S4 faculty affiliates are involved in a wide array of research activities. These have in common an interest in spatial relationships, but the specific approaches to questions are influenced by people’s scholarly disciplines and interests. Information about each person’s work can be found here.

More detailed information is provided through this page for a number of continuing activities:.

• The American Communities Project is a program of research being conducted by S4’s director John Logan. It includes studies based on the U.S. census of population based on both contemporary and historical data. It also includes research on public schools, especially school segregation and racial disparities in school performance. Web-based map systems provide data for census tracts (MapUSA) and schools (Map US Schools) across the United States.

• The Rio Project is one component of research on Brazil being conducted by Brown social scientists. It is led by historian James Green, and it focuses on mapping 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. Other current projects include studies of spatial inequalities in Brazilian cities, led by sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi, and environmental change in the Amazon region, led by sociologist Leah VanWey.

• The Georgia Nursing Homes Project was developed as a demonstration of how information about the client population and quality of care in nursing homes could be mapped in relation to neighborhood characteristics. Subsequently Vince Mor (Community Health) has brought together a group of investigators to pursue these questions nationwide. A related project also led by Vince Mor is analyzing the issue of nursing home evacuations in the face of hurricane warnings.

• The Hurricane Katrina Project is being pursued by a group of scholars led by John Logan, and including both social scientists and natural scientists on the Brown faculty. Its main concern is to understand the impacts of Katrina, and more broadly the impacts of Gulf Coast hurricanes over the last several decades, on communities and the physical environment.

• The Brown University Working Group on China brings together diverse faculty who are interested in studies of social, economic, and cultural change in China.