Where Do People Gather for Anti-Racism Protests? Spatial Analysis of 2020 Crowd Data in two US Cities

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to spatially and quantitatively analyze anti-racism protesters' public space use in New York City and Los Angeles during the summer of 2020, utilizing crowd gathering data. The research questions being addressed are (i) “which spaces in Los Angeles and New York City are most frequently used for anti-racism protests?” and (ii) “which urban design features affect where people choose to protest?” Although the effect of urban features on protesting has been written about from sociological and urban design perspectives (which informed the formulation of the hypothesis for this thesis), there has yet to be work released on this topic from a data analysis lens. The objectives of this research were to (i) determine protest statistics for May - July 2020 for NYC and LA utilizing crowd gathering data, (ii) determine, map, and spatially analyze the most frequent anti-racism protest locations in NYC and LA, and (iii) determine which urban features most impact anti-racism protest frequency and size, utilizing a Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The results of this thesis are organized into two components. The result of the mapping and spatial analysis is that transit access is a key variable in determining where people choose to protest. From the QCA, it was found that high white percentage, large public space size, and walkability are core conditions for both large protest size and high frequency of anti-racism protest in a location. These results are significant because the literature does not directly point to racial demographics being an important factor in choosing anti-racism protest locations.