Analysis

Our data was gathered from the Census Bureau and it is important to know that as time past, more census tracts added to match the amount of growth the city has had over the past 40 years. These added census tracts help us see how much urban development has occurred in the short amount of time. Almost every aspect of our study shows an increase mainly because of the added census tracts and the expanding city. It is also good to keep in mind that we took the median of all the data we received to make it a little easier in our analysis. (Click here for another look at the maps and graphs)
When looking at the amount of growth in the city of Everett, it is interesting to see how much the population has changed over the years. The median population has grown steadily over the years starting at 34,171 in 1970 and steadily rose to its current number, 43,741. There was a slightly higher increase between the 1980 and 1990 dates because of many factors. This includes the introduction of many new industries to the area and the increasing economy that comes with that.

When I looked at the median amount of occupied housing it was interesting to see the great jump from 1970 to 1980. The number jumped from a very small 3,529 to 25,514. It made an equal jump again between the next two dates in much the same way. It is easy to see the amount of development that has occurred in the short amount of time. When looking at housing, I find it more important to look at the amount of vacant housing in the area. It is surprising to see that the largest amount of vacant housing was in 1980. This suggests that in that time period, a great amount of development was occurring and more houses were being built compared to the number of people moving into the area.
The last two variables we looked at was the amount of renters and the amount of owners in the Everett area. I was interesting in looking at the ratio of owners to renters and seeing which was higher, and try to come to a conclusion as to why this is. I looked as the data as a comparison between renters and owners for each year rather than the change between years. I did this because the median data does not give an accurate amount over the years. This is because industrial areas produced a really low number and other tracts were only housing and that produced a really high number. So because of these factors, the median numbers are not as accurate. It is easy to see that the amount of renters is greatly higher compared to the amount of owners. For each year, there was always 10 times as many renters as there was owners. There can be many factors that contribute to this. One of these factors is the lack of job security in the area, and with the many job layoffs in the area, many people opt to rent as to not limit themselves should layoffs occur.

When I looked at the data on the maps, it was easy to see that the city growth was expanding southward. Unlike other areas where space is limited, there was a lot of room for growth south of the original Everett peninsula. This resulted in the expansion of the city southward.

There are many other studies that address the Urban growth of cities. This can be supported by many other studies and programs that are looking at the same problem. One article I found to be particularly interesting was this one. The article talks about Everett and what has happened in its Urban growth.

As you can see from the map, the downtown are has expanded outward from the original plan. This causes a problem because the housing and other buildings in the original area get abandoned because of this outward expansion This relates to this project because much in the same way that it is happening in the downtown area of Everett, it is also happening in the various communities of Everett. It seems that the further you move away from the city center, the more expensive the houses are and the greater the mean income is for those areas. So you get this problem of increase in amount of current housing because people are moving out. In a good way this creates affordable low income housing without having to build new structures. This is what happened in downtown Everett. The problem with that is sometimes the houses that are left are in no shape to live in. So they sit there and there is no use for them. In the article, the author talks about the challenges in beautifying the area and removing all the rundown housing.