East St. Louis Action Research Project
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Results

Code Violation is expressed by two different types of map. One is thematic map which uses the graduated color to represent the severity of waste dumping in study area. The other is dot map that one dot represent one violation. These two types are overlayed in main map.

Violation and Distance from Major Routes

Table 1. The Distance from the Major Roads and Violation (unit : miles)

Figure 1. Code Violation by Major Road

This case shows most obvious correlation in this project(Table 1, Figure 1). Violations are occurring along with the major roads of East St. Louis. I hypothesized that more violations would occur around major routes and interstate offramps. The violations are more concentrated close to the major roads. All violations occur within the distance of 5/8 miles from major roads. Major Roads Buffer Map shows this point better.

Violation and Distance from Highway Exit

Table 2. The Distance from the Highway Exit and Violation (unit : miles)

Figure 2. Code Violation by Highway Exit

This case that is the interstate exit and the violation does not show any correlation(Table 2, Figure 2). As a result, I could get an assertion that most of violations are done by the residents of East St. Louis. If the violations are done by the residents of neighboring cities, the highway exit and the violation could show some correlation. Exit Buffer Map illustrates the point better.Not all roads have dumping beside them, but one in particular does, King Drive. From the Aerial photo map, we can see the land use condition of the study area better. In this map, yellow blocks represent the violated area. We can see that not all major road have the violation along with them from this map. Some major roads does not have violation near them even though we can see some vacant area near by. More detailed map is provided to support this point. In this map, there are a lot of violated blocks only beside the King Dr.

Violation and Land Use

Land use was difficult to determine, since many blocks are split up between more than one use. When I overlaid the land use shape file over my block map, I designated each blockís land use by specifying the land use of the block's center as a whole block's land use.

Ranked according to the number of violations per given area (10,000 square feet) the land uses are summarized in table 3.

Table 3. Summary of Land Use and Code Violation. (unit : 10,000 sq. ft.)

*on average, including only those blocks containing violations

Figure 3. Code Violation by Land Use.

Since I thought that people might dump their waste in less populated area, it is difficult to explain why dilapidated housing receives less dumping than viable housing. After changing my way of thinking, however, the answer was simple. More dumping occurs in the areas that more densely populated area.(Table 3, Figure 3). Because residents do not want to take their waste further, they dispose waste near their dwelling. Then, the result of this calculation makes sense. Land Use Map is provided to support this point.

Even though commercial land is least likely to contain a violation, blocks containing violations are more concentrated than other land uses. This makes me think that commercial violation is more likely to spread to adjacent lots

Violation and Population Density

Table 4. Violation and Population Density (unit : 100,000 sq. ft.)

Figure 4. Code Violation by Population Density.

There seems to be a bit of correlation between population density and violation occurrences. I found that just one block has much higher population density which is 38000 than other. So, this very right side bar graph may not affect much to the result . I originally hypothesized that it would be the other way around, with more code violations in sparsely inhabited areas. However, these findings make sense if it is residential materials being dumped (and for the most part it is). Population Density Map shows the relationship between the population density and code violation.

Document author : Yong Wook Kim, Jason Steffensen
HTML by : Yong Wook Kim
Last modified: May 16, 1997

East St. Louis Action Research Project