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Lauren E. Nolan

  • Assistant Professor, Urban Planning

Education

PhD, Planning & Public Policy, Rutgers University
MCP, City Planning, University of Pennsylvania
BA, Economics, Sociology, University of Notre Dame

Biography

Lauren Nolan, Ph.D., AICP, is an Assistant Professor in the UW-Milwaukee Department of Urban Planning specializing in economic development, community development, and housing. Her research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study how communities pursue development in the context of urban change and inequality. Her recent work examines the proliferation of large-scale warehousing and distribution facilities and how communities are responding to impending logistics-oriented development. Lauren also studies issues of housing access and insecurity. She previously served as the Director of Research for the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit research and policy organization focusing on issues of fair lending, wealth creation, and economic justice within financial systems. Prior to that, she served as a researcher for the Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement and instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Lauren is a certified planner and member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).

Links

Recent & Selected Works

Chapters

  • Nolan, L. (2026). “Fulfillment Prophecy: Readying Land for Amazon’s Expansion in South Suburban Chicago.” In Shih, M. & Newman, K. (Eds.), The Politics of Land and Value: Case Studies from Across the Globe. London: Routledge.

Articles & Selected Papers

  • Deitz, S., Payne, W.B., Seymour, E. Newman, K., & Nolan, L. (2024). Local Landscapes of Assisted Housing: Reconciling Layered and Imprecise Administrative Data for Research Purposes. Cityscape, 26(1), 321-338. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscape/vol25num3/ch10.pdf
  • Payne, W.B., Nolan, L. & Seymour, E. (2023). When a City Isn't a City: Aggregating Data from the Picture of Subsidized Households to the Municipal Scale for Research Purposes. Cityscape, 25(3), 207-216. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscape/vol25num3/ch10.pdf

Theses & Dissertations

  • Nolan, L. (2025). Municipal Orientations to Warehouse Development in the Chicago Region [Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University]. RUedt. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/75044/PDF/1/play/