Barbara Minsker’s research is helping the City of Dallas tackle neighborhood inequities or SMU’s research is helping the City of Dallas tackle neighborhood inequities

When Dallas County launched a major public COVID-19 vaccination site at Fair Park in 2021, thousands of people a day were inoculated against the virus. However, some residents living just two blocks away from the site could not register for the vaccine because they lacked the required internet access. 

According to a five-year research project led by SMU civil engineer Barbara Minsker, the area around Fair Park is one of 62 Dallas infrastructure deserts, highly deficient in the  assets – like internet availability – that create a safe, livable and economically viable neighborhood.  

A new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will help Minsker and other researchers learn more about life in an infrastructure desert from those who know best – the residents. 

“We’re trying to understand how infrastructure affects well-being in neighborhoods,” says Minsker, a nationally recognized expert in environmental and infrastructure systems analysis. “By gathering data from residents about how they use infrastructure and how it impacts their everyday lives, we can better predict how they’ll be affected by changes to that infrastructure.” 

The NSF Smart and Connected Community planning grant will enable researchers to design a smart toolkit that combines crowd-sourced data and ideas, machine learning, social and infrastructure network analysis, agent-based modeling, and community-engaged infrastructure decision making to improve neighborhood equity and well-being. 

“Driving through Dallas, you see people with wheelchairs or moms pushing strollers in the street because sidewalks are not available,” Minsker said. “In low-income areas, it’s very common to see a busy road running right through the middle of a neighborhood. Historically, residents didn’t have the political power to fight it.” 

Toolkit researchers will rely on Minsker’s ongoing work creating interactive reports  that help explain the extent of the neighborhood disparities experienced in these infrastructure deserts.  

Minsker and her team have rated nearly 800 Dallas city neighborhoods on the condition of their streets, sidewalks, internet access, crosswalks, noise walls, street tree canopy, public transportation access, hospital or medical service access, bike and pedestrian trails, community gathering places and food access. Each neighborhood was rated excellent, good, moderate, deficient or highly deficient. 

Much of the data used in the mapping was publicly available, but other data was generated by machine learning using aerial images to detect crosswalks and the assessment of Google Street View images to identify noise walls. Undergraduate and graduate researchers used technology such as drones, smart phone applications and artificial intelligence to gather data. They also used feet-on-the-ground methods such as observations from their car windows and brainstorming sessions with community leaders to define the concept of infrastructure deserts. 

The NSF grant-funded toolkit  will give residents a new way to share feedback about the infrastructure in their neighborhoods with researchers through cellphone apps and cellphone data that shows how residents navigate their neighborhoods. Researchers also plan to interview residents and mine data from minutes of past community meetings. 

“We want to learn from residents about all the places that are unsafe and how it is affecting their lives,” Minsker says. “These are the stories that will help guide infrastructure investments.” 

The City of Dallas already relies on Minsker’s infrastructure research. In January, 2023, the City Council unanimously approved and amended the City of Dallas Economic Development Policy and approved a new Economic Development Incentive Policy – both of which cite Minsker’s studies. 

“We are already seeing influence in the City of Dallas policy, which is very exciting,” Minsker says.  

Additionally, several other City of Dallas department directors have indicated to Minsker that they would be interested in partnering on proposals that may lead to various streams of funding to address these urban infrastructure deserts. Nonprofits have also used the information provided by the study to understand how they can better allocate their efforts and resources. 

“Often infrastructure funding is used for major investments, like freeways or airports,” Minsker says. “These studies demonstrate the importance of funding for smaller scale infrastructure at the neighborhood level.” 

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