Bus-Riding from Barrio to College: A Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis

Educational access studies have found that residents’ choices and opportunities are often geographically bound and based on capital accumulation rather than educational attainment needs. Public transportation in the United States has a long history of being the primary source of mobility for urban residents, who are more likely than suburban residents to be low income and come from racial/ethnic historically marginalized backgrounds. Similar to public transportation policies, post-Civil Rights U.S. higher education policy has served as an important but unstable vehicle for communities of color to become economically mobile. The goal of this qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) study is to understand the racial ecosystem of cities and public services more fully as factors shaping place-bound students’ local access to nearby colleges and universities. Specifically, my goal is to understand the experience of using public buses to commute between a Latinx urban neighborhood—or barrio—in Rochester, New York, and college campuses in the surrounding city and suburban areas.