Research Fellow
Center for Sustainable Communities
Temple University

Dr. Sidney Wong’s expertise is in fiscal impact studies, market analysis and needs assessment, local economic development, geographically targeted tax incentives, community development and information, and land use planning.

Before coming to Pennsylvania, Dr. Wong was the Associate Director of the Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems in Florida, and Interim Director of a $400,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development -sponsored Community Outreach Partnership Center Program in Miami. He was also an advisor to Empowerment Trust, Inc. of Miami-Dade County and to the county planning commission on the 2000 Census. Most of his work was relating to community programs and economic development.

Dr. Wong is currently conducting research on neighborhood changes, using a spline model to test the threshold theory and developing agent-base simulation models to identify critical factors leading to blight and gentrification. This $40,000 project is funded by HUD. He has recently completed a fiscal impact study for Hopewell Township, N.J. In 2001, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Wong established an online community databank (West Philadelphia Data and InfoResource) to provide better data access for community groups in West Philadelphia.

Dr. Wong has served as a panelist and moderator at many Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning conferences. He has been a featured speaker at community information workshops at the General Accounting Office, the Census Bureau, and the Digital Miracles Conference in Philadelphia. He was also invited by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to speak on public leasehold.

In 1998, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning named Professor Wong's doctoral dissertation, “Local Enterprise Zone Program and Economic Development Planning,” the best planning dissertation in North America. He also received the award of academic excellence from the British Royal Town Planning Institute. His recent publications include Fiscal Impacts of the Proposed Beazer Projects, Hopewell Township, N.J., “Data intermediation and beyond: Issues of Web-based PPGIS,” (Vol. 38, Cartographica); “Spatial Organization of Urban Places,” (in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences); “Fragmentation and Economic Development” (in Solving Urban Problems in Areas Characterized by Fragmentation and Divisiveness); and “Creating a Positive Future for a Minority Community,” (Vol. 24, Journal of Urban Affairs).

Dr. Wong was honored with the best teaching award by the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and the outstanding graduate instructor award at UC Berkeley. His teaching expertise includes planning methods, impact studies, urban economics, policy analysis and program evaluation, public finance, local economic development, community information technology applications, and research methodologies.

Dr. Wong holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, master’s degrees in urban studies from University of Hong Kong and in town planning from the University of Wales, and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He was also a postdoctoral fellow with University of Southern California.

Prior to his doctoral pursuit, Dr. Wong worked as a practicing planner (certified by the Royal Town Planning Institute) in Hong Kong. His responsibilities included zoning, land use control, consultant management, urban renewal, and long-range infrastructure planning. In the early 1990s, he also served as a consultant to the World Bank regarding their Asian urban projects.