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This page of the ACSP Web Site now replaces what was Update, the Association's quarterly newsletter about news at member schools. Submit your content for the web site in an MS Word document attachment to ddodd@acsp.org. Content will expire six months from posting unless we are notified otherwise. Available positions at member schools should be sent as a separate file to ddodd@acsp.org. See Job Bank link in the left menu.

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Cleveland State University (top)

  • On May 12, the MUPPD program celebrated the 20th anniversary of its launching in 1990. It has since graduated approximately 250 students. The event also celebrated a substantial gift for MUPDD student scholarships from Professor Roby Simons and his family.
  • Sabbaticals: Roby Simons will be on sabbatical leave during the 2010-2011 academic year at the Technion in Haifa, Israel with a Lady Davis Scholarship. Dennis Keating will be on sabbatical leave during the Spring, 2011 semester.
  • Professor Norm Krumholz is participating in a Levin College effort to assist the city of East Cleveland, whose new mayor is a Levin College MPA graduate.
  • The Department of Urban Studies hired Stephanie Ryberg, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, specializing in historic preservation.

University at Buffalo (top)

  • The American Planning Association honored the University at Buffalo Graduate Planning Student Association with an Outstanding Planning Student Organization Award. The award recognizes the GPSA’s work with the Buffalo UP project. The GPSA partnered with LPCiminelli to engage 7th and 8th graders in community development and revitalization through neighborhood planning projects. In 2009, the APA NY Upstate Chapter honored the MUP student project, Bridging the Gap. Dr. Daniel B. Hess led the students in their collaboration with D’Youville College and the West side of Buffalo.
  • UB’s tenure-track faculty strength will reach 14 in fall 2010 with the arrival of Himanshu Grover, making the University at Buffalo Department of Urban and Regional Planning one of the larger programs in the nation.
  • Dr. Daniel B. Hess, associate professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and conduct research at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia.
  • As part of the Healthy Kids Healthy Communities Initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Samina Raja has been awarded a two-year grant to assess healthy eating and active living policies and environments.
  • In 2010, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UB hosted distinguished lecturers. Susan Fainstein gave the third annual Jammal Lecture in Planning. Donald Shoup served as the 2010 Clarkson Chair in Planning and delivered a public lecture titled “The High Cost of Free Parking.” Distinguished guests from the White House Office of Urban Affairs gave the GPSA Lecture. In recent years Michael Teitz and Michael Greenberg have served as Clarkson Chairs in Planning. Previous Jammal Lectures were given by Faranak Miraftab and Tridib Banerjee.
  • In summer 2009, 12 MUP students from UB travelled to Stuttgart, Germany to observe how German children commute to school, how they interact with their built environment, and what programs are in place to increase their safety. The program took place under the direction of Professors Niraj Verma and Samina Raja. Participating students explored potential policy, program, and physical infrastructure recommendations designed to promote active living among children in Amherst, New York.
  • MUP and M.Arch students will travel to London in August 2010 to study comparative urban sustainability. They will explore various topics—including transportation planning, active living, natural resources, energy—and investigate policies in Europe and the U.S. in a study course led by Prof. Daniel B. Hess.
  • Graduate studios engage students and faculty in a broad range of community projects with local governments, not-for-profit organizations and private entities. Very often studios may grow out of long-standing partnerships between local government and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. In 2010, Dr. Sam Cole led a tourism studio for MUP students in collaboration with Cattaraugus County. A graduate studio led by Dr. Samina Raja and funded by a Safe Routes to Schools grant through the Town of Amherst drew upon the students’ research in Stuttgart, Germany in summer 2009. Students also worked with the Town of Wheatfield under the direction of Dr. Ernest Sternberg. 

University of California Los Angeles (top)

  • Urban Planning Professor Randy Crane has been selected as the Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). The journal will be housed at UCLA for five years beginning October 1, 2010. As the flagship scholarly journal in urban studies it is the principal gatekeeper for advancing theoretical and empirical work in planning.
  • Distinguished Professor Edward Soja’s new book Seeking Spatial Justice, was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press. A special session on the book as well as another commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication of Postmetropolis were held at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Washington D.C. . Soja has presented lectures on the book, which focuses on the resurgence of labor-community coalition building in Los Angeles, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, USC and the University of Miami.
  • Professor Lois Takahashi and Jury Candelario of the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team, have been awarded a three-year grant from the UC California HIV Research Program to rigorously evaluate a program aimed at reducing risk of HIV for monolingual Chinese women who work in massage parlors in Los Angeles.
  • The UCLA Center for Community Partnerships has announced the winners of the first Rishwain Social Justice Entrepreneurship Award: Urban Planning doctoral students Ava Bromberg and John Scott-Railton were recognized for their outstanding contributions to community based social entrepreneurship, serving the community in ground-breaking ways. Ava Bromberg created a Mobile Planning Lab, a converted camper designed to take urban planning issues to low-income residents in South Los Angeles. Working with the Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice and the United Neighbors in Defense against Displacement, she created the project “Visions for Vermont,” which helps to engage residents in land use plans by providing a mobile, neutral, and local setting for neighbors and city planners to go over models, maps and data, and to discuss the future development and growth of their communities. Her project has given a voice to residents to show city planners the concerns and comments of the neighborhood in order to create sustainable development. Halfway across the world, in Dakar, Senegal, John Scott-Railton has been working to solve “collective action” problems in villages as they seek to deal with unseasonable rains and devastating floods that are related to climate change. Using inexpensive handheld technology, John has partnered with Senegalese universities, climate scientists and their students, non-profit organizations, and community members to apply sophisticated mapping techniques, hybridized surveys, and linked satellite mapping to the village level toward developing more effective, long-term parcel-based solutions. As Railton continues his fieldwork, he plans to redouble efforts to steer local officials towards a pilot program in which community members and the government share responsibility for mitigating flooding.
  • Urban Planning student Daniel Caroselli, is one of three School of Public Affairs students to receive the David Bohnett Fellowship for the 2010-2011 academic year: Caroselli is a former production coordinator and marketing specialist, is focusing his studies on design and development. David Bohnett Fellows will receive valuable hands-on work experience as well as provide high-level research to the Los Angeles Mayor’s office.
  • The UCLA Urban Planning community is deeply saddened by the passing of longtime friend and benefactor, Miriam Perloff, co-founder of UCLA Design for Sharing, and wife of the late Harvey S. Perloff, founding dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, for whom UCLA’s Perloff Hall is named. A graduate of Juilliard, a professional pianist, concert organizer and publicist, activist and businessperson, Mimi Perloff started the first office temp business in the country, Secretarial and Office Services. She put her many talents to use for the betterment of the UCLA community upon her arrival on campus in 1968. After her first year, she and arts philanthropist Blanche Witherspoon co-founded UCLA Design for Sharing, a performing arts outreach program that has enabled more than 400,000 public school students and more than 75,000 disadvantaged community members to attend performances by both national and international artists. Mimi Perloff was not only a supporter of the School of the Arts and Architecture and the School of Public Affairs, but also served as president of the board of directors for the UCLA Center on Aging and a member of the Board of Governors for the UCLA Foundation. She showed her dedication to UCLA education in other areas including the David Geffen School of Medicine, the College of Letters and Science, the School of Theater, Film and Television, the School of Law, the UCLA Library, and other UCLA programs.
  • M.A. student Alex Beata was awarded the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship for 2009-10. As part of this program he presented at the TRB meeting in Washington D.C. in January. The Eisenhower Fellowship program aims to attract the nation's brightest minds to the field of transportation, to enhance the careers of transportation professionals by encouraging them to seek advanced degrees, and to retain top talent in the transportation industry of the U.S.
  • Doctoral candidate Beth Tamayose has been awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the Geography and Spatial Sciences Division of the NSF for her comparative historical analysis of land tenure and water access issues among indigenous populations in Hawaii and Guam.
  • Doctoral student Linda C. Samuels presented her paper "Insurgent Infrastructure: Leveraging Public Works as a Form of Architectural Activism" at the 98th ACSA Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The topic of the conference was REbuilding. Her article "Working Public Architecture" covering cityLAB's WPA 2.0 competition and symposium and other infrastructure innovations was published in PLACES Journal and can be found online at http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=12427.
  • The Department of Urban Planning celebrated 40 years of planning scholarship and education with a symposium and party on May 1. The symposium featured a panel discussion of “Four Decades of Urban Planning: Looking Back, Looking Forward” which brought together current faculty, emeriti and alumni to talk about the major planning issues and themes by decade. The afternoon symposium concluded with a talk by UCLA Urban Planning alumna Cecilia Estolano, Regents Lecturer at UCLA and Chief Strategist of State and Local Initiatives for Green For All on “Building a Progressive Economic Development Agenda: The Promise of High-Road Green Jobs.” The evening of dinner, musical performances by alumni and current students, video tributes and dancing also marked the launch of a student fellowship named for Professor Robin Liggett who will retire in June after teaching quantitative analysis to Urban Planning students for over 30 years.
  • Alan Altshuler, Professor of Urban Politics, Planning and Development at Harvard delivered the 4th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation at UCLA. His talk was on “Equity, Pricing, and Surface Transportation Politics.” The event also launched the new Martin Wachs student scholarship fund.
  • Professor Chris Tilly was the lead organizer for a UCLA conference on “Work and Inequality in the Global Economy: China, Mexico, and the U.S.” The October 2009 event attracted 150 participants from the three countries and elsewhere in the world.

University of Kansas (top)

  • We are no longer the Graduate Program in Urban Planning. Our new title is the Department of Urban Planning. This change came along with a new administrative structure joining parts of the School of Fine Arts with the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. We are now the School of Architecture, Design, and Planning, with a separate department for each unit.
  • On February 5, 2010, the Kansas Board of Regents approved a joint degree for a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Master of Urban Planning. This is a joint degree that involves a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. Students pursuing the joint degree will start taking master’s courses in their senior years. Together both degrees require 154 semester hours, reducing the time to get both degrees from six years to five years. Architectural Studies students must have a minimum GPA, take the GRE, and gain faculty approval for acceptance into the joint degree program.
  • KU students were honored with the “New Horizon Award” at the 2009 State Conference of the Kansas APA Chapter. Gabriel Scott Casner, Tyler Means, and Lance White won the award for their study, “Regional High Occupancy Vehicle HOV and Managed Lane Study for the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.” This study was the major assignment in the Transportation Planning Implementation course taught by adjunct professor Marcy Smalley. The students’ client was the area’s metropolitan planning organization, the Mid-America Regional Council.
  • In April, Professor Robert Cervero, Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley presented our second annual Galloway lecture, “Transportation investments, place-making and economic development.” The Galloway Urban Planning Lecture Series was created in 2008 by Sharon Perry Galloway and the Galloway family in honor of the late Dr. Thomas D. Galloway. Dr. Galloway was the Founding Chair and Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Kansas from 1971 to 1980 and later the Dean of the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech. The Galloway Urban Planning Lecture Series presents topics and speakers meant to expand on leading issues within the urban planning profession.
  • This year Associate Professor Stacey White received a major grant and award. As a co-principal investigator, she received a five-year $2.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR Program for a project entitled “Farmers’ Decisions to Grow Crops for Fuel.” Her portion of this research will examine the connections between innovations at the community level and new practices farmers adopt with respect to bio-fuels. She received an additional $125,000 from KU’s Transportation Research Institute in combination with this NSF grant. In addition, White’s article, “Early Participation in the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment,” was selected as the Outstanding Paper Award Winner in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.
  • In June, second- year planning student Ariel Heckler received a $5,000 Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship. Her research focuses on how transportation professionals can improve their outreach and communication with the public, particularly, in regards to the costs and real value of transportation systems and infrastructure.
  • John Elias, who graduated this May with his MUP, was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF). John has already started as a policy analyst in the U. S. Department of Transportation assistant secretary’s Infrastructure Finance and Innovation section in Washington, D.C. His work includes developing performance measures for last year’s Recovery Act Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants and examining applications for the upcoming second round of TIGER grants. This is the second year in a row a KU urban planning student has become a PMF. Last year, David Murray was selected; he is currently working for the House Committee on Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee.

University of Maryland (top)

  • University of Maryland Names a New Dean for the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
  • David Cronrath, AIA, has been named the next dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland. He will begin his Maryland post on July 1. Recognized as one of the ‘Most Admired Architectural Educators of 2010,' Cronrath, a registered architect, is currently dean of the Louisiana State University (LSU) College of Art and Design. He brings to the role experience in post-Katrina restoration and a commitment to building a sustainable future. "Sustainability research and practice is a core mission at Maryland, and this perfectly positions the school to play an important role in unraveling some of our century's greatest environmental and energy challenges," says Cronrath. Our design, planning, preservation and development programs each have a major contribution to make in fashioning a sustainable future - especially in collaboration with other disciplines." Learn More...

University of Michigan (top)

  • Associate Professor Richard K. Norton was appointed the Urban and Regional Planning Program Chair (effective July 2010) . Norton’s research and teaching are in sustainable development, environmental planning, and planning law. He holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning and a J.D. with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as master’s degrees in public policy studies and environmental management from Duke University.
  • Urban and Regional Planning Chair Jonathan Levine spoke in at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as part of its weekly transportation seminar. He discussed the need to shift from mobility to accessibility in transportation planning.
  • Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning Robert Fishman received the 2009 Laurence Gerckens Prize of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. Fishman was featured in the PBS documentary and online series, Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City, which highlighted his paper entitled, “1808—1908—2008: National Planning for America.”
  • The American Sociological Association chose Professor of Urban Planning and Sociology Martin Murray’s latest book, Taming the Disorderly City: The Spatial Landscape of Johannesburg after Apartheid, to have an “Author Meets Critics” session at the organization’s annual August meeting in Atlanta. The book focuses on the racial and economic tensions in the struggles over the “right to the city” in post-apartheid Johannesburg.
  • Assistant Professor Joe Grengs gave the keynote address for the annual conference of the Michigan Center for Advancing Safe Transportation throughout the Lifespan in April in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  • Assistant Professor Lan Deng was the lead author on a report for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development titled, “Housing Policy and Finance in China: A Literature Review.” The paper describes China's public housing and finance system, with the conclusion describing aspects of China’s housing policy of importance to the Obama administration.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (top)

  • Godschalk co-chairs new sustainability planning initiative - David R. Godschalk has been tapped by the American Planning Association (APA) to co-chair a new sustainability task force. Godschalk is the Stephen Baxter Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning in UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences. APA announced a new Sustaining Places Initiative at the recent United Nations Fifth World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Godschalk will co-chair a task force that will focus on using comprehensive planning as a tool to help communities of all sizes achieve sustainability. His co-chair will be Bill Anderson, director of planning and community investment for the city of San Diego. “David Godschalk is known among both practitioners and educators as one of the most influential ‘thought leaders’ of the profession over several decades,” said APA president Bruce Knight. He specifically identified Godschalk’s expertise with respect to comprehensive planning and comprehensive plans. According to Knight, “His accomplishments in these areas are legendary, and we are honored that he has agreed to co-chair this critical new initiative.” Godschalk is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and co-author of the popular text, Urban Land Use Planning. His research interests include growth management and land use planning; hazard mitigation and coastal management; and dispute resolution and public participation. He consults with local and state governments on planning issues. He holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill, Dartmouth College and the University of Florida. “Our task force will help planners find ways to build sustainability into their local comprehensive plans — a big challenge in these turbulent times,” Godschalk said.
  • Campanella awarded Rome Prize - Thomas Campanella, DCRP associate professor was named 2010-2011 fellows of the American Academy in Rome. Campanella was tapped with the Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize in the design category for “From Rome to Robert Moses: Recovering the Legacy of Michael Rapuano.” The American Academy in Rome is one of the leading American overseas centers for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities. Each year, through a national juried competition, the Academy offers up to 30 Rome Prize fellowships in architecture, design, historic preservation and conservation, landscape architecture, literature, musical composition, visual arts, and the humanistic approaches to ancient studies, medieval studies, Renaissance and early modern studies and modern Italian studies. The Academy was founded in 1894. Campanella, a Guggenheim Fellow, focuses his research primarily on the evolution of the urban civic landscapes of the United States. He also has studied and written about the wholesale transformation of Chinese cities in the post-Mao era. His most recent book is The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World (2008).” He is currently working on two new books: The Last Utopia chronicles the rise and fall of Soul City, North Carolina, a “new town” planned and partially built in the 1970s by civil rights leader Floyd B. McKissick. Designing the American Century examines the careers of two of the most important American landscape architects of the 20th century — Glimore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano, creators of many of the parks, parkways and public works associated with Robert Moses in New York.
  • UNC, N.C. State students win national award - A team of North Carolina State University (NCSU) and UNC-Chapel Hill students won a national urban design competition with their redevelopment plan for a San Diego neighborhood. The team won the $50,000 top prize in the 2010 Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines Design Competition. The team’s plan for an area within the East Village neighborhood, now a mishmash of new housing, old warehouses and parking lots called for “family-oriented development.” The design emphasizes neighborhood diversity, affordable housing and more walking opportunities to accommodate the diverse needs of families of different sizes, ages and economic levels. The NCSU-UNC team bested the other finalists from Harvard University, the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania in San Diego on April 8, 2010. The NCSU-UNC team members were Maria Papiez (leader), Rebecca Myers, Jeff Pleshek and Matt Tomasulo from NCSU and Daria Khramtsova from UNC. Professor Robin Fran Abrams, director of the School of Architecture at NCSU, was the lead teaching advisor for the team during the competition. Professor and Chair Emil Malizia, Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) at UNC-CH, also advised the team. For the first time, Professors Abrams and Malizia combined their courses—an urban design studio at NCSU and a real estate development workshop at UNC-Chapel Hill. In the studio course were 20 graduate architecture or landscape architecture students with 10 graduate city and regional planning students in the workshop. The first phase of the competition began in January and lasted two weeks. A total of 132 teams from 48 universities in the U.S. and Canada submitted proposals to ULI including 6 teams from NCSU-UNC. Professors Abrams and Malizia have agreed to combine their courses again in spring 2011 to participate in the next ULI Hines competition.

University of Washington (top)

DUDP this year begins celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the formal Master of Urban Planning (MUP) degree at the University of Washington. The establishment of the degree followed nearly a decade of interdepartmental interdisciplinary masters education in planning at UW, and preceded by a couple of years the formation of DUDP itself. It is a good time to celebrate; major changes are taking place, as described below.

New Faculty
We are pleased to announce two new members of our faculty this year. Qing Shen moved to Seattle from the University of Maryland to take up the position of Professor and Chair of our department. At Maryland, Prof. Shen was Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Christopher Bitter also joined the department this year, as Assistant Professor, having come from the University of Arizona. Prof. Bitter has graduate degrees in Geography, and professional experience in real estate and urban economics in California and Arizona. At UW, he is teaching primarily in the Real Estate specialization and masters program.

New Programs

  • The UW DUDP also launched two new degree programs this year. The Master of Science in Real Estate welcomed its first class of 17 students in Autumn 2009. This two-year professional degree will provide students with the core and advanced training necessary for successful careers in the real estate industry. It will also capitalize on the successful and competitive location of the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies in the College of Built Environments, where interactions with allied departments of Architecture, Construction Management, and Landscape Architecture as well as its home department of Urban Design and Planning, provide students with a richer and more comprehensive view of the entire Real Estate development process and industry than is typically provided by programs that are housed in schools of business.
  • DUDP and the Department of Landscape Architecture are taking applications for the first class of formal Concurrent Master of Urban Planning – Master of Landscape Architecture degree students. Students will be able now to pursue the two degrees simultaneously by sharing credits and writing a single thesis/professional project. The concurrent degree program allows faculty and students to better integrate teaching and research in a number of areas of joint interest, including urban ecology, green infrastructure, food systems planning, and community-based urban design.
  • This year, the College of Architecture and Urban Planning became the College of Built Environments. As part of a renewed commitment to interdisciplinary and interdepartmental education heralded by this name change, DUDP took the lead in piloting a new interdepartmental studio series of Built Environment Laboratories (BE Labs) with a multi-quarter sequence of courses focusing on post-earthquake recovery planning and design for a minority ethnic community in Taoping, Sichuan, China. The sequence involved a spring seminar including an exchange workshop and charrette with visiting planners and designers from Sichuan and Chongqing, China; a summer field studio in Yunnan and Sichuan; and a full-quarter autumn studio on campus.

Continuing Programs

  • Fritz Wagner, formerly the Dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans and presently serving as a research professor at the University of Washington's Department of Urban Design and Planning, is funded to continue a multi-year visioning planning project for a large area on the west bank of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. He, along with Professors Sharon Sutton (architecture) and Daniel Winterbottom (landscape architecture), are working with 27 graduate students from the three departments in a studio class.
  • This is the 20th year of the University of Groningen and University of Washington student exchange program. Over these years, just under 80 students from the UW have spent a quarter in Groningen, the Netherlands, usually during the fall term. They join EU students in an English-language program consisting of an extensive course in Dutch Spatial Planning, and a team-based field study course that we accept as our second-year MUP studio.

Honors, Awards and Accomplishments

  • Assistant Professor Brandon Born’s 1st-year Masters of Urban Planning Studio on “Planning the Process: City of Seattle Neighborhood Plan Update Process”, received the 2009 1st place American Planning Association-American Institute of Certified Planners National Student Project Award.
  • Associate Professor Dan Abramson received a Fulbright Scholarship for field research and action on “Resilience and Sustainability in the Ethnic Minority Settlements of Sichuan, China: Lessons for Community-based Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction,” to be used during sabbatical leave winter and spring Quarters, 2010.
  • Associate Professor Frank Westerlund and Acting Instructor Bob Freitag published their book Floodplain Management, A New Approach for a New Era, co-authored with Susan Bolton and J.L. Clark (Island Press, 2009).
  • Professor Qing Shen was appointed as a Tongji Chair Professor by Tongji University in Shanghai, China. This is a visiting appointment that will enable Prof. Shen to participate in collaborative research on urban transportation at Tongji University during summer and winter breaks.

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