Wong, Sidney 3

Sidney Wong, Ph.D.

Senior Advisor

Background & Experience

Sidney Wong is the project lead of the Community Data Analytics team working to develop the next generation of demographic multipliers for development impact assessment.

In 2017, he and the CDA team published a methodological article entitled “Residential Demographic Multipliers: Using ACS PUMS Records to Estimate Housing Development Impacts” in Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. He and ESI are frequent CPE speakers at the American Planning Association.

Dr. Wong has over twenty years of experience in planning, and has worked on projects involving enterprise zones, fiscal impact, and economic impact. In 2015, he teamed with ESI to focus on New Jersey affordable housing after collaborating on the Council on Affordable Housing Round III growth allocation in 2007.

He has authored many publications, including “Searching for a Modern and Humanistic Planning in China” in the Journal of Architecture and Planning Research and “Architects and Planners in the Middle of a Road War” in the Journal of Planning History. His doctoral dissertation on assessing the performance of multistate enterprise zone programs won the 1998 Best Planning Dissertation in North America. In 2018, the Institute of Urban Research at University of Pennsylvania appointed him as a fellow.

Dr. Wong is a former professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Morgan State University, and has taught Planning Methods, Statistics, Program Evaluation, Urban Economics, Neighborhood and Community Development. His research consists of freeway revolt and community development, and planning history and urban development in China.

He speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin and has a strong interest in Asian development. Apart from working as World Bank senior consultant in Asian projects, he was a planner in Hong Kong, where he contributed to urban redevelopment, zoning control and the METROPLAN. He still serves as an honorary editor for the Journal of the Hong Kong Institute of Planners and was recently appointed as a research fellow of the Ronald Coase Centre for Property Rights Research in Hong Kong.

Dr. Wong earned his Ph.D. in City Planning from Berkeley; two urban Masters in Wales and Hong Kong. He has served in the Executive Committee of the American Planning Association (Maryland Chapter), and the project manager for the Pennytown Fiscal Impact Study for Hopewell, NJ.