Chapin Hall

David McQuown is a Senior Researcher at Chapin Hall with particular expertise in research database development and geospatial analysis. With one foot planted in the world of urban public policy and the other in the world of technology, he works with a range of state and local government agencies to process and store complex administrative data feeds in a way that is ideal for research supporting effective and just policy making. Additionally, he has lead efforts to expand Chapin Hall’s capacity for storing, analyzing, and visualizing geospatial information through the development of powerful enterprise GIS solutions built upon free and open source software.

McQuown’s research interests have touched on many different facets of urban public policy, including social service provision, affordable housing, economic development, and regional planning. Before coming to Chapin Hall, he worked at the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, where he was in charge of warehousing a variety of real estate transaction and assessment data in order to support research on the housing market in the Chicago region. He has been the Phillip D. Peters Regional Planning Fellow at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and a planning advisory service researcher at the American Planning Association.

McQuown holds a Master of Urban Planning and Policy and a Certificate in Geospatial Analysis and Visualization from the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.