Academic Year 2015-16    

· Winter-Spring 2016 · 
Vitale  ·  Wilson-Brown  ·  Park  ·  Santiago

"The Monroeville Doctrine: The Suburbanization of Industrial Research in Twentieth Century Pittsburgh"

Patrick Vitale, PhD

Friday, January 22nd, 2016
 Noon to 1:15pm, 1st Floor Conference Room, 3343 Forbes Ave

Patrick is a Faculty Fellow in the Draper Program at New York University. He is currently revising a book manuscript, The Atomic Capital of the World, which examines the role of nuclear science and technology in the remaking and suburbanization of Pittsburgh during the Cold War. The manuscript is under contract with the University of Minnesota Press.

The suburban research laboratory was not miraculously born in the post-World War II era. Rather, it emerged early in the twentieth century as part of the growing mechanization and sophistication of manufacturing, the deepening spatial and social division between the conceptualization and execution of work, the emergence of the corporation, and the movement of industry into the suburbs. This paper examines the history of industrial research in Pittsburgh suburbs from the opening of Westinghouse’s Forest Hills Laboratory in 1916 to the closing of numerous research centers in the 1990s. It describes how the decentralization of industrial research facilities was part of a long-standing process of industrial suburbanization that helped reproduce conditions for capital accumulation, including creating special spaces for industrial scientists and engineers that preserved their class positions and status. It also demonstrates that Pittsburgh and its suburbs have long been important sites of the "knowledge economy."

"Coupling Systems, Building Coalitions: Connecting Housing, Energy and Transit in U.S. Cities"

Barbara Wilson Brown, PhD

Friday, February 26th, 2016
Noon to 1:15pm, 1st Floor Conference Room, 3343 Forbes Ave

Barbara is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia, where her work focuses on the ethics, theory, and practice of sustainable community design and development, and on the history of urban social movements. She is particularly concerned with the modes in which social values engage with the built world in the age of climate change.

Although many posit that the city should be understood as a complex adaptive system, the programs and policies meant to propagate sustainable development are rarely integrated. This brown bag seminar will consider the importance of coalition building for sustainable development by discussing a comparative case study of approaches taken to preserve and retrofit unsubsidized housing along transit corridors in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and Denver. Unsubsidized or ‘naturally occurring’ affordable housing plays an important role in the provision of housing to lower income households in most cities. As development pressures rise around transit corridors, unsubsidized affordable housing stock is increasingly at risk. Though each case study city employs a unique approach to address this challenge, all three cities struggle with the challenges of integrating issues of sustainability, of affordability, and of opportunity into one system. To that end, networks emerged in each city that serve as the connective tissue for these efforts. How these coalitions emerge, sustain themselves, and enact change will be the topic of this talk.

"Operating the Game-theoretic National Interstate Economic Model:  A Numerical Example of Aviation Cyber Security"

JiYoung Park, PhD

Friday, April 15th, 2016
Noon to 1:15pm, 1st Floor Conference Room, 3343 Forbes Ave

JiYoung received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2007 and was employed as a post-doctoral scholar at the CREATE center of USC. Dr. Park developed the National Interstate Economic Model (NIEMO). NIEMO is a spatially disaggregated operational multiregional input-output model of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. and provides such estimates including economic mitigation, substitution, and resilience effects. His research interests includes analyzing economic costs and resilience effects of shocks to urban and regional infrastructure and transportation systems by using applied econometrics and economic modeling techniques. Based on NIEMO, Dr. Park has formulated various spatial and temporal extensions that provide alternate predicted futures for various policy makers at the urban, regional, national and international levels. Recent research topics include global maritime economics and logistics associated with the Panama Canal expansion, freight movement issues in near-border cities, and global security issues on airport systems His research outcomes include 4 multi-coauthored academic books and numerous peer-review articles. He awarded UB’s Exceptional Scholar Award in 2013.

This study suggests the development of a quantifying framework of direct and indirect economic damages caused by a cyber-attack on an airport security system. The vulnerability of an aviation system to cyber-attacks has been increasing due to the reliance of transportation systems on internet-based technologies. A cyber-attack on a major U.S. aviation hub has the potential to cause damage to both U.S. and global economies since airport systems are tightly interrelated both locally and globally. Measuring the economic impact of cyber-attacks against an airport is important to predict the expected economic impact of an attack on the U.S. aviation system. By combining the probability of an attack with the value of subsequent economic impacts, a new operating framework that contributes to an understanding of strategies in cyber-terror security is suggested. It is called a Game Theoretic National Interstate Economic Model (G-NIEMO) that combines competitive games with a multiregional economic impact model of the U.S. and can be used to identify the probabilistic costs of airport closure and the economic importance of cyber security both by place of event and type of industry. Using the equilibrium strategies identified by G-NIEMO, general guidelines to evaluate security resource allocations will be developed to help airport administrators and aviation security agencies understand optimum levels of security at U.S. airports.

"Exacting a Pound of Flesh:  Neighborhood Environments, Childhood Food Insecurity and Obesity"

Anna Santiago, PhD

Friday, May 20th, 2016
Noon to 1:15pm, 1st Floor Conference Room, 3343 Forbes Ave

Anna is a Professor of Social Work at Michigan State University. She received her interdisciplinary Ph.D. in urban social institutions from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition, Dr. Santiago completed postdoctoral research training in demography, research methodology, poverty and public policy research at the University of Michigan. Her research examines how place matters in determining the health, opportunities and life chances of low-income Latino and African American children. Since 1997, Dr. Santiago garnered more than $3 million in research funding from sources including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Ford Foundation, the Mac Arthur Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Her publications include numerous articles in peer reviewed journals, book chapters, one co-authored book, Why NOT in My Backyard? and most recently the HUD publication, Opportunity Neighborhoods for Latino and African American Children.

Using data from a natural experiment in Denver for approximately 760 low-income Latino and African American children, this study examines the relationships between neighborhood environmental characteristics and the prevalence and onset of childhood food insecurity and obesity. Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) models with frailties were estimated to determine the timing of onset of childhood food insecurity while Cox Proportional Hazards models using cumulative risk factors were estimated to examine the effects of neighborhood environments on the childhood diagnosis of obesity. We further test the role of food insecurity as a moderator of obesity. More than half of our sample children experienced food insecurity; 1 in 20 were diagnosed as obese. Findings suggest a strong link between food insecurity and diagnosis of obesity during childhood, particularly for Latino children. The implications of these findings for neighborhood-based health initiatives are discussed.