HILL participates in a variety of research and education initiatives. A select list of funded projects, published articles and project highlights are provided below.
Select Funded Projects
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Climate-Ready Corridors: Streetscape Toolkit for Extreme Heat (PI: Fischer, L.) $360,000. October 2025 – September 2027.
State University of New York Experiential Learning Network. Corridors of Cooperation and Conflict: Evaluating Transportation Justice in Buffalo, NY (PI: Fischer, L.) $25,000. January 2025 – August 2025.
UNT Office of Research Innovation. Empowering Communities with Environmental Health Literacy (Co-PIs: Champlin, S. Fischer, L.A. & Liang, L.) $5,500. September 2023 – August 2024.
Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Texas Zoning Atlas. (PI: Yang, Z., Co-PI: Fischer, L.A. & Carroll, M.). $57,466. October 2022 – April 2024.
National Science Foundation, CIVIC Stage 1 Planning Grant. Community-Science Partnership to Enhance Stormwater Adaptation under Climate Change. (PI: Dr. Wendy Jepson; Co-PI: Drs. Jaber, F. Bowling, R. Fischer, L.A. & Ponette-Gonzalez, A.) $49,998. October 2022 – March 2023.
City of Lewisville, Texas. Healthy Infrastructure Plan and Neighborhood Analysis. (PI: Fischer, L.A., Co-PI: Liang, L.) $58,875. November 2021 – March 2023.
Environmental Defense Fund. Metropolitan Planning Organizations and Environmental Screening Tools: Current Practices and Limitations. (PI: Hutson, N.; Co-PI: Fischer, L.A.) $20,000. September 2021 – August 2022.
Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. Typologies of Integration: An Analysis of Municipal Land Use and Water Management Practices in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. (PI: Fischer, L.A., Co-PI: Fry, M.) $9,025. June 2021 – May 2022.
Select Publications
Stahl, V. & Fischer, L. (2025) Diverging Discourses: State-Level Preemption of Municipal Land Regulation for Housing Production in California and Texas. Journal of Urban Affairs.
Voulgaris, C., Ray, R. & Fischer, L. (2024) Transit board diversity and pandemic service cuts in vulnerable communities. Transportation Research Record.
Fry, M & Fischer, L.A. (2023) Valuing Property over the Environment: Municipal landscaping ordinances in Texas. Landscape and Urban Planning.
Fischer, L.A. (2023). Value Capture In Situ: Participation, Evaluation and Signaling in Kansas City, MO. Journal of Planning Education and Research.
Fischer, L.A. (2022). Tax Discrimination District: The Intersection of Race and Transit Value Capture. Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(3), 352 – 364.
Zavar, E., & Fischer, L. A. (2021). Fractured landscapes: The racialization of home buyout programs and climate adaptation. Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, 3, 100043.
Fischer, L. A., Ray, R. S., & King, D. A. (2021). Who Decides? Toward a Typology of Transit Governance. Urban Science, 5(1), 6.
Select Project Profiles + Presentations
Corridors of Community Learning (UB Corridors Project)
A multidisciplinary collaboration with the UB Institute for Learning Sciences (UBILS) exploring how community learning and sense-making occur within infrastructure planning and neighborhood change. Using storytelling and community mapping, the project documents residents’ perspectives on highway reform efforts along the RT198 and RT33 Corridors in Buffalo, NY to identify planning and design interventions that enable equitable outcome.
Transport Transitions + Emerging Mobility
HILL research assistant Raine Walker presented their research at UNT’s annual Scholars Day on April 3, 2024. Conducted as part of the undergraduate research fellows program, Raine used an annotated bibliography and case studies of local transit agency’s decision-making to understand whether the COVID-19 pandemic “Derailed” transit. Raine was recently awarded a summer research scholarship to continue this work, which will be published as part of their honors thesis in 2024-25 academic year. Great Job Raine!
Texas Zoning Atlas
We are officially in year two of the Texas Zoning Atlas project, co-directed by Dr. Lauren Ames Fischer and Dr. Yang Zhou, and are starting to release findings for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. This open source geospatial database creates a user friendly resource on the key land use regulations (ex. minimum lot and unit sizes, parking requirements) that shape the communities where we live, work and play. Read more about the project here, in a piece by the Dallas Morning News.
Presenting at the Dallas Fort Worth Regional Housing Consortium’s Quarterly Meeting in December 2023. Thanks to Denise Mason and Cadence Bank for the delicious food!
Healthy Infrastructure Plan, Lewisville, Texas
In fall 2021 we expanded our research on air quality, heat, street trees and the built environment in Lewisville to cover six neighborhoods. We used data on environmental and human health to inform the co-production of an equity framework and index to guide implementation. The city adopted the plan in March 2023. The plan has received several awards: North Central Texas Council of Governments CLIDE (Celebrating Leadership in Development Excellence) award in June 2023, the Texas American Planning Association’s Environmental Planning Gold Award in November 2023 and the Planning Excellence award from the Texas Recreation and Parks Society (TRAPS) in February 2024. The project provides training and research experiences for a variety of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of North Texas.
HILL Leadership team presenting at the National Recreation and Parks Association Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas in October 2023. Picture (from left) are Kendall Howard, Jose Marines, Stacie Anaya, Lauren Ames Fischer and Lenny Hughes.
Community-Science Partnership to Enhance Stormwater Management and Equity
In partnership with Texas A&M and Texas Water Resources Institute, HILL is engaged in a community-based, interdisciplinary inquiry into nature-based infrastructure solutions. Supported by an NSF CIVIC award, the project aims to address social equity challenges to the adaptation of the environmentally friendly infrastructure.
Healthy and Sustainable Communities Pilot, Lewisville, Texas
In spring 2020 we partnered with Lewisville’s Park and Recreation Department, with support from UNT’s Advanced Environmental Research Institute (AERI), to conduct analysis in the Triangle Neighborhood, a low-income, multi-family neighborhood, to support development of a neighborhood park and enhanced public spaces. Our analysis helped support development of a new park in the neighborhood, opening in April 2024, that gives more than 4,000 residents walking access to green space and recreation.
Planting the Metroplex: Sustainable Land Use and Water Conservation in DFW
With support from the Babbitt Center for Water Policy at the Lincoln Institute, we are using a novel database on municipal landscaping, water conservation and tree regulations to evaluate the sustainability and integration of current practices. The poster below features the work of Nick Collins, who completed an undergraduate research fellowship project on xeriscaping practices in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Lauren Ames Fischer, Ph.D. 