I study urban economic development, workforce development and local labor markets with the goal of informing public policy that supports employment opportunities, human capital development and job mobility for people across the educational attainment spectrum. I have written on the planning dilemmas inherent in decision-making on industrial land use, on the history and politics of community development, on the role of labor unions in the development of workforce skills and on the use of job linkage programs in the context of real estate-led urban economic development. Planning departments, economic development agencies, redevelopment authorities, labor unions and community-based development organizations all help shape metropolitan economies and urban neighborhoods. I study the complex, often contentious relationships among these institutions and their relationship to the private economy,linking their behavior and performance to social and economic outcomes. I teach Urban Economics in the core curriculum for the Masters in City Planning at UPenn as well as several courses in the Community and Economic Development curriculum concentration.
Economic Development Policy and Politics
Urban industrial land and land policy: national context, American Planning Association Annual Conference (2010)
Community Benefits Agreements and Local Government: A Review of Recent Evidence, Journal of the American Planning Association (2010)
As community benefits agreements (CBAs) become more common in urban redevelopment, they are generating conceptual...
Up-Zoning New York City’s Mixed Use Neighborhoods : Property-Led Economic Development and the Anatomy of a Planning Dilemma, Journal of Planning Education and Research (2005)
Remaking New York City: Can Prosperity Be Shared and Sustainable? (with Brad Lander), Departmental Papers (City and Regional Planning) (2004)
Changes in the organization of global economic activity – in particular, the ascendance of services...
Local Labor Markets and Workforce Development
Human capital-centered regionalism in economic development: The case of Philadelphia’s biosciences sector, Penn Institute for Urban Research White Paper Series on Sustainable Urban Development (2011)
The paper, drawing on a case study of a regional "talent development" consortium in the...
Chains and Ladders: Exploring the Opportunities for Workforce Development and Poverty Reduction in the Hospital Sector (with Marla Nelson), Economic Development Quarterly (2010)
In this article, the authors investigate the potential of hospitals to offer low- and semiskilled...
Reading rival union responses to the localization of technical work in the US telecommunications industry, Environment and Planning A (2007)
Building in Good Jobs: Linking Workforce Development with Real Estate-Led Economic Development (with Jeremy Reiss and Margaret Stix), Departmental Papers (City and Regional Planning) (2006)
Municipal governments in the U.S. are increasingly devoting public resources to the redevelopment of abandoned,...
Beyond the First Job: career-ladder initiatives in telecommunications and related information technology industries, Communities and Workforce Development (2005)
planning and community development history
Expanding Planning’s Public Sphere: STREET Magazine, Activist Planning and Community Development in Brooklyn, NY 1971-75, Journal of Planning Education and Research (2008)
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a paradigm of activist planning or critical city...