Community Market Report
In the spring of 2024, I completed the course “GIS and Spatial Analysis,” For our final project, students were expected to generate a market report for one Chicago community area using at least three measures.
I. Introduction
President Reagan signed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) into law on October 17, 1986. The Act included the establishment of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) to provide communities with information about toxic chemical releases from industrial facilities into the environment and to support informed decision-making. I was interested to discover if there was a relationship between the number of parks and the location of designated TRI facilities.
II. Data Analysis & Method
The data used in this market report is downloaded from the “Chicago Data Portal” and the “United States Environmental Protection Agency.” I used QGIS to conduct my research and initially imported state boundaries, Chicago community areas, and Chicago district park boundaries in 2016 and reported TRI facilities in 2022. The data downloaded from the EPA included data for the entire state of Illinois, so I used the “Geoprocessing Tool: Clip” to filter my data points and only include TRI sites inside of the designated Chicago community areas. I also set the Project and Layer CRS to ESRI: 103272.
A. Distance from TRI Facilities to Parks
To choose my community area of focus, I calculated the distance between parks and facilities for all community areas (distance from point to point). I created a heatmap showing the TRI sites with the largest distance to the nearest park. I was intrigued by the large cluster of TRI sites in the center of the map, so I chose the community area, New City, to study further. I chose only to include TRI sites within New City but included the surrounding parks in my analysis (parks with a 60609 zip code). The lines connected to each TRI site represent the distance to the nearest park.
B. Total On-Site Toxic Chemical Releases (lbs)
Several sites had ten or fewer pounds of releases, so I excluded them from my analysis. In 2022, TRI facilities in New City released 608,501.70 lbs of toxic chemicals. I cleaned the TRI data in Excel and merged it with the community areas file in GeoDa to create a choropleth map for the number of on-site releases greater than ten in all community areas.
C. Tree Canopy
There were a number of TRI facilities close to parks, but I was interested to see if there was a relationship between tree canopies and facilities. I used data from the “Chicago Health Atlas” which reported the percent of community areas shaded with tree foliage in 2017. The results show a very strong relationship between a lack of shaded areas and the presence of facilities.
III. Results & Summary
There is a wide range in the number of on-site releases for facilities. 45 facilities had less than 20,000 pounds of releases each; however, the other 9 had over 250,000 pounds, with the largest being Ardagh Metal Beverage USA Inc. in New City with 492,294 pounds. Although there are parks near some facilities the tree canopy is very low compared to community areas with no sites. Access to green spaces is extremely important for residents living near these facilities. If I were to expand this market report, I would look into health indicators in community areas with the highest number of releases.
