Urban / Human Geography

As a geographer, I explore questions about how people experience cities, and how those perceptions and experiences shape the possibility of urban development. My focus to date has been on North American cities, most importantly: Baltimore, New York, to a lesser degree Boston, and (in early, exploratory form) the Pacific Northwest (e.g., Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland).

Theoretically, I endeavor to situate my work between place theory and network theory. I tend toward questions about how people experience boundaries, and how they construct places socially and physically; I am interested in the "temporary permanences" (Harvey) of the places we make. I seek to make sense of the interactions between different scales of analysis when it comes to the urban: how do neighborhoods "combine" to construct cities? What is the relationship between those neighborhoods and larger regional economies?

However, I am also interested in networks, and in particular in how network connections transgress the platial/experiential boundaries that we construct. When a person's relationships are both inside and outside of the neighborhoods in which they live and work, how are the relationships affected by those boundaries? To what degree does the sharpness of these boundaries depend on topography and the existing built environment, and to what degree are they socially transcendent of existing physical spaces?

• social cities
• qualitative GIS
• sustainable cities