Research

My lab investigates how the structure, function, and governance of urban social-ecological systems shape the distribution of environmental benefits and risks across cities. We use spatial analysis, GIS, remote sensing, and increasingly machine learning to ask how cities can become more sustainable, just, and resilient in the face of climate change, rapid urban growth, and persistent social inequity. Most of our fieldwork is in Philadelphia, with comparative and global work in collaboration with partners across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Research themes

Urban form, heat, and air quality

Urban Structure and the Environment

How does the way buildings, vegetation, and pavement combine at the block scale shape what residents breathe and the heat they experience? With colleagues in Berlin, Leipzig, and Philadelphia, we developed the Structure of Urban Landscapes (STURLA) classification to capture three-dimensional urban form, and now use it across cities to ask how composition shapes temperature, air quality, and ecological function.

Spatial data, AI, and community knowledge

Urban Flooding and Green Infrastructure

Urban flooding is becoming more frequent and severe under climate change, with disproportionate consequences for socially vulnerable communities. With civil engineering colleagues at Villanova and transportation researchers across the country, we ask how cities can use spatial data, community knowledge, and AI to plan stormwater and adaptation strategies that are both effective and equitable.

Community gardens and the right to urban space

Land in Common

Vacant land is a persistent structural feature of US cities. Rather than treating vacancy as failure, we conceptualize urban vacant land as a generative space in which communities exercise creative rights, most visibly through community gardens and urban agriculture. As founding member and technical lead of the Philadelphia Garden Data Collaborative, my lab builds and maintains the only authoritative GIS dataset of active community gardens in Philadelphia.

Unequal access to urban nature

Environmental Justice and Green Space

Urban green spaces, parks, and environmental amenities are unequally distributed within and across US cities, often along lines of race, income, and historical disinvestment. Through the SESYNC Parks for People working group and local work in Philadelphia, we ask why access to nature in the city remains so unequal, and what fine-scale spatial analysis can change about that. Equity is also the connective tissue across the rest of the program.

Cross-cutting

Spatial infrastructure for urban research

Methods and Tools

Our research generates methods, datasets, and platforms that outlast individual projects: the STURLA classification for three-dimensional urban form, a mobile platform for fine-scale air pollution monitoring developed with Dr. Kabindra Shakya, the Philadelphia Garden Data Collaborative platform, and contributions to the SESYNC Parks for People dataset.

Partners

This work is sustained by long-term partnerships with academic and community institutions, including the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Neighborhood Gardens Trust, Soil Generation, the Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems, the SESYNC Parks for People working group, and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Leipzig.