Kafui Attoh

Kafui Attoh is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the City University of New York. He holds a B.A. in Geography and Spanish from Macalester College (2006), an M.A. (2008), and a Ph.D. in Geography from Syracuse University (2013). His research focuses on urban transportation equity, the political economy of cities, and the role of social movements in shaping transit policy. He is the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay (2019).

His work analyzes how limited access to transportation exacerbates inequality, particularly for marginalized communities. Key research themes include labor dynamics in the gig economy (e.g., Uber drivers), the spatial politics of public transit, and the interplay between urban infrastructure and social justice. His scholarship has been published in Urban Studies, Society and Space, and Progress in Human Geography, among others.

Dr. Attoh has received grants from the Ewing Kauffman Foundation (2015–2017) for studying household budgets in on-demand service sectors and was a 2016–2017 Faculty Fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. He is also affiliated with the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at the CUNY Graduate Center.

His teaching includes courses like URB 600: Classical Approaches to Urban Studies and URB 651: The Right to the City. Beyond academia, his public scholarship addresses transportation justice, with op-eds in StreetsBlog NYC and interviews on NPR’s On the Media and WORT FM.