Mapping Through The City

• BIO:

My name is Wilmari Melo Dominguez, I am a 17 years old. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. Specifically in Bani, Peravia. I came to the United States when i was 9 years old entering 5th grade. I am a bilingual student, learning english was hard but it was a necessary in order to communicate with other people. I went to Orchard Gardens K-8 School and finished my middle school years and became fluent in english. Later on entering high school i spent freshman through sophomore year in Roxbury Prep High school than transferred to Margarita Muniz Academy finishing my senior year this year of 2022.

I found this map interesting because of how diverse it is. As a foreign born Dominican, I find it very surprising that we are so spread out throughout this different neighborhoods. It says a lot on how we communicate around other people and how we fit in with a lot of different communities and native countries. I seen how Dominican Republic is the second highest foreign boston population in the city of boston. The neighborhood we have the highest population in is Roxbury, i believe even without the map it is very noticeable that in roxbury there’s a higher population of Dominicans rather than in East Boston which is mostly populated with Foreigns from El Salvador.

Looking closely into the two different sided maps, one of the left is Traffic Proximity and Volume(daily traffic count distance to road) and on the right is Respiratory Hazard Index. We can see how Cambridge is the most affective in both maps, on the left we can see how Traffic Proximity is high in Middlesex and Charles River which i believe is what affects the Respiratory Hazard on the right because of the fuel wastage. While making this map i asked myself multiple times, If we limit the Traffic in that area would the Respiratory hazard decrease its impact?

On my map I added Boston ages of 15-19 and 30-34 because of their big age gap. I wanted to see how based on ages it was divided. We can see that in Beacon Hill there’s a big amount of individuals in the 30-34 ages and very little for 15-19, even seems like there’s not any. Comparing it to City Hall Plaza, we can see how there’s a small amount of 30-34 ages and a very big amount of 15-19 individuals within that part of the city this because of all the different schools and activities that can be done through that area. I really felt like this activity helped me a lot to understand how to use maps and how to simply analyze them. It was hard at first to put the right colors on the map in a way that you can notice the two different parts that im zooming in on, but i was able to make the different shades of purple a bit transparent in show of individuals of ages 15-19 and the stars i colored them black for it to pop out more representing individuals of ages 30-34.

I picked Limited English Proficiency because i believe here in boston there’s a lot of people that don’t know english and it can be hard to keep them up to date on all the weather or community problems. Zooming in into the higher amount of people of color, shown in the color grey, we can see how there’s a big amount around Essex St as well as a higher amount of Limited English Proficiency. This is very impactful due to the different crucial information that can miss out on like how to prepare for hazards due to climate change, communicate any problem or emergencies. This can be a big amount of immigrants which means that can be missing any governmental information and can fear other deportation service. Comparing it to People of color, shown in black circles, we can see how both connect. People of color live in populated urban areas, this can negatively impact them because some have limited english proficiency causing them to not be directly inform about the danger of the extreme heat or cooling climate.