Leah Meisterlin is an urbanist, GIS methodologist and Assistant Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Broadly, her research engages concurrent issues of spatial justice, informational ethics, and the effects of infrastructural networks on the construction of social and political space. Her current research explores the ways in which digital technologies are restructuring urban spatial politics and altering methods, both contemporary and historical, of urban research.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2016
Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive ... more Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive zoning to gain control of their land use and built environment. Nineteenth-century cities had comparatively unregulated land-use systems, where proprietors and builders found minimal restrictions to their choices to develop urban land. This article exploits newly digitized geographic information systems (GIS) data, at the level of building footprints, made available by the New York Public Library, to study the land-use geography of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan, the Western world's then third largest city. We ask: What was the spatial order of the nineteenth-century city? Beyond the case, what can we learn about land use in a political economy where market forces operated with much greater freedom? Addressing these issues, we introduce a variety of advanced GIS methods to the original data set. Specifically, we examine the separation and mixing of the three basic land-use types of commerce, industry, and residence, by the spatial units of both blocks and streets. In addition, we measure at a new level of precision the enormous variations in residential density and crowding that defined the growing sociospatial inequalities of nineteenth-century cities. Documenting systematically and in detail these spatial patterns, including their socially undesirable outcomes, helps understand how nineteenth-century cities developed and the conditions they produced to warrant increasing land-use controls, from building codes to government-mandated zoning.
In the summer of 2013, I did what many would not attempt in the heat of July: I went to Las Vegas... more In the summer of 2013, I did what many would not attempt in the heat of July: I went to Las Vegas. I had a handful of overlapping reasons to be there, and among those was seeing the work and progress of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project (DTP). [1] [2] Like so many urbanists, I had heard of the plans, the intentions, the investment budget, the vision and its visionary, the ambition. I saw the container park under construction. [3] I walked the perimeter of 9th Bridge—a private early education and elementary school “now enrolling entrepreneurs and creators”—and thought about the building’s restoration and DTP’s investment in both private and public education. [4] I walked the length of Fremont Street, comparing and contrasting it to the Strip, to the acres of sprawl surrounding Vegas, and to every mixeduse, walkable, “vibrant” downtown revitalization plan I had seen before. When night came, I had a couple of drinks at a couple of bars. I left Vegas uneasy, unsettled, and uncertain. I am r...
Background
Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a d... more Background Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a disproportionate concentration of alcohol venues. Limited research has explored how alcohol venues facilitate HIV transmission.
Methods We spatially mapped locations of alcohol venues in a Dominican tourism town and conducted a venue-based survey of key informants (n = 135) focused on three facets of alcohol venues: structural features, type of patrons, and HIV risk behaviors. Using latent class analysis, we identified evidence-based typologies of alcohol venues for each of the three facets. Focused contrasts identified the co-occurrence of classes of structural features, classes of types of patrons, and classes of HIV risk behavior, thus elaborating the nature of high risk venues.
Results We identified three categories of venue structural features, three for venue patrons, and five for HIV risk behaviors. Analysis revealed that alcohol venues with the greatest structural risks (e.g. sex work on-site with lack of HIV prevention services) were most likely frequented by the venue patron category characterized by high population-mixing between locals and foreign tourists, who were in turn most likely to engage in the riskiest behaviors.
Conclusion Our results highlight the stratification of venue patrons into groups who engage in behaviors of varying risk in structural settings that vary in risk. The convergence of high-risk patron groups in alcohol venues with the greatest structural risk suggests these locations have potential for HIV transmission. Policymakers and prevention scientists can use these methods and data to target HIV prevention resources to identified priority areas.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2016
Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive ... more Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive zoning to gain control of their land use and built environment. Nineteenth-century cities had comparatively unregulated land-use systems, where proprietors and builders found minimal restrictions to their choices to develop urban land. This article exploits newly digitized geographic information systems (GIS) data, at the level of building footprints, made available by the New York Public Library, to study the land-use geography of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan, the Western world's then third largest city. We ask: What was the spatial order of the nineteenth-century city? Beyond the case, what can we learn about land use in a political economy where market forces operated with much greater freedom? Addressing these issues, we introduce a variety of advanced GIS methods to the original data set. Specifically, we examine the separation and mixing of the three basic land-use types of commerce, industry, and residence, by the spatial units of both blocks and streets. In addition, we measure at a new level of precision the enormous variations in residential density and crowding that defined the growing sociospatial inequalities of nineteenth-century cities. Documenting systematically and in detail these spatial patterns, including their socially undesirable outcomes, helps understand how nineteenth-century cities developed and the conditions they produced to warrant increasing land-use controls, from building codes to government-mandated zoning.
Manhattan’s 1811 street grid defined the spatial framework for urbanization. Existing scholarship... more Manhattan’s 1811 street grid defined the spatial framework for urbanization. Existing scholarship, however, has not empirically examined its role in determining land-use geography. By mid-nineteenth century, New York City had grown substantially into its street system, but had not yet instituted comprehensive zoning regulations. We explore interactions between the grid’s morphology and land-use placement on the street in a generally unregulated environment, comparing patterns in the city’s pre- and post-grid halves. Deploying new GIS data and methods, we complement existing interpretations showing that the grid guided Manhattan’s development towards mixed-use commercial and residential avenues with residential and industrial cross-streets. We demonstrate that one set of locational logics drove these patterns pre- and post-grid. The grid amplified the morphological parameters of land use, identified as street connectivity, length, and width. Connectivity, determined by block dimensions, constituted the most critical factor. Lastly, we suggest that our findings and methods on the interactions between street morphology and land use are relevant to other cities, both for historical research and contemporary planning practice.
This publication is a record of what was said about Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, an ... more This publication is a record of what was said about Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, an architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, from April 2011 through August 2012. Every discussion requires a platform, or space, in which to find its shape and test its limits. These platforms—whether they are culturally, politically, or technologically defined—in turn affect the content of the dialogues themselves, inasmuch as they allow or disallow the development of certain trajectories, encouraging some modes of inquiry while discouraging others. Considering this, how do we talk about architecture? Housing? Cities? Culture? Politics? And, equally important, how don’t we talk about them? Comments on Foreclosed documents just this kind of public discussion and the various actors that shape it.
The Buell Hypothesis: Rehousing the American Dream, 2011
The Buell Hypothesis examines the cultural assumptions underlying the “American Dream” in the con... more The Buell Hypothesis examines the cultural assumptions underlying the “American Dream” in the context of the foreclosure crisis, suburban sprawl, and the architectural public sphere. Taking the form of a screenplay, the book positions the American Dream as an all-too familiar “film” that can only be sufficiently rethought by shifting the conversation toward a philosophical debate about its most entrenched underpinnings. It includes a series of case study sites, selected using a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria, that are representative of the challenges facing municipalities nationwide. Each of these examples offers a somewhat different context in which radical and thoughtful ways of testing the hypothesis in its most basic form—change the dream and you change the city—can be found.
As part of the Buell Center’s long-term initiative to cultivate a new national conversation about... more As part of the Buell Center’s long-term initiative to cultivate a new national conversation about public housing in the United States, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis, Public Housing: A New Conversation seeks to restate the problem by reconsidering the facts: that public housing exists in the United States in a variety of forms, that more of it is needed in other forms, and that these needs are connected to those public needs addressed by recent investment in other types of infrastructure.
The pamphlet synthesizes Buell Center research and ideas generated in the Public Housing/Public Sphere: Policy and Design Workshop held in July 2009 at GSAPP’s Studio-X space in downtown Manhattan. Its content shares the vision and argument that genuinely public housing is needed, and that investment in housing and related infrastructures could serve as a catalyst of urban transformation in American cities and suburbs.
with Marble Fairbanks and James Lima, for Architectural League of New York and the Center for an ... more with Marble Fairbanks and James Lima, for Architectural League of New York and the Center for an Urban Future. (2014)
at Cabaret Series: Ventriloquism (an evening with the Avery Review & ARPA Journal) at Storefront ... more at Cabaret Series: Ventriloquism (an evening with the Avery Review & ARPA Journal) at Storefront for Art & Architecture (2014)
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2016
Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive ... more Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive zoning to gain control of their land use and built environment. Nineteenth-century cities had comparatively unregulated land-use systems, where proprietors and builders found minimal restrictions to their choices to develop urban land. This article exploits newly digitized geographic information systems (GIS) data, at the level of building footprints, made available by the New York Public Library, to study the land-use geography of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan, the Western world's then third largest city. We ask: What was the spatial order of the nineteenth-century city? Beyond the case, what can we learn about land use in a political economy where market forces operated with much greater freedom? Addressing these issues, we introduce a variety of advanced GIS methods to the original data set. Specifically, we examine the separation and mixing of the three basic land-use types of commerce, industry, and residence, by the spatial units of both blocks and streets. In addition, we measure at a new level of precision the enormous variations in residential density and crowding that defined the growing sociospatial inequalities of nineteenth-century cities. Documenting systematically and in detail these spatial patterns, including their socially undesirable outcomes, helps understand how nineteenth-century cities developed and the conditions they produced to warrant increasing land-use controls, from building codes to government-mandated zoning.
In the summer of 2013, I did what many would not attempt in the heat of July: I went to Las Vegas... more In the summer of 2013, I did what many would not attempt in the heat of July: I went to Las Vegas. I had a handful of overlapping reasons to be there, and among those was seeing the work and progress of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project (DTP). [1] [2] Like so many urbanists, I had heard of the plans, the intentions, the investment budget, the vision and its visionary, the ambition. I saw the container park under construction. [3] I walked the perimeter of 9th Bridge—a private early education and elementary school “now enrolling entrepreneurs and creators”—and thought about the building’s restoration and DTP’s investment in both private and public education. [4] I walked the length of Fremont Street, comparing and contrasting it to the Strip, to the acres of sprawl surrounding Vegas, and to every mixeduse, walkable, “vibrant” downtown revitalization plan I had seen before. When night came, I had a couple of drinks at a couple of bars. I left Vegas uneasy, unsettled, and uncertain. I am r...
Background
Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a d... more Background Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a disproportionate concentration of alcohol venues. Limited research has explored how alcohol venues facilitate HIV transmission.
Methods We spatially mapped locations of alcohol venues in a Dominican tourism town and conducted a venue-based survey of key informants (n = 135) focused on three facets of alcohol venues: structural features, type of patrons, and HIV risk behaviors. Using latent class analysis, we identified evidence-based typologies of alcohol venues for each of the three facets. Focused contrasts identified the co-occurrence of classes of structural features, classes of types of patrons, and classes of HIV risk behavior, thus elaborating the nature of high risk venues.
Results We identified three categories of venue structural features, three for venue patrons, and five for HIV risk behaviors. Analysis revealed that alcohol venues with the greatest structural risks (e.g. sex work on-site with lack of HIV prevention services) were most likely frequented by the venue patron category characterized by high population-mixing between locals and foreign tourists, who were in turn most likely to engage in the riskiest behaviors.
Conclusion Our results highlight the stratification of venue patrons into groups who engage in behaviors of varying risk in structural settings that vary in risk. The convergence of high-risk patron groups in alcohol venues with the greatest structural risk suggests these locations have potential for HIV transmission. Policymakers and prevention scientists can use these methods and data to target HIV prevention resources to identified priority areas.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2016
Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive ... more Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did U.S. city governments turn to comprehensive zoning to gain control of their land use and built environment. Nineteenth-century cities had comparatively unregulated land-use systems, where proprietors and builders found minimal restrictions to their choices to develop urban land. This article exploits newly digitized geographic information systems (GIS) data, at the level of building footprints, made available by the New York Public Library, to study the land-use geography of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan, the Western world's then third largest city. We ask: What was the spatial order of the nineteenth-century city? Beyond the case, what can we learn about land use in a political economy where market forces operated with much greater freedom? Addressing these issues, we introduce a variety of advanced GIS methods to the original data set. Specifically, we examine the separation and mixing of the three basic land-use types of commerce, industry, and residence, by the spatial units of both blocks and streets. In addition, we measure at a new level of precision the enormous variations in residential density and crowding that defined the growing sociospatial inequalities of nineteenth-century cities. Documenting systematically and in detail these spatial patterns, including their socially undesirable outcomes, helps understand how nineteenth-century cities developed and the conditions they produced to warrant increasing land-use controls, from building codes to government-mandated zoning.
Manhattan’s 1811 street grid defined the spatial framework for urbanization. Existing scholarship... more Manhattan’s 1811 street grid defined the spatial framework for urbanization. Existing scholarship, however, has not empirically examined its role in determining land-use geography. By mid-nineteenth century, New York City had grown substantially into its street system, but had not yet instituted comprehensive zoning regulations. We explore interactions between the grid’s morphology and land-use placement on the street in a generally unregulated environment, comparing patterns in the city’s pre- and post-grid halves. Deploying new GIS data and methods, we complement existing interpretations showing that the grid guided Manhattan’s development towards mixed-use commercial and residential avenues with residential and industrial cross-streets. We demonstrate that one set of locational logics drove these patterns pre- and post-grid. The grid amplified the morphological parameters of land use, identified as street connectivity, length, and width. Connectivity, determined by block dimensions, constituted the most critical factor. Lastly, we suggest that our findings and methods on the interactions between street morphology and land use are relevant to other cities, both for historical research and contemporary planning practice.
This publication is a record of what was said about Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, an ... more This publication is a record of what was said about Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, an architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, from April 2011 through August 2012. Every discussion requires a platform, or space, in which to find its shape and test its limits. These platforms—whether they are culturally, politically, or technologically defined—in turn affect the content of the dialogues themselves, inasmuch as they allow or disallow the development of certain trajectories, encouraging some modes of inquiry while discouraging others. Considering this, how do we talk about architecture? Housing? Cities? Culture? Politics? And, equally important, how don’t we talk about them? Comments on Foreclosed documents just this kind of public discussion and the various actors that shape it.
The Buell Hypothesis: Rehousing the American Dream, 2011
The Buell Hypothesis examines the cultural assumptions underlying the “American Dream” in the con... more The Buell Hypothesis examines the cultural assumptions underlying the “American Dream” in the context of the foreclosure crisis, suburban sprawl, and the architectural public sphere. Taking the form of a screenplay, the book positions the American Dream as an all-too familiar “film” that can only be sufficiently rethought by shifting the conversation toward a philosophical debate about its most entrenched underpinnings. It includes a series of case study sites, selected using a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria, that are representative of the challenges facing municipalities nationwide. Each of these examples offers a somewhat different context in which radical and thoughtful ways of testing the hypothesis in its most basic form—change the dream and you change the city—can be found.
As part of the Buell Center’s long-term initiative to cultivate a new national conversation about... more As part of the Buell Center’s long-term initiative to cultivate a new national conversation about public housing in the United States, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis, Public Housing: A New Conversation seeks to restate the problem by reconsidering the facts: that public housing exists in the United States in a variety of forms, that more of it is needed in other forms, and that these needs are connected to those public needs addressed by recent investment in other types of infrastructure.
The pamphlet synthesizes Buell Center research and ideas generated in the Public Housing/Public Sphere: Policy and Design Workshop held in July 2009 at GSAPP’s Studio-X space in downtown Manhattan. Its content shares the vision and argument that genuinely public housing is needed, and that investment in housing and related infrastructures could serve as a catalyst of urban transformation in American cities and suburbs.
with Marble Fairbanks and James Lima, for Architectural League of New York and the Center for an ... more with Marble Fairbanks and James Lima, for Architectural League of New York and the Center for an Urban Future. (2014)
at Cabaret Series: Ventriloquism (an evening with the Avery Review & ARPA Journal) at Storefront ... more at Cabaret Series: Ventriloquism (an evening with the Avery Review & ARPA Journal) at Storefront for Art & Architecture (2014)
A symposium with speakers Orit Halpern, Andrés Jaque, Hod Lipson and Michael Sorkin. Organized by... more A symposium with speakers Orit Halpern, Andrés Jaque, Hod Lipson and Michael Sorkin. Organized by Esteban de Backer, David Isaac Hecht, Alejandro Stein and Che-Wei Yeh. Moderated by Janette Kim, Diana Martinez, Leah Meisterlin and Susanne Schindler.
Envisioning Seneca Village (envisioningsenecavillage.github.io/) is a digital project that imagin... more Envisioning Seneca Village (envisioningsenecavillage.github.io/) is a digital project that imagines what this significant nineteenth-century village might have looked like around the year 1855, shortly before its destruction for the building of Central Park. The project is anchored in existing and ongoing research of many historians, archaeologists, educators, and descendants about this community of which there are no surviving photos, drawings, or above-ground traces. We seek to amplify this scholarship, help visitors to learn more about the village, catalyze new research, and above all, honor the people of Seneca Village and the community they created.
This is a living project, so please visit again in the future to see updates and new features.
Project team: Gergely Baics, Meredith Linn, Leah Meisterlin, and Myles Zhang
Uploads
Papers by Leah Meisterlin
Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a disproportionate concentration of alcohol venues. Limited research has explored how alcohol venues facilitate HIV transmission.
Methods
We spatially mapped locations of alcohol venues in a Dominican tourism town and conducted a venue-based survey of key informants (n = 135) focused on three facets of alcohol venues: structural features, type of patrons, and HIV risk behaviors. Using latent class analysis, we identified evidence-based typologies of alcohol venues for each of the three facets. Focused contrasts identified the co-occurrence of classes of structural features, classes of types of patrons, and classes of HIV risk behavior, thus elaborating the nature of high risk venues.
Results
We identified three categories of venue structural features, three for venue patrons, and five for HIV risk behaviors. Analysis revealed that alcohol venues with the greatest structural risks (e.g. sex work on-site with lack of HIV prevention services) were most likely frequented by the venue patron category characterized by high population-mixing between locals and foreign tourists, who were in turn most likely to engage in the riskiest behaviors.
Conclusion
Our results highlight the stratification of venue patrons into groups who engage in behaviors of varying risk in structural settings that vary in risk. The convergence of high-risk patron groups in alcohol venues with the greatest structural risk suggests these locations have potential for HIV transmission. Policymakers and prevention scientists can use these methods and data to target HIV prevention resources to identified priority areas.
Books by Leah Meisterlin
The pamphlet synthesizes Buell Center research and ideas generated in the Public Housing/Public Sphere: Policy and Design Workshop held in July 2009 at GSAPP’s Studio-X space in downtown Manhattan. Its content shares the vision and argument that genuinely public housing is needed, and that investment in housing and related infrastructures could serve as a catalyst of urban transformation in American cities and suburbs.
Talks by Leah Meisterlin
Tourism areas represent ecologies of heightened HIV vulnerability characterized by a disproportionate concentration of alcohol venues. Limited research has explored how alcohol venues facilitate HIV transmission.
Methods
We spatially mapped locations of alcohol venues in a Dominican tourism town and conducted a venue-based survey of key informants (n = 135) focused on three facets of alcohol venues: structural features, type of patrons, and HIV risk behaviors. Using latent class analysis, we identified evidence-based typologies of alcohol venues for each of the three facets. Focused contrasts identified the co-occurrence of classes of structural features, classes of types of patrons, and classes of HIV risk behavior, thus elaborating the nature of high risk venues.
Results
We identified three categories of venue structural features, three for venue patrons, and five for HIV risk behaviors. Analysis revealed that alcohol venues with the greatest structural risks (e.g. sex work on-site with lack of HIV prevention services) were most likely frequented by the venue patron category characterized by high population-mixing between locals and foreign tourists, who were in turn most likely to engage in the riskiest behaviors.
Conclusion
Our results highlight the stratification of venue patrons into groups who engage in behaviors of varying risk in structural settings that vary in risk. The convergence of high-risk patron groups in alcohol venues with the greatest structural risk suggests these locations have potential for HIV transmission. Policymakers and prevention scientists can use these methods and data to target HIV prevention resources to identified priority areas.
The pamphlet synthesizes Buell Center research and ideas generated in the Public Housing/Public Sphere: Policy and Design Workshop held in July 2009 at GSAPP’s Studio-X space in downtown Manhattan. Its content shares the vision and argument that genuinely public housing is needed, and that investment in housing and related infrastructures could serve as a catalyst of urban transformation in American cities and suburbs.
This is a living project, so please visit again in the future to see updates and new features.
Project team: Gergely Baics, Meredith Linn, Leah Meisterlin, and Myles Zhang