Amy Hillier, PhD

Assistant Professor in City and Regional Planning, School of Design
Research Associate Professor, School of Social Policy & Practice

Bio | Project Website | Link to Scholarly Papers | Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Research - Current projects

  1. Recreating the Old Seventh Ward of Philadelphia that W.E.B. Du Bois studied in 1896 for his classic book, The Philadelphia Negro. This project uses GIS, archival records, and 1900 census data to create an online mapping system and curriculum materials for high school and college students. This project is funded by the National Endowment for Humanities. To learn more about Mapping the Du Bois Philadelphia Negro, go to www.mappingdubois.org
  2. Developing an online interactive computer game for children to record their paths to and from school and all of the food they purchase and consume on the way. These Food and Exercise Diaries for Urban Places (FED-UP) would offer a new tool for assessing children's travel and eating behavior in an effort to reduce childhood obesity.
  3. With Dr. Jerry Johnson and members of the Philadelphia Area Research Community Coalition (PARCC), participatory asset-mapping in Southwest Philadelphia.

Research - Recently Completed Projects

  1. Five-city study of outdoor advertising (for Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles, Fresno, and Sacramento CA) that used global positioning system (GPS) equipment to locate and digital cameras to capture the content of outdoor advertisements. The analysis focused on the impact of race, income, zoning, and land use on the prevalence and content of outdoor advertising.
  2. With Dr. Gary Foster (PI), study of how neighborhood conditions impact the body mass index (BMI) of middle school children. This School Nutrition and Kids (SNAKs) study also involved surveying the food and recreation opportunities around participating schools and using hand-held computers equipped with GIS to map the route that children take to school.