My name is Michael Valentino Ochoa. I am a graduate student in UIC's Department of Economics. My research focuses primarily on urban and health economics with particular interests in neighborhood change, social interactions, inequality and planning healthy cities.

Formerly I was affiliated with Northwestern University.

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Before returning to graduate school I was a multi-unit manager at Goddess Restaurant Group and a cook and server for Hogsalt Hospitality.

Before that, I was a publicist and software designer.

I also have a long standing warmth for 19th and 20th century art history, cities without grids and restorative architecture.

Say hello: mvochoa2@uic.edu

blog (2015-Current)

code (2018-current)

work history

+ Current Projects

In June 2025 I began documenting and evaluating Chicago bike lanes and posting them to social.

This is a long term project directed at bringing awareness to both noteworthy and notorious bike lane design, as well as building an archive bicyclists may use to travel Chicago safely by two wheels.

please follow at: @ _________ on TikTok (debuting soon!)

+ Past Projects

Nooz

Recruited a team of computer engineering, architecture and graphic design students for a news software project.

press (scroll to middle)

Undergraduate Thesis

honorable mention, oral presentation

+ Press

student organization of the week

best graffiti on campus

+ Bookshelf

Below is a running list of the books I cherish. This list, just like my bookshelves are in no particular order

Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975

It Can't Always be Caviar

Landmark Cases in Forensic Psychiatry

The Jungle Effect

History of Economic Analysis

Academic Legal Writing

Agent Josephine

Causal Inference: The Mixtape

Voice & Vision: A Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Are Judges Political?

Introduction to Mathematical Economics

The Information Master: Jean Baptiste Colbert's Information System

The Writing of Economics

The Economics of Innoncent Fraud

Ambassador's Journal

Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays

The Ecology of Human Development

Shattering: Food Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity

The Anatomy of Power

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

How Judges Think

A Tenured Professor

The Affluent Society

Sorcerers Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the Supreme Court

The Code of Capital

Micromotives and Macrobehavior

What the Best Law Teachers Do

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

Business Applications Using C++

Lucky Peach Magazine

The Great Crash, 1929

Paris: Buildings and Monuments

The Federal Courts Challenge and Reform

The Great Good Place

Five Hundred Buildings of New York

The First Crash Lessons From the South Sea Bubble

Writing Ethnographic Field Notes

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

C++ for Business Programming

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Becoming by Michelle Obama

The Classical School: The Birth of Economics

Ogilvy On Advertising

Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson

The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development

Who's Your City

Block Club Chicago

Barron's Dictionary of Banking Terms

Handmaid's Tale

The Lula Cafe Cookbook

Culinary Artistry

Calvin and Hobbes

The Lorax