Isabelle Nilsson

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences
Assistant Professor, Public Policy Doctoral Program

Faculty Website

Research Interests: Transportation policy, Urban development, Location of firms and households, Residential mobility

Dr. Nilsson’s research interests are focused on firm location, transportation, and housing. In particular, she is interested in the effects of public policy and public investments on firm and household location behavior.

Some of her recent research projects include explorations into the effects of rail transit investments on neighborhood change and residential mobility among low-income individuals; effects of zoning on retail firm location behavior; location behaviors in the craft beer industry (see CityLab articleby Richard Florida citing our work); the changing industrial organization of US megaregions; effects of neighborhood foreclosure rates on mortgage lending denial rates; and estimating migration rates associated with economic development projects. My research is quantitative with theoretical grounding in economics as well as geography.

• Nilsson, I. and O. Smirnov, 2018. Limited Location Options: Measuring Spatial Interactions among Retailers under Zoning Restrictions, Geographical Analysis, 50:358-377.
• Nilsson, I. and E.C. Delmelle, 2018. Transit Investments and Neighborhood Change: On the Likelihood of Change, Journal of Transport Geography, 66:167-179.
• Nilsson, I., N. Reid and M. Lehnert, 2018. Geographic Patterns of Craft Breweries at the Intraurban Scale, The Professional Geographer, 70:114-125.
• Nilsson, I. and O. Smirnov, 2017. Clustering vs. Relative Location: Measuring Spatial Interactions between Retail Outlets, Papers in Regional Science, 96:721-741.
• Haggquist, E. and I. Nilsson, 2017. Factors Influencing the Adoption of Geological Information in Swedish Municipalities, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 60:1112-1126.
• Schafer, S. and I. Nilsson, 2016. The Effects of Public and Private Investments in ITS on Freight Transportation Outcomes, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2548:90-96.
• Nilsson, I. and O. Smirnov, 2016. Measuring the Effect of Transportation Infrastructure on Retail Firm Co-Location Patterns, Journal of Transport Geography, 51:110-118.