2025/01/01 by Tessa Vu, Vu, Tessa
Social Sciences · #Applied Statistics #Artificial Intelligence and Robotics #Computer Sciences #Demography #Environmental Health and Protection #Environmental Justice and Health Disparities #Environmental Sciences #FOS: Social and economic geography #FOS: Sociology #Geographic Information Sciences #Geography #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies #Human Geography #Inequality and Stratification #Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series #Nature and Society Relations #Physical Sciences and Mathematics #Physical and Environmental Geography #Place and Environment #Population #Race and Ethnicity #Remote Sensing #Social Statistics #Social and Behavioral Sciences #Sociology #Spatial Science #Statistical Models #Statistics and Probability #Urban Studies and Planning #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies #and Ecology #artificial intelligence #computer vision #environmental justice #geoai #geospatial data science #inequality #jim crow #machine learning #path dependency #philadelphia #segregation #spatial data science #urban analysis
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/jn6qh
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/12/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
This project investigates the path-dependency of racialized urban planning in Philadelphia, specifically the liminal spaces occupied by Asian middleman minorities and Black residents during the Jim Crow era (1880–1940). Unlike the binary segregation of the South, Philadelphia’s informal Jim Crow operated at the micro-scale of alleys and street segments. By integrating historical IPUMS Census microdata and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps with modern environmental data from the Philly Emerging Contaminants Initiative (PECI), this study uses computer vision and predictive modeling to determine if historical tri-racial interaction zones are statistically correlated with modern infrastructure contaminants—specifically, higher concentrations of PFAS and microplastics. The project tests the hypothesis that 19th-century tenderloin and bachelor society districts served as industrial buffers that created persistent environmental hazards.