This paper charts my path from observer to action researcher – and my ex post realisation that a transition had happened in my work.  This transition happened on the fly, in the field, without me critically reflecting on it at the time, while I was studying evictions in Port Vila, Vanuatu, South Pacific.  My ethics came into direct conflict with my research approach, and I chose to change my approach.  I theorise my transformation in the modernity/coloniality literature and close by offering strategies to students and other researchers who are looking for ways to engage more deeply with, and give something back to, the communities they study.

This paper examines the effects of residential relocation to Shanghai’s suburbs on job accessibility and commuting, focusing on the influences of proximity to metrorail services and neighborhood environments on commute behavior and choices. The policy implications of the research findings on the planning and design of suburban communities in large cities like Shanghai are addressed in the conclusion. Our research suggests that TOD has a potentially important role to play in placing China’s large, rail-served cities on a more sustainable pathway.

I explore a new approach to studying the development of face expertise by examining digital representations of faces. Typically digital faces have lower recognition scores than real faces, and I propose expertise and style as factors that moderate this boundary. Experiment 1 recruited participants who have played over 50 hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as an expert population (experts, n=51) and compared their score on an upright and inverted face recognition task against participants who had not played Skyrim (novices, n=55). We also tested two different races of faces from Skyrim (Nord and Altmer). Participants performed significantly better on upright faces, t(104) =14.056, p <.0001 and Altmer faces, t(104) =-5.346, p < .001, and experts performed significantly better than novices, t(103) =2.664, p < 0.01. Participants then watched a video of gameplay with eye-tracking where participants’ proportions of fixations on Skyrim faces were recorded. This face proportion measure did not significantly correlate with any other measure. Finally, participants completed a survey with questions about the number of hours played, video game habits, open-ended questions about experiences in Skyrim, and a character recognition task. Experiment 2 recruited a new population of novice participants (n=46) and compared scores on an upright and inverted face recognition task for morphed photos of human faces to 3 different styles of video game faces that ranged from highly realistic (Monster Hunter: World), moderately realistic (Skyrim), to highly stylized (Blade & Soul). Participants performed significantly better on upright faces over inverted faces, F(1, 45) =13.06, p <.0001 and on realistic faces over stylized faces, F(1, 45) = 54.657, p < .0001. Participants demonstrated a significantly larger upright advantage for stylized faces over realistic faces F(1, 45) = 11.97, p < .01. Participants then completed a survey with questions about video game habits, perceived task difficulty, and looking strategies. The results for experiments 1 and 2 provide evidence to suggest that both expertise and style can account for reduced performance in digital faces, and open up questions about how these factors interact.

Automated bus and truck systems hold the potential to improve road safety by eliminating some human error, increase the vehicle throughput by allowing vehicle convoying to shorten headways, and reduce costs associated with infrastructure, user time, and drivers. In this study, an automated bus system (ABUS) was compared with more-conventional light rail and bus-on-dedicated-lane (BDL) alternatives. A cost comparison (excluding accident costs) was also made among an automated freight trucking system (AHS-Truck), a no-build base condition, and configurations involving the addition of a conventional lane or a dedicated truck lane to the existing roadway. In both the ABUS and the Truck-AHS cases, the buses and trucks were assumed to operate in convoys. The benefits and costs were assessed from a societal perspective. Another comparison, based on shipping rates, was made among the AHS-truck, conventional trucking, and intermodal rail. The study concludes that the proposed bus alternatives could have substantially-lower costs than a functionally-equivalent light rail system for relatively low passenger volumes, but that there is no significant difference between the ABUS and BDL options at these volumes. At intermediate and high passenger volumes, ABUS and light rail may be the preferred alternatives, respectively. With regards to the freight systems, the analysis presented here indicates that the AHS lane performed better than the other two alternatives, primarily because of the lower vehicle operating and user costs. Additional research is recommended that addresses safety, demand change, and other impacts of the systems considered in this study.