Community Garden Tour

Producer, Videographer, Editor

dispLAced: Leimert Park

Co-Producer, Videographer, Editor

Synopsis: A story of how love shapes a politics of resistance, resilience, and belonging within Los Angeles' Black cultural center, Leimert Park

Google Drive Link

How to Prepare and Cook Nopales

Producer, Videographer, Editor

Five Plants for your Southern California Food Forest

Producer, Videographer, Editor

John D. Liu @ The BirdHouse (Part 1): True Wealth & Imagining a New Economic System

Editor

Users can view current invitations from their friends, see who is available based on their friends inputted schedules, and view the locations of their friends who have location enabled.

Sign of the Times

Spring 2021

User Research Lead

Dining supplies for family members to bridge the generation gap, share their value systems, and listen closely.

Although the above product may seem quite simple, it required in-depth conversations with 90 older adults.

Our team went in open minded, with the goal of designing a product to improve the lives of older adults. One of the primary challenges that we encountered was a feeling of emotional distance from younger relatives.

The

Process

Over the course of several months of conversations and co-designing sessions, we landed on utilizing the opportunity of holiday meals to bridge this gap. We created a napkin set containing questions designed to help family members from different generations understand each other better.

Field Notes & Mind Mapping

Mapping Air Toxics in Los Angeles

Spring 2020

Made using ArcGIS

In this assignment, I used census tract data to determine the relationship between toxic air pollution and income in Los Angeles, California.

A small orange circle indicates a low level of air toxics, and a large circle indicates a high level.

Several of the largest emitters are near the boundary of a middle income neighborhood and a low income neighborhood.

Considering that in Los Angeles, one street can be very different in terms of quality of living, real estate value, occupation, and overall demographic than the next street over, I would be interested in repeating this exercise using a more localized form of spatial data unit, perhaps by street.

Low Income

High Income

Although several of the largest emitters are near the boundary of a middle income neighborhood and a low income neighborhood, low income neighborhoods tend to have the highest concentration of TRI (toxic release inventory) emitters.

Because I am from Hawai’i (but not of Native Hawaiian descent), I was curious to examine TRI emissions in relation to race.

Is the Native Hawaiian population in Los Angeles living in areas of high TRI emissions?

I found the largest concentration of Native Hawaiian residents (in the 29-76 percent category) to be near Fullerton, and it is nearly free of TRI emissions, which is surprising and fantastic. Sadly, in Hawai’i, many Native Hawaiian residents live in low-income communities that are more likely to be polluted by large highways and industry.

However, a less dense in Pacific Islander resident region (shown below), was highly polluted in terms of TRI emissions. It is very near Torrance, where several of the largest emitting sites in LA are.

Mapping Billboards in Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils

Spring 2020

Made using ArcGIS

In this assignment, I sought to understand the relationship between population density and the amount of billboards throughout Los Angeles.

The yellow-orange gradient in the above map represents the population density, with the darker orange hues corresponding to a denser population within that neighborhood council.

The map shows that there are more billboards in neighborhoods with higher population density. In a city like Los Angeles, neighborhoods with lower population density tend to be higher income and have larger and more spread out properties. For this reason, billboards are likely more expensive to purchase. Residents also typically have more purchasing power to prevent unwanted development in their neighborhoods.

Pictured above are the 101, 134, and 5 freeways in LA, stretching from West Hollywood to Glendale and from Burbank to Hancock Park. Billboards are represented by small blue circles.

Also in this assignment, I found that the majority of billboards are located along secondary roads in Los Angeles. My hypothesis for this was that advertisers are more interested in advertising on roads closer to their businesses, where the speed limits are lower.