In March, 2026, I was invited to give the Keynote at the Taiwan Healthy Cities Conference and lecture at National Cheng Kung University. I spoke to the Healthy Cities Research Center on "Urban Health Innovations.”

Advancing Peace - New Book published November 2025

A ground-breaking study of how communities around the country are preventing gun violence and supporting the healing of those most impacted by violence. The books offers practical and policy insights for community leaders, decision-makers and everyone interested in understand what has contributed to America’s on-going urban gun violence epidemic, and what we need to do as a society to end it and ensure those most impacted received the love, support and healing they deserve. 

Richmond’s Health in All Policies, 10 Year Progress Report.

Richmond, CA, was the first city in the US to adopt a Health in All Policies Strategy. I helped lead that effort in 2014, by Chairing the Richmond Health Equity Partnership.  In 2025, I led the research and documentation of ten years of progress on implementing HiAP in Richmond. Read the report here. 

Study using Interrupted Time Series models shows Fresno’s Gun Violence Program is reducing homicides and injury shootings.  

Read the study, which I funded and co-led, here.

Read our study of over 5 years of research in the Iron Triangle Neighborhood of Richmond, CA, and how Pogo Park, a local non-profit, hired local residents to redevelop the community through parks, street scape improvements and social programs. This project was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

As reported in Boston.com, my book, Street Science, was the 4th most frequently assigned book at Brandeis University, after C. Wright Mills, but before The Communist Manifesto and Erving Goffman.

In 2023 we released a study of the impacts of Pogo Park on community health & safety in Richmond, CA. We analyzed community survey data collected from the same households in 2009 (before park redevelopment) and in 2019 (after redevelopment).  For those responding after the park redevelopment, we found significant reductions in fear of violence and measures of stress compared to 2009.  We also found significant improvements in reported  social connections, trust among neighbors self rated health.

With the Muungano Alliance, we completed the Integrated Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA) summary report. This was one of the largest ever informal settlement upgrading processes. The plan will transform and improve the lives of almost half a million Nairobi residents. The participatory planning process has been recognized as a model for community-lead informal settlement upgrading.

May 2022, new publication in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, Water and sanitation for all: Citizen science, health equity, and urban climate justice.

Recognized by Sage as one of world’s Key Thinkers on Cities. Profiled as an innovator in urban scholarship whose ideas have shaped the way cities around the world are understood, researched, debated and acted upon. I am acknowledged alongside urban scholars such as Jane Jacobs, Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells and David Harvey.

Cities For Life won the 2022 EDRA Great Places Book Award. An excerpt from the award committee reads: “Focusing on racism, health, and urban trauma, this book presents a timely and inspiring account of innovative programs in three cities that speak to the structural violence against marginalized communities, both historically and today. Through three case studies, in Richmond, California, Medellín, Columbia, and Nairobi, Kenya, the book makes a compelling case for the ecological model of health, the engagement of citizens, and the healing power of placemaking.”