Call for papers
Population change at the neighborhood level is rarely spontaneous. Cycles of investment and disinvestment, often driven by government intervention, shape who is able to arrive and who is forced to leave a neighborhood. The policies governing land use, subsidies, siting, and access to credit are among the strongest levers that determine neighborhood change and individual outcomes.
This workshop convenes researchers across demography, urban planning, geography, and sociology to ask how policy drives neighborhood change, and how these changes sustain or erode segregation and urban inequality. We will also examine how novel administrative, historical, and commercial data sources can shed new, measurable light on these processes.
We invite work in progress on topics including:
- Zoning and land-use reform, such as upzoning, and who arrives and who is priced out as a result
- Housing affordability, including rent burdens, rent regulation and tenant protections, inclusionary zoning, and how affordability pressures sort households across neighborhoods and regions
- The importance of place in housing policy: where subsidized housing is sited, how neighborhood opportunity is defined and targeted, and what this means for who lives where
- Access to credit, from redlining to contemporary mortgage lending, and long-run neighborhood trajectories
- Public investment and disinvestment, including transit-oriented development, urban renewal, and other place-based programs, and their role in displacement
- Climate risk, including disasters, flood exposure, and rising insurance costs, as a driver of who leaves and who arrives
- Investors and the financialization of housing, including institutional buyers of single-family homes, short-term rentals, and shifts in rental ownership
- Measuring moves and neighborhood dynamics with administrative, historical, and commercial data, and how to assess their coverage and bias
Work in progress is welcome. If your submission is accepted, you will be asked to upload the full paper in advance of the workshop.
How to submit
Send an extended abstract of no more than one page. Submissions are open to faculty and graduate students. If you want to be considered only for a lightning talk, say so in the final comments question of the form.
Deadline: December 15, 2026 · Decisions by: January 4, 2027
Conference details
- Date
- Friday, May 21, 2027
- Location
- UC Santa Barbara, location TBA
- Meals
- Breakfast and lunch are provided.
- Organizers
- Wenfei Xu and Elizabeth Ackert
- Graduate student assistants
- Hannah Malak and Esau Casimiro Vieyra
- Contact
- wenfeixu@ucsb.edu
The workshop is hosted by the Broom Center for Demography at UC Santa Barbara.
Hotel and travel
Room block: The Club & Guest House at UCSB
We have a block of rooms at The Club & Guest House on the UCSB campus, for the nights of May 20 and 21, at a group rate of $300 per night. Check-in is at 3:00 pm and check-out at 11:00 am.
Book online at theclub.ucsb.edu/Stay. Select your dates first, then enter group code BDW27.
Book by [cutoff date]. Rooms are limited.
- Flying
- Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) is about 10 minutes from campus. [Taxi, rideshare, or shuttle notes]
- Driving
- UCSB is off US-101 at Goleta. Hotel guests park overnight in Parking Structure 22, off Ocean Road. At the pay machine, choose the Club & Guest House option and enter code CLUBPARK ($8 per weekday).
- Train
- Amtrak Pacific Surfliner stops in Goleta and Santa Barbara.
Schedule
Draft program. Presenters will be added after selection, and times may change.
| 8:30 | Coffee and arrival |
| 9:00 | Welcome and framing |
| 9:15 | Session 1 |
| 10:45 | Break |
| 11:00 | Keynote: Jackelyn Hwang, Stanford University |
| 12:00 | Lunch |
| 1:00 | Session 2 |
| 2:30 | Break |
| 2:45 | Session 3 |
| 4:15 | Break |
| 4:30 | Lightning talks |
| 5:15 | Close and wine reception |