Dr. Alan Wiig
Associate Professor
alanwiig@ufl.edu
Turlington Hall 3124
(352) 294-0784
Focus Areas
- Focus Area 3: Places, Networks, & Flows
- Focus Area 4: Geopolitics and The Global Economy
- Focus Area 6: Sustainability & Global Environmental Change
Areas of Specialization
- Human Geography
- Economic Development
- Globalization
- Information Technology
- Infrastructure Studies
- Urban Planning
- Urban Studies
Educational Background
- PhD in Geography-Urban Studies, Temple University, 2014
- M.A. in Geography, San Francisco University, 2009
- B.A. in Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2002
In My Own Words
Dr. Alan Wiig is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Florida. His research sits at the intersection of urban geography, urban planning, and infrastructure studies and examines three areas of scholarly and public concern: the new digital divides emerging alongside smart city projects, the politics of large-scale urban revitalization efforts, and the spatial strategies through which transnational logistics corridors are remaking city regions.
By using in depth fieldwork, semi-structured interviews with politicians and government officials, community leaders, and corporate executives, alongside analysis of policy and planning documents, his work critically assesses city regions’ top-down and bottom-up responses to economic globalization and emerging technologies. There are two key aspects to this scholarly contribution. First, it demonstrates that trade corridors and economic zones operate as testbeds for 21st century, smart city technologies. These are spaces where patterns of digital connectivity and wireless mobility are maintained through new systems of civic management to align established city-regions into a world economy facing significant geopolitical, climactic, and pandemic-driven turbulence. Second, this work draws attention to the ways billions of dollars of international infrastructure investment amplify uneven development by transforming city-regional economies but also reinforcing existing inequalities. This scholarship argues for a grounded understanding of the political logics justifying speculative infrastructure projects by asking how, where, and for whom these networks reinforce or constrain efforts at building just and sustainable cities.
Alan’s work has been published in leading journals including the Annals of the American Association of Geographers; Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society; City: analysis of urban trends, theory, policy, action; Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space; the Journal of Urban Technology; Regional Studies; and Urban Geography.