David Wilson is currently investigating projects pivoting around the political economy of the U.S. and global north city. Specific projects examine the politics of urban growth regimes in these cities, the politics of competing discourses that generate gentrified neighborhoods and poverty communities, and the racializing of the contemporary urban issues of crime and city growth. Professor Wilson has served on the editorial boards of Urban Geography, Professional Geographer, Social and Cultural Geography, Syracuse University Press (Society, Space, and Place Book Series), Inter-Cultural Studies, the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography project and ACME: International Journal for Critical Geography.

David has been a visiting scholar at universities in China, Germany, and Canada. He was recently listed in a global study of urban geographers (The Professional Geographer) as the eleventh most productive scholar in this field in the world.