My scholarship focuses on how urban and suburban policies and plans contribute to and can address social inequality, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid racial and economic change.
I have written extensively on suburban poverty, racial segregation, immigration, residential and commercial gentrification, redevelopment politics, and neighborhood opportunity.
My recent research has focused on the following issues:
Immigrant Placemaking and the Politics of Development. This research focuses on the recent shift in the geography of immigrants from central cities to the suburbs. It looks at the ways in which these trends have changed the form, use, and meaning of suburban space and development politics. My book, Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia, examines the efforts of Asian Americans in Silicon Valley to invest in schools, neighborhoods, and shopping centers as well as the tensions that emerged over these changes. Trespassers underscores the ways in which White, middle-class norms and privilege are reinforced through suburban policy, planning, and the design of the built environment, and impact even the most well-to-do communities of color. Other articles have addressed issues ranging from the politics of immigrant faith-based institutions to the changing form of suburban homes and neighborhoods.
Suburban Poverty and Politics of Equitable Development. This research includes my second book, The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge, which investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC—one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States—have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment. The Right to Suburbia shows how patterns of unequal, racialized development and displacement are being produced and reproduced in suburbs—and how communities are fighting back. I have written several related articles on commercial gentrification, equitable transit-oriented development, and suburban poverty and protest.
Access to Opportunity and Equitable Regional Planning. Neighborhoods of concentrated poverty often have limited educational, employment, and other opportunities that affect residents’ economic and social mobility. My research has shown how community engagement in mapping neighborhood opportunity and regional planning can help to bridge opportunity divides. It has explored issues related to opportunity and equity mapping, regional equity planning, story mapping, and equity in smart city planning.
My research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Justice, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kresge Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Enterprise Community Partners, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, and other government agencies and private foundations. In 2020, I received an Exemplary Researcher Award from the University of Maryland’s Office of the Vice President for Research.