ASU Scholarship Showcase

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.

Recently fabricated two-dimensional phosphorene crystal structures have demonstrated great potential in applications of electronics. In this paper, strain effect on the electronic band structure of phosphorene was studied using first-principles methods including density functional theory (DFT) and hybrid functionals. It was found that phosphorene can withstand a tensile stress and strain up to 10 N/m and 30%, respectively. The band gap of phosphorene experiences a direct-indirect-direct transition when axial strain is applied. A moderate −2% compression in the zigzag direction can trigger this gap transition. With sufficient expansion (+11.3%) or compression (−10.2% strains), the gap can be tuned from indirect to direct again. Five strain zones with distinct electronic band structure were identified, and the critical strains for the zone boundaries were determined. Although the DFT method is known to underestimate band gap of semiconductors, it was proven to correctly predict the strain effect on the electronic properties with validation from a hybrid functional method in this work. The origin of the gap transition was revealed, and a general mechanism was developed to explain energy shifts with strain according to the bond nature of near-band-edge electronic orbitals. Effective masses of carriers in the armchair direction are an order of magnitude smaller than that of the zigzag axis, indicating that the armchair direction is favored for carrier transport. In addition, the effective masses can be dramatically tuned by strain, in which its sharp jump/drop occurs at the zone boundaries of the direct-indirect gap transition.

Current research on criminal case processing typically examines a single decision-making point, so drawing reliable conclusions about the impact that factors such as defendants’ race or ethnicity exert across successive stages of the justice system is difficult. Using data from the New York County District Attorney's Office that tracks 185,275 diverse criminal cases, this study assesses racial and ethnic disparity for multiple discretionary points of prosecution and sentencing. Findings from multivariate logistic regression analyses demonstrate that the effects of race and ethnicity vary by discretionary point and offense category. Black and Latino defendants were more likely than White defendants to be detained, to receive a custodial plea offer, and to be incarcerated—and they received especially punitive outcomes for person offenses—but were more likely to benefit from case dismissals. The findings for Asian defendants were less consistent but suggest they were the least likely to be detained, to receive custodial offers, and to be incarcerated. These findings are discussed in the context of contemporary theoretical perspectives on racial bias and cumulative disadvantage in the justice system.

The role of ambiguity tolerance in career decision making was examined in a sample of college students (n = 275). Three hypotheses were proposed regarding the direct prediction of ambiguity tolerance on career indecision, the indirect prediction of ambiguity tolerance on career indecision through environmental and self explorations, and the moderation effect of ambiguity tolerance on the link of environmental and self explorations with career indecision. Results supported the significance of ambiguity tolerance with respect to career indecision, finding that it directly predicted general indecisiveness, dysfunctional beliefs, lack of information, and inconsistent information, and moderated the prediction of environmental exploration on inconsistent information. The implications of this study are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.

Cyberstalking is a relatively understudied area in criminology, with no consensus among scholars as to whether it represents a modified form of stalking or whether it is an entirely new and emerging criminal phenomenon. Using data from the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), this study compares stalking and cyberstalking victims across several dimensions, including situational features of their experiences and self-protective behaviors. Results indicate that there are significant differences between stalking and cyberstalking victims, including their number of self-protective behaviors adopted, duration of contact with their stalker, financial costs of victimization, and perceived fear at onset. Perceived fear over time, the occurrence of a physical attack, and sex of the victim were all associated with a higher number of self-protective behaviors for cyberstalking victims compared to stalking victims, net of the effect of the control variables. Implications for stalking theory, research, and criminal justice policy are discussed.

The Phoenix TRUCE Project was modeled after the Chicago CeaseFire program. There have been relatively few process and impact evaluations on the model compared to the level of funding and attention the program has rendered. This paper presents findings related to the evaluation of the TRUCE project. We found that the program engaged in a strong media campaign, conducted conflict mediations, and identified high-risk individuals for case management. The program did not, however, establish a coordinated and collaborative relationship with the faith-based community or other community groups. Time-series analysis showed that program implementation corresponded to a significant decrease in overall levels of violence by more than 16 incidents on average per month, a decrease of 16 assaults on average per month, and resulted in a significant increase of 3.2 shootings on average per month, controlling for the comparison areas and the trends in the data.

Research Summary:
Using U.S. Sentencing Commission data, this study assesses whether judicial downward departures are more prevalent among child pornography offenders compared with a matched sample of defendants convicted of other offenses. Additionally, we examine reasons given by judges when departing from the guidelines for these offenders. We found that child pornography defendants received significant reductions in sentences by way of judicial downward departures.

Policy Implications:
In 2007, the Supreme Court considerably altered the federal sentencing process. In Kimbrough v. United States (2007), the Court held that judicial departures were permissible on grounds of a policy disagreement. Many circuit courts have authorized sentencing judges to depart from the guidelines in child pornography cases based on such a policy disagreement. The findings of this study suggest that judicial downward departures for these offenders cannot be explained by individual characteristics, such as race, gender, or age, and may be indicative of a specific disagreement with this particular sentencing policy. An examination of the reasons provided by judges supports the hypothesis that judges may be attempting to remedy what they perceive as unjustly harsh sentencing guidelines.

Background: Most excess deaths that occur during extreme hot weather events do not have natural heat recorded as an underlying or contributing cause. This study aims to identify the specific individuals who died because of hot weather using only secondary data. A novel approach was developed in which the expected number of deaths was repeatedly sampled from all deaths that occurred during a hot weather event, and compared with deaths during a control period. The deaths were compared with respect to five factors known to be associated with hot weather mortality. Individuals were ranked by their presence in significant models over 100 trials of 10,000 repetitions. Those with the highest rankings were identified as probable excess deaths. Sensitivity analyses were performed on a range of model combinations. These methods were applied to a 2009 hot weather event in greater Vancouver, Canada.

Results: The excess deaths identified were sensitive to differences in model combinations, particularly between univariate and multivariate approaches. One multivariate and one univariate combination were chosen as the best models for further analyses. The individuals identified by multiple combinations suggest that marginalized populations in greater Vancouver are at higher risk of death during hot weather.

Conclusions: This study proposes novel methods for classifying specific deaths as expected or excess during a hot weather event. Further work is needed to evaluate performance of the methods in simulation studies and against clinically identified cases. If confirmed, these methods could be applied to a wide range of populations and events of interest.