About David Wilson
Bio
David Wilson is currently investigating projects pivoting around the political economy of the U.S. and global north city. Specific projects examine the politics of urban growth regimes in these cities, the politics of competing discourses that generate gentrified neighborhoods and poverty communities, and the racializing of the contemporary urban issues of crime and city growth. Professor Wilson has served on the editorial boards of Urban Geography, Professional Geographer, Social and Cultural Geography, Syracuse University Press (Society, Space, and Place Book Series), Inter-Cultural Studies, the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography project and ACME: International Journal for Critical Geography.
David has been a visiting scholar at universities in China, Germany, and Canada. He was recently listed in a global study of urban geographers (The Professional Geographer) as the eleventh most productive scholar in this field in the world.
Education
- PhD, Rutgers University
- BA, State University of New York at Albany
Research and publications
Ongoing and upcoming research
research
Political Economy of Global North Cities
Urban Political Processes
Cultural Studies of Global North Cities
Social Theory and the Built Environment
Qualitative Methods
Selected publications
Berglund, L., & Wilson, D. (2026). New modes of privatized policing under austerity: development and growth in detroit and flint. Geoforum, 175, Article 104731. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104731
Wilson, D., & Wyly, E. (2026). Dracula Urbanism and Smart City Mania: Urban Change in the Twenty-First Century. (Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003468271
Wilson, D. (2023). Existential capitalism and gentrification in pandemic times. Human Geography(United Kingdom), 16(3), 334-342. https://doi.org/10.1177/19427786231173065
Schwarze, T., & Wilson, D. (2022). Silencing, Urban Growth Machines, and the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 4, Article 835674. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2022.835674
Wilson, D., & Heil, M. (2022). Decline machines and economic development: rust belt cities and Flint, Michigan. Urban Geography, 43(2), 163-183. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1840736
Teaching and advising
Classes taught
- GEOG 104: Urban Geography
- GEOG 350: Sustainability and the City
- GEOG 471: Recent Trends in Geographic Thought
- GEOG 483: Urban Geography
- GEOG 594: Seminar in Social Geography