My research examines how people collectively shape cities and the institutions that govern them. Across substantive areas including historic preservation, fiscal democracy, and democratic innovation, I study how institutions structure participation, how competing visions and preferences are translated into policy, and how these processes reshape places and local governance. This research agenda currently develops across two interconnected programs: Heritage, Cities & Placemaking and Fiscal Democracy & Democratic Innovation.

I. Heritage, Cities & Placemaking

My research on heritage, cities, and placemaking examines how the politics of historic preservation shapes the built environment and, through it, the character of cities. I study how people construct the meaning and value of the urban past, how they participate in negotiating competing preferences and visions of the city through political and institutional processes, and how these struggles determine what remains materially present in the urban landscape and becomes part of the city’s future.

My dissertation, Shaping Global-City Character: Cultural Heritage Production and Urban Governance in 21st-Century Taipei, provides the foundation for my ongoing research on heritage, cities, and placemaking. The project examines how competing visions of the city are negotiated through the institutional politics of heritage production and translated into the built environment. I am currently developing several parts of the dissertation into standalone articles while extending its broader argument toward a book on heritage production and global city-making.

II. Fiscal Democracy & Democratic Innovation

My research on fiscal democracy and democratic innovation examines how people collectively make decisions about public resources and how different forms of democratic participation emerge and operate around these decisions. I study how political and institutional conditions shape the development of participatory practices, how democratic innovations travel across places or emerge locally, and how the organization of fiscal decision-making shapes citizens’ choices about taxation and public spending. Together, these projects examine how collective decisions over public resources shape the future of collective life in cities.