Geography
Calvin team maps health care for low-income patients
 | In summer 2007, Dr. Fred De Jong and social work student Lauren Vander Plas (at left) completed a significant report for the Grand Rapids Healthy Communities Access Program (GRHCAP), a federal grant awarded to Cherry Street Health Services as the head of a regional consortium of health care organizations. |
The report’s maps illustrate the depth and breadth of low-income coverage provided by Grand Rapids’ growing clinic network. For example, the green areas in the map detail below show that the low-income patient population living in central Grand Rapids is a substantial proportion of the estimated low-income population in those same areas.
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CSR Fellows Mulder and Smith to present at Yale conference
 | Constructing a study of faith and cities |
CSR’s faculty Fellows for 2006-2008 are Drs. Mark Mulder of Sociology (on left above) and James K. A. Smith of Philosophy (on right above). The duo will present a report on their work in progress, “Subdivided by Faith,” at the conference on Ecclesiology and Ethnology at Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture on Saturday morning, September 28.
In Spring 2007, students from Dr. Smith’s Philosophy of the Social Sciences class (PHIL 201/SOC 395) and Dr. Mulder’s Urban Sociology class (SOC 302) interviewed local residents from a wide range of religious traditions and geographies to gain insight into religious believers’ attitudes toward urban areas. The presentation at Yale will draw on the scholars’ early readings of these interview transcripts.
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Correlates of Congregational Growth, 2000-2005: Vitality, Purpose, Drums, and Irreverent Joy
What has distinguished growing American congregations from their stagnant and dwindling cousins? Some tentative answers are found in a new report from Faith Communities Today: a growing, youthful demographic setting, a multiethnic constituency, a “vital”, contemporary worship style, and a purposeful organizational disposition to grow and change. Drums and “joyful” worship often went with growth; worship described as “reverent”, unfortunately, did not often accompany numeric growth in weekly attendance (see pages 9 and 10 of the report).
Whether these recent trends are worthy of emulation is a theological and social matter the current report does not address directly. But scholars and laypeople of all stripes may find evidence to inform their perspectives. The report, covering many faiths and denominations, is based on nationwide data collected in 2005 by the Calvin College Center for Social Research.
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Follow the Money: Mapping Campaign Contributions
| What: | Social Science Division Symposium | |
| When: | Tuesday, November 14 @ 3:30PM | |
| Where: | DeVos Communication Center room 170 | |
| Who: | All social science faculty, with other faculty and students welcome. | |
| Speaker: | Neil Carlson, Assistant Director of the Center for Social Research | |
| Topic: | Following the money: mapping flows of campaign contributions. |
The figure below draws on 2004 data including presidential campaigns, mapping interstate flows for 48 states. Most Republican funds propagated indirectly through Washington DC, which is not mapped in this case, though such mapping is feasible. The map was produced by Waldo Tobler's Flow Mapper tool.
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Studying urban sprawl from space
Discover magazine led me to a great find, a new satellite imagery study of urban sprawl in the US by a University of Toronto team led by economist Matthew Turner. The study surprisingly finds less sprawl than expected overall, but major differences among metropolitan areas. Miami is compact, Pittsburgh sprawls. Inter-city differences are explained by differences in “ground water availability, temperate climate, rugged terrain, decentralized employment, early public transport infrastructure, uncertainty about metropolitan growth, and unincorporated land in the urban fringe.” See the working paper or get a copy of the published version from the Quarterly Journal of Economics on the IDEAS site (the download did not work for me, but the citation and abstract are complete).
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