CPRC scholars in our Urbanism and Neighborhoods primary research area group examine neighborhood change, including impacts on population health, producing original research as well as datasets that are a vital a resource for CPRC affiliates and others doing NIH-supported work on spatial approaches to health. Longitudinal analysis of health and well-being is a focus of several affiliates, who collaborate on two panel studies of representative samples of NYC residents with a focus on poverty, disadvantage, health, and well-being. Creating new data on neighborhood characteristics is another focus; affiliates created a web application – the “Computer Aided Neighborhood Visual Assessment System” (CANVAS) which implements neighborhood audit studies via Google Street View. In addition, affiliates have created two datasets, available to collaborators at CPRC, which provide fine-grained details on how urban form has changed over the past 30+ years.
Leadership
Gerard Torrats-Espinosa is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
His research draws from the literatures on urban sociology, stratification, and criminology, and it focuses on understanding how the spatial organization of the American stratification system creates and reproduces inequalities. His current research agenda investigates how the neighborhood context, particularly the experience of community violence, determines the life chances of children; how social capital and social organization emerge and evolve in spatial contexts; and how place and geography structure educational and economic opportunity in America and elsewhere.
His work has been published in numerous academic journals, including the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Gerard holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University.
Angela Simms is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Barnard College-Columbia University. She studies the political economy of U.S. metropolitan areas, more specifically, the capacity of suburban Black middle-class jurisdictions to provide high-quality public goods and services. Angela has a forthcoming book, titled: Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia, which will be published in February of 2026.
She has published articles related to local government financial capacity, including “Fiscal Fragility in Black Middle-Class Suburbia and Consequences for K-12 Public Schools,” in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences (2023); and “COVID-19, Black Jurisdictions, and Budget Constraints: How Fiscal Footing Shapes Fighting the Virus,” in Racial and Ethnic Studies (2021).
Angela serves as a co-chair of Columbia Population Research Center’s Working Group on Urbanism and Neighborhoods. She is also on the editorial board of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity Journal. During the 2023-2024 academic year, Angela was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar.
Prior to academia, Angela served in the federal government for seven years as a Presidential Management Fellow and legislative analyst at the Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations.