By: Svetlana Babaeva

We’re thrilled to once again showcase the impressive work of a GIS student from Santa Monica College! This time, we spotlight the exceptional talents of Svetlana Babaeva, whose dedication and analytical skill shine through in her latest project. Svetlana has taken on one of the most urgent and complex issues facing Californians today: the dramatic and ongoing rise in rent across Los Angeles County. With a sharp geographic lens and a commitment to uncovering meaningful insights, she’s mapped and analyzed this crisis with clarity and purpose. In her own words …

Los Angeles, often seen as a land of opportunity and the embodiment of the “California Dream,” drew me in 2019 with its vibrant cultural energy. However, I soon encountered the city’s harsh reality: a crushing housing crisis that personally affected me and nearly a third of my neighbors who spend over half their income on rent.

Understanding the Housing Crisis Through GIS

After five years of observing this crisis and studying geography at Santa Monica College, I realized my personal struggle was part of a larger issue impacting over 60% of Los Angeles County residents. This led me to create Rent Pressure in Los Angeles, a story map using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to pinpoint areas most affected by severe rent burdens. My spatial analysis highlighted central and downtown Los Angeles County as particularly vulnerable, prompting questions about the sustainability of living here. This project has significantly deepened my understanding of how geographic thinking and GIS can illuminate and address critical real-world issues beyond just housing. These patterns clearly warrant continued investigation within this area of study.

Acknowledgements

I am incredibly grateful to the Santa Monica College Geography Program for their exceptional guidance. Special thanks to Professor Jing Liu, whose five GIS courses and unwavering support were instrumental in developing this project and my forthcoming Geospatial Technology certificate. I also extend my sincere appreciation to Professor Robert O’Keefe for introducing me to critical geographic thinking, Professor Pete Morris for his insightful, multidisciplinary approach to California geography, and Professor William A. Selby for his inspiring presentations. Their combined contributions have provided an invaluable foundation and continue to inspire my geographic explorations.

Showcase Your Geographic Work on Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography

Are you passionate about California’s landscapes, communities, or pressing challenges? Have you created maps, visualizations, research projects, or multimedia presentations that explore the geography of the Golden State? If so, we invite you to contribute to Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography — an online platform dedicated to telling California’s story through a geographic lens.

We’re looking for student and faculty contributions that connect clearly to California — whether you’re examining climate change impacts, housing and rent patterns, water resources, wildfire dynamics, transportation systems, cultural diversity, immigration, or any number of issues shaped by place and space. Submissions can be analytical or creative, visual or written, but they must offer geographic insight into the state’s dynamic human or physical landscapes.

By sharing your work, you not only gain professional exposure but also help inform and inspire others to better understand California — its regions, its people, and the challenges it faces.

If you’re interested in being featured, or have a student whose work deserves a wider audience, we’d love to hear from you! Let’s rediscover the Golden State together, one geographic story at a time.

The post Rent Pressure in L.A first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

At Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography, one of our missions is to feature the impactful work of students who apply geographic thought and analysis to pressing California issues. We’re proud to present Jason Runnels, a dedicated student from Santa Monica College.

Jason has completed a significant project titled Wells, Crops, and Crisis: Exploring the Spatial Relationships Between Groundwater Depletion, Crops and Landcover in Tulare County, CA. This timely and insightful work delves into the critical issue of groundwater depletion in Tulare County, examining its spatial relationships with agricultural practices and land cover.

We encourage you to explore Jason’s work by following the link above. Additionally, please take a moment to read his bio (see below) and learn more about his motivations for addressing this critical issue.

A twenty-five-year resident of California, Jason Runnells, the creator behind this featured project, brings a deeply personal perspective to the state’s pressing water resource challenges. With roots in a multi-generational Colorado farming family, he possesses a lifelong appreciation for the intricate relationship between land and water in semi-arid environments. This foundational interest has culminated in a focused exploration of Tulare County’s groundwater issues, a critical component of California’s larger sustainability puzzle.

This project leverages the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to investigate the complex spatial interplay between shifting groundwater levels and established land use patterns. The resulting analysis provides valuable insights for the broader conversation surrounding water management and long-term environmental planning in the region.

Jason’s path to geography and GIS is as unique as his perspective. After a successful two-decade career in the music industry, a desire to more deeply understand the natural world led him back to academia. Under the mentorship of Professor Jing Liu at Santa Monica College, a passion for cartography and spatial analysis was ignited. This newfound dedication to geography has led to an internship as the GIS lead for The Canyon Alliance, where he is instrumental in developing geographic databases and tools to support local disaster preparedness efforts.

Upon graduating this spring with an associate degree in Geography, Jason will continue his studies at UCLA, pursuing a major in Geography/Environmental Studies and a minor in Geospatial Information Systems & Technologies. This project stands as a testament to his dedication and a promising glimpse into a future dedicated to applying the power of geography to real-world environmental challenges.

The post Wells, Crops, and Crisis first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

One topic of concern that is familiar to Angelinos is the toll that the car culture has on the environment and quality of life in southern California. In a detailed and informative story map presentation, Amir Heibl, a GIS student at SMC, posed real-world geospatial questions while employing appropriate and innovative spatial analysis methods to address those issues.

We invite you to view his thought-provoking work entitled Gimme Shelter!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with GIS, it can be thought of broadly as the marriage of computer cartography and database management. More specifically, it is a computerized system for capturing, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing geospatial information. Crucially, the data in a GIS contains a locational element which allows for spatial analysis of anything plotted on the surface of the Earth.

GIS is frequently used to answer why things are where they are. In the case of many human endeavors, it also helps decide where things will go or be. Businesses increasingly use GIS for such tasks as locating their customer bases, maximizing the efficiency of delivery fleets, and finding the best location to put in a retail store. Governments use GIS for a host of applications. From knowing the location of a city’s fire hydrants, to managing critical habitat and open space, to tracking and understanding the movement of goods, services, and people though a city, state or nation, GIS helps administrators make informed and timely decisions with real-world implications for the people they serve.

But GIS, along with interactive mapping applications, can be used effectively as a tool for stimulating learning and inspiring critical thought. As we have now seen in Amir’s work above, GIS allows you to explore spatial data, ask questions about that data and display it in ways that provide insights and inspiration for others to follow up on or act upon.

If you are interested in learning GIS at Santa Monica College, please check out their offerings in Geography Program in the Earth Sciences Department.

** Rediscovering the Golden State: California Geography welcomes submissions of California-themed projects from students and faculty from any CA institution of higher education to be highlighted on our web site. This includes, but is not limited to, articles, papers, maps and presentations– GIS or otherwise).

Even if you are working/ studying outside CA, we’ll consider your contributions too provided the content has a clear and unambiguous connection to California geography.

For more information: info@rediscoveringthegoldenstate.com

The post Gimme Shelter! first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

You may choose to read down this page with its traditional style, but if you would rather view the same story with all the technological marvels of a Story Map, click to this link and you can skip this page: https://arcg.is/inzjD

Melting Pots and Salad Bowls of L.A.: A Culinary and Cultural Study

It’s finally time! You’ve been anticipating it. Imagine your favorite food. Really, close your eyes for a second and imagine it. Its aroma fills the air and brings back happy memories or feelings of home. It’s right there, on its way to your mouth. That first bite. It sends you back. Back to your childhood. Back to your family and friends. Back Home. In that moment you’re connected. We’re all connected. For it’s food that binds us; it’s food that nurtures us; and it’s food that unites us all.

Food is an integral part of culture, so much so, that one of the first things people do when immigrating into a new home is establish communities and restaurants to feed them. The US has long been called the Great American Melting Pot, and no other city on Earth can match the cultural diversity that Los Angeles has to offer.

Whether you’re a newly minted Angeleno, a long time resident, or just someone looking to maximize their experience when visiting this wonderful city, you don’t want to miss all the greatness LA has to offer. Large cities like this offer a world of cultural and culinary experiences; and, if you haven’t explored a city’s hot spots, it’s like you’ve never been there at all.

Ever get an invite to join friends at an Ethiopian restaurant only to realize you’ve never even had Ethiopian food before? Maybe not, but there’s certainly some great foods out there still waiting for you to try. You can learn a lot about the cultural makeup of a city by eating your way through those communities formed around food. You can become a more learned and improved traveler without even needing a passport.

“Culinary Communities” aren’t always labeled on a map in obvious ways like LA’s Koreatown might be, but with some geospatial analysis, you can get a good idea of where they are. Below, we’ll explore what came up for Los Angeles. And, for those geospatial buffs out there, you’ll find more about how these maps were generated towards the end.

Major Culinary Hot Spots Maps
The intuitive way to read the maps below is to see redder spots as having a statistically significant and higher than expected concentration of a given restaurant type than if these restaurants were evenly distributed throughout LA County – These are “Hot Spots.” The areas which are more blue are, similarly, “Cold Spots.” Dark, uncolored areas, don’t necessarily lack restaurants, they’re just areas where the concentration isn’t significantly high or low.

As you peruse these maps, you will notice that they unveil some interesting trends, but they may also encourage even more questions, especially from seasoned locals who are familiar with these places. There are multiple variables to question here, until they can become overwhelming. How does one decide how to categorize each type of ethnic food and its origins? How do we even define the boundaries of a region of the globe, such as what is considered to be in the Middle East? How do we count restaurants that may enthusiastically identify with one particular ethnic group’s cuisine, though they may offer that famous L.A. fusion mix, until it becomes a less genuine version that is Americanized, or California-ized? How might have these restaurants been forced to change as their neighborhoods evolved demographically? Some of these restaurants may have been stranded, now representing cultural enclaves of the past. We will try to address a few of these questions that may arise for each map.

Digging Deeper – Asian Restaurants
You may be thinking: “isn’t it an oversimplification to lump entire continents of people together?” You may have even seen the work of our friends at The Radical Dot Map and noticed intuitive spatial correlations between ethnicity and the culinary maps above, but also noticed these maps don’t get very granular. ‘Asian’ is pretty broad. There are a lot of distinct cultures lumped into that label. Why do cartographers keep doing that? Well, in part, it’s because even the 2010 census lumped people into 6 groups this way.

High level aggregations like this are easy to understand, but don’t paint the picture with as full a pallet as they could. Below we’ll add some detail to just one of those categories and map out hot spots of different types of Asian Restaurants in LA.

Map Wrap Up Notes from Javier

Those of you not from LA may not know of the late, beloved culinary critic Johnathan Gold.  Gold was loved and welcome at any table in any neighborhood as if he were an old friend or family. He brought cultures together by introducing them to each other’s food and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it.  He had a profound appreciation for the culture and history of LA.  

Think of all the divisiveness you see these days. Now, imagine instead, if we were all a little more like Gold.  All you have to do is grow your comfort zone a little and explore your city.  Post-COVID, if you’re fortunate enough to be near Los Angeles, you could take a food tour and Eat Your Way Through LA!  You could plan to visit a handful of places in a given area each month and by this time next year you’ll find yourself much more appreciative of the food and culture of your great city. There are plenty of apps that will help you do this.  Use an app like Swarm to make it easy to Remember Everywhere you’ve been and want to go.  Or create a blog. It’s amazing how many foodie-followers you can get.  Get out there and expand your horizons.  The more we’re all a bit more like Gold, the more our diversity multiplies our strength as a community.

Appendix

You can see how this evolved into a project that demonstrates the power and limitations of maps as much as it illustrates the distributions of ethnic restaurants and cultures in L.A. County. We are reminded that maps are only as reliable and trustworthy as the data used and the people who make them and that these technologies are improving by the day. If you are interested in more details about how the data, science, and technology were molded into these cartographic works of art, continue reading through the next sections.         

About the Data
The restaurant’s data used was pulled from Foursquare’s Places Database – a comprehensive dataset spanning 190+ countries and 50 territories.  The data set is updated daily as our world is constantly evolving. This analysis was done in December 2020.    

The Foursquare Places Database has a rich set of attributes you could use to understand the world around you.  This analysis only needed a few of them:  the restaurant’s location, the restaurant’s categorization, and information telling us if the restaurants were part of a national chain.  

Independent, locally owned and operated locations are more representative of a community than national chains like McDonald’s or Subway; so, all chain locations were removed. Certain other categories like Dessert Shops, Bakeries, and Coffee Shops were removed as they weren’t unique enough to any particular culture. The remaining thousands of locations tell a very detailed story and could fall into one of 350 different categories related to food. These locations were aggregated up using personal judgement into the major categories seen above in the first set of maps.  For example Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan Restaurants were combined into a single “Indian Subcontinent” Grouping.  For the second set of maps diving deeper into Asian restaurants, most of the detailed categories were left as is, with little aggregation. Details on these recategorizations can be found in this gist. Once recategorized, this data can easily be fed into your favorite geoanalysis tool.

About the Geospatial Hot Spot Analysis
All of the above maps were built using ArcGIS Pro’s Optimized Hot Spot Analysis readily available in its Spatial Statistics toolbox. This tool aggregates point data, the location of restaurants of a given culinary category in this case, into the cells of a fishnet grid or hexagon polygon layer. These generated polygons are then compared to their neighbors and cells are categorized as being either statistically not significant or as being significant “hot spots,” or “cold spots.”    

The categorization algorithm running underneath is the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic. In our analysis, the default fishnet cell size was chosen to be 500m by 500m and a bounding polygon capturing commercially feasible areas for restaurants was supplied. The algorithm evaluates whether a given fishnet cell can be considered as a statistically significant hotspot or cold spot by comparing restaurant distributions to theoretical random distributions generated within the supplied bounding polygon and calculating a z-score and a p-value for each cell. For statistically significant (evaluated by p-value) positive z-scores, the larger the z-score is, the more concentrated restaurants are in that area (hot spot). For statistically significant (evaluated by p-value) negative z-scores, the smaller the z-score is, the more intense the clustering of low values (cold spot).  

It should be noted that not all categories had enough locations to produce reliable results. ArcGIS Pro’s Optimized Hot Spot Analysis tool requires certain threshold numbers of input locations. This is why there are far more categories of restaurant available than maps shown above.  

About The Authors

Javier Soliz does data engineering and analysis in service of revenue generation as a Sales Engineer for Foursquare Labs Inc.. 

William (Bill) Selby is a Geographer and lover of the rich culture of California. He is the author of Rediscovering the Golden State. More here.

Jing Liu is a professor of Geography and GIS (Geographic Information Science) at Santa Monica College. She is also on the team of Rediscovering the Golden State. More here.

The post Mapping L.A.’s Melting Pot Restaurants first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

Will 2020 go down in history as the taxing year that broke California or the year when we met unprecedented challenges that forced us to make necessary changes and paved our way toward a brighter future? Can such a heartbreaking year of disease, distrust, and divisions be turned into the year when we discovered how to make positive change, when we celebrated our diversity and strengthened our connections that have been highlighted throughout this project? Those who might have previously questioned why we sometimes wandered into analyzing these struggles, conflicts, and controversies that trouble us aren’t asking any more in this year of reckoning. These lessons in human geography help us understand why each of us must accept personal responsibility for resisting or following those who have lost their moral compass, the selfish opportunists who exploit our divisions by creating more victims, enabling behavior that could leave us spiraling into a dystopian future.

The dragon that threatens us feeds on ignorance that digests into the putrid hate, stereotyping, fear, and discrimination that can poison our state and its people and its leaders. We must be armed with knowledge to slay this dragon. And so we offer plenty of information in this story and this project that might help speak truth to power and to those who might abuse it and to empower those who might not have it. Here, we will again take the higher road toward a brighter future that starts by using the knowledge that liberates us. In our never-ending efforts to encourage researchers with different perspectives who can add to the wealth of evidence that informs us about the Golden State, Bill Bowen will make his contribution with maps. We can slay the dragon by learning from such geographers and related influencers with their diverse expertise.   

He is a native of where the Sacramento Valley spills into the Delta. He earned his PhD studying with renowned geographers during the exciting growth years at a storied institution: UC Berkeley. He migrated to southern California to build a family and a long, distinguished career as a leading geographer at California State University, Northridge. Today, he remains very active, years after finally returning to the other side of Sacramento with his family, proving how geographers can make notable and lasting contributions long after “retirement”. Bill Bowen continues to be an impactful influencer, by refining and applying his geospatial technology skills, and using them to produce impressive and informative maps that shed more light on our Golden State. We thank him for contributing substance to our project through the years and for sharing some of his latest creations.         

We start with two images Bowen captured from the air back in the autumn of 2016. They demonstrate how a geographer can look down on his home with a clearer lens that reveals fascinating patterns; these are the detailed imprints on our landscapes that unveil secrets about the physical and human systems and cycles that rule our world. The first image (above) displays how agricultural patterns and activities still dominate so much of the Sacramento Valley and how farmers use prescribed burns (on allowed burn days dictated by air quality) to remove crop residues such as hay and rice and to better control weeds, pests, and diseases. It reminds us how the Sacramento Valley plays a key role in making California the leading agricultural state, still without a close rival.

The second image (above) looks east and upstream along the Yuba River as it flows out of the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Yuba City. You can see imprints left behind from 170 years of mining and water management that have altered the Yuba River drainage basin’s natural hydraulic and sediment transfer systems. You can also see the maze-like dredge tailings, known as the Gold Fields, reminding us of the historic Gold Rush that changed California forever. This basin is now being reimagined and reengineered with long overdue 100-year flood protection and ecosystem restoration projects. The purpose is to block and control flows that can then be diverted or percolated into local aquifers, while protecting endangered migratory birds and fish. Dantoni, Marigold, Hammonton, Timbuctoo, and Sucker Flat are just a few of the colorful historic place names along this river basin that most people never thought of as Californian, places with histories, cultures, and landscapes pretending they could be thousands of miles away from the state’s powerful coastal cities.

Next we turn our attention to the informative maps that Bowen has recently produced, demonstrating how GIS has transformed the way we make maps and examine our state. The first map (above) unveils political divisions that we have frequently addressed in our publication and on this web site. It reminds us of Rob O’Keefe’s county map in our publication, where he displayed presidential election results from 2016. Bowen’s points map clearly paints those two Californias and the transition between them. Democrats dominate in most coastal cities, but less so as we move inland and into more distant suburbs. The farther we travel into more remote rural inland communities, the more Republicans tend to dominate the electorate, with some notable exceptions.

The next map (above) shows the percentage of adult Californians at each location who have NOT graduated from high school. Note that, in and near most coastal cities, less than 3% of adults have not graduated from high school. But that number dramatically increases to more than 21% as we move inland into rural communities where primary industries (such as farming) dominate. Specifically, the Central Valley, Imperial Valley, and Salinas Valley stand out. These regions are home to high numbers of migrant farm workers and fewer educational opportunities. The contrasts between highly-educated populations concentrated in coastal cities and clusters of less-educated people in rural inland communities is clear. Exceptions can be found within a few low-income neighborhoods in some cities that house pockets of less-educated service workers. On the other extreme of exceptions are the occasional clusters of inland communities that have attracted retirees or other more educated Californians escaping from crowded cities into resorts and communities surrounded by nature and open spaces, such as in the Sierra Nevada foothills.           

California’s patterns of polarized politics, cultures, and economies are evident on these maps. For instance, Berkeley (where there are 24 Democrats to every Republican) stands out in Bowen’s political map. (The other top Democratic strongholds are an interesting mix of both upper income white and lower income communities with people of color in the Bay and L.A. areas.) The cultural connections are fascinating. For instance, in the annual Niche rankings that are based on what are considered rigorous analysis of data and reviews, Berkeley consistently leads as one of the top ten best places to live in America, including the best suburb and healthiest city. Recently, Apartment Guide ranked Berkeley as the top coffee city in the country, with the greatest number of coffee shops and cafes specializing in coffees and teas/capita (1/2,073 residents). San Francisco ranked third in the nation in the same coffee study. And it is no surprise that the state’s wealthy coastal communities (such as in Marin County, with its high percentage of graduate degrees) consistently rank highest in educational attainment AND cost of living surveys. Follow along to examine the two Californias. 

These communities with high numbers of students, professors, and highly-skilled professionals (such as the Silicon Valley and southern California’s Silicon Beach and Tech Coast) stand out in contrast to lowest-ranked communities that are usually found far inland, where primary industries with their less skilled work forces dominate economies, cultures, and landscapes and where the cost of living is relatively low. Central Valley or Inland Empire cities often place on worst places to live lists (such as research published in 24/7), where surveys find some of the least healthy residents with the highest poverty rates and lowest educational attainment. There are plenty of Californians who live in cities, suburbs, and remote inland locations who would take exception to what might be considered unfair over-generalizations and stereotypes here. Our state has 40 million different perceptions and definitions of happiness and quality of life and even more ways of measuring them. But that doesn’t dismiss the power of these maps and what we can learn from them. 

Notice the striking general similarities between trends in northern/central California and southern California. Dominant greens show highly educated populations along the coasts, trending to a more varied mix into the suburbs, especially locations that could be perceived to be within commuter distance of major cities. As we move farther inland, we become more detached from the coastal cities until the reds of large percentages of people without college degrees may dominate.

Combine all of these maps and you can see many different variations and methods of measuring and defining the two Californias. According to studies in publications such as Education, people with advanced graduate degrees earn 3.7 times more than those who have not completed high school. These highly educated people tend to settle in and near major metropolitan areas with corporate headquarters and the best jobs. We can now add ethnic groups into the mix. Compare these with the previous maps to better understand which communities thrive with highly educated populations and which communities struggle without education and other resources, yet more ways to define and measure the two Californias.

How might you use the information in this story to respond to the challenges that have erupted during 2020? As I write this, the symptoms of the disease are all around us. They come in the form of the Public Safety Alerts that blare out of our phones to announce the latest curfew, the constant whine of sirens from responders trying to quell the violence, and the ominous presence of National Guard forces that have settled on our city streets. The symptoms are also evident in the senseless violence that left the detritus of destroyed businesses and public property in our downtown that will cost us millions of dollars to restore. In the middle of this chaos, one of the more poignant and common graffiti read, Eye for an Eye, an unintended and somewhat ironic reminder of how we continue to act in ignorance as if we were all blind. So, it is hoped that some of the information here might encourage us to use our intelligence that will help cure our disease and build a road toward the light. Knowing “where” is just a start.

The next logical step is to add to the impressive research and analyses that help us understand these patterns we observe. Historical institutionalized discrimination, segregation, racial restrictive covenants, redlining, white flight, migrations, growing gaps between working- and upper-classes, gentrification, access to and defunding of public education, tribalism, growth of new ethnic enclaves, job opportunities for highly-skilled and less-skilled workers, affordable housing and cost of living, access to health care and other services, commute times, and perceptions of living standards are part of a much longer list of multiple variables to be studied. Environmental considerations such as topography, microclimates, exposure to pollution, access to open space and natural resources, natural hazards risks, and related quality of life variables also help explain these maps since these factors are perceived very differently by diverse groups when they are forced to decide where to live. Many of these variables can be mapped and layered to help us understand what are otherwise extremely complicated human behaviors, decisions, and patterns on the land. Such research will help us solve the problems that confront us in 2020 and beyond as we more effectively address the issues we have tackled in this project and in our publication.

Start with a wealth of practical and research experiences, add astute and perceptive landscape appreciation, throw in some good geospatial technology skills, and you have created some impactful geography with powerful influence potential that can change the world. Now, it’s your turn.

The post Bill Bowen Maps California’s Many Faces first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.