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Building footprint-derived landscape metrics for the identification of informal subdivisions and manufactured home communities: A pilot application in Hidalgo County, Texas

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  • Durst, Noah J.
  • Sullivan, Esther
  • Huang, Huiqing
  • Park, Hogeun

Abstract

Informal subdivisions and manufactured home communities make up a substantial share of the United States’ housing stock but receive relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. The time-intensive nature of identifying these often-invisible communities through the analysis of satellite imagery and property records limits their systematic study. What research does exist on these communities suggests that they are often exposed to concentrated forms of economic, social, and environmental vulnerability. This paper uses big data to develop building footprint-derived landscape metrics capable of identifying and distinguishing between informal subdivisions and manufactured home communities based on their morphology. We use a data set of building footprints developed by Microsoft and released publicly in 2018 to measure the size, type, orientation, placement, and uniformity of housing in more than 2000 residential neighborhoods Hidalgo County, Texas, where more than 1000 informal subdivisions have been documented by prior research. Support vector machines (SVMs) and cross-validation are used to test the ability of these metrics to distinguish between three neighborhood types: informal subdivisions, manufactured housing communities, and formal subdivisions (or traditionally planned neighborhoods). Our models can accurately classify these three types of community approximately 91 % of the time. We then examine whether there is evidence to support the further disaggregation of these types of neighborhood, as is the case in both policy and scholarship. Our analysis of the morphology of these communities points to little evidence for the current distinction in state and federal law between pre- and post-1990 informal subdivisions; we do, however, find evidence for the need to distinguish between manufactured home communities with distinct tenure arrangements: namely, land-lease communities that we call manufactured home parks and land-owner communities that we call manufactured home subdivisions. We conclude by offering new research directions made possible by this novel identification method.

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  • Durst, Noah J. & Sullivan, Esther & Huang, Huiqing & Park, Hogeun, 2021. "Building footprint-derived landscape metrics for the identification of informal subdivisions and manufactured home communities: A pilot application in Hidalgo County, Texas," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:101:y:2021:i:c:s0264837720324960
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105158
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kevin Simmons & Daniel Sutter, 2008. "Manufactured home building regulations and the February 2, 2007 Florida tornadoes," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 46(3), pages 415-425, September.
    2. Kevin Simmons & Daniel Sutter, 2007. "Tornado shelters and the manufactured home parks market," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 43(3), pages 365-378, December.
    3. Noah J. Durst & Jake Wegmann, 2017. "Informal Housing in the United States," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 282-297, March.
    4. Casey Dawkins & C. Koebel, 2010. "Overcoming Barriers to Placing Manufactured Housing in Metropolitan Communities," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(1), pages 73-88.
    5. Noah J. Durst & Peter M. Ward, 2016. "Colonia Housing Conditions in Model Subdivisions: A Déjà Vu for Policy Makers," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 316-333, March.
    6. Sonia Hirt, 2015. "The rules of residential segregation: US housing taxonomies and their precedents," Planning Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 367-395, July.
    7. Jake Wegmann & Sarah Mawhorter, 2017. "Measuring Informal Housing Production in California Cities," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 83(2), pages 119-130, April.
    8. Shen, G., 2005. "Location of manufactured housing and its accessibility to community services: a GIS-assisted spatial analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 25-41, March.
    9. Noah J. Durst & Esther Sullivan, 2019. "The Contribution of Manufactured Housing to Affordable Housing in the United States: Assessing Variation Among Manufactured Housing Tenures and Community Types," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(6), pages 880-898, November.
    10. Pierce, Gregory & Gabbe, C.J. & Gonzalez, Silvia R., 2018. "Improperly-zoned, spatially-marginalized, and poorly-served? An analysis of mobile home parks in Los Angeles County," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 178-185.
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    1. García-Suaza, Andres & Varela, Daniela, 2024. "Nightlight, landcover and buildings: understanding intracity socioeconomic differences," Documentos de Trabajo 21025, Universidad del Rosario.

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