This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Political, social and economic phenomena take place within a spatial context: the actions and interactions of decision-makers are conditioned by characteristics of the places in which they occur. Various methods have been developed to model and measure spatial context. There are many phenomena, however, for which existing measurement and modeling approaches are inadequate and for which more complex characterizations of context are necessary. Specifically, this research considers a class of problems with two important characteristics: decisions, behavior and outcomes are shaped by the effects of context at multiple levels, and the relevant spatial context is dynamic rather than static. An important substantive example of a problem with these characteristics is regional governance, that is, coordinated policy-making between two or more governments within a given geographic area. In regional governance, decisions by regional actors are affected by spatial context at both the local and regional levels, and by the dynamic interconnectedness of people within their regions. This research will involve developing of new measures of spatial context and applying these measures to problems of regional governance. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis tools, the research will involve constructing flexible measures of multi-level spatial context from Census and other data, characterizing the mobility and dynamic interconnectedness of actors within regions, conducting counterfactual analyses of the impact of alternative regional boundaries, and testing hypotheses about how dynamic and multi-level context affects various political phenomena, including but not limited to regional governance. Improved measures of spatial context, and a better understanding of how such context shapes social, economic and political outcomes, will help policymakers develop public policies that are more attuned to their unique local and regional spatial context.
