BSc Geography Insights: New perspectives on housing?

Housing is never far from the headlines these days as governments around the world struggle to provide accessible, secure, affordable and good quality homes for their populations. 

While much of the public debate focuses on how to get more homes built, for UCL Geography’s Dr Rory Coulter this is only part of the puzzle. Instead, Rory’s research explores the impacts the housing crisis has on people and places. As Rory puts it “my work explores why we live where we do and how the homes we live in shape the rest of our lives, from our health and work to our relationships and family finances”. He argues that this approach “is vital for understanding and tackling growing social and geographical inequalities”, while also shedding new light on how housing helps to drive demographic and urban changes.

UCL Geography’s longstanding strengths in geographic data science are exemplified in Rory’s research and teaching. He notes that “most of my work uses large longitudinal social datasets which track how people’s lives unfold over time”. These are powerful resources and Rory is involved in running several large nationally important longitudinal data infrastructure investments.

Rory’s research-led teaching in UCL Geography brings together these strands of expertise in modules such as Urban Geography and Urban Policy. Here, Rory supports students to “think critically about housing and urban issues, while also learning how these can be examined using various types of data and advanced quantitative methods”.