NEW RESEARCH FELLOW PROVIDES STRONG ECONOMIC EXPERTISE FOR THE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
During two days in May, Dr. Sidney Wong had the opportunity to
interact with 25 developers from China during an American Planning
Association-sponsored program that provided the developers the opportunity
to study U.S. urban development.
“I showed them the city and escorted them to WRT (Wallace, Roberts, & Todd, LLC planning and design in Philadelphia) and the city Planning Commission,” he said. “It was an eye-opening program for me too, as the development (in China) is much bigger and faster. The largest shopping mall is now in China — Golden Resources Shopping Mall in Beijing at 7.3 million square feet versus 4.2 million at the Mall of America.”
As the newest Research Fellow of the Center for Sustainable Communities at Temple University Ambler, Dr. Wong will put his expertise in the fiscal impact of such development to good use, engaging in detailed research on a variety of projects for the Center.
Dr. Wong will also be teaching Community and Regional Planning 410 Research Methods — part of the CRP graduate program at Ambler.
“Sidney Wong is an expert on fiscal analysis who is currently teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. What he will bring to the Center is the ability to tell communities the fiscal impacts of alternative land use changes — new highways or residential developments versus commercial or age-assisted development, for example,” said Dr. Jeffrey Featherstone, Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities and Chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning. “He has done this for other towns as a consultant. As we move into developing more revitalization studies and land use scenario analyses for communities, Dr. Wong will be able to analyze revenues versus expenditures for those alternative scenarios.”
Dr. Wong’s expertise includes fiscal impact studies, market analysis and needs assessment, local economic development, geographically targeted tax incentives, community development and information, and land use planning and urban design.
Before coming to Pennsylvania, Dr. Wong was the Associate Director of the Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems in Florida, and Interim Director of a $400,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development -sponsored Community Outreach Partnership Center Program in Miami. He was also an advisor to Empowerment Trust, Inc. of Miami-Dade County and to the county planning commission on the 2000 Census. Most of his work was related to community programs and economic development.
“I’m currently conducting research on neighborhood changes, using a spline model to test the threshold theory and developing agent-based simulation models to identify critical factors leading to blight and gentrification. It is a $40,000 project is funded by HUD,” Dr. Wong added. “I also recently completed a fiscal impact study for Hopewell Township, N.J.”
In 2001, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Wong established an online community databank (West Philadelphia Data and InfoResource) to provide better data access for community groups in West Philadelphia.
He has served as a panelist and moderator at many Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning conferences. and has been a featured speaker at community information workshops at the Census Bureau and the Digital Miracles Conference in Philadelphia. He was also invited by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to speak on public leasehold.
In 1998, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning named Professor Wong's doctoral dissertation, “Local Enterprise Zone Program and Economic Development Planning,” the best planning dissertation in North America. He also received the award of academic excellence from the British Royal Town Planning Institute. His recent publications include Fiscal Impacts of the Proposed Beazer Projects, Hopewell Township, N.J., “Data intermediation and beyond: Issues of Web-based PPGIS,” (Vol. 38, Cartographica); “Spatial Organization of Urban Places,” (in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences); “Fragmentation and Economic Development” (in Solving Urban Problems in Areas Characterized by Fragmentation and Divisiveness); and “Creating a Positive Future for a Minority Community,” (Vol. 24, Journal of Urban Affairs).
Dr. Wong was honored with the best teaching award by the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and the outstanding graduate instructor award at UC Berkeley. His teaching expertise includes planning methods, impact studies, urban economics, policy analysis and program evaluation, public finance, local economic development, community information technology applications, and research methodologies.
Dr. Wong holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, master’s degrees in urban studies from University of Hong Kong and in town planning from the University of Wales, and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He was also a postdoctoral fellow with University of Southern California.
Prior to his doctoral pursuit, Dr. Wong worked as a practicing planner (certified by the Royal Town Planning Institute) in Hong Kong. His responsibilities included zoning, land use control, consultant management, urban renewal, and long-range infrastructure planning. In the early 1990s, he also served as a consultant to the World Bank regarding their Asian urban projects.
