll roads to spend money differently based on motivations like public or private status, geographic scope and level of government, among other motivating factors. This study also interviews staff members and elected officials from five toll road agencies, providing further details on why they made decisions to raise or lower tolls, how they intended to use the money, and their relationship to other state and local governments.

Language Assistant

In November 2021 I began working as a Culture and Language Assistant for a high-school in Arroyomolinos, a small town south of Madrid. Without knowing much Spanish, I started this adventure to gain more understanding of another culture and also to hopefully gain some language experience myself. My daily work changes depending on the class of the day as well as the teacher I am working with. My functional role changes between providing presentations to the entire class about an aspect of American life to working with small groups of students to test their English language comprehension and ability. As part of the NALCAP program, I am asked to provide a portfolio and final project.

Portfolio

Here, I provide an introduction, overview of my assigned school, day-to-day activities, and an example introduction presentation.

Final Project

For the final project, I chose to do a debate. The students will learn to use grammatical topics within the context of an informal debate project. In pairs, the students will provide arguments for and against a debate topic of their choice. They must provide factual evidence, rational thinking, and compare and contrast the counter perspective.

Google Sites

Report abuse