Human-Environment Interaction in the City

This research addresses how people interact with the urban environment through urban growth, land cover change, and the transformation of urban ecology.  I am particularly interested in the relationship of socioeconomic character with vegetation character, i.e. how does socioeconomic or urban neighborhood change force, and is forced by, ecological change?  I am also more broadly interested in how individual behavior is influenced by environmental or neighborhood conditions, not only in terms of the physical environment but also in terms of the socioeconomic and built environments as well.  Recently, I have been focusing on neighborhood effects on behaviors relating to juvenile delinquency and substance abuse in Philadelphia.  The development and application of methods for analyzing these questions is also of interest, as conventional analytical techniques often prove inadequate.  I have utilized a number of spatial statistics and spatial data mining techniques to address these methodological issues.