Data Innovation

Urban data innovation scholars at Price use computational data science and spatial analysis to explore urban transportation patterns around the world, critically interrogate how big data reshapes housing affordability, and leverage technology platforms for more just, collaborative city planning.

USC’s Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis features a strong faculty in urban data science, critical data studies, and transportation/housing analytics. Geoff Boeing heads Price’s Urban Data Lab at the frontier of computational urban design and planning. In addition, Professor Annette Kim experiments with critical cartography and humanistic machine learning in the Spatial Analysis Lab, and Professor Lisa Schweitzer brings cutting-edge expertise on social media and data ethics to urban planning research. 

Spotlight: Research at the Urban Data Lab

Urban big data and technology have explosively reshaped city planning in recent years. At the USC Urban Data Lab, students study these phenomena and their repercussions for urban living, using methods spanning computational data science, machine learning, and spatial modeling and analysis.

Recent and ongoing lab projects include:

• Developing OSMnx, an open source Python package for downloading and modeling transportation networks and other spatial data anywhere in the world.
• Exploring how urban planning creates spatial order through the design of street networks around the world.
• Investigating how big data shapes the modern housing search information landscape, reproducing traditional inequalities and reinforcing residential segregation.

Urban Data Lab is currently funding students researching transportation and pollution in Los Angeles, walkable accessibility around the world, and open source tool development. You can read more about our research interests and recent work.

Prospective Students

Urban Data Lab is looking for grad students at the master’s and PhD levels. We particularly seek students with strong coding and data science skills who can hit the ground running in the USC Urban Data Lab. However these skills are not prerequisites. If you attend USC, we will teach you coding and spatial data science with Python from the ground-up primarily across two courses: PPD534 (Data, Evidence, and Communication for the Public Good) and PPD599 (Advanced Urban Analytics).

If you’re an activist or urbanist with no tech experience, we will teach you data/tech skills to effectively apply your knowledge to serve the community. If you’re a coder or scientist interested in urbanism and planning, we will teach you how to unlock your skills for more equitable cities.

Contact

Geoff Boeing is Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, and the Director of the USC Urban Data Lab.

Learn more about Professor Boeing’s work here.

Phone: 740-2773 | Email: [email protected]