Data and the Built Environment

Areal view of two buildings with turquoise-colored roofs.

Tommy’s research interrogates the impact of construction booms and busts on urban form. Using GIS and other computational approaches, Tommy synthesizes historical datasets with archival material to visualize the urban transformations wrought by successive phases of intense development and contraction. Tommy’s cases are the global urban regions of London, New York and Los Angeles: three metropolitan regions which have historically served as both laboratories for the pioneering of new building typologies and urban morphologies, and also as outlets for global finance capital. 

Researcher: Thomas Shay Hill