Through analyzing and mapping out the data obtained from official reports and open census data using tools in ArcMap(e.g., interactive features, join attributes, geocoding, etc.), I initially planned on taking a quantitative approach. The indicators I chose to represent the local demography of NYC include the distribution of people of color, the distribution of the Asian population, the average median income, and the medium gross rent—all data of which were downloaded and calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau website. After processing and editing them using excel tables, I was able to perform the join function based on their common GEOID which then pairs the numerical values assigned to each location with the geography of NYC in the form of shapefiles.
With respect to collecting information of restaurants that were closed during covid, aside from examining the descriptions and comments on various food review websites(e.g., Chowbus, Yelp, Google Maps, etc.), given the fact that the tiny-sized restaurants sometimes don’t appear on these official maps, I have also sampled customer reviews and announcements published on social media pages(e.g., Instagram, Facebook) and other websites(e.g., The Infatuation, Time Out, ABC News) that are reflective of the restaurants’ opening statuses.
Later intrigued by the articles by Pavlovskaya(2019), Maharawal and McElroy(2018), I appreciate their dedication in a feminist undertaking that strives to incorporate the informal nuances of people’s lived experience into a process they referred as countermapping (2018: 381). Echoing their creative efforts, I was inspired to incorporate qualitative practices into my research processes. Specifically, the “unconventional data” I’ve included in the project contains “narratives, in-depth interviews, hand-drawn maps”, geotagged “photographs”, and also “voices and sounds” that I have compiled based on my visits to Chinatown (2019: 14). In this case, I seek to achieve a synergy between the quantitative and qualitative aspects where each would complement the argument present by another—together revealing the complex reasons behind the decline of Chinese/Asian restaurants.
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