Matthew Wilson, Ph.D.

Matthew D. Wilson, Ph.D., is an Associate Director of the Great Cities Institute (GCI), where he leads the Economic and Workforce Development program. His research examines how economic development policies, public investments, housing markets, and labor-market institutions shape neighborhood change, spatial inequality, and access to economic opportunity. His areas of expertise include place-based economic development, housing-market change, residential mobility, workforce development, and labor markets.

A central focus of Dr. Wilson’s current research is the design and effectiveness of place-based development policy. His work on the federal Opportunity Zone program examines how spatial targeting, investor incentives, and institutional design influence development outcomes. Ongoing research evaluates the program’s effects on housing construction, finding uneven gains concentrated in relatively advantaged neighborhoods and showing that a substantial share of apparent development effects reflects broader spatial growth patterns rather than Opportunity Zone designation itself. He is also part of a GCI team examining tax increment financing in Chicago. Using parcel-level assessment, tax, redevelopment, and geographic data, his quantitative analysis distinguishes between property value created by TIF investments and value captured from growth that would have occurred without the program, with implications for property-tax burdens, equitable development, and urban public finance.

Another strand of Dr. Wilson’s current research examines housing markets, neighborhood change, and metropolitan mobility. His study of Chicago’s 606 Trail finds that housing-market effects emerged years before the trail opened and well before housing-preservation measures were adopted, a gap conceptualized as a policy–market temporal mismatch. Related research traces residential moves into and out of Black- and Latino-majority gentrifying neighborhoods to examine where residents move and whether these mobility patterns reproduce or disrupt metropolitan segregation. Additional studies use Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to investigate racial disparities in mortgage lending, the relationship between neighborhood change and access to credit, and the characteristics of neighborhoods that sustain long-term racial integration.

Dr. Wilson’s active applied research includes an evaluation of the City of Chicago’s ChiBlockBuilder vacant-land disposition program, examining lot utilization, wealth building, fiscal impacts, vacancy, and crime. He is also studying the economic effects of intensified federal immigration enforcement in Cook County. Using weekly origin-destination foot-traffic data, this research finds that while commerce within immigrant neighborhoods remained relatively stable, commercial activity by residents of those neighborhoods declined substantially at destinations elsewhere in the county, revealing economic impacts that extend well beyond the communities directly targeted by enforcement.

Recent completed research includes multiple studies of the federal Opportunity Zone program examining the spatial targeting, institutional design, and equity implications of place-based tax incentives. For The Chicago Community Trust, he conducted the quantitative economic-impact analysis of We Rise Together, using consumer-spending and foot-traffic data to assess economic change around neighborhood anchor investments across Chicago’s South, Southwest, and West Sides. With GCI Director Teresa Córdova, he has also produced research on youth joblessness and employment disparities that helped inform public discussion, programs, and investment in youth employment in Chicago.

Dr. Wilson also develops data tools that make complex economic and neighborhood information more accessible to practitioners and policymakers. Current projects include a workforce and economic development platform for North Lawndale and the Greater West Side and an interactive application integrating longitudinal economic, workforce, housing, investment, mobility, and demographic data across Chicago neighborhoods.

Dr. Wilson earned his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Master of Urban Planning and Policy and BA in Urban and Public Affairs from the University of Illinois Chicago.