News from the Schools

Professor Ralph Gakenheimer is working on a worldwide assessment of mobility with the MIT-based Cooperative Mobility Program for the World Business Council.

Professor Gakenheimer has become Chair of the International Scientific Committee of CODATU (Cooperation for Development and Improvement of Urban Transportation), an international society for urban transportation in the developing world.

Professor Lawrence J. Vale has published his latest book From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors_ (Harvard University Press, 2000).

A delegation from Chile, including the Minister of Housing and Urbanism, Mr. Claudio Orrego, visited the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He spoke with Department Chair, Bish Sanyal and others about the possibility of research with strong student participation in support of Chile's new housing and upgrading programs. These range from reforming urban development practices to better tailoring housing to client needs and overall reformulation of the Ministries activities under the heading of "city reform." Preparation of a MINVU-MIT Program is now under way.

A delegation from the Chinese Academy of Urban Planning and Design recently visited MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning. Issues such as the Beijing Studio and value of cooperation and open dialog in planning cities were discussed. Since 1985 MIT and Tsingua University in Beijing have sponsored a joint urban design studio with students and faculty from both schools. The studio has explored many options for neighborhood and commercial revitalization in the capital city. Strong support for the studio and the expansion of exchanges between MIT and Urban Planning institutions in China was expressed. The discussion also explored the need for conservation of the historical and cultural context of Chinese cities in the face of modernization and what steps could be taken to encourage alternative models of development. The current approach relies extensively on urban renewal with much demolition and development prototypes imported from western cities, including high rise development and ground level plazas that have little to do with Chinese traditions of City Planning. Members of the Academy discussed the need to explore alternatives that are more sensitive to the Chinese cultural patrimony, while also facilitating economic development. How to reconcile these objectives is a challenge for all planners.

In January 2001 seven students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT participated in a workshop on airport development at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. The MIT planning students, together with MIT students from two other departments and students from the faculties of Architecture, Public Policy, and Aerospace Engineering at Delft, examined the factors that are creating imperatives for expansion in the airline industry, the local conflicts this generates, and the way these are addressed in land use planning and development around Schipol Airport. Schipol, like many airports around the world, is planning to expand and this development is contested. The persistent controversy at Schipol is notable as one of the few instances in which the strong history of consensus building that have prevailed in Dutch planning and policy-making since the 1980s has not led to a program of action.

The two-week course was a pilot program for a broader project on the ecological city in the new economy that is being developed by TUD and MIT. The first phase of this program focuses on airports as cities and inquires into how imperatives for sustainable development might be met in this kind of applied context. The students' work began to open up the commitments and practices that define airport planning to a new kind of scrutiny and analysis. One of the goals for the planning students is to ask how new forms of economic and political organization influence the terms and institutional contexts in which concerns about sustainability are raised and resolved.

As planners seek ways to combat sprawl and promote reinvestment in inner cities, metropolitanism has become a hot topic. The fall 2000 colloquium of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning tackled the topic of “Metropolitanism in Practice”, examining the politics and policies that have succeeded in getting cities and suburbs to work together to address area-wide concerns. Thirteen speakers from metro areas around the United States, along with discussants from the Boston area, joined audiences of 30 to 40 in lively discussions over workable solutions to today’s urban dilemmas.

The speakers—including elected officials, planners from the public and private sectors, community organizers, academics, and even one funder of metropolitan initiative—addressed topics ranging from land use, to tax-base sharing, to affordable housing. The colloquium emphasized political feasibility, leading to crackling debates such as that between Greg Galuzzo of Chicago’s Gamaliel Foundation, which emphasizes power politics and confrontation grounded in grassroots organizing, and John Parr of the Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action in Denver, which promotes slow consensus-building. (Their conclusion: each strategy needs the other as well.) Catherine Ross, Director of the newly created Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, pointed out that despite her agency’s sweeping statutory powers, success depends critically on building political legitimacy. Bob Stacey, who played a variety of roles in institutionalizing metropolitan land use planning in Portland, Oregon, recounted the successes of the Portland model, but also noted its fragility, as exemplified by the passage—just a few days before Stacey’s talk—of a statewide ballot anti-“takings” initiative which may invalidate the area’s planning process.

Speaker after speaker highlighted the fault lines of race, class, and geography that make metropolitan cooperation difficult, and bemoaned the lack of federal support for area-wide collaboration. Nonetheless, the tone of the colloquium was optimistic, looking back at what has been accomplished in recent decades and looking forward to new possibilities. Speakers appealed to visions of a better society, but built their plans on pragmatic politics. “When people see how these issues are affecting them in their pocketbook,” Mayor William Johnson of Rochester commented, “that’s when they get very civic-minded.”

A Roundtable Series
Civic Environmentalism: Democratic Pathways to Sustainability

Environmental policy and action have begun to turn away from top-down, pollutant-by-pollutant, command-and-control regulation to embrace strategies that rely on democratic participation to advance ecosystem health, pollution prevention, and community revitalization. These "civic environmental" strategies include deliberative democratic processes, systems theory, adaptive management, green development, industrial ecology, and regionalism. A multi-university roundtable series will take place this Spring 2001 beginning February 13, led by Dara O’Rourke and William Shutkin, faculty from MIT, and Charles Foster and Archon Fund, faculty from Harvard, to explore central questions raised by these developments. For instance, how are these strategies new or different from past "grassroots" environmental movements? What is the role of civic participation? NGOs? The state? How does ideology influence civic environmentalism? What are the real, on-the-ground outcomes of civic environmental experiments? And what policies or programs best capture the promise of civic environmentalism?

What Is Civic Environmentalism and Why Does It Matter? MIT, Building 7, Stella Room (Room 338) John DeWitt (Bowdoin College), William Shutkin (MIT);

Civic Environmentalism and the Pursuit of Sustainable Communities Tufts, Olin Building, Laminan Lounge Julian Agyeman (Tufts University), Anthony Patt (Boston University)

The Social and Intellectual Underpinnings (Note this is an evening event). MIT, Building 4, Room 237

A Look at Local and Regional Projects Harvard, JFK School, Littauer 3^rd Floor, Fainsod Room,

Innovations in Policy and Regulation Harvard, JFK School, Littauer 3^rd Floor, Fainsod Room, Charles H.W. Foster (Harvard University), Archon Fung (Harvard University

Space is limited. For information about time and locations, or to RSVP, contact Maddy Arnstein at 617 253-5724 or maddy@mit.edu

University of California, Los Angeles

J. Eugene Grigsby, Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the Advanced Policy Institute, has been selected as a Fellow to the Institute of the Regional Community, a program of the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC). Based in Washington D.C., the NARC advances the work of regional partnerships and initiatives that improve the quality of life in regional communities.

Grigsby was one of five panelists from UCLA and the community who briefed the California Legislative Black Caucus and Los Angeles community leaders last fall on economic development in impoverished districts . Grigsby called for implementing a series of policies that would bring the entire region together. One recommendation was to promote regional economic development with a community focus, such as enhancing access by central city workers to high‑skill, high‑wage employment throughout the region via the Internet. Grigsby also suggested strengthening neighborhood business districts, constructing affordable housing along transit nodes throughout the region, supporting community development corporations, and regionalizing community development.

Elected leaders also held a session on reapportionment issues within the context of newly released 2000 Census data. Grigsby and Leobardo Estrada, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the North American Integration and Development Center, led the reapportionment briefing and discussed demographic trends that will impact the next redistricting process, which will begin April 1, 2001.

Two Urban Planning faculty members participated in a conference entitled “The Chicano Experience: The Culture, Economy and Politics of the Mexican-American Community in the United States,” conducted in Spain in November to promote Chicano/Latino studies in that country. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Research Director of the North American Integration and Development Center, discussed the global Chicano political economy as it relates to US-Mexico integration. Abel Valenzuela, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Chicano Studies, and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, gave a presentation about immigration and the native Mexican population in California. Both faculty members are part of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, which sponsored the series of panel presentations along with the Universities of Valencia, Granada and Sevilla.

According to Abel Valenzuela, co-editor of Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles, published by the Russell Sage Foundation , Los Angeles and the nation as a whole have enormous work to do to ensure rising standards of living and greater equality. The study examines the relationship between the labor market, housing market, and attitudes about race and relations among ethnic groups in Los Angeles County. Prismatic Metropolis is the largest component of a multi‑city study of urban inequality funded by the Ford Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundations. Other cities studied were Atlanta, Boston and Detroit. The study concludes that negative stereotypes and prejudice, especially toward African Americans and Latinos, remain widespread problems in Los Angeles. Economic hardship has a strong racial and ethnic dimension, with segments of the African‑American and Latino communities bearing a heavily disproportionate burden of joblessness and poverty.

Policy-makers, policy advisors, practitioners and members of the academic/research community from around the country converged at the UCLA Lake Arrowhead facility for a retreat on “Growth and Quality of Life.” Conference participants discussed the future of development in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the impact of growth on travel, land use and the environment. The symposium was a joint collaboration of the UCLA Extension Public Policy Program and the School of Public Policy and Social Research. California will add somewhere between 8 and 20 million people in the next 25 years. Symposium participants considered these growth projections, economic forces, alternative growth management styles, and environmental concerns. They concurred that defining “quality of life” is an important first step in understanding the impacts of a given policy. Brian Taylor, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Associate Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies was one of the event coordinators. Other participating faculty from the Department of Urban Planning included Evelyn Blumenberg, Assistant Professor; Randall Crane, Associate Professor; and Donald Shoup, Professor and Chair.

Carol Ojeda Kimbrough, an urban planning doctoral student in the environmental planning track, has been named a 2000-01 California Switzer Environmental Fellow. Her research focuses on environmental justice, public participation, and community economic development. The one-year fellowship is awarded to graduate students in California and New England whose studies are directed toward improving the quality of the natural environment.

The U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration has awarded a 2000 Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship to Daniel Chatman, an urban planning doctoral student, to support his dissertation research on transportation and land-use planning. The fellowship provides tuition and a stipend for three years.

Graduate students Ana Luz Gonzalez, Nicole Clark, Troy Strange and Levin Sy were selected to participate in the Emerging Leaders Program of the National Congress for Community Economic Development (NCCED) in Washington, D.C. in February, 2001. The program brings together undergraduates, graduate students and recent graduates from colleges, universities, community colleges and trade schools across the U.S. to learn about the field of community economic development (CED). The program offers a unique leadership development experience that increases participants' knowledge of the CED field, and enhances their collaboration, leadership, facilitation and problem‑solving skills.

Other recent UCLA Urban Planning student awards and fellowships include:

Eno Transportation Foundation Eighth Annual Leadership Development Conference – Eno Fellow: Gian Claudia Sciara

Presidential Management Intern Awards : Kay Gilbert, Jeree Glasser, Scott Perley

Irvine Foundation Sustainable Commuity Leadership Program Fellows: Heather Barnett, Marc Hanson, Charlie Sciammas

Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (for study in Europe): Charlie Sciammas

Dissertation Fellowship (UC Institute for Labor and Employment): Jim Spencer

Paris Program in Critical Theory (UCLA Center for Modern and Contemporary Studies: Mustafa Dikec

Virginia Tech, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning

John Levy, Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning has recently published a 5th edition of Contemporary Urban Planning, Prentice-Hall, 2000, and a new title, Urban America: Processes and Problems, Prentice-Hall, 2000.
Joseph L. Scarpaci, Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, delivered the keynote address at the Pennsylvania Modern Language Association meeting in Pittsburgh this past fall. His talk, "The Globalization of Culture and the Role of Foreign Language Education in the USA: Convergence or Divergence for the US Student Abroad," drew upon 18 study-abroad programs carried out in Chile and Cuba.

University of Texas at Arlington

Ardeshir Anjomani, professor.
Research/Service
Conducted a project, involving a number of graduate planning students, to help the Far Greater Northside Historical Neighborhood Association, in Fort Worth, develop a plan for revitalization that will be funded by the city's Model Blocks Program with federal support.

Elise M. Bright, associate professor.
Publications
Published "Reviving America's Forgotten Neighborhoods: An Investigation of Inner City Revitalization Efforts," Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London, 2000.

Jianling Li, assistant professor.
Research/Service
Research supervisor of a study for the Texas Department of Transportation that should help TxDOT reduce traffic congestion on roads and highways in major metropolitan areas acroass the state. She is collaborating with Dr. Richard Cole, SUPA dean, and Civil Engineering faculty Drs. Siamak Ardkani, Shekhar Govind and Jim Williams.

Teresa Vazquez, assistant professor.
Paper Presentations
"Bilateral Planning Mexico-United States: Implications for Planning Practice and Planning Curriculum," as part of the panel Planning in the USA-Mexico Border in the Context of Globalization, ACSP 2000 Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, November 4, 2000.
Participation
"Fair Growth: Connecting Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Social Equity" workshop by the Fannie Mae Foundation, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia, November 1, 2000.
Presentations
Presentation on "Building Communities from the Inside Out" as part of the Arlington Neighborhood Academy, September 20, 2000, Council Briefing Room, 3rd Floor of City Hall, City of Arlington, Texas, 6:30-8:30PM.

Organized the talk "Public Transportation for Arlington" featuring speaker John Overman from the Citizens Transit Advisory Committee (CTAC). Overman is also Associate Research Scientist fot the Texas Transportation Institute. The talk took place in Room 534UH on September 26th, 2000 at 6:30PM.
Publications
Web page of the high school adoption for the use of students and professors. http://omega.uta.edu/~tvazquez/index.htm

News from the Schools, February - March 2001

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of California, Los Angeles

Virginia Tech, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning

University of Texas at Arlington