Modeling Strategic Interventions to Increase Attendance at Youth Community Centers
Name
smartcities-07-00073.pdf
Size
9.84 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
263defc880548f4c55e550b44b5d83cd
Author(s)
Moro-Araujo, Alejandro
Alonso Pastor, Luis
Larson, Kent
Date Issued
July 22, 2024
Journal
Smart Cities
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Moro-Araujo, A.; Alonso Pastor, L.; Larson, K. Modeling Strategic Interventions to Increase Attendance at Youth Community Centers. Smart Cities 2024, 7, 1878-1887.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Community centers play a crucial role in urban environments, providing physical and educational services to their surrounding communities, particularly for students. Among the many benefits for students are enhanced academic outcomes, improvement of behavioral problems, and increased school attendance. Such centers are also particularly vital for low-income and racial minority students as they are pivotal in giving them outside-of-school learning opportunities. However, determinants influencing attendance at community centers remain largely unexplored. The novelty of our research comes from using census data, Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF) attendance data, and specific center attributes, to develop human mobility gravitational models that have been used, for the first time, to predict attendance across the BCYF network. Using those models, we simulated the potential effects on general and student attendance by changing center attributes, such as facilities and operating hours. We also researched the impact of changing the walking accessibility to those centers on their respective attendance patterns. After the analysis, we found that the most cost-effective policy to increase BCYF attendance is changing each center’s educational and recreational offerings far beyond any accessibility interventions. Our results provide insights into potential policy changes that could optimize the attendance and reach of BCYF Community Centers to under-served populations.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities7040073
