Date of Award

4-2024

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Kathleen Baker, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Benjamin Ofori-Amoah, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Deirdre Courtney, M.A.

Keywords

Census blocks, dasymetric maps, dissimilarity index, Grand Rapids, Kent County, racial residential segregation

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Racial residential segregation has been the foundation for social inequality in American society for many years with links back to slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Many different techniques have been created to study racial residential segregation, with a vast majority of the statistical calculations showing that segregation has been steadily decreasing since the 1960s, sometimes in large amounts. This study seeks to assess these claims by utilizing the same calculations used in those studies and producing dasymetric maps to depict how racial residential segregation is appearing in Kent County, Michigan including Grand Rapids and East Grand Rapids. The following calculations are used to measure racial residential segregation: the dissimilarity index, the interaction index, the isolation index, and the information theory index (Theil’s index). The calculations and maps are produced using Census tracts, Census block groups, and Census blocks as areal units of analysis, and they are produced using Census data from 2000, 2010, and 2020 for Kent County, Grand Rapids, and East Grand Rapids, Michigan. The dasymetric maps use National Land Cover Data (NLCD) from the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) for the years 2001, 2008, and 2019. The results of the statistical calculations indicate that Kent County, Grand Rapids, and East Grand Rapids all experience racial residential segregation to varying degrees, and that the level of racial residential segregation varies based on the areal unit of analysis. The results of the maps show the spatial pattern occurring in these areas, and they also support the conclusions from the statistical calculations.

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