Scott Markley

Scott Markley's research focuses on questions at the intersection of housing, racial capitalism, and geospatial analysis. This frequently entails multi-method investigations into how state and private institutions continue to (re)produce racially uneven geographies of sub/urban development. As part of these efforts, he also produces urban datasets that help researchers working on similar questions. These projects have included the Historical Housing Unit and Urbanization Database v2010 (HHUUD10), published in Nature's Scientific Data, and the tabulated Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) Area Description sheets, published in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. Related to this work, Markley also serves as the Geospatial Project Coordinator at the National Zoning Atlas.

Markley received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Georgia.

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Cities
  • Housing
  • Planning history
  • Suburban neighborhoods
  • GIS / Cartography
  • Urban data science
  • Racial justice and inequity

Related Pages

Related News

Classes (Selected)

  • CRP 2010 People, Planning, and Politics in the CitySeminar examining various bases of political and professional power. What do professionals who want to serve the public need to know about power and decision-making processes in the institutional settings in which they operate? How and why can professionals make a difference when facing problems characterized by great complexity and severe inequalities among affected groups? The course addresses these and others questions.

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

  • Open Access Research Grant, University of Georgia (2022) 

  • Dissertation Proposal Award, Ethnic Geography Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers (2022)

  • Diversity Research and Scholarship Grant Program (Co-PI), University of Georgia (2021)

  • Dissertation Research Grant, American Association of Geographers (2021)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

  • "Reporting on redlining: get to know your data with Scott Markley," Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library (2022)

  • "Planning spatial obsolescence: mapping the historical geographies of racialized devaluation," American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (2022)

  • "Exploring tract-level historical housing unit data," Center for Housing and Community Research, College of Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Georgia (2022)

Publications (Selected)

  • Markley, S. (2023). Tabulating Home Owners' Loan Corporation area description sheet data. Environment & Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 50(1), 268–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083221133112.

  • Markley, S., Holloway, S., Hafley, T., and Hauer, M. (2022). Housing unit and urbanization estimates for the Continental U.S. in consistent tract boundaries. Scientific Data, 1940–2019, 9(82). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01184-x.

  • Markley, S., Hafley, T., Allums, C., Holloway, S., and Chung, H. (2020). The limits of homeownership: racial capitalism, Black wealth, and the appreciation gap in Atlanta. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44(2), 310–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12873.

  • Markley, S. (2018). Suburban gentrification? Examining the geographies of New Urbanism in Atlanta's inner suburbs. Urban Geography, 39(4), 606–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1381534.

  • Markley, S. (2018). New Urbanism and race: an analysis of neighborhood change in suburban Atlanta. Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(8), 1115–1131. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1454818.

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