LibGuides: URST 498: URST 498: Capstone in Urban Studies (Neill)

Research Starting Points: Urban Issues & Sustainability

Below are some UNLV Library databases, books, and web resources focusing on urban issues and sustainability to assist you with your assignments.

Start with a basic keyword search. Here are a few examples:

sustainability and building
green architecture
neighborhood beautification and community participation
high school dropout rate and community engagement
bullying in middle school and civic engagement
local impacts and climate change
energy and southwestern United States
waste disposal
public transportation
solar energy
waste disposal and research

UNLV Libraries Quick Search
Great place to begin your search. You can narrow by publication type (such as scholarly articles), time period, and discipline

CQ Researcher
Good for: Controversial topics in social issues, environment, health, education, science, and technology.
Contains: Reports with information about all sides of an issue, including comments from experts in the field, charts and graphs, a pro-con feature, a chronology, a bibliography for additional research, and a list of advocacy organizations.
Dates covered: 1923-present.
Academic Search Premier
Good for: Conducting academic research on all subjects.
Contains: Journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.
Las Vegas Review Journal (NewsBank)
Good for: Searching the text of articles published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Contains: Article text (no images).
Dates covered: 1996-present.
Newspaper Source Plus
Good for: Finding regional news articles and broadcast television transcripts.
Contains: Regional newspapers and transcripts.

Newspaper Source provides full text coverage for 40 national and international newspapers including USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Times (London), and The Toronto Star. Selected full text is offered from more than 330 regional newspapers including The Buffalo News, Orange County Register, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Full text transcripts are available from CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, National Public Radio, and more.
Building Green
Good for: Researching sustainable building practices.
Contains: Articles, reviews, product information, and news.

This resource integrates product listings from the GreenSpec products directory, project case studies from the High-Performance Buildings Database, and the Environmental Building News.

Google Scholar
Searches scholarly journal articles. Set preferences to UNLV for full text access!

Advancing Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment by Anna V. Diez Roux; Keisuke Hanaki; Luuk C. Rietveld; Pierre Ritchie; Saroj Jayasinghe; Susan Parnell; Yi Zhang; Yongguan Zhu (Editor); Anthony Capon; Christel Donnelly; Franz W. Gatzweiler (Editor); Gérard Salem; Hany M. Ayad; Ilene Speizer; Indira Nath; Jo I. Boufford
ISBN: 9789811033636

Publication Date: 2017-04-06
Sustainability: Key Issues by George Holmes (Editor); Helen Kopnina (Editor); Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet (Editor)
ISBN: 9780415529860

Publication Date: 2015-07-01

American Communities Project
ACP used a wide range of different factors – everything from income to race and ethnicity to education to religious affiliation – and a clustering technique to identify 15 types of counties, everything from Big Cities to Aging Farmlands. It has mapped those types to show where the country’s political, socio-economic and cultural fissures are.
Planetizen: A public-interest information exchange provided by Urban Insight for the urban planning, design, and development community
Sustainable Cities Index: Explores the three demands of People, Planet and Profit to develop an indicative ranking of 50 of the world's leading cities.

Center for Urban Policy Research (Rutgers University)
The site features a description of CUPR's current research areas and projects, a list of its published books, policy reports and working papers, affiliated institute links and CUPR's periodical, CUPReport.
Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research
Established at the University of Albany, the Center honors the tradition of interdisciplinary scholarship established by Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), one of the most distinguished urbanists of the 20th Century. The site provides links to useful data sources, maps, teaching and educational material.
Metropolitan Area Research Corporation (MARC)
MARC is a non-profit research and geographic information systems (GIS) firm with a history of service to the public interest, government, philanthropy, academia, and private research institutions. MARC's expertise lies in presenting cutting edge demographic research through the striking spatial display of data.
Metropolitan Policy Program (Brookings Institute)
The Program provides decision makers with cutting-edge research and policy ideas for improving the health and prosperity of cities and metropolitan areas. The web site includes numerous research publications, policy briefs and commentary, and a bi-monthly newsletter.

Assignment #1: Personal Growth Assignment

The undergraduate experience : focusing institutions on what matters most
Call Number: E-book

Assignment #2: Urban Theory Assignment

100 Resilient Cities

Sustainable cities : inspirational case studies
Call Number: HT241 .S865 2015
Community Gardening: Benefits Focused Strategies

What is critical urban theory? / Harvard GSD Urban Theory Lab
Interesting think tank at Harvard focusing on critical urban theory. Website includes news & publications.
THE NATURE OF CITIES: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory
What is critical urban theory?
Explorations in urban theory (e-book)

Assignment #3: Community Engagement

Adolescent Civic Engagement and Adult Outcomes: An Examination Among Urban Racial Minorities

Urban environmental stewardship and civic engagement : how planting trees strengthens the roots of democracy

Assignment #4: Professional Judgement & Behaviors

Office of Undergraduate Research-UNLV

Assignment 4 (continued): Urban Studies Jobs, Internships, Grad Programs, etc.

Assignment #5: Data Analysis

There are several great resources available to find data/statistics to analyze. Check out the tips & resources below:

Searching on Google is a great place to begin for looking for statistics. In order to obtain official and reliable data, you can limit your sources to government websites by typing site:.gov after your keywords.

Examples:
crime statistics site:.gov
recycling data site:.gov

UNLV Data & Statistics Resource Guide

MyResearcher.com
Good for: Tracking data and finding information about Las Vegas and Clark County, as well as gaming statistics from across the United States.
Contains: Las Vegas and Clark County area statistics as well as detailed gaming statistics from across the United States.
First time users must register with their UNLV email address. The account will need to be renewed each June.

MyResearcher is a data-tracking and information reporting tool created by Applied Analysis with Las Vegas and Clark County area statistics as well as detailed gaming statistics from across the United States. It allows users to search millions of economic, fiscal, social and environmental metrics, tracking and trending the ones that matter most to them. MyResearcher has Las Vegas and Clark County area statistics as well as detailed gaming statistics from across the United States.
Sage Data
Good for: N/A (Content has been migrated to DataPlanet.)

URST 305--Data Analysis
The course guide for URST 305 provides a great deal of sources (including databases and government websites) that will help you on your data project.

Statista
Good for: Finding statistical data.
Contains: Statistical data from various sources.

Statista includes data on more than 85,000 topics from 18,000 sources. About 20 percent of the total data in Statista comes from sources available free online, such as the World Bank and the U.S. Census, but the data also includes numerous exclusive sources which include industry, marketing, and trade groups. Much of the data is related to marketing, demographic, government and industry information, and is international in scope. Data can be downloaded in JPG, PowerPoint and Excel.

City of Las Vegas Open Data

Library Handouts & Citation Resources

RefWorks
Good for: Saving, organizing and formatting citations in your personal database.
Contains: Bibliography manager.

This web-based bibliography manager lets you save citations to journal articles, books, web sites and more into your personal online database. You'll be able to quickly link to online articles, organize and share your references, and automatically create formatted bibliographies in all the major citation formats, including APA, MLA, and Chicago styles. Learn more on the RefWorks Basics page.

APA Formatting--Purdue OWL

CRAAP Test
Handout describing how to evaluate information using a method known as the CRAAP test.
Distinguishing Source Types - UNLV Libraries

Subject Guide

Susie Skarl, Urban Affairs Librarian

Email Me

Contact:

UNLV Libraries
Lied Library
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
Box 457014
Las Vegas, NV 89154-7014
susie.skarl@unlv.edu

702-895-2141

Subjects: Communication Studies, Couple & Family Therapy, Criminal Justice, Crisis & Emergency Management, Government Information, Journalism & Media Studies, Public Administration, Social Work, Urban Studies

URST 498: URST 498: Capstone in Urban Studies (Neill)