The Mobility Network at the University of Toronto Mississauga congratulates the following inaugural recipients of the Graduate Student Research Awards:
Hanlin Zhou
Walkability Assessment Using Street View Imagery
Hanlin Zhou is a second-year PhD student in Human Geography in the Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment. Hanlin Zhou’s research interest is in linking GIS, RS, and CS techniques or data to human activities, such as health behavior, crime problems, and economic issues. Zhou’s research project for the Mobility Network focuses on quantifying the walkability of the micro-built environment (measured by the street view imagery) at a city-wide scale.
Emily Power
Demanding Justice in Transit Planning: A case study of Light Rail Transit Gentrification in Hamilton
Emily Power is a student in the Master of Science in Planning Program in the Department of Geography and Planning. Power’s research interests include planning and social justice, gentrification, financialization of housing, and tenant struggles. Her project for the Mobility Network analyzes transit-induced gentrification and displacement resulting from light rail transit planning in Hamilton, with a focus on the working-class Afro-Caribbean neighbourhoods along the route. This research draws upon Power’s experience as a tenant in the Gibson neighbourhood, living one block south of the proposed LRT, and involvement in King Street Tenants United, a group of tenants fighting back against eviction and demolition of their homes by Metrolinx and the City of Hamilton.
Haifa AlArasi
Grounded mappings of adolescents’ non-school mobility in Mississauga, Ontario
Haifa AlArasi is a Planning PhD candidate focusing on digital ethnographic explorations in reproductions of childhoods and cities. AlArasi’s research examines questions related to practices that are embedded in the environment, the social, and the material. Using grounded spatial visualizations, AlArasi attempts to broaden constructions of marginalized bodies and their associated experiences. Under the Mobility Network, AlArasi will focus on examining fleeting visual narratives of travel produced by newcomer immigrant adolescents that fall under acts of appropriations of claiming the (sub)urban as a legitimate site of childhood.
Sophie Roussy
Spatial associations between marginalization, ambient benzene pollution, and health outcomes: An investigation of environmental inequality across Etobicoke-York, Toronto, Canada
Sophie Roussy is a student at the Master of Science in Physical Geography, Environment and Health Collaborative Specialization. Roussy’s research focuses on the intersection of transportation-related air pollution (TRAP), marginalization, human exposure, including its equitable distribution, and health outcomes. Specifically, Roussy’s research uses spatial interpolation techniques to model the spatial distribution of TRAP, with a specific focus on ambient benzene pollution, across Etobicoke-York, Toronto. The research employs spatial analysis techniques, statistical models, and established dose-response relationships of the air pollutants to health outcomes to examine associations between level of marginalization and disparities in human exposure to TRAP and subsequent health risks, thereby identifying environmentally-driven health disparities across Etobicoke-York.
Contact
Andres Jimenez
Research Associate, Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI)
University of Toronto Mississauga
andres.jimenez@utoronto.ca