Timothy Imeokparia

Timothy Imeokparia
Timothy Imeokparia is Associate Director of Research and Planning for the Great Cities Institute (GCI). He earned his MCRP and Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University, and his B.Sc. Arch and B. Arch from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Dr. Imeokparia was the Director of Planning for the Neighborhood Design Center, Columbus, Ohio from 2005 to 2008. From 2008 to 2014 he was an Assistant Professor in the Community and Regional Planning Program at the University of New Mexico.
Dr. Imeokparia’s principal research and teaching interests have focused on exploring the intersection of capitalist spatiality and urban planning and design praxis as renegotiation and creation of space and place in urban environments. Principally he investigates the triad of relationships between the economic, social, and cultural and how the dynamics of place and people shape the quality and structure of individual life opportunities and everyday social interactions. Dr. Imeokparia’s current research at GCI examines business attraction, retention, and expansion as strategies for revitalizing communities with significant economic disinvestment in Chicago; social entrepreneurship as an essential component in addressing the chronic unemployment in economically marginalized communities in urban America; and developing a framework for a more inclusive business ecosystem in Chicago to counteract the histories of segregation and other forms of socio-economic exclusion in the region by connecting economic opportunities with the needs of Black and Latino communities.