Methods and Framework

SB 79 creates one TOD zone per qualifying transit stop. This analysis covers two transit categories. For Metro rail, LA Metro's GTFS feed contains 448 individual stop records: separate entries for each platform, direction, and entrance. A multi-platform station, such as Union Station, appears in the GTFS as dozens of distinct stops.

The rail component deduplicates to 111 named station groups by clustering stops within 400 meters with identical station names. Each group has one TOD buffer. This matches the policy intent: SB 79's zone is the half-mile circle around the station, not around each platform.

The G Line / Orange Line BRT was incorporated in May 2026, adding 17 named station groups from 33 directional GTFS stop records. The D Line Phase 1 extension (Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega, operational since October 2023) was incorporated in May 2026, bringing the rail total to 111 named station groups. This brings the total to 471 qualifying stop records deduplicated into 128 named station groups. The Metro J Line remains excluded based on LA City DCP's November 2025 report because it lacks full-time dedicated bus lanes. Additional planned or qualifying bus corridors remain under review.

The deduplication methodology is conservative. However, some Metro stops that share a name but serve different lines at significant distances may be incorrectly merged. The reproducible pipeline in data/raw/ includes the full clustering logic.

Displaceability by Design (Roy, Orendorff, and Stephens, 2025) is the primary theoretical grounding for the Displaceability Index and the displacement-indicator flag. The six-component Displaceability Index operationalizes Roy et al.’s composite of environmental burden, tenancy precarity, housing cost stress, carceral proximity, and historic-overlay pressure. Their central claim is that displaceability is engineered by policy, not incidental to it. This site uses that framework interpretively; the station scores are exposure indicators, not proof of policy-caused displacement.

Beyond Sanctuary (Roy and Zablotsky, eds., Duke University Press, 2025) provides the broader normative and analytical frame. The volume argues that formal protection mechanisms — managed refuge, humanitarian shelter, by-right housing approval — are structured to manage and contain rather than protect. Vanessa Thompson's concept of surplusification grounds the compound vulnerability analysis: communities in the highest-risk TOD zones are rendered surplus relative to the development premium of transit corridors. Nicholas De Genova's analysis of deportability-as-discipline informs the framing of tenant displaceability under persistent redevelopment pressure. Charles Sepulveda's framing of Tovaangar — the LA Basin as a relational Indigenous geography — establishes that every Metro corridor analyzed here runs through occupied land with reciprocal obligations. These concepts inform the analytical framing in BEYOND_SANCTUARY_FRAME in src/critical_geography.py.

Continuum of Carcerality (After Echo Park Lake Research Collective, 2022) grounds the carceral_density column. The continuum framework maps the spatial apparatus of displacement, including police stations, probation offices, immigration enforcement facilities, and surveillance infrastructure, directly onto TOD zone boundaries. Carceral proximity is treated as one component of compound vulnerability, not as a standalone displacement predictor.

Immunocapitalism (Olivarius, "Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans," American Historical Review 124(2), 2019; further developed in Necropolis, Harvard University Press, 2022) informs the insurance and capital access section of the Eaton Fire case study. Olivarius argues that access to financial instruments (insurance, credit, legal services) functions as an immunity system: those with access survive disruption with assets intact; those without do not. In the Eaton Fire corridor, this framework informs the analysis of the rebuilding gap.

Several additional sources shape the pipeline's spatial methodology: Graziani, Montano, Roy & Stephens (2023) grounds the nuisance abatement exposure function and provides the Chesapeake Apartments anchor case; Maharawal & McElroy (2018) informs the counter-mapping methodology; Lai (2012) grounds the racial triangulation risk score; and Bhandar (2018), accessed through Graziani et al., provides the concept of racial regimes of ownership operationalized in the racial_regime_present flag.