I am an Industry Assistant Professor at Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP), Tandon School of Engineering, NYU. I study how environmental exposures and urban systems—such as green space, air quality, land use, housing policies, and human mobility—shape population well-being and spatial patterns. My work bridges environmental planning, spatial data science, and public health to better understand and address complex urban challenges.

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Email: hanxue.wei@nyu.edu

Work Phone: +1(646) 997-0527

Training:

  • Ph.D. in Regional Science, Cornell University (2019–2023)

  • Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU Grossman School of Medicine (2023–2025)

Projects

Service

1. Environmental Determinants of Health: How do natural environmental factors—such as green space, blue space, and air quality—and urban policies shape health outcomes?

Project: Green Space and Mental Health Outcomes. NIH K99 Submission (Rejected).

Project: Exploring the Legacy of the Federal Housing Administration’s Housing Policies on Present-Day Disparities in Preterm Births and Low Birth Weight in Chicago, IL. External Collaborators: NYU Langone, & Chicago Department of Public Health. Funded by Collaborative Center in Children’s Environmental Health Research & Translation Pilot Project Program (PI: Hanxue).

Selected Publications:

2024 Redlining and Estimated Population Burden of Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors

2024 Mobility-Based Urban Tree Canopy Exposure and Cardiovascular Diseases

2025 A Systematic Review of Historic Neighborhood Redlining and Contemporary Health Outcomes

2. Housing Market Analysis with Alternative Data: How to better predict housing prices with the help of alternative data? What alternative data can serve as good indicators for gentrification? How to evaluate the environmental amenities in property values?

Project:

2025 Summer Guided Study, NYU CUSP

Publication:

2024 Value of street trees varied across neighborhoods in housing prices

3. Urban Form: Promoting Diversity in Public Spaces: I investigate how urban form affects diversity in public spaces (e.g., urban parks) by analyzing large-scale mobile phone location data to uncover spatial patterns of public behavior.

Selected Publications

2023 A data-driven investigation on park visitation and income mixing of visitors in New York City

2024 Big data insights into urban park use in the pandemic: Changes in visitation patterns and exacerbated social inequalities in the US

2024 Urban park accessibility assessment using human mobility data: a systematic review

2023 Spatial, temporal, and social dynamics in visitation to US national parks: A big data approach

4. Urban Form: Understanding Urban Redevelopment Dynamics: I track urban redevelopment activities over time, predicting land parcel consolidation, subdivision, and shape changes. My work identifies the built environment, economic, social, and policy determinants behind these processes using big data and machine learning models.

Selected Publications

2024 What drives urban redevelopment activity? Evidence from machine learning and econometric analysis in three American cities

2023 Urban containment as smart growth

5. Human mobility and socioeconomic dynamics: I use mobile phone location data to track human mobility patterns under different senarios.

Selected Publications

2022 Staying at home is a privilege: Evidence from fine-grained mobile phone location data in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 Time-series clustering for home dwell time during COVID-19: what can we learn from it?

7. Causal Inference.

I’m working with Dr. Matthay regarding controlling time-varying confounders in causal inference.

Publication

N/A

8. Localized Climate Indicators.

I’m working with Dr. Thorpe etc. regarding climate indicators.

Publication

N/A

Editorial Board, Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy CiteScore 6.4

Early Career Editorial Board, Health & Place CiteScore 7.7