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of News from the Schools.
University of Louisville
School of Urban and Public Affairs
CALL FOR PAPERS. The Sixth Biennial Symposium and
Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the International Urban Planning and
Environment Association will be hosted by the School of Urban and Public
Affairs in Louisville, Kentucky, September 4-8, 2004. The Conference
Theme is “Global Pressures on Local Autonomy: Challenges to Urban Planning
for Sustainability and Development.” Come join academics and
practitioners from across the globe at this highly interactive symposium.
IUPEA’s last symposium in Oxford drew 250 participants from 36 nations.
Details on symposium subthemes and abstract submission instructions are
available at
<http://cepm.louisville.edu/IUPEA6/index.htm>. Abstracts
are due January 30, 2004.
Thomas Lyons, Director of the Master of Urban Planning
Program, has been appointed Fifth Third Bank Professor of Community
Development in recognition of his work on minority entrepreneurship.
This professorship is funded by an endowment established by the Jacob G.
Schmidlapp Trust. Dr. Lyons’ book, Economic Development: Strategies
for State and Local Practice, co-authored by Steven Koven, was published
earlier this year by the International City/County Management Association.
Peter B. Meyer, along with his colleague (and spouse)
Kristen Yount of Northern Kentucky University, has been awarded a five year,
$878,000 Cooperative Agreement from the EPA Office of Brownfields Cleanup
and Redevelopment for a project on “Accelerating Brownfields Cleanup and
Redevelopment with Innovative Uses of Environmental Insurance.” The
grant covers four distinct projects, all based on case studies of
redevelopment efforts around the country.
As legal issues
surrounding growth and development become increasingly complex, Georgia Tech
and Georgia State University (GSU) have developed a concurrent degree option
that helps city planners earn law degrees in a shorter amount of time. A
Joint Degree Program in Law and City and Regional Planning was approved by
the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents this summer. The joint
degree program in Law and City and Regional Planning from GSU's College of
Law and Georgia Tech's College of Architecture is the only such degree
between two separate institutions. We began accepting students this fall.
Graduate students who successfully complete the program will earn a law
degree from GSU and a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from
Georgia Tech.
***********************
The Center for Community Partnerships, the operational arm of the UCLA in LA
initiative, has announced the inaugural recipients of its Community
Partnership grants. One of this year's grants was awarded to Urban Planning
M.A. student Eric Schwimmer for a project on stabilizing a low-income
community.
With his CCP grant Schwimmer will assist the Esperanza Community Housing
Corporation by building a distressed neighborhoods database, which will
identify changes in demographics, code violations and tax delinquencies.
This will give community organizers a systematic way to isolate worrisome
trends, pinpoint problem areas and strategize. It will tell organizers where
displacement is happening most rapidly and help identify economic
development or affordable housing opportunities.
The Center for Community Partnerships develops and supports mutually
beneficial partnerships that link UCLA expertise with community knowledge in
three key areas: children, youth and families; economic development; and
arts and culture. This year, the center received 80 proposals for
campus-based projects and funded 18 in amounts ranging from $13,000 to
$50,000. The competitively awarded grants support research and other
collaborations involving a UCLA partner and a nonprofit organization in the
Los Angeles region.
**********************
In 2002-03 Professor Paul Ong is a member of the Committee on Census Data
for Transportation Planning, the Transportation Research Board, and the
National Research Council.
**********************
M.A. Student Amy Ford received the First Place Outstanding Student
Scholarship from the California Planning Foundation. The statewide
scholarship was presented at a recent meeting of the California Chapter of
the American Planning Association. Each year CPF invites students from the
nine accredited planning programs in California to compete for these
scholarships which are awarded based on academic performance, professional
promise, financial need, commitment to serve the planning profession in
California, and increasing diversity in the profession of planning.
She also received a Michael S. Dukakis Internship Stipend from the School of
Public Policy and Social Research. Created in 1997 to introduce students to
the value of public service, the Dukakis Internship Program provides
stipends for students to serve in non-partisan internships in government,
with a focus on California. The stipends are awarded each spring on a
competitive basis. Amy's internship is with the Los Angeles County
Metropolitan Transportation Authority where she is doing research on land
use and transportation policies as they apply to transit corridor projects.
*********************
Associate Professor Diane Zahm has been elected
President of Virginia Tech’s Faculty Senate. She represents the faculty at
Tech’s Board of Visitors meetings, providing input on university-level
decision-making. Zahm is also working on a research grant funded by the
university research division. The research, done in partnership with the
National Sheriff’s Association, will provide information for President
Bush’s State of the Union address in January on homeland security related to
neighborhood watch groups. The President’s goal is to double the number of
neighborhood watch groups by the end of the year.
Associate Professor Alnoor
Ebrahim will be awarded the 2003 Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
Article Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations
and Voluntary Action at their annual conference in Colorado on November 21.
He was one of two recipients of this award and wins a $500 cash prize for
his article, Information Struggles: The Role of Information in the
Reproduction of Non-Governmental Organization-Funder Relationships
published in 2002. Ebrahim specializes in non-governmental
organizations and has participated in several research projects dealing with
such organizations and their management of natural resources. He received
his Ph.D. in Environmental Planning and Management, Civil and Environmental
Engineering from Stanford University. He teaches at Virginia Tech’s
Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Ebrahim
also has a new book out entitled "NGOs and Organizational Change:
Discourse, Reporting, and Learning,," Cambridge University Press, 2003.
His study analyzes the evolution of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as
a result of their increased profile as bilateral partners in delivering aid.
Gerard Toal, Professor of
Government and International Affairs and Director of the
Masters of Public & International Affairs offered at Tech's Alexandria
location, presented a talk on American Geopolitical Culture at a
Geography and International Relations mini-conference held at George
Washington University in October.
Heike Mayer, new assistant professor in Urban Affairs &
Planning at Tech’s Blacksburg campus received one-year funding from the
Arlington Economic Development department (AED) in Virginia
to examine the county’s high technology economy and to assess the
county’s prospects to capture emerging industry sectors. The study
will identify core high technology strengths and assess the suitability and
economic growth potential of emerging technologies. Mayer will work
with Tech’s UAP Professor Chris Nelson and Robert Lang, Director of the
Virginia Tech Metropolitan Institute, and with Terry Holzheimer and Hal
Glidden from AED’s Business Investment Group.
Institute of Architecture and Planning
Graduate Program in City and Regional
Planning
The planning program has grown over the past two years
and currently has thirty-six students enrolled in the program. This is
concurrent with the growth of the Institute which now has over 200 graduate
and undergraduate students.
The Institute of Architecture and Planning has been led
by a planner since Fall of 2003, when Dr. Richard E. Lloyd joined as the
Director of the Institute. Dr. Lloyd’s professional career
includes work in both urban planning and architecture related design of
housing for low-income groups, pre- and post occupancy evaluation, and
preparation of urban design guidelines and neighborhood studies. Prior to
joining Morgan State, Dr. Lloyd was with the planning programs at Jackson
State University, California Polytechnic and State University at Pomona, and
the University of New South Wales in Australia. Dr. Lloyd
received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Urban Planning from California
State Polytechnic University at Pomona, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from the
University of California at Berkeley.
Dr.
Siddhartha Sen was promoted to the rank of Professor in Fall of 2003. He is
finishing up reports for several funded projects on transportation planning
including one on environmental justice and one on pedestrian safety
campaigns. He has also been funded by the Maryland State Highway
Administration and Federal Highway Administration to look at the effect of
noise barrier walls on property values and travel patterns of people of
color. Other investigators on the above mentioned projects are Dr. Leonard
Azonobi of the planning program and Dr. Randal Reed of the Institute for
Transportation at Morgan State. Professors Azonobi, Reed and Sen are also in
the process of preparing several manuscripts based on these projects. The
total funding for these projects is over $250,000. Dr. Sen spend the
summer gathering data on a book on the role of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) in housing and urban development in India. The project was
partially supported by a scholarship from the Consortium on Development
Studies, South Korea.
The entire faculty of the planning program has
undertaken service learning projects on Pennsylvania Avenue, a Historic
Black cultural center in Baltimore through their classes. In addition, Dr.
Hazel Edwards’ undergraduate studio is also working on a Saint Elizabeth
Hospital Campus project for the District of Columbia Office of Planning. In
this context it is to be noted that all planning faculty are teaching in the
new interdisciplinary undergraduate program in Architecture and
Environmental Design.
Dr. Edwards was invited to serve on the Randallstown
Urban Design Action Team in Baltimore County. She has also been invited to
serve on the Jackson State University Community Charrette and be an advisor
to the Illinois State Representative on the East Saint Louis Illinois State
Initiative. She has also been appointed to serve on the 2004 American
Planning Association Awards Jury. Professor Worthy’s studio finished a
planning study for the Madison East Community in East Baltimore.
Dr. Claudia Phillips of the Landscape Architecture
Program was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure in Fall
of 2003. She continues to be an asset to the planning program through
offering of courses and guiding students on their theses. Dr. Phillips was
appointed to the Maryland Governor’s Commission on Environmental Justice and
Sustainable Design.
Department of
City and Regional Planning
Chairman Emil Malizia
News Summary:
• UNC Planning Graduate Receives
Distinguished Alumna Award
• Enabling the Next Generation of
Hazard Researchers
• Triangle graded on "smart growth"
• Creating Disaster Resilient
Communities in the Island State of Guadeloupe, Caribbean
• Dr. Khattak named Editor-in-Chief of
the transportation journal
UNC Planning Graduate
Receives Distinguished Alumna Award
October 12, 2003 Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Faculty, distinguished alumni, students and others proceeded from the Old
Well to Hill Hall Auditorium to celebrate the University of North Carolina’s
210th annual University Day. This year's University Day commemorated the
laying of the first cornerstone and celebrated the 100th anniversary of the
founding of the Graduate School.
Chancellor James Moeser presided over the ceremony. "A University with such
an illustrious past as ours is worth celebrating." He also commended the
success of the Graduate School. "Twentieth-century Carolina grew into the
research institution it is today," Moeser said.
University Day included the presentation of an Alumnus Awards to Shirley
Friedlander Weiss, who received her master of regional planning degree from
UNC in 1958. Weiss was the Department of City and Regional Planning’s first
female faculty member and was later promoted to full Professor.
Weiss, a pioneer in urban research, served as Associate Research Director of
the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and Acting Director of Women’s
Studies. In 1992, Weiss and her husband, Dr. Charles Weiss, established
UNC’s Urban Livability Program, providing support for graduate fellowships,
a resident scholar, essay competitions and a special collection in the
Chapin Planning Library.
Enabling the Next
Generation of Hazard Researchers
Social Science Research Training Fellowship for Junior Faculty
Web site: enabling.unc.edu
This program, “Enabling the Next Generation of Hazard Researchers”, is
funded by the National Science Foundation and is being undertaken by the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in collaboration with faculty
from seven other universities.
The program will consist of a two-year series of workshops, tutorials, and
discussions focusing on practical advice about research initiation and
research proposal development for social science research addressing hazards
and extreme events. This is a unique opportunity for junior faculty who are
early in their research careers.
Participants will receive an honorarium and travel expenses to workshops and
meetings with senior faculty mentors.
"This is a unique opportunity to bring junior faculty members at different
stages of their careers,” says Ray Burby, FAICP. “Dialog has been wonderful
and the program has greatly facilitated networking among the various
universities that are part of ‘Enabling’, this is opening doors to many new
ideas.”
Program Details
This is the second round of mentoring junior faculty on societal aspects of
hazards and extreme events supported by the National Science Foundation.
During the first round, conducted in 1996 and 1997, junior faculty members
from thirteen universities took part. The program led to a number of
successful research projects and subsequent publications by the
participating faculty members.
The first year of the program provides an intense period of mentoring for
program fellows, with sustained one-on-one contact with members of the
senior faculty panel and a summer workshop that introduces fellows to
research opportunities and provides guidance in linking their disciplinary
research interests to important questions related to
hazards and extreme events.
During the second year, the focus shifts to the formulation of research
proposals by the fellows that carry these ideas forward toward a fundable
research proposal.
Program fellows will gain access to a network of top-notch social
scientists, as well as develop valuable research and writing skills. NSF's
goal is that the faculty fellows participating in the program will sustain
scholarship about societal aspects of hazards and extreme events into future
generations.
Three advisors assist the panel of faculty mentors. The advisors include Dr.
William Anderson of the National Academy of Sciences and two former fellows,
Dr. Thomas Birkland from SUNY-Albany and Dr. Robert Ridge from Brigham Young
University.
Triangle graded on "smart
growth"
The Triangle area has been called one of the best places in the country to
live and work. But a new study led by researchers in the College's Center
for Urban and Regional Studies gave the region mediocre grades for
affordability, transportation, air quality and open space. The 2003 Triangle
Regional Smart Growth Report Card showed, for example, that nearly one-third
of rental households pay more than the recommended 35 percent of their
income for rent. Lengthy commutes, air pollution and urban/suburban sprawl
are other factors that kept the region off the honor roll for "smart
growth."
The report card, gave the Triangle a B-plus for Economic Vitality and a B
for Civic Life, which included high rankings for education and cultural
activities. But the region scored a B-minus for Affordability/Equity, C's
for Transportation, Open Space/Farmland, and
Environment/Public Health, and a C-minus for Growth Management. The
measurements for Growth Management revealed that while the Triangle's
population increased 36 percent from 1987 to 1997, the amount of land
consumed per person jumped 52 percent during the same period.
Data for the project was collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, state
agencies and other organizations such as the Triangle J Council of
Governments and the Triangle Land Conservancy. An eight-person committee,
including home builders and "smart growth" advocates, worked with another 12
local experts to compare how the area handled an increasingly sprawling
population over the past decade. Results were announced at a public meeting
attended by regional policymakers, public officials, and leaders from the
business, academic and non-profit sectors.
"We set this up as a bench-marking procedure to get the public's attention
and to hopefully continue this research on a regular basis in order to chart
the course for the region for the next 25 years," said Mary Beth Powell,
associate director of the Center and principle investigator for the project.
Co-investigators were David Godschalk, professor of city and regional
planning, and David Salvesen, director of the Center's Smart Growth and the
New Economy Program. The report was funded by the Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation and Triangle Growth Strategies.
-- Excerpted from an article by Russell C. Campbell III in the
University Gazette.
Helping Create Disaster
Resilient Communities in the Island State of Guadeloupe, Caribbean
On request of the French Association of Disaster Management, Philip Berke
participated in a seminar in October 2003, Creating Disaster Resilient
Communities in the island state of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. He gave a
lecture and participated in a workshop that dealt with reviewing
state-of-the-art concepts and techniques in planning for disaster
reconstruction, and linking recovery to sustainable development.
A DCRP doctoral student, Aurelie Brunie, accompanied Professor Berke during
the seminar. Berke was asked by the French Ministry of Environment and
Sustainable Development to conduct a workshop on hazard mitigation planning
and floodplain development. The workshop is planned for the summer of 2004
in Paris.
Dr. Khattak named
Editor-in-Chief of the transportation journal
DCRP
Associate Professor, Asad J. Khattak, has been named Editor-in-Chief of the
Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, published by Taylor and
Francis. He served as Associate Editor for three years prior to the
appointment." Dr. Khattak also directs the Carolina Transportation Program.
Journal Aim and Scope:
The ITS Journal is devoted to scholarly research on the development,
management, operation and evaluation of intelligent transportation systems.
Intelligent transportation encompasses the full scope of information
technologies used in transportation, including control, computation and
communication, as well as the algorithms, databases and human interfaces
within intelligent transportation systems. ITS Journal is especially
interested in research that leads to improved performance of transportation
systems through the application of intelligent transportation. The ITS
Journal is published quarterly.
In early 2004. NYU's Urban Planning Program will move into its new home
at the 118-year old landmark, the Puck Building in Manhattan's SoHo
neighborhood. Part of a larger consolidation by NYU's Robert F. Wagner
Graduate School of Public Service, the School will occupy 50,000 square feet
in this historic building located in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods
in New York City.
Hugh O'Neill, Adjunct Professor of Planning at NYU and President of
Appleseed, an economic development consulting firm, prepared an economic
analysis of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center for the Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation. The report was released by Governor Pataki on
October 30, 2003 and is available on the Lower Manhattan Development
Corporation’s website at:
http://www.renewnyc.com/news/displaystory.asp-id=85.htm .
The Urban Planning Student Association (UPSA) is building a unique and
innovative partnership with The Academy of Urban Planning (AUP) at Bushwick
High School in Brooklyn, NY. Lead by students Meredith Phillips and
Jordan Anderson, UPSA is working with the Brooklyn Center for the Urban
Environment (BCUE) -- the lead partner to AUP -- to develop a program that
will bring urban planning graduate students into the classroom as mentors,
project assistants, researchers and instructors. BCUE and UPSA are excited
to work together to share their experience with the high school
students, cultivate a deeper interest in urban planning, and empower them to
act as agents of positive change in their community.
School of Urban and Public
Affairs
SUPA Helps Revive Historic South Dallas Jazz District
An urban planning class
at the UTA School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA) is helping revive a
low-income South Dallas neighborhood once known for some of America’s great
blues and jazz artists.
Former resident Ed Harris has become its
advocate and is spearheading its redevelopment in the image of the bustling
Beal Street Historic District in Memphis, Tenn. Beal Street is known as
home of the blues and birthplace of rock ’n roll. It boasts booming
nightclubs, theatres, restaurants and stores, as well as hot music.
Harris, who is a recent retiree from the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development and a SUPA alumnus, contacted
the school for a low-cost conceptual plan to rejuvenate the community as an
entertainment district, in tandem with city efforts.
SUPA Professor Ard Anjomani accepted the
assignment for his spring 2003 graduate project-planning class on behalf of
SUPA’s Center for Economic Development, Research and Service (CEDRAS).
Composed primarily of working professionals, the class developed a
professional four-phase plan for the area’s transformation.
Harris said he has been using the plan as part of
a development package to attract support and investment. In October, he used
it in focus-group meetings that included lenders, investors, politicians,
and city staff. Subsequently, the city approved its Fair Park Master Plan,
to which it had added the proposed entertainment district.
Harris also intends to use the presentation with
merchants, banks and the U. S. Department of Commerce - Economic Development
Administration, in further pursuit of funds.
SUPA students who worked on the presentation are
Dorothy LeBlanc, Bhavin Parekh, Lin Peng, and Shririm Bhutada.
For more information, contact Dr. Ard Anjomani,
at 817-272-3310 or anjomani@uta.edu.
