Advancing Thought on the Use of Spatial Techniques and Methods for Urban Analysis

The views expressed in this introduction are those of the guest editors and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Office of Policy Development and Research, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. government.Over the past 20 years, spatial analysis has exploded across a range of uses. Primarily promoted by the rising capacity of Geographic Information Systems (GISs), spatial analysis is now its own scientific field of inquiry, with many journals, conferences, and academic degrees (see Goodchild, 2010, for a recent two-decade review of accomplishments). Analysts have developed spatial analysis tools across many scientific disciplines to measure local variations of social and environmental phenomena. More often than not, the interaction between these phenomena vary across space, suggesting that a spatial approach may be required to fully understand and respond to society's most pressing problems. Spatial tools provide us with a quantitative foundation for understanding these complex interactions and implementing place-based solutions. The symposium in this issue of Cityscape is designed to show how spatial techniques and methods can be creatively applied to a wide range of urban issues.The Spatial Analysis and Methods (SpAM) department of Cityscape was created to demonstrate the use of spatial approaches for urban applications so that readers can replicate the methods in their own research. With SpAM, we also hope to combat the notion that spatial analysis is just mapmaking with GIS.The remarkable growth in use of spatial methods may be expressed quantitatively. Exhibit 1 shows the percentage of journal articles published across several social science disciplines that use some form of spatial analysis. Other surveys demonstrate a similar multidisciplinary growth, such as Fearon (2003), who presents a similar trend with spatial analysis growing from 1.3 percent in 1990 to 3.7 percent in 2001.1 All charted disciplines show a marked upward trend in the use of spatial approaches in understanding the interaction between people and place.This symposium covers a wide range of practical articles that are representative of the published papers represented in exhibit 1. The problems analyzed include crime, vacant land, residential mobility, urban population distribution, neighborhoods and housing, food deserts, segregation, and place meaning. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), like many local governments, is increasingly employing spatial analysis in its work, with the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&rR) playing the key role.Many of HUD's programs are inherently place based. Program data are regularly geocoded and integrated with other spatially enabled sociodemographic and economic data for analytic purposes. PD&R manages the Enterprise GIS (eGIS) program, which supports and coordinates these activities across the entire agency. An important aspect of PD&rR's role in eGIS is the adoption, practice, and promotion of geospatial analytical techniques like the ones presented in this symposium.For example, the dasymetric approach that Jeremy Mennis addresses in his article has been implemented with block-level data to support the grant application process for a number of HUD's signature grant programs, including the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, Choice Neighborhoods, Rural Innovation Fund, and, most recently, Promise Zones. …