Urban Economics, Land Use and Transportation, Urban Simulation, Urban Informatics, Visualization.
I believe that cities are complex spatial political economies, shaped by their physical and institutional contexts and by the individual choices made by their people and organizations. Metropolitan regions are becoming ever more salient as economic and social structures in the era of global interdependence and information technology, and in the context of heightened awareness of the environmental costs of auto-dependent and spatially dispersed urban development. Some of the most important challenges we face ahead include those of finding ways to understand the dynamics of metropolitan regions, and to inform local and metropolitan infrastructure and planning choices in ways that are both democratic and sustainable. I believe that addressing these challenges will require an unprecedented degree of cooperation among different perspectives and disciplines, across research methods and epistemologies, and among a broad and engaged community of research and practice.
Paul Waddell teaches and conducts research on modeling and planning in the domains of land use, housing, economic geography, transportation, and the environment. He has led the development of the UrbanSim model of urban development, now used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations and other local and regional agencies for operational planning purposes in a variety of U.S. metropolitan areas such as Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as internationally in a growing list of cities in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His current research focuses on the assessment of the impacts of land use regulations and transportation investments on outcomes such as spatial patterns of real estate development and prices, travel behavior, emissions, and resource consumption. He is also working on ways to engage public participation in making complex policy choices.
Over the past five years, Professor Waddell has served as PI or Co-PI on numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, and state and local governments. He is also active in providing consulting for local governments in developing and applying analytic tools for decision support, and began his professional career working as a regional planner with the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
Professor Waddell has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Journal of Transport and Land Use, Transportation Letters, Applied Spatial Analysis and Planning, and International Journal of Microsimulation. His research is published broadly in journals in planning, geography, transportation, and urban economics.
CP255 Urban Informatics and Visualization
CP207 Urban Land and Housing Markets