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Welcome.

My name is Christine Wen. I'm an assistant professor of urban planning at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), specializing in economic development, municipal finance, and education/labor.

My mission is to advance knowledge on structural reforms that expand human capacity and strengthen communication + collaboration and reduce power/resource disparities among diverse communities.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, follow me on BlueSky, or use the contact form at the very bottom. Also check out my companion blog The Inquisitive Ranger where I sometimes log my reflections.

[2025.12]

I've concluded Fall 2025 at Toronto Metropolitan University teaching (undergrads) Municipal Finance for Planners and Advanced Planning Studio II, where the student team produced a development concept for CreateTO for a vacant Port Lands site -- robust with massing, market, and feasibility studies.

research + teaching

municipal finance and tax policy: this research promotes fair taxation as well as adequate, efficient, equitable, accountable public service delivery. One project resulted in an original database of disaggregated index measuring the severity of U.S. state restrictions with regard to local revenue and spending. Others examine the impact of business tax incentives on public services like education (see publications below). A new project involves assessing economies of scale and scope for water and wastewater services in Ontario.

children and the economy: this research informs development planning around children and childcare, early psychological development, schooling and educational equity, and youth workforce training/socialization, focusing on the increasingly pervasive role of urban technology and evolving human-machine relationships in labor production; the first part has focused on examining the impact of economic development incentives on school funding. Currently, I'm developing models for more accurately capturing the causal effects.

teaching areas:

public finance, and general urban economics

planning methods, including statistics, GIS, and advanced applications

theory related to planning and development sociology

publications

C. Wen, E. Marcello, & M. Warner (2025) "The fiscal impact of tax abatements on New York's school districts" Journal of Urban Affairs. [link]

C. Wen (2024) "Do economic development tax abatements affect school finances?" Economic Development Quarterly, 38 (1), 3-14. [link]

C. Wen & G. LeRoy (2023) "Making the students pay? The gross fiscal cost of tax incentives for U.S. school districts." Community Development, 54 (4), 479-495. [link]

C. Wen (2020) "Educating rural migrant children in interior China: The promise and pitfall of low-fee private schools." International Journal of Educational Development 79. [link]

C. Wen, Y. Xu, Y. Kim, & M. Warner (2020) "Starving counties, squeezing cities: Tax and expenditure limits in the U.S." Journal of Economic Policy Reform 23 (2), 101-119. [link]

C. Wen & J. Wallace (2019) "Toward human-centered urbanization? Housing ownership and access to social insurance among migrant households in China." Sustainability 11(13), 3567-3581. [link]