CHRISTINE WEN
Urban planning scholar + educator
economic development, municipal finance, education and schooling, data science
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2025.04
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​I've just wrapped up my Spring'25 classes on GIS and data visualization at U of Calgary.​​
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I'm developing mathematical models for optimizing state and local business incentives using project data from Louisiana and New York, and will present the first results at the 2025 International Conference on Urban Affairs (ICUA/UAA) in Vancouver, Canada--where I'm from!
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Featured works
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​​The Conversation long-form investigation: "Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses..." Click here to read.​
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ArcGIS StoryMap: "Mapping Amazon 2.0: Where the Online Giant Locates and Why." with Good Jobs First. Click here to see it.
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Liberty County, TX, 2022-2026 Strategic Plan by my planning studio students at Texas A&M. Click here to download the posters we presented to the community.
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ABOUT
I research urban planning/economic development and currently teach at the University of Calgary. After receiving my Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University in 2019, I worked three years for the D.C.-based nonprofit Good Jobs First before accepting an assistant professor position at Texas A&M University, where I taught in the bachelor's and master's urban planning programs.
In my former life, I worked for the Earth Institute at Columbia University while doing my master's and the cosmic microwave background radiation group at Princeton University while doing my bachelor's in physics. And before that, at age 15, I received First-Class Honors with Distinctions in professional piano performance for the Associate Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada, where I lived as a teenager.
Besides my work, I love literature, science, philosophy, music, theater, and spend my spare time hanging with my dog Arthur and cats Salem and Billy, writing stories, kayaking, boxing, swimming, studying foreign languages, coding, learning the violin, and finally picking up piano again after 18 years.
RESEARCH AREAS
ACTIVE:
Municipal finance and tax policy
This research promotes fair taxation and transparency. One project resulted in an original database of disaggregated index measuring the severity of U.S. state restrictions with regard to local revenue and spending. Others have examined the impact of business tax incentives on public services.
Modeling development incentives
This research develops frameworks and tools to guide state + local government interventions in maximizing the net benefits of economic development incentives. The models would predict how much can be cut down without negative effects, thereby making them more cost-efficient.
Children in our economy
This research informs development planning around children and childcare, early childhood development, schooling and educational equity, and youth workforce training/socialization/well-being, focusing on the increasingly pervasive role of urban technology and evolving human-machine relationships.
++ various collaborative projects led by colleagues
INACTIVE/ARCHIVED:
Human-centered urbanization
This doctoral dissertation project pinpoints where China's urbanization policy falls short of integrating rural migrant families into urban life, with focus on schooling, housing, and urban social security.
Groundwater management
An offshoot from the hydrological research at the Earth Institute, this project compares centralized and decentralized mode of governance in regard to the outcomes for groundwater depletion.
SELECTED WRITINGS
REFEREED ARTICLES
Christine Wen. 2024. "Do economic development tax abatements affect school finances?" Economic Development Quarterly, 38 (1), 3-14. Read here
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​Christine Wen and Greg LeRoy. 2023. "Making the students pay? The gross fiscal cost of tax incentives for U.S. school districts." Community Development, 54 (4), 479-495. Read here
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Christine Wen. 2020. "Educating rural migrant children in interior China: The promise and pitfall of low-fee private schools." International Journal of Educational Development 79. Read here
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Christine Wen, Yuanshuo Xu, Yunji Kim, and Mildred Warner. 2020. "Starving counties, squeezing cities: Tax and expenditure limits in the U.S." Journal of Economic Policy Reform 23 (2), 101-119. Read here
Christine Wen and Jeremy Wallace. 2019. "Toward human-centered urbanization? Housing ownership and access to social insurance among migrant households in China." Sustainability 11(13), 3567-3581. Read here​
REPORTS AND PAPERS
NYS IDA Issue Brief (update in progress: link available soon)
"Corporate subsidies versus public education: How tax abatements cost New York public schools." Read here.
"The revenue impact of corporate tax incentives on South Carolina public schools 2017-2021." Read here.
"Mapping Amazon 2.0: Where the online giant locates and why." Read here.
"Revealing the true costs of tax incentives: 8 critical improvements needed for GASB Statement No. 77." Read here.
"Abating our future: How students pay for corporate tax breaks." Read here.
OP-EDS + COMMENTARIES
"How tax breaks siphoned millions from MO public schools that serve poor students." The Missouri Independent.
"School boards must speak up when money goes away." The Cincinnati Enquirer.
"NY school boards needn't be powerless against corporate tax breaks." The Post-Standard.
"Black and Brown students pay for this tax break. Texas should not extend it." The Houston Chronicle.
"How economic development is killing Michigan school funding." The Detroit News.
SELECTED TALKS
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Urban Affairs Association (UAA)/International Conference on Urban Affairs (ICUA): 2018, 2020 (canceled), 2024
Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Annual Conference: 2015, 2018, 2021
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference: 2016, 2017
Other: Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), New York State City Mangers Association (NYSCMA)
INTERVIEWS
2024. Economic Development Quarterly: "Do economic development tax incentives affect school finances?"
2021. America's Work Force Union Podcast: new report "Abating our future: How students pay..."
2021. In the Public Interest: "Corporate subsidies not only rarely work, but they're also starving public schools."
2021. Sanctuary for Independent Media, Hudson Mohawk Radio Network: how "Corporate tax breaks hurt schools."
