Research

Overview

My research sits at the intersection of urban and population geography, spatial data science, and open-source software. It falls into three broad areas.

Migration, diversity, and metropolitan change. I study how population change reshapes US cities and suburbs, including neighborhood diversity, the migration of baby boomers and millennials, and the “demographic inversion” hypothesis that central cities are growing wealthier and whiter as suburbs diversify. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Geography and Spatial Sciences Program (BCS-1739662) and has appeared in journals including Urban Studies, Migration Studies, Growth & Change, and Spatial Demography.

Immigration and local politics. My earlier research examined how local governments in the United States responded to immigration during the 2000s, why policy responses varied so much from place to place, and how political attitudes toward immigration vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. This work has appeared in Urban Geography, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, City & Community, and Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie.

Open-source tools for spatial data science. Much of my current work is the design and development of software that makes demographic and spatial data easier to obtain, analyze, and visualize. This includes the tidycensus and tigris packages for US Census data in R, the mapgl package for interactive WebGL maps, and newer Rust-backed tools for vector tiling and spatial optimization. In 2022 I was named Spatial Data Scientist of the Year at the CARTO Spatial Data Science Conference, and in 2026 the R Consortium funded a project to sustain and modernize R’s Census data infrastructure. See the Software page for details.

Books

Peer-reviewed articles

  • Coles, Ashley, and Kyle E. Walker. 2021. Assessing motorist behavior during flash floods in Tucson, Arizona. Transportation. doi:10.1007/s11116-020-10156-2
  • Shannon, Jerry, and Kyle E. Walker. 2020. Ventures into viral cartography: Waffle House, educational attainment, and the social life of maps. The Professional Geographer 72(1): 66-77. doi:10.1080/00330124.2019.1653774
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2018. Locating neighborhood diversity in the American metropolis. Urban Studies 55(1): 116-132. doi:10.1177/0042098016643481
  • Shannon, Jerry, and Kyle E. Walker. 2018. Opening GIScience: A process-based approach. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 32(10): 1911-1926.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2018. A reproducible framework for visualizing demographic distance profiles in US metropolitan areas. Spatial Demography 6(3): 207-233.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2018. Scaling the interactive dot map. Cartographica 53(3): 171-184.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2017. The shifting destinations of metropolitan migrants in the U.S., 2005-2011. Growth & Change 48(4). doi:10.1111/grow.12187
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2016. Baby boomer migration and demographic change in U.S. metropolitan areas. Migration Studies 4(3): 347-372. doi:10.1093/migration/mnw012
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2016. tigris: An R package to access and work with geographic data from the US Census Bureau. The R Journal 8(2): 231-242.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2016. Tools for interactive visualization of global demographic concepts in R. Spatial Demography 4(3): 207-220.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2015. The spatiality of local immigration policies in the United States. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 106(4): 486-498.
  • Walker, Kyle E., and Sean M. Crotty. 2015. Classifying high-prevalence neighborhoods for cardiovascular disease in Texas. Applied Geography 57: 22-31.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2014. Immigration, local policy, and national identity in the suburban United States. Urban Geography 35(4): 508-529.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2014. The role of geographic context in the local politics of US immigration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(7): 1040-1059.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2013. Political segregation of the metropolis: Spatial sorting by partisan voting in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. City & Community 12(1): 35-55.
  • Walker, Kyle E., and Helga Leitner. 2011. The variegated landscape of local immigration policies in the US. Urban Geography 32(2): 156-178.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2010. Local policy responses to immigration in the United States. The CURA Reporter 40(3-4): 27-34.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2010. Negotiating GIS and social theory in population geography. Geography Compass 4(6): 616-629.

Book chapters and encyclopedia entries

  • Walker, Kyle E. 2018. Immigrants in US suburbs. In The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs, edited by B. Hanlon and T.J. Vicino, 193-207. London: Routledge.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2016. Geography of immigration or immigrants. Oxford Bibliographies in Geography (peer-reviewed).
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2013. Commuting. The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (peer-reviewed).
  • Walker, Kyle. 2009. Border commuters. In The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, edited by Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, 98-99. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Textbooks and course materials

  • Walker, Kyle E. 2018. Analyzing US Census Data in R. Course prepared for the DataCamp online learning platform.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2017. Getting Started with ArcGIS Mapping, The Ins and Outs of ArcGIS Data Analysis, and Advanced Mapping with ArcGIS. Video courseware prepared for Packt Publishing.
  • Crotty, Sean M., and Kyle E. Walker. 2015. Navigating the World with GIS: A Companion to World Regional Geography. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.

Reports and other publications

  • Walker, Kyle E. 2014. Teaching with interactive data visualization. Insights into Teaching and Learning (Fall issue), TCU Koehler Center.
  • Hurst, Anne L., Kyle E. Walker, Derek Y. Darves-Bornoz, Matthew J. Price, and Susan T. Erdey. 2012. State of the Clergy 2012: A Report for The Episcopal Church. Office of Research, Church Pension Group.
  • Darves-Bornoz, Derek Y., Susan T. Erdey, Anne L. Hurst, Matthew J. Price, and Kyle E. Walker. 2012. Whither Thou Goest: Assessing the Current State of Seminaries and Seminarians in The Episcopal Church. Office of Research, Church Pension Group.
  • Price, Matthew J., Derek Darves-Bornoz, Susan Erdey, Anne Hurst, and Kyle Walker. 2012. The Hymnal Revision Feasibility Study: A Report to the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music. Office of Research, Church Pension Group.
  • Walker, Kyle E. 2011. Review of Cities and Suburbs: New Metropolitan Realities in the US, by B. Hanlon, J.R. Short, and T.J. Vicino. Journal of Planning Education and Research 31: 351-353.
  • Walker, Kyle. 2008. Immigration, suburbia, and the politics of population in US metropolitan areas. Minnesota Population Center Working Paper Series, Working Paper 2008-05.