Research Projects

Forthcoming research publications, and projects that are submission-ready, include:

With two co-authors from Harvard University's Bloomberg Center for Cities, Quinton Mayne and Fernando Fernandez-Monge Cortazar, a research project critically framing and understanding the ecosystem of Local Systems of Public-Sector innovation (LSPSI) globally, attending to key dimensions and variables explaining local PSI systems and measuring varied definitions and approaches to innovation, administrative regime types, and leadership characteristics.
A comprehensive, social-constructivist analysis of the urban transport, land-use, and neighborhood planning nexus in Denver, Colorado's East Area, drawing on interviews with city officials and planners, and based on participant observation.
A national study considering communities' deployment of local-level land use regulation as a tool of urban geopolitics. In this study, I consider three pressing geopolitical contestations and analyze how communities deploy land-use controls as a response: (1) Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities and carceral infrastructures; (2) AI data centers, inclusive of their full social and environmental benefits and costs; and (3) border-wall and surveillance infrastructures like facial recognition towers.
A research project working with University of Denver student Research Assistants (RAs) to analyze results from a housing simulator model sponsored by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. Our research team will model and analyze a wide array of possibly future public policies with a focus on these policies' impacts on housing production. The project will also critically consider the role of modeling technologies.

Early-stage or ongoing research projects include:

A long-term project considering housing policy in the Denver and Colorado contexts, with an emphasis on "missing middle" housing for middle-income Coloradans and policy reforms for "gentle density," or contextually suited increases in density.
Relatedly, and supported by a grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a project with collaborators Susan Daggett, Eric Holt, and Luke Teater analyzing the impact of commercial vs. residential building codes on missing-middle housing in Colorado.
With Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) policy practitioner Victor Chen, an early-stage theoretical and empirical foray conceptualizing left-behindedness as a sociopolitical phenomenon. Specifically, in this research project we consider one Colorado region's efforts at progressive Local Economic Development in the face of deindustrialization, demographic decline, and a politics of neglect.
With Prof. Elliott Sclar, an archival investigation of the 1948 Nairobi capital plan, crafted by British and South African planners and a window into a world-historical moment and subjectivity;
An engagement with the photography of South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky and his work on securitization in Johannesburg;
With colleagues at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, an examination of ethics, deliberation, and patient decision-making processes for organ transplantation, examining the results qualitative survey data and a day-long facilitated deliberation sessions with patients and healthcare providers.