Will Payne — Measuring Urban Consumption Footprints in Changing Cities
The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at NYU Tandon welcomes you to attend a lecture by Dr. Will Payne, assistant professor of geographic information science at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. This event, hosted as part of the Fall 2025 Urban Science Research Seminar Series, will be held in Room 1201 at 370 Jay Street.
About the Lecture
Measuring Urban Consumption Footprints in Changing Cities
New retail businesses targeting affluent consumers are often contentious signs of change in the urban built environment, as neighborhood fixtures are replaced with upscale coffee shops or boutiques. While the phenomenon is widespread and has attracted significant media attention and some interest from qualitative researchers, quantitative social scientists know relatively little about the temporal and spatial patterns of this form of “commercial gentrification.” In this talk, Dr. Will Payne will present previously inaccessible data from the local review platform Yelp and novel spatial analytic methods to analyze the changing geographic distributions of customer-reviewers from 2005-2024 in two adjacent neighborhoods in New York City. Untangling the complex problem of how changes in the business landscape affect and prefigure demographic shifts can help cities and resident groups shape equitable development and meet community needs.
About the Speaker
Will Payne is Assistant Professor of Geographic Information Science at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. In his research, Will uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study the relationship between geospatial technologies and urban inequality, examining how changing technical capabilities, labor relations, and competitive pressures in the location-based services (LBS) industry interact with processes of racialized and class-based segregation in American cities. He has examined how different groups of urban residents use “urban information systems” like the Zagat Survey, Nextdoor, Yelp, Foursquare, and Google Maps to organize and understand their consumption experiences in cities, while technologists and real estate developers employ the resulting data to help transform marginal neighborhoods into upscale consumption spaces. Will also develops open-source tools for spatial data visualization and computational research.
Visitor Information
This event will be held in Room 1201 at 370 Jay St. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Luma is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.
About the Urban Science Research Seminar Series
The Center for Urban Science + Progress’s annual Research Seminar series features leading voices in the growing field of urban informatics examining real-world challenges facing cities and urban environments around the world. The Fall 2025 series is organized by Assistant Professors Graham Dove, Yuki Miura, Qi Sun, and Takahiro Yabe.