Sustainable Urbanism

Developing an agenda for more sustainable urban practices is a critical goal for American city governments, but many of the measures for evaluating sustainability depend on metrics which only obliquely capture people's participation in more sustainable practices--that is, a more sustainable urbanism. My research on sustainability involves both empirical work on today's "actually existing sustainability" and exploration of ways of conceptualizing sustainability that better integrate geographical research on urban politics and place-making with the kinds of ecological analyses which have to date largely driven sustainability studies.

Currently, I am writing in both of these two areas. First, I am exploring the ways that historically important environmental, justice-oriented urban discourses are (and are not) being incorporated into more recent urban sustainability planning processes in the United States. Additionally, drawing on recent field work in Portland, Ore., I am writing on the relative sustainability of competing urban practices. Moving forward, I hope to draw on both themes in developing methodological approaches to urban sustainability research that remain "policy ready" while also incorporating the political and justice-oriented critiques that drive research within urban geography.

Urban Land Tenure: Understanding the Informal Regulation of U.S. Cities

In the Global North (and particularly the U.S.), accounts of property rights dominate thinking about the regulation of urban space. Property is undeniably powerful as a rubric for understanding land regulation, but focusing on property elides other kinds of rights in urban spaces and places.

I am currently writing on the implications of importing the vocabulary of land tenure from literature on the Global South, using it to frame a discussion of existing non-property rights in U.S. cities, many of which are informal in nature. By adopting the nuanced vocabulary regarding use rights and land tenure from scholarship in Southern contexts, I hope to encourage new thinking about the many overlapping, complexly constructed rights and privileges which the residents of American cities negotiate among themselves, such as the use of stoops for community gathering or the use of particular lawns as informal pocket parks. My field work in Portland, Ore. forms the underlying empirical case for this research theme, as well.

Group Home Siting and the Production of Urban Landscapes

I have been collaborating with Deborah Martin and Alex Scherr in pursuing research on the politics surrounding group home siting. In the aftermath of the "de-institutionalization" of social service provision in the 1970s/1980s, residential social service facilities provide critical services to urban communities. However, the process of choosing where these facilities will be located is both political and social, with many of the most complex negotiations playing out at the local scale as communities grapple with questions of spatial/social identity. We are currently exploring case studies in Massachusetts and New York.