My research
I’m an urban geographer who studies transportation and mobility, urban sustainability and local government, and a few other things. My main interests center on the social, political, and environmental contexts and consequences of infrastructure and standards. Over the years, this has included the impact of airport expansion on neighboring communities, the political ecology of green buildings, and the spatiality of hazardous materials transport. My first book is Imagining Sustainability: Creative Urban Environmental Governance in Chicago and Melbourne, available from Routledge, and I’ve also written a textbook about social and political aspects of transportation geography from Rowman & Littlefield.
My teaching and advising
I regularly teach courses in four main areas: global urbanization and city form (GEOG 204), U.S. regional geography with a focus on U.S. minority cultures, (GEOG 254), technologies of geography and geographies of technology (GEOG 412), and transportation and mobilities (GEOG 465, GEOG 595). I love teaching because it allows me to learn about aspects of geography that I don’t include in my own research but that still fascinate me.
I also advise Master’s and PhD students on various aspects of transportation justice and political economy/ecology.
About me
It’s been said that my hobbies require the same kind of effort as my job: long-term, large-scale projects that have to be taken a bite at a time, and that require me to concentrate on my own work and what brings me joy instead of comparing myself to others. Ideally, these activities would all reinforce each other, right? In my spare time, I train for and run half marathons, with a goal of finishing one in all fifty states. I also quilt, somewhere in between traditional and modern styles.