Paul Lewis

An associate professor, Paul Lewis is the coauthor of Regional Governance and the Politics of Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area (Temple University Press, 2023), Policing Immigrants: Local Law Enforcement on the Front Lines (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016), Custodians of Place: Governing the Growth and Development of Cities (Georgetown Univ. Press, 2009), and author of Shaping Suburbia: How Political Institutions Organize Urban Development (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). His research has been published in Economic Development Quarterly, Housing Policy Debate, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Policy History, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Journal of Urban Affairs, Law & Policy, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, Polity, Social Sciences, State and Local Government Review, and Urban Affairs Review, and in several edited volumes and policy reports. 

Lewis studies urban policy and local governments in the United States, with a focus on land use, housing, and metropolitan development, as well as local policies toward immigrants. He also is interested in the way people think and make judgments about public policy issues, including preferences about urban and suburban neighborhood environments. His research has received funding support from the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. He has served on editorial boards for Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, and State and Local Government Review. Lewis was the associate director for undergraduate studies in the School of Politics & Global Studies from 2020 to 2023. From 1996 to 2005, he was a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, also serving as a program director at PPIC from 2002 to 2005.