Phil Ashton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC. Phil's research focuses on three inter-related areas. His primary interest lies in analyzing the industrial organization of US mortgage markets, with particular attention to the effects of financial restructuring on inner city neighborhoods. He is currently engaged in writing a series of analyses of the subprime mortgage market and the sources and dimensions of the mortgage crisis. His dissertation, which focused on subprime lenders and large financial conglomerates in inner city Chicago, was honored as the 2006 Best Dissertation in Planning in by the Association for Collegiate Schools in Planning.

A second line of research examines the neighborhood effects of broad changes in financial markets and urban policy, attempting to distinguish the different paths to neighborhood change that have accompanied the marketization of urban redevelopment. With his colleague Kathe Newman at Rutgers, he conducted a detailed study of real estate development in the West Side Park neighborhood in Newark, NJ. More recently, he was part of a team conducting a study of neighborhood changes produced by concentrated subprime lending in Chicago, carried out through the UIC City Design Center and funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Third, Phil is interested in the regulatory regime governing the US financial system, and in the modes of credit market regulation capable of shaping a progressive path within financial sector reform. He has been particularly focused on the tensions and conflicts in various civil rights frameworks as they have been applied to questions of credit access.

http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/upp/faculty/ashton.html

Phone: (312) 413-7599
Email: pashton@uic.edu