We build open-source methods, models, and software for understanding sociospatial structure.

SSUS is the research lab of Elijah Knaap at the University of California, Irvine. We study who lives where and why: how households sort across neighborhoods, how housing and land markets price location, and how the resulting patterns of segregation and opportunity change over time.

Outcomes in one place depend on its neighbors, so these questions need spatial models: we develop spatial econometric and Bayesian models of sorting and spillovers, and the sparse numerical tools that make them feasible for whole metropolitan regions.

The questions come from policy. Our models have informed a federal fair-housing evaluation and a regional plan, and show where harm-reduction services would reach the most overdose risk. The methods behind them ship as open-source software, so others can check the analysis and apply it to their own decisions.