Department welcomes Dr. Elizabeth Delmelle as GIS Day Speaker

On Wednesday, November 15, the Department of Geography, Planning, and Sustainability hosted our annual GIS Day event, coinciding with hundreds of similar events across the world to promote spatial methods and perspectives.  Dr. Elizabeth Delmelle from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is Director of the Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program and an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning.  Her talk, entitled "Using Real Estate Advertisement Text and Mortgage Lending Data to Understand Urban Dynamics" demonstrated the alignment of urban socioeconomic characteristics with specific phrases in the real estate descriptions used to pitch properties on online databases.  By integrating this qualitative data within a spatial framework, she and her collaborators were able to uncover the potential for ongoing inequities in the housing market and identify trajectories of changing communities.  Additionally, Dr. Delmelle met with students and faculty of the department to share research and curricular ideas and learn more about our respective programs.  Many thanks to Dr. Delmelle and all who organized this great event!