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of News from the Schools.
Professor Susanna Hecht will spend the 2003-04
academic year as a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Advanced Studies in
the Behavioral Sciences where she will continue working on books and
articles from her Central American and Amazonian research.
We are pleased to announce that former California State
Assemblyman Richard Katz will teach two classes this year in the
Department of Urban Planning. In the Fall Quarter he will teach a course on
Environmental Politics and Governance and in Winter Quarter he will teach a
class on Water Resources.
Richard Katz was elected to the California State
Assembly in 1980 where he served continuously for 16 years. For ten years
he was chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee where he authored
Proposition 111, a 10 year Transportation Blueprint, which raised historic
amounts of money for mass transit and highways. He created the Congestion
Management Plan which required cities and counties to measure and mitigate
impacts of land use decisions on their streets, highways and transit
systems, and wrote landmark environmental protection and water marketing
laws. In 1996, California’s term limits law prohibited Katz, then the
Assembly Democratic Leader, from seeking reelection. Since 1997 Katz has
owned and operated a small business providing strategic consulting in public
affairs for clients involved in transportation, banking, education, and
entertainment. Katz was appointed by Governor Gray Davis to the State Water
Resources Control Board in 2001. He is currently in the second year of a
four year term. He was appointed as Senior Advisor to the Governor on
Energy and Water issues in 2003.
A paper by Anatasia Loukaitou-Sideris , Robin
Liggett , and Hiroyuki Iseki was selected for the Chester Rapkin
Award by the Journal of Planning Education and Research. The paper
entitled "The Geography of Transit Crime: Documentation and Evaluation of
Crime Incidence on and around the Green Line Stations in Los Angeles,"
appeared in Volume 22, 2002 pages 135-151. The award was presented at the
joint ACSP/AESOP conference in Leuven, Belgium,in July 2003.
Here is what the awards committee had to say about the
article: "Professional planners, planning academicians, advisors to public
agencies, and researchers have been baffled for decades on answering
conclusively whether there is an association between transit and crime,
whether design of transit stations make a difference, and the extent to
which public perception about transit crime is founded. This article
identifies the linkages between transit crime and the surrounding social and
physical environment. Its literature review merges current thinking on the
defensible space tradition and criminology. Its analysis combines the
creative use of quantitative and qualitative techniques to tell a compelling
story that planning and design can be effective in minimizing criminal
activity around transit stations. Through originality of research, depth of
analysis, clarity of presentation, pertinence to planning education and
research, and proximity to Chester Rapkin's perspective on planning, this
article is the very embodiment of the Chester Rapkin Award."
Assistant Professor Vinit Mukhija has a new book
out. SQUATTERS AS DEVELOPERS? SLUM REDEVELOPMENT IN MUMBAI was
published by Ashgate Publishing in 2003. In the mid-1990s, the state
government of Maharashtra introduced an innovative strategy of slum
redevelopment in its capital city, Mumbai (Bombay). Based on demolishing
existing slums and rebuilding on the same sites at a higher density, it is
very distinct from the two prevalent conventional strategies with respect to
slums in developing countries - slum clearance and slum upgrading. So why
did the slum redevelopment strategy originate in Mumbai, and how did it do
so? What were the key issues in the implementation of such a project? This
critical volume responds to these questions by closely examining one
particular redevelopment project over a period of twelve years: the
Markandeya Cooperative Housing Society (MCHS). It analyzes the problems
faced and the solutions innovated; identifies non-traditional issues often
overlooked in housing improvement strategies; reveals the complexities
involved in housing production for low-income groups; and combines in-depth
empirical research with historical, institutional, spatial and financial
perspectives to improve our understanding of complex urban development
processes.
Urban
Planning student Sandra Chen received the Tritia Toyota Graduate
Fellowship from the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. She will also be
featured in a forthcoming book of Who’s Who of Asian Americans and
Young Asian Americans.
Vanessa Dingley, the Graduate Advisor in the
Department of Urban Planning, retired at the end of August, after 26 years
of service to UCLA. Over 150 of Vanessa's colleagues, friends, family,
faculty, students and alumni came to the UCLA Faculty Center on May 29 to
celebrate her extraordinary level of service to the Department and its
students. Tributes were offered by alumni, current students, faculty, and
staff. As a special honor the Department of Urban Planning presented a
"check" representing over $7,000 in donations for the establishment of a
Vanessa Dingley Fellowship which will be used for Urban Planning student
support.
Vanessa began her UCLA career at the Graduate School of
Architecture and Urban Planning in 1974. She has held a variety of positions
since that time – Assistant to the Dean of the School of Architecture and
Urban Planning, Assistant to the Head of the Urban Planning Program,
Assistant to the Head of the Architecture, Academic Personnel Assistant to
the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning,
Assistant Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and
finally Graduate Advisor in the Department of Urban Planning in the School
of Public Policy and Social Research.
Judith
Magee will replace Vanessa as Graduate Advisor in the Department of
Urban Planning.
Department of City and Regional Planning
Community engagement enables the UNC planning faculty
and students to address community needs. Community engagement goes beyond
service because leaders of public, non-profit, and community-based
organizations define the problems that need to be resolved and seek our
help to resolve them. Through application workshop courses, faculty and
students work collaboratively with these North Carolina clients to specify
the class projects to be undertaken. Over the course of the semester,
students combine creativity and technical capabilities to produce plans,
strategies or recommendations for community improvement. Projects vary
each year but generally focus on affordable housing, community
development, economic development, environmental protection, growth
management, land use planning and transportation. In the past year,
faculty and students were engaged in the following projects.
Feasibility
of Affordable Housing Near Downtown Durham
(Real Estate Workshop/Malizia)
The Durham Housing Authority recently acquired a site near downtown Durham
appropriate for new housing development. A team of both graduate planning
students from DCRP and MBA students completed a comprehensive feasibility
study that proposed the development of 65 rental townhomes and duplexes.
The project would compete for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and use
concessionary debt financing to make the units affordable for tenants
earning $18-36,000 per year. The study included government relations,
market research, site plan, capital budget, revenue/expense analysis,
financial analysis, and risk mitigation.
The study was favorably reviewed by an expert panel of non-profit and for
profit low-income housing developers, a NC Housing Finance Agency
representative and tax-credit syndicators. It has been made available to
interested parties to help assess the challenges of building affordable
housing in this area.
Development of a Park-and-ride Plan
for the Research Triangle Region (Transportation workshop—Professor
rodríguez)
The Triangle
Transit Authority (TTA) views the provision of park-and-ride facilities as
important for building transit ridership in preparation for the regional
rail system. By encouraging greater use of transit, well-designed
park-and-ride facilities can contribute to goals of congestion reduction and
air quality improvement and potentially build a market for future transit
system extensions. A team of DCRP students with expertise in geographic
information systems (GIS), land suitability analysis, travel data analysis
and scenario planning, contributed to the formulation of a sound
park-and-ride strategy for TTA. The main findings were presented to the
Board of TTA.
DCRP students analyzed
current technical and policy issues related to park-and-ride
facilities and identified general pitfalls associated with their design.
They examined how transit agencies can encourage more compact development
around rail stations. Students highlighted potential tools TTA could use
for park-and-ride redevelopment: land acquisition & management, station
targeting, station area marketing, coordinated facilities & infrastructure
investments, coalitions & partnership building, and external funding
sources. Using available
data, DCRP students then developed design tools to identify corridors and
assess possible locations for park-and-ride facilities. They evaluated six
major destinations: Downtown Chapel Hill/UNC, Duke University, NC State
University, Downtown Durham, Downtown Raleigh, and Research Triangle Park
and determined whether corridors associated with these destinations could be
served by existing or realigned TTA bus service. The final report proposes
feasible strategies for situating park-and-ride lots within each corridor.
Northwest North Carolina in
Transition Plan
(Community/Economic Development Workshop—Professor Quercia)
Although global economic dynamics transplanted low-skill manufacturing jobs
from industrialized nations to less developed countries, North Carolina’s
position as textile industry leader allowed it to resist this trend during
the 1980s. In the 1990s, however, the competitive advantage disappeared.
Workers now find themselves in the void between the demands of manual labor
and the skills of the new information economy and the service sector.
The U.S. Economic
Development Administration offers grants for distressed regions to devise a
Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) to address the new
challenges that they face. Eight North Carolina counties--Ashe, Allegheny,
Davie, Forsyth, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, and Yadkin--are developing a CEDS
for their region. DCRP students focused on the workforce development
initiative of the CEDS process.
The class found the following points particularly noteworthy:
·
The workforce development is regional
in nature and should be centered on community colleges and JobLink centers.
·
A mismatch exists between the skills
of the workforce, the training opportunities that they are offered, and the
skills that businesses demand.
·
No centralized institution offers
guidance for workforce development best practices.
·
Workforce development in Northwest
North Carolina needs a regional institution for leadership,
which may be the future role of the NWNC CEDS Committee.
Long Range Plan for Montreat
Conference Center
(Land Use/Environmental Workshop—Professor Moreau)
In 2002, DCRP was contacted by the president of Montreat Conference
Center to assist in preparing a comprehensive plan for Montreat’s Long Range
Planning Committee. Participants in the Long Range Planning Committee
include the Conference Center, Montreat College, the Town of Montreat, and
the Cottage Owners Association.
The project was intended to survey current conditions
in Montreat, identify issues, and prepare alternatives for development of a
comprehensive plan. Elements of the plan included: land use and land
supply, housing, transportation and related services, water supply,
wastewater services, stormwater management, zoning and development
ordinances.
DCRP students prepared two written reports. The first report was a State
of the Community Report, and the second was entitled Comprehensive Plan
Alternatives for Montreat, North Carolina (approximately 125 pages).
Alternative policies were identified and three possible scenarios of growth
were developed. The report was presented to the Long Range Planning
Advisory Committee of Montreat.
Campanella publishes new book
No tree has loomed larger in American history than the American elm, and
nowhere more so
than in New England. These elegant, ‘old Titans’ were an essential feature
of America’s cultural
landscape for more than a century, forming great verdant parasols overhead
and giving its name
to streets all across the nation.
In Republic of Shade, published by Yale University Press,
Thomas Campanella delivers the first
full-length biography of an American tree. Drawing from a wide range of
sources including traveler’saccounts, local histories, municipal records and
contemporary newspaper articles, Campanella describes how the elm became a
defining element in the spatial design of America’s villages, towns, and
cities, first in New England and eventually throughout the United States.
Professor Gen Giuliano (giuliano@usc.edu)
has been named chair of the executive committee of National Academies’
Transportation Research Board,
http://www.nationalacademies.org/trb,
as well as a lifetime National Associate. She also heads the METRANS
Transportation Center (the National Center for Metropolitan Transportation
Research,
http://www.metrans.org), funded by
US DOT and California DOT, a joint endeavor between USC and the Cal State
University at Long Beach. Tridib Banerjee (tbanerje@usc.edu
was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of
Certified Planners; also, he has been appointed as an ACSP representative on
the Planning Accreditation Board. Niraj Verma (nverma@usc.edu)
is now head of ACSP’s Doctoral Committee. And, Dowell Myers was
elected to the Governing Board of ACSP as Western Regional Representative.
Also, Myers was recently appointed an Academic Fellow of the Urban Land
Institute. Stuart Gabriel was elected as president of American Real
Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA). Yongheng Deng was
named Postdoctoral Fellow of Homer Hoyt Institute. And Catie Burke
has been elected President of the Advanced Transit Association (http://www.advancedtransit.org/pub/2002/prt/index.htm).
Recent doctoral
student academic appointments include: Ajay Garde (Assistant
Professor, University of Waterloo, Ontario); Qisheng Pan, Texas
Southern University, Associate Professor, to establish a GIS research
laboratory. James Steele has been promoted to professor in USC’s
School of Architecture. And Chang-Hee Christine Bae, has recently
been awarded tenure at the University of Washington.
David Sloane
(dsloane@usc.edu)
and Beverle Conant Sloane have just published their book, Medicine Moves
to the Mall (Johns Hopkins University Press,
http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/titles/f02/f02slme.htm).
Other recent books include Doing Mathematics (World Scientific,
http://www.wspc.com/books/mathematics/5133.html, Martin
Krieger,
krieger@usc.edu , and a book of
essays on Southern California and the World (Praeger, edited by Eric
Heikkila (heikkila@usc.edu) and Rafael Pizarro). Charles
Cicchetti (cicchett@usc.edu)
has published the second edition of his Restructuring Electricity
Markets: A World Perspective, Post-California and Enron (Visions
Communications). Recent exhibits at the Gallery (www.usc.edu/sppd/news/)
include Sacred Transformation: Armenian Churches in Los Angeles (Yeghig
Keshishian, an undergraduate in our School), What Does Sustainability
Look Like? (Kristia Sloniowski, MPl candidate), and photographs of the
Department of Water and Power (Chinatown!)
Electrical Distribution Stations.
Clara Irazabal
(irazabal@usc.edu,
PhD Architecture, Berkeley) has joined our faculty, teaching urban design,
sustainable development, and comparative urbanism. Her research interests
encompass the politics of urban and regional planning and development; the
links between social and spatial inequalities; and theory and criticism of
transnational, contemporary architecture and urbanism, particularly in the
Americas. Michael
Moody will be joining our faculty and the Center on Philanthropy and
Public Policy (www.usc.edu/sppd/philanthropy)
with a special interest in philanthropy and civil society, as well as
environmental policy. And the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, the leader in
studies of Latino/a policy, will become part of USC and our School, with
Harry Pachon, its head, also joining our faculty. [More on this in
our next Update.] Our School's research portfolio includes a major project
monitoring the rise of neighborhood councils in the city of Los Angeles
(Juliet Musso,
musso@usc.edu, and Terry Cooper,
tlcooper@usc.edu). Another, in
which David Sloane and LaVonna Lewis (lewis@usc.edu)
participate, is a community-based effort to combat health disparities among
African Americans around diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In forming the
School of Policy, Planning, and Development out of schools of planning and
public administration, our planning offerings have been enhanced enormously:
in decisionmaking and risk, health policy and planning, international
development, urban economics, theory, and infrastructure and utilities.
The Keston
Infrastructure Institute (http://207.151.39.146/announce/item.php?id=242,
part of the Lusk Center for Real Estate,
www.usc.edu/sppd/lusk/) has just
begun operations under the leadership of Julie Bornstein (formerly,
Director of the Department of Housing and Community Development of the State
of California) and Christopher Redfearn (redfearn@marshall.usc.edu)
of the Marshall School of Business, Research Director. The first Casden Real
Estate Economics Forecasts (of the office and industrial, and apartment
markets), also part of the Lusk Center, have been well received, and Raphael
Bostic (bostic@usc.edu,
formerly of the Federal Reserve in DC) is heading this endeavor (http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/research/casden/). Gary
Painter (gpainter@usc.edu)has
been named Research Director of the Lusk Center.
USC has the
Norman Lear Center, exploring the convergence of entertainment, commerce and
society (in the Annenberg School for Communication), so it is perhaps not
surprising that Tridib Banerjee has just finished a collaborative
laboratory-workshop with planning and public policy students from USC and
Technische Universität Berlin focusing on the role of arts, culture, and
entertainment in urban development. Klaus Kunzmann of the University of
Dortmund led the Berlin students. The semester-long studio involved
reciprocal visits to Berlin and Los Angeles, and design charettes focusing
on the future of the historic Hollywood Boulevard entertainment district,
and soon to be retired Tempelhof Airport in Berlin,
http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/workshops/IPADLW.
The work was presented at a colloquium this
April on “Entertaining Cities,” hosted by the Goethe-Institut of Los
Angeles.
USC’s Center for
Economic Development (http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/ced/master.htm),
under the leadership of Tridib Banerjee and Leonard Mitchell (mitchell@usc.edu)
is a significant outreach function for the School and provides clinical
training of planning and other professional students. Among CED’s various
on-going activities and recent projects: HUD’s Community Outreach
Partnership Cooperation (or COPC) project with various local communities and
community based agencies; overseeing two separate HUD Community Fellowship
programs; an Eco-industrial Park project from EPA (with Cornell); a
forthcoming symposium on industrial ecology for NSF; the second phase of the
San Joaquin Valley Growth Response study (with Rand Corporation) for
Caltrans; residential density along transit corridors for Metrans.
MIT Department of Urban
Studies and Planning (DUSP)
In 2002-2003, DUSP
Department Head Lawrence Vale gave more than a dozen talks and
keynote addresses at various universities and professional organizations,
most dealing with his new book Reclaiming Public Housing, or MIT’s
“Resilient City” project (examining the recovery of urban areas from sudden
traumas).
Diane E. Davis,
Associate Professor of Political Sociology in the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning at MIT joined with DUSP doctoral students Uri Raich and
Tina Rosan to produced a report titled The 'Sustainability' of
Environmental Gains in the Context of Mexicoís Political Transition: A
Strategic Assessment of Barriers and Possibilities for Metropolitan
Coordination in the Zona Metroplitana del Valle de Mexico. The report
was commissioned by Luisa and Mario Molina, Directors of the Mexico City
Project at MIT, which pulls together environmental scientists, transport
engineers, and urban planners committed to bettering environmental quality
in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. Davis also has been named Acting
Director of MIT's Program on Human Rights and Justice (PHRJ) for the
2003-2004 academic year.
Professor Karen R.
Polenske was awarded three grants last spring. Two are grants from the
Cambridge-MIT Initiative (CMI) to edit a book and disseminate information on
talks given by 11 well-known regional analysts at a fall-term seminar on the
Geography of Innovation. With her third grant from the Alliance for Global
Sustainability (AGS), she will head a team of chemical engineers,
physicists, and regional economic planners from China, Japan, Switzerland,
and the United States who will examine changes in energy intensity (energy
consumption per unit of output) in the steelmaking sector in Liaoning
Province in the People's Republic of China (China). She continues her work
on China’s yellow dust problem, gave keynote talks in Iran and Sweden, and
has also joined a team of researchers examining innovative low-noise
strategies in aircraft and engine system design and operation.
In Beyond Late
Development: Taiwan's Upgrading Policies DUSP Professor Alice H.
Amsden and Wan-wen Chu “cover new ground by analyzing the phenomenon of
high-end catch-up. They study how leading firms from the most advanced
latecomer countries like Taiwan have increased their market share in mature
high-tech industries and services.”
Assistant Professor Keith
Hampton was awarded the Harold A. Innis Award for Outstanding Thesis or
Dissertation in the Field of Media Ecology from the Media Ecology
Association. The award was announced at the Fourth Annual Convention of the
MEA at Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, on June 7, 2003. The title of the
winning dissertation is Living the Wired Life in the Wired Suburb:
Netville, Globalization and Civil Society.
Dr. JoAnn Carmin
joins DUSP as Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning. She
was formerly Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Affairs and
Planning at Virginia Tech, and her research focuses on the mobilization of
civil society in response to environmental disasters, as well as other
areas.
Dr. Lynn Fisher
joins DUSP and CRE as Assistant Professor of Real Estate. In addition to
her involvement in the CRE curriculum she will teach a spring class on
housing finance, aimed at DUSP students.
Dr. Judith Layzer
joins DUSP as Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy. She was formerly
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. Her current
research examines the politics of ecosystem management in the United
States.
Visiting faculty include,
among others, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Manuel
Castells, Herman Karl, Gregory Morrow, and Zhong-Ren Peng.
College of Urban and Public Affairs
Seltzer Appointed Director
School of Urban Studies and Planning
at PSU’s College of Urban and
Public Affairs
Portland, OR – Ethan Seltzer, current
Director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, was appointed
Director of the School of Urban Studies and Planning in the College of Urban
and Public Affairs at Portland State by President Daniel O. Bernstine.
The appointment follows recommendation from the
Dean of the College and the faculty of the
School of Urban Studies and
Planning.
“I consider it a great honor to have
the chance to lead one of the most watched schools of planning in the
country,” said Seltzer, who has been on the PSU faculty since 1992. “Our
legacy has been built through the accomplishments of our faculty students
and graduates. I look forward to working collaboratively to add to that
record.”
Seltzer was appointed in 1992 as the
first Director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies. He
received his undergraduate degree in Biology from Swarthmore College in
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Landscape Architecture and
Regional Planning and doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He has been a resident of the
Portland region since 1980. Prior to joining the faculty, he served as the
Land Use Coordinator at Metro, and as Assistant to Portland City
Commissioner Mike Lindberg. Currently, Seltzer serves as President of the
Portland Planning Commission and on the board of the Portland Institute for
Contemporary Art.
"As he moves to higher responsibilities, Ethan will continue to be a
major player in planning in Portland,” said Nohad A. Toulan, Dean of the
College of Urban and Public Affairs. “I have no doubt the School will
benefit considerably from his experience in metropolitan regions and the
bridges he has built with the community."
The School of Urban Studies and
Planning is the nation's oldest continuously operating instructional program
in urban studies. Beginning with an undergraduate certificate in 1959, the
School now offers a bachelor degree in community development, master degrees
in urban and regional planning and urban studies, and doctoral degrees in
urban studies and urban studies: regional science. Understanding
metropolitan regions and their problems, and analyzing policies to shape
their evolution and overcome obstacles are major concerns of the School’s
degree programs.
Seltzer will begin his duties September
1, succeeding Michael Fogarty, who has led the school since 2001.
Information about the process to select a new Director for the Institute of
Portland Metropolitan Studies will be announced at a later date.
The College of Urban and Public Affairs
trains and educates the next generation of leaders who will address
government, health, and urban issues. The College consists of the School of
Urban Studies and Planning, the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government and
the School of Community Health.
Peace Corps Fellows at UNO
The College of Urban and Public Affairs at the
University of New Orleans embarked upon a program of welcoming returned
Peace Corps Volunteers into the Urban and Regional Planning Program in 1999.
We are pleased to report that this year we have seven students enrolled in
the program, all of whom offer a wealth of experience in the areas of
community development or environmental planning.
As part of the program, the College of Urban and Public Affairs partners
with the Peace Corps to place returned Volunteers in internships with
nonprofit agencies or local units of government. Jane Brooks, Robert
Jordan and Marla Nelson serve as faculty advisors to the returned
Volunteers. For more information on the program please visit our website at
www.uno.edu.cupa.
Cal Poly
Professor Awarded Grant To Prepare Book on Brazilian Urban Design
SAN LUIS OBISPO --
A Cal Poly city and regional planning professor has been awarded a $10,000
grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts to produce
a book on contemporary Brazilian urban design.
Vicente del Rio is bringing together his own case studies on Rio
de Janeiro and studies by Brazilian urban researchers on such topics as
revitalization, social inclusion and gated communities. He is writing and
compiling the book, "Beyond Brasilia -- Contemporary Urban Design in
Brazil," with Cal Poly City and Regional Planning Department Head William
Siembieda.
“The Graham grant
is a great opportunity to develop some of my own interest in urban design
methodologies and techniques in the developing world,” del Rio said. “With
American design professionals working more and more abroad, they can learn
some valuable lessons from the Brazilian experience and apply them here.
“In California,"
he said, "there is a growing debate surrounding 'smart growth,' with a focus
on denser housing, mixed-use zoning, public transportation and sustainable
urban development. Cities in Brazil, naturally, are much denser and depend
more on public transportation. I feel the Latin American experience,
especially in Brazil, can help us address important issues of urban form and
transportation.”
A native of Rio de
Janeiro, del Rio will conduct his research from San Luis Obispo.
At Cal Poly, del
Rio is responsible for the City and Regional Planning Department's urban
design studio classes. For the past two years, he has led student
design-revitalization projects in Arroyo Grande.
"This award
demonstrates national recognition of Vicente's talent," Siembieda said.
"And he is sharing his international expertise with cities of the Central
Coast."
According to
Siembieda, the Graham Foundation grant is the country’s most competitive
award for architecture and urban design. Of approximately 500 grant
applicants this year, 100 received grants. A $10,000 grant is the largest
the foundation awards to an individual.
Del Rio earned
bachelor's degrees in architecture and planning in Brazil, a master's in
England, and a doctorate in Brazil. He joined the faculty of Cal Poly's
College of Architecture and Environmental Design in 2001 after teaching
architecture and urban design for more than two decades at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro and working in state and municipal planning
departments and in private practice in Brazil. He has lectured in the
United States, Europe, Mexico and South America and written numerous journal
articles and five books.
Professor T. John Kim,
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, has been awarded the Endowed Professor of Urban and
Regional Systems. This endowed professorship has been made possible through
a generous donation to the department.
Sustainable Futures: An Interdisciplinary Studio in a Costa Rican Cloud
Forest
Sustainable Futures is a ten week course that provides
an opportunity for graduate students and interested professionals from the
fields urban planning, landscape architecture and architecture, to live and
work in a rural, but rapidly developing region in Costa Rica on projects
concerned with creating futures that are ecologically and socially just.
This course has a long tradition of working with community organizations
including the local cooperatives, schools, chamber of commerce and the
recently formed district government. The Monteverde Institute provides a
home for the program as well as works year round with local leaders and
community members on issues related to sustainable development through other
educational and research programs.
The course unfolds at an altitude of 4500 feet in the
Tilaran Mountains where the clouds blow over the continental divide from the
Atlantic side into in the town of Monteverde creating a unique set of
microclimates along Pacific slope. Students and faculty find themselves
surrounded by a diverse array of flora and fauna including 450 species of
orchids, 200 species of ferns, 500 types of butterflies and spectacular
birds such as the Quetzal and Bell Bird along with nearly 850 others. The
region attracts a diverse variety of people including Costa Rica nationals
from all over the country as well as biologists, students, tourists and
artists from around the world. The area has long been promoted as an
international model for sustainable development, bringing many to the area,
but also challenging the region’s ability to protect the natural environment
while addressing the growing economic and social disparities.
The work of Sustainable Futures often spurs community
discussion about the use of land and helps generate ideas for future
community projects. In addition to the more site-specific projects, students
develop alternative scenarios for the communities in the region. This
development of scenarios began two years ago in an effort to better
understand the regional growth and development patterns as well as to create
a base line of information about existing conditions including number of
structures, population estimates, land-use patterns, traffic and water
quality. Now on its third year, the scenario planning team continues to
collect and analyze data as well as to create plausible scenarios that
explore what might happen if things continue “business as usual.” Students
develop two alternative scenarios, one based upon an economy dominated by
eco-tourism and the other with a more diversified economy. In all three,
students explore ways to balance the competing landscapes in the region.
Through these efforts, the Institute hopes to contribute to the community
discussion about the future and participate in the development of
conservation and growth guidelines for the region.
The Monteverde Institute is always looking for
interested students and faculty to participate in the program. For more
information on the program, contact Dr. Stacy Harwood at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning,
email: sharwood@uiuc.edu.
International Development Planning Field-Based Summer Course
By Faranak Mirfatab, UIUC
Last
summer a group of six UIUC students went to Cape Town, South Africa, as part
of their graduate course titled
Neo-liberalism, Cities, and Services Provision in South Africa
instructed by Professor
Faranak Miraftab at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning.
The main
objective of this course was to achieve a conceptual and practical
understanding of the paradigm shift that has taken place in provision and
development of basic urban services in the Third World countries: namely the
treatment of basic urban services as market-driven commodities. The course
concerned the equity dimension of privatization and understanding how
globalization of neo-liberalism has direct and profound affect on living
conditions of the poor.
Following an intensive
preparatory phase of four-week at UIUC focused on conceptual understanding
of the problem, the fieldwork component of the course took place in Cape
Town, South Africa, over a period of four weeks. In Cape Town, within an
overarching theme of cities and neoliberalism, each student chose a case
study close to her/his personal and professional interest, including the
privatization of public transportation system; privatization of safety and
public space through City Improvement District (CIDs); privatization of
waste collection in disadvantaged townships; and the anti-privatization
movements by grassroots in response to these government policies. During
the field trip they worked with a local non-governmental group that
facilitated students’ access and relationship with local communities and
their grassroots mobilizations such as the Anti-eviction Campaign, the
Anti-water cut-off Campaign, and the Homeless People’s Federation.
Pedagogically the course
combined a problem-based student-centered approach with an action-oriented
principle. This stressed students close working relations with the local
community members, grassroots groups, NGOs, professionals and planners in
order to achieve not only a concrete understanding of the problems at hand
but also to be part of the action space and problem-solving process that
local people and decision makers are immersed in. One of the interesting
outcomes of the course has been a non-profit organization that students’
created on their own initiative upon return to UIUC. This organization,
Ithemba Foundation, which raises funds for assistance to a local grassroots
group and its specific community-based educational projects has a board of
directors composed of some of the students that took part in this course
(Laurie Scott and Nicole Lamers) and some of the South African counterparts
they worked with during the field work. The foundation is now up and
running and their first newsletter is out! (See
http://www.ithembafoundation.org/index.html). The course was extremely
successful both in terms of its process and outcome. For that the financial
support offered to the project by the Dept of Urban and Regional Planning
should be acknowledged.
A new School of Public + International
Affairs has formed in Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture & Urban
Studies, combining two departments -- Urban Affairs and Planning (UAP) and
Center for Public Administration & Policy (CPAP) -- and incorporating a new
Government and International Affairs program of six new faculty lines
transferred from other departments. All three units have operations on the
Blacksburg campus and at the college's center in Alexandria, VA. The school
will be directed by Professor John Randolph, former head of the Urban
Affairs and Planning department. The school’s goals are to focus on Tech’s
excellence in planning, governance, public administration, public policy,
international affairs, and urban affairs, to help communities and
institutions across the world understand their most critical problems, and
fashion creative solutions.
UAP completed its cluster hire of four faculty
in 2003, including Assistant Professor Casey Dawkins, who just
completed his Ph.D. in planning at Georgia Tech; Assistant Professor
Heike Mayer, new PhD in urban studies from Portland State; and Assistant
Professor Bruce Goldstein, who is now completing his Ph.D. in
planning from UC-Berkeley and will start in January 2004, all
on the Blacksburg campus, and Associate Professor Tom Sanchez with a
tenured appointment in Alexandria. UAP will also be searching for a new
position in Blacksburg in environmental planning for fall 2004 (more on this
soon).
The school also has also initiated a new
cluster hiring of three positions in Collaborative Governance and
Accountability at the assistant or associate professor level: two affiliated
with CPAP and one joint UAP/CPAP. Information on the three open positions
can be found at http://www.caus.vt.edu/
in the jobs section, or by contacting
John Rohr at jrohr@vt.edu
(540) 231-7306.
Professor Chris Nelson's latest book,
Estimating Land Use and Facility Needs for Comprehensive Plans, will
be published later this year by the American Planning Association. It will
be highlighted at the 2004 APA conference in Washington, DC. In addition,
APA will publish his book, Reshaping America, in 2004. Also in 2004,
Routledge will publish Urban Containment and Society co-authored by
Nelson and his VT colleagues Tom Sanchez and Casey Dawkins.
APA recently contracted with Nelson, Jim Nicholas (University of Florida)
and Julian Juergensmeyer (Georgia State University) to update their prior
APA books on impact fees in a new book, Principles and Practice of
Development Impact Fees, projected for publication in 2004. A completed
manuscript co-authored by Nelson and Dawkins, Profiles of American Urban
Containment, is in negotiation with a prospective publisher. In
September, the APA published its PAS Memo on Sprawl Export/Import
co-authored by Nelson and Joel Hirschhorn of the National Governor's
Association and Joe Schilling of the International City-County Management
Association.
Professor John Randolph's new textbook
"Environmental Land Use Planning
and Management" published by Island
Press will be available in November. Randolph also completed a USGS funded
research project "Urban Biodiversity: Pilot Study of Holmes Run/Cameron
Run Watershed." He is also PI for a three-year state-funded project
evaluating the Virginia Weatherization Program
Associate Professor Diane Zahm has been elected to serve as
President of Virginia Tech’s faculty senate, which includes serving as the
non-voting faculty representative on the Board of Visitors, as well as being
the university representative to the Faculty Senate of Virginia. Zahm has
obtained a grant from the National Sheriffs' Association on Homeland
Security and Neighborhood Watch, and has just finished a large project with
the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, redesigning the
landscapes of its public housing communities using crime prevention through
environmental design (CPTED). She has also been elected to the Board of
Directors of the International CPTED Association.
CapAsians Design/Plan to Learn
CapAsia III (spring 2003) brought the field study to a new height:
students from MIT and Berkeley participated, graduate students led from the
front, distinct graduate and undergraduate projects were carried out in
India, built two pavilions in Sri Lanka, and visited Kuala Lumpur and
Bangkok.
The CapAsians began their intellectual journey at the City One
conference in Delhi, the first ever conference on the south Asian city held
in south Asia. The graduates were then involved in three “community
development projects” of the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).
The purpose was to expose students to self-built communities and the
innovative use of GIS as used by the NIUA in the development of these
communities. The students were also expected to help the NIUA customize its
information system making it more useful for city authorities and the
community. Each team also investigated a problem specific to their
neighborhood.
The undergraduates collaborated with a studio at the School of Planning
and Architecture (SPA), Delhi, which was preparing a development plan for
Pondicherry. They spent a week in Delhi collecting secondary information
and preparing questionnaires, the next two weeks in Pondicherry carrying out
surveys, and then in Delhi making preliminary proposals.
The graduate students learned that there are mismatches between formal
institutional structures and the day-to-day social structure, and also
between official city plans and the spatial organization in self-built
neighborhoods. They also learned about society and how to ask good
questions. In this way, they were able to get a more realistic
understanding of the problems and help the community and the NIUA to address
issues and use its resources more effectively.
Dr. Nihal Perera is the director of CapAsia. Dr. Wes Janz co-directed
the Sri Lankan component.
http://web.bsu.edu/perera/capasia/
Nihal Perera Publications
Feminizing the City:
Gender and Space in Colonial Colombo
In Trans-Status Subjects: Genders in the Globalization of South and
Southeast Asia,
eds., Sonita Sarker and Esha Niyogi De: 67-88 (Duke University Press, 2002)
Indigenising the
Colonial City: Late 19th-Century
Colombo and Its Landscape
Urban Studies: Contested Landscapes, Asian
Cities, eds., Lily Kong and Lisa Law, 39, 9 (2002 Spet): 1703-21
The Transforming
Asian City: The Challenges and Potential for Planners
National Organization of Students of Planning
Forum 2003, eds., Divya
Chandrashekhar and Poulomi Chakraborty (February 2003): 11-15
Explaining Colombo:
The Contested History of a Colonial
City
Seminar Proceedings: Urban Renaissance through City Architecture
(Colombo: Sri Lanka Institute of
Architects, 2002): 17-31
Review of
Southeast Asian Urban Environments: Structured and Spontaneous,
Carla Chifos and Ruth Yabes, eds. (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University
Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 2000) in the Journal of Planning
Literature 17, 1(August 2002): 67
New Professor Brings Broad Expertise and Experience to UTA School of Urban
Affairs
New Assistant Professor Bob Stokes brings expertise and experience to
UT-Arlington's School of Urban and Public Affairs that spans the gamut of
urban affairs study, from social policy to public administration to urban
planning.
As a student, Stokes conducted research on mortgage-lending
discrimination for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and
assisted in the development of a management information and evaluation
system for the Philadelphia Family Court's community-placement program for
juvenile offenders. He also conducted research in urban redevelopment,
fiscal-impact analysis, community-safety planning, land-use, and
housing-and-public-service planning and provision for such agencies as the
US Department of Education, the National Institute of Justice, HUD, and
others. He taught courses in urban society (race and class) and urban public
policy.
As a consultant for private firms and public agencies, Stokes
conducted field research in a school evaluation, developed training
materials on public-safety planning and evaluation, recommended procedures
for developing a marketing plan for a retail business area, and developed a
geographic analysis of domestic-violence offenses.
He has authored two successful grant proposals funded by the
National Institute of Justice for more than $630,000 and has published five
articles in professional journals.
Stokes earned a BS in business administration and management from
Millersville University of Pennsylvania, in 1987, an MA in urban studies at
Temple University, in Philadelphia, in 1993, and a PhD in urban planning and
public policy from the E. J. Bloustein School at Rutgers, in 2002.
He comes to SUPA from the University of South Carolina, where he was
an assistant professor.
He has already joined a Metroplex hard ball league.
School of Architecture
DAPHNE SPAIN TO CHAIR
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING AT U.VA.
Professor Daphne Spain has
been named chair of the Department
of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia School of
Architecture.
"Spain brings a wealth of
administrative expertise to this appointment as well as a very distinguished
academic record of research and writing on the social and cultural aspects
of the public realm," said Karen Van Lengen, dean of the School of
Architecture. "I am so pleased to have the opportunity to work with Daphne
Spain in the coming years."
Spain, a faculty member at
the School of Architecture since 1985, held a joint appointment for four
years between two departments: sociology in the College of Arts and
Sciences, and planning in the School of Architecture. After moving fulltime
to planning, she served as the associate dean of the School of Architecture
from 1989 to 1995 and as acting dean in 1994. She teaches urban theory and
public policy, planning history and undergraduate research methods. In 1999,
Spain was honored with the
University's Harrison Teaching Award for excellence in graduate teaching.
Spain earned a Ph.D. in
sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and worked as a
statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau and as a free-lance writer before
joining U.Va.'s planning faculty. Her publications include "Gendered Spaces"
(UNC Press, 1992) and "Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment
among American Women" (with Suzanne Bianchi, Russell Sage Foundation, 1996).
Her most recent book, "How Women Saved the City" (University of Minnesota
Press, 2001), explores how women, through their volunteer efforts, were
responsible for transforming America's urban landscape by building
institutions that served the urban poor during the years of Reconstruction
and immigration.
Spain has received research
grants from the Russell Sage Foundation and The Graham Foundation for
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Her work has been featured on the PBS
documentary "The First Measured Century," and on "The Jim Lehrer NewsHour."
Spain is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American
Planning Association, a member of the Urban Affairs Association Governing
Board and a past member of the Governing Board of the Association of
Collegiate Schools of Planning.
The University of Virginia
School of Architecture offers nine degree programs in four disciplines
(architecture, landscape architecture, architectural history, urban and
environmental planning). Approximately 350 undergraduate and 170 graduate
students are enrolled for the 2003-04 school year. The school's graduate
programs were ranked sixth in the country in the U.S. News and World
Report's most recent rankings (1997) for graduate architecture programs.
