Ben Teresa studies the role of finance in urban development and governance. His research follows how financial actors, institutions and logics assume influence in the social world, how this process constitutes a leading edge of urban change and its consequences for urban life. He focuses on the effects of privileging financial knowledge and imperatives on political agency, and in particular, the often-fraught position of planning and the planner in these transformations. His current research projects include the transformation of rental housing in New York City and the role of planners within contemporary planning practice in Chicago that depends on, reproduces, and conflicts with financial techniques and rationality.