Wenfei Xu

Wenfei Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Her research examines how housing policies, institutions, and technologies shape urban inequality through urban analytics, with focus areas including social-spatial stratification, segregation, and neighborhood change in the United States.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Urban Planning, Columbia University
• Dual Master in Architecture and Urban Planning, MIT
• B.A. in Economics, University of Chicago

Her research integrates housing policy history with contemporary data science methods to analyze structural discrimination patterns. Key interests include mapping historical redlining impacts, neighborhood diversity quantification using mobile data, and developing urban data science frameworks.

Publications focus on spatial justice themes, with recent work examining mortgage risk mapping, neighborhood diversity through mobile data, urban vacancy identification, and conceptual foundations of urban data science.

Awards:

• IPUMS Best Published Work in Spatial Data (2022)
• Mansueto Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021)
• AAG Racial Justice Research Grant (2021)

Leads the Urban Data Research Lab and teaches courses including Introduction to Urban Data Science (CRP 4680/5680) and Mapping/Countermapping (CRP 4280/5280).