Dr. Maximilian Buchholz (University of California, Los Angeles) was selected as the recipient of the 2023 Best Conference Paper Award for his paper “Does Urbanization Increase Inequality? Race, Gender, and the Urban Wage Premium.” This award was sponsored by Routledge | Taylor & Francis.
This annual award seeks to recognize high quality research presented at the previous year’s UAA annual spring conference.
AWARD COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT
“Dr. Buchholz’s paper addresses an important topic of inequality in U.S. cities and the ways that urbanism can aggravate wage differentials across race/ethnicity and gender groups. City economies consistently show an urban wage premium. However, this wage premium may not be experienced by all groups or at the same level. The authors provided an excellent integration of theoretical reasons for urbanization to increase the wage gap across some groups, and empirical work in exploring these questions. The paper took a new approach by assessing if changes in density would be related to changes in the wage differential, adding a time dimension to the typical cross-sectional studies. The analysis involved use of a large Census data set with detailed data management and methodological approaches, which was presented with clarity for all readers. Importantly, the authors suggest policy options that may help counter the urban reasons for the wage gap, adding significant value to the study.”
AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Annette Steinacker, Loyola University Chicago (Chair); Xueming Chen, Virginia Commonwealth University; Christian King, University of Central Florida; Sara O’Connor, University of California, Irvine; Seva Rodnyansky, Occidental College
AWARD RECIPIENT BIO
Max Buchholz has a PhD in geography from the University of Toronto. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning, funded through a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Prior to coming to UCLA he held the Pollman Fellowship in Real Estate and Urban Development at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He has published 7 peer-reviewed journal articles, on topics ranging from housing and urban economic development to globalization and the cultural economy. A key theme throughout his work is understanding how the drivers of economic disparities across city-regions also produce unequal outcomes for different segments of the population (e.g. across race, gender, or educational attainment). His current research more specifically focuses on understanding whether the process of urbanization causes racial and gender inequality to increase in the U.S. context.
ABOUT THE URBAN AFFAIRS ASSOCIATION
The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) is an international professional organization for 700+ urban scholars, researchers, policy analysts, & public service providers. UAA is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary spaces for engaging in intellectual and practical discussions about urban life. Through theoretical, empirical, and action-oriented research, UAA fosters diverse activities to understand and shape a more just and equitable urban world.
In addition to hosting an annual conference, UAA sponsors ongoing professional development opportunities; Upsilon Sigma: The Urban Studies Honor Society; and two peer-reviewed journals, the Journal of Urban Affairs and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. You can find UAA on the web, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
