Welcome and Background Information

                                               Welcome to our final project for URP4273.

Our group members are:

Nick Avalos

Danielle Behr

Alana Palau

Nandi Smith

Question to solve: How many elementary school areas are designed for adequate after-school activities within Alachua County?



From the following layers, our group hopes to manipulate and test data to answer this question.
Once we determine the elementary schools that meet these requirements, we will further investigate the safety of surrounding areas to ensure the child's safety when traveling from school to after-school activities.


1. Alachua county boundary
2. Roads
3. Elementary Schools
4. Elementary School Zones
5. Youth Organizations
6. Parks and Gardens
7. Safety> Child Care Centers
8. Safety> Sex Offenders
9. Cultural Centers

DETERMINATION OF BUFFER:

According to the Alachua County School Board , transportation via school buses will be provided to students who live more than 2 miles away from their school. Using this data, we are under the assumption that elementary school students who live more than 1 mile away are more likely to be driven to school. As a result, in accessing how far they would walk to a park, afterschool care center, or youth organization, we have decided to create a one mile buffer around the schools.

Gainesville is the most child friendly municipality in Alachua County, due to the accommodations of schools, along with the close proximity of amenities for children. 

Sources:

(http://www.sbac.edu/files/_YZFnl_/e9a9decb80e54d8d3745a49013852ec4/Procedure_manual.pdf)

Scope and Characteristics

In order to run tests on our map, we had to first determine what a "child friendly city" involves.
The criteria we determined came from a UNICEF document titled "Building Child Friendly Cities: A Framework for Action".

The most important aspects we chose are:

1. Participation in family, community, and social life
2. Receive basic services, such as education, health care, and shelter
3. Be protected from exploitation, violence, and abuse
4. Walk safely in the streets on their own
5. Meet friends and play
6. Have green spaces for plants and animals
7. Participation in cultural and social events
8. Be an equal citizen of their city, with access to every service, regardless of ethnic origin, religion, income, gender, or disability.



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-When planning to create a "child-friendly" area, urban planners must consider different types of amenities that will contribute positively to the area.

Activity centers are very important in our community for children because:

1. They give children the opportunity to socialize with other kids their age in a controlled, safe environment. 

2. It gives them the power to make their own choices and then learn to accept the consequences.

3. A lot of learning goes on in carefully constructed centers, and kids can learn at their own rates. 

4. They help children grasp the concept of following instructions and taking direction.

Libraries play a vital role in improving children literacy skills. They also serve as a daily outlet for children and other age groups to use as a educational resource. 

Surveys reveal that libraries continue to play a major role in fostering literacy in our nation particularly elementary school children. Public libraries are in a great position to expose children to large quantities of books.

Now just imagine these great resources and centers being available only a few steps a way from your child's school. This will definitely promote a child-friendly area, because then the children will be more likely to use it on a daily basis.

Sources:

(http://www.childfriendlycities.org/documents/view/id/66/lang/en)

Objectives

In order to combine all of these factors, our group has decided to find the most child-friendly elementary school areas. To achieve this goal, we will attempt to run different analysis tests, including definition queries, selecting by attribute, and buffers. Each of our group members is responsible for testing a different aspect of child friendliness (according to the UNICEF document "BuildingChild Friendly Cities) within a 1 mile radius of elementary schools within the City of Gainesville:


Nick and Alana: Registered sex offenders
-Be protected from exploitation, violence, and abuse
-Walk safely in the streets of their own


Nandi: Libraries, Activity and Cultural Centers
-Participation in family, community, and social life
-Participation in cultural and social events

Danielle: Parks, Gardens, Youth Organizations
-Meet friends and play
-Have green spaces for plants

Figure 1. A map of Alachua County featuring all of our chosen layers.

Methodology

Figure 2. A diagram showing how we arrived to our final maps.

As an urban planner, you must first begin researching what features should be analyzed first in order to determine where you will place certain things. In respects to our project, we must first research to determine what defines a child-friendly city/area. In order for us to find these areas, we used a document (BUILDING CHILD FRIENDLY CITIES: A Framework for Action) to help us to justify where to start our search. We then determined to use the roads, sex offenders, child neglect, libraries, cultural centers, activity centers, parks & gardens, childcare, and youth organizations layers to define where child-friendly areas in Gainesville are.

We determined to use a buffer of a 1.0 mile radius for each elementary school in Gainesville, FL and from there we figured out which school areas would serve as our “child-friendly” target areas.

As a start, we applied the libraries, cultural centers, elementary schools, and activity center layers to my ArcMap. We then applied a 1.0 mile radius for each elementary school. We noticed that, to my surprise, not many elementary schools had amenities such as libraries, cultural centers, and activity centers surrounding them or had at least 2-3 of any of these amenities within the one-mile radius. During this search, we found that only seven elementary schools satisfied these requirements. The seven schools were: Terwilliger Elementary School, Wiles Elementary School, Littlewood Elementary School, Finley Elementary School, Foster Elementary School, Williams Elementary School, and Metcalfe Elementary School.  

We also applied the parks & gardens, childcare, and youth organization layers to the ArcMap along with the one-mile radius elementary school buffers. We thought that any buffers that included at least 3 of any of these amenities could be categorized as a “child-friendly” area, because they enhance educational activities outside of school that children can positively get involved in. After determining these areas, we found that Williams Elementary School, Finley Elementary School, Littlewood Elementary School, Foster Elementary School, and Highsprings Elementary/Middle School were schools that included these specifications.

To determine which areas in Gainesville, FL are not “child-friendly”, we applied the one-mile radius to all of the elementary schools and added the “Sex Offenders” layers. We thought that areas that included more than four sex offenders would seem as a threat to the safety of children, especially since it would be in a one-mile radius of their schools where they would be walking. After applying the buffers and Sex Offenders layer, we found that only four schools seemed safe for the children to walk within one-mile of their elementary schools. These schools include Chiles Elementary School, Talbot Elementary School, Littlewood Elementary School, and Finley Elementary School.

Discussion

Figure 3. A map of Alachua County only displaying the amenities and sex offenders within the schools' one mile buffer.

Figure 4. A map of Gainesville only displaying the amenities and sex offenders within the schools' one mile buffer.

Figure 5. A graph displaying statistics of the number of sex offenders found in Gainesville and Alachua County.

Results

After conducting various analyses using several layers, buffers, and specifications, our results showed that Littlewood Elementary and Finley Elementary were considered to be the most child-friendly schools. We first individually researched and mapped out our assigned layers. We then combined everyone's layers and criteria into one cohesive mapping. After combining all layers, we analyzed the school buffer zones for inclusion of all of the criteria. As a result, we found that Littlewood and Finley met all criteria, while simultaneously having the least amount of sex offenders. We noted that the 3 sex offenders within the schools' buffer boundaries are permanently registered sex offenders. All other schools studied only met one of our groups of criteria.

Figure 6. A map of Gainesville that shows the two most child-friendly school areas.

Conclusions

As a result, we combined all of our layers and selections to research which areas were best fit to be categorized as “Child-Friendly” areas. This process included adding all of the elementary schools that satisfied the requirements made by us and through our research. From there, we chose the schools that we had in common as our elementary school areas that were categorized as “Child-Friendly” areas.

According to our results, areas around Finley Elementary School and Littlewood Elementary School are the most “child-friendly” areas in Gainesville, Florida. With these results, we can conclude that these are the best areas for children to be raised in Gainesville.

These results could help urban planners to determine where they would want to add other amenities such as more parks, playgrounds, youth organizations, etc. For example, if an urban planner were presented with a problem about where to include more parks, playgrounds, libraries, and youth organizations; they could use data similar to this to include these in the areas that were not categorized as our “child-friendly” areas. They would include it in the non-child friendly areas, because this would enhance those areas and allow them to become categorized as such.

Ideally, we would have found schools that had all amenities within the 1 mile buffer AND no sex offenders present to ensure both involvement and safety. Since our results show otherwise, we can say that as a whole, Alachua County does not offer very child-friendly cities. If it plans on accommodating more children, there will need to be a lot of revisions into the cities' designs. Gainesville, however, is definitely on its way to being a great city to raise a child.

Sources

• Document used to justify our layer/criteria choices: 
  http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/cfc-framework-eng.pdf
• Alachua County Elementary Schools Code of Conduct

http://www.sbac.edu/files/_efHWF_/64fd8adc85dd44ac3745a49013852ec4/Code-Elementary.pdf

• Alachua County School Board Transportation Document

http://www.sbac.edu/files/_YZFnl_/e9a9decb80e54d8d3745a49013852ec4/Procedure_manual.pdf

• Culture and Development in Children’s Play

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/ehyun/10041/culture_and_development_in.htm

• The Importance of Learning Activity Centers

http://www.ehow.com/info_8408649_importance-learning-activity-centers.html

• The role of Public Libraries in Children’s Literacy Development

http://www.ifpl.org/Junior/studies/Role%20of%20Libraries.pdf

• Child Care Accessibility

http://www.naccrra.org/sites/default/files/publications/naccrra_publications/2012/economysimpactonparentschoices.pdf

• Importance of Youth Organizations

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/KBWTheValueofYouthOrganizing2012.pdf

Post-Presentation: Further Investigation

Do other factors contribute to why these two schools are most child-friendly?

Location: Are these amenities provided because of the schools' location, or do the schools just happen to be placed within busy, well-planned areas?

Figure 7. Urban Clusters present in the Gainesville area.

Demographics: 

Average Home Value: The value of one's home can give some insight into how much money one has or has been able to invest long-term.

Figure 8. Average home value in Gainesville, centered around our two focus schools.

Percent College: Those adults who attend/have attended college tend to have better jobs, and are thus better off financially.

Is there a correlation between average home value and percent of the population who attended college?

Figure 9. Percent of Gainesville's population that received a college education, centered around our two focus schools.

Percent White: Sadly, we are still in a time when being racially dominant can lead to many advancements, including better/higher education and higher paying jobs.

Figure 10. Percent of Gainesville's population that identifies with the 'White' race, centered around our two focus schools.

What conclusions can be made?

• Littlewood and Finley are not located within urban clusters, thus providing evidence that the amenities were provided in order to benefit the surrounding communities, many of which have homes with children.
• Littlewood and Finley are surrounded by homes that average at least $125,000 in value, and many of which exceed $250,000 in value.
• Littlewood and Finley are almost exclusively the only Elementary schools in Gainesville that have 80-100% of its surrounding adult population having attended college.
•  Littlewood and Finley are surrounded by communities that are 80-100% composed of people that fall under the 'White' race.
• As you can see, the surrounding schools have less "beneficial" surrounding communities, meaning they are lower in value, have a lower college percentage, and have greater race diversity.