About

Geoff Boeing is a faculty member at USC Price, involved in various academic programs related to public policy, urban planning, and data analytics. His work focuses on urban data analysis, transportation, and sustainable urban development, contributing to research initiatives and educational programs that address complex urban challenges. Boeing's expertise supports the university's mission to advance knowledge and practice in public policy and urban planning, fostering innovative solutions for city growth, sustainability, and social equity.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Geography
• Business
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Environmental planning
• Economics
• Environmental health
• Economic growth
• Sociology
• Civil engineering
• Cartography
• Public economics
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Regional science
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Finance
• Environmental economics
• Marketing
• Transport engineering
• Nursing
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Equity in the built environment: A systematic review

  Building and Environment · 2023 · 52 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What next? Expanding our view of city planning and global health, and implementing and monitoring evidence-informed policy

  The Lancet Global Health · 2022 · 152 citations

  • Political Science
  • Environmental planning
  • Business

  This Series on urban design, transport, and health aimed to facilitate development of a global system of health-related policy and spatial indicators to assess achievements and deficiencies in urban and transport policies and features. This final paper in the Series summarises key findings, considers what to do next, and outlines urgent key actions. Our study of 25 cities in 19 countries found that, despite many well intentioned policies, few cities had measurable standards and policy targets to achieve healthy and sustainable cities. Available standards and targets were often insufficient to promote health and wellbeing, and health-supportive urban design and transport features were often inadequate or inequitably distributed. City planning decisions affect human and planetary health and amplify city vulnerabilities, as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted. Hence, we offer an expanded framework of pathways through which city planning affects health, incorporating 11 integrated urban system policies and 11 integrated urban and transport interventions addressing current and emerging issues. Our call to action recommends widespread uptake and further development of our methods and open-source tools to create upstream policy and spatial indicators to benchmark and track progress; unmask spatial inequities; inform interventions and investments; and accelerate transitions to net zero, healthy, and sustainable cities.

  DOI

• Determining thresholds for spatial urban design and transport features that support walking to create healthy and sustainable cities: findings from the IPEN Adult study

  The Lancet Global Health · 2022 · 125 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Geography
  • Transport engineering

  were associated with meeting one or both physical activity criteria. Shorter distances to the nearest park were associated with more physical activity. We use the results to suggest specific target values for each feature as benchmarks for progression towards creating healthy and sustainable cities.

  DOI

• Using open data and open-source software to develop spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for achieving healthy and sustainable cities

  The Lancet Global Health · 2022 · 161 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Environmental planning

  Benchmarking and monitoring of urban design and transport features is crucial to achieving local and international health and sustainability goals. However, most urban indicator frameworks use coarse spatial scales that either only allow between-city comparisons, or require expensive, technical, local spatial analyses for within-city comparisons. This study developed a reusable, open-source urban indicator computational framework using open data to enable consistent local and global comparative analyses. We show this framework by calculating spatial indicators-for 25 diverse cities in 19 countries-of urban design and transport features that support health and sustainability. We link these indicators to cities' policy contexts, and identify populations living above and below critical thresholds for physical activity through walking. Efforts to broaden participation in crowdsourcing data and to calculate globally consistent indicators are essential for planning evidence-informed urban interventions, monitoring policy effects, and learning lessons from peer cities to achieve health, equity, and sustainability goals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities

  The Lancet Global Health · 2022 · 206 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Economic growth

  City planning policies influence urban lifestyles, health, and sustainability. We assessed policy frameworks for city planning for 25 cities across 19 lower-middle-income countries, upper-middle-income countries, and high-income countries to identify whether these policies supported the creation of healthy and sustainable cities. We systematically collected policy data for evidence-informed indicators related to integrated city planning, air pollution, destination accessibility, distribution of employment, demand management, design, density, distance to public transport, and transport infrastructure investment. Content analysis identified strengths, limitations, and gaps in policies, allowing us to draw comparisons between cities. We found that despite common policy rhetoric endorsing healthy and sustainable cities, there was a paucity of measurable policy targets in place to achieve these aspirations. Some policies were inconsistent with public health evidence, which sets up barriers to achieving healthy and sustainable urban environments. There is an urgent need to build capacity for health-enhancing city planning policy and governance, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Billie Giles‐Corti

  22 shared

• James F. Sallis

  19 shared

• Ester Cerin

  18 shared

• Mark Nieuwenhuijsen

  Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública

  15 shared

• Deepti Adlakha

  Delft University of Technology

  14 shared

• Carl Higgs

  13 shared

• Yougeng Lu

  12 shared

• Clemens Pilgram

  11 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Urban Planning

  University of Southern California

  2009

• M.S., Urban Planning

  University of Southern California

  2005

• B.A., Environmental Studies

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2002

Similar researchers at University of Southern California

• Norbert Schwarzh-140
• Inderbir S. Gillh-136
• Andreas Molischh-132
• David G. Armstrongh-124
• Antoine Becharah-116