Justice and Opportunity: Spatial Justice and Changing Access to Employment Opportunities in Metropolitan Baltimore, 1990-2000
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Date
2016-01-01
Type of Work
Department
Geography and Environmental Systems
Program
Geography and Environmental Systems
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This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
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Abstract
Since the 1970s, economic restructuring and urban expansion have re-drawn the map of economic opportunity in metropolitan Baltimore. These transformations had different impacts on neighborhoods across the region. Research has typically focused on the labor market outcomes of socio-demographic groups that are disproportionately disadvantaged by these urban transformations, or linked residential location with group identity in a specific socio-demographic group. This research focuses on the impacts of economic restructuring and urban expansion on the economic opportunities, specifically, employment access on different spatial groups across metropolitan Baltimore. This study also presents the idea that spatial justice is lens though which to view employment accessibility. In doing so, differences in access to opportunity shift from issues purely in the realm of public policy to something which residents of communities can become actively involved in transforming. This paradigm considers both the social and the spatial aspects of access, and in addition, this shift allows for the inclusion of a greater number of actors and concerns within an integrated spatial area. The goal of this research was to obtain a better understanding of how economic restructuring and employment decentralization impacted job access for residents living and working within metropolitan Baltimore from 1990 to 2000. I present an overview of the demographic changes that occurred within residential areas of metropolitan Baltimore, and the shifting patterns of employment within the major industrial categories from 1970 to 2000, with a focus on neighborhood-level change between 1990 and 2000. Then, using Google Maps to calculate travel costs, I measured employment access with two separate accessibility measures. The results suggest that centers of employment play an important role in determining accessibility within the metropolitan region. Residential neighborhoods located in and around centers of employment have access to a higher number of employment opportunities and faster commuting times However, access was not equal among socio-spatial demographic groups residing in different areas of the metropolitan region. The findings suggest that access is related to spatial location and that different neighborhoods have experienced changes to that access over time in distinct ways.