Background & experience
Elizabeth Dobbins is an analyst at ESI specializing in transportation, economic development, and housing. With a background in urban planning and journalism, she believes understanding connections between different fields and perspectives is essential to creating thoughtful, actionable solutions. She brings this approach to her work at ESI, where she crafts analyses that pull together qualitative and quantitative information to develop nuanced, context-specific insights.
Elizabeth is interested in public infrastructure—especially transportation—and economics. She has experience estimating the economic and fiscal impact of public transit, trails, and parks, which clients have used to inform decision-making, communicate value, and secure grant funding. To understand these relationships, Elizabeth has applied a variety of approaches from benefit-cost analyses to market studies and regression modelling. Her work also frequently considers housing and real estate development, such as a recent project illustrating the fiscal impact of new residential development on New Hampshire municipalities.
Prior to joining ESI, Elizabeth worked as a reporter for local newspapers in Ohio and Massachusetts. Her articles have received awards in a range of categories, including criminal justice, environmental reporting, spot news, explanatory reporting, and public records use. During her graduate education, she collaborated on affordable housing policy research and interned at the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability. At the City, she focused on traffic safety, bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure, working at the nexus of community engagement and implementation.
Elizabeth earned a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Oberlin College. Since graduating, she continues to approach each topic with a fresh perspective to build an understanding of the systems that shape our environment. This informs her ability to communicate complex issues and support collaborative problem-solving.
