Faculty Updates
Howell Baum - has finished a book on the history of Baltimore school desegregation. Titled How Liberalism Failed Brown: School Desegregation in Baltimore, it will be published by Cornell University Press. He presented some of the research to the History of Education Society in a paper on "How the 1968 Riots Stopped School Desegregation in Baltimore." The book describes how Baltimore school officials tried to desegregate schools without addressing racial passions that supported segregation. The book examines how liberalism enables Americans to avoid dealing with race in public policy and planning.
He organized a roundtable on "What Should Planning Education Try to Accomplish, How Can We Do It, and How Should We Assess Our Efforts?" at the Joint Congress of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and the Association of European Schools of Planning. He has chaired the ACSP track of conference papers on Planning Education and Pedagogy
Howie is currently writing a paper on "Planning and the Problem of Evil." The paper examines racial discrimination as an illustration of two aspects of evil in human society. First, it is a serious problem-qualitatively more serious than most problems with which planners are concerned. Second, it is an expression of ordinary human capacities to harm others by exploiting, hurting, or neglecting them. The paper argues that planning's assumptions that people act rationally and benevolently lead planners to avoid recognizing and dealing with problems of evil in society.
Sidney Brower - The manuscript of Sidney's book "Designing for Communities" is with the publisher, but he slowdown in the market has resulted in the publication schedule being stretched out, and the book won't be available for another year. His Spring '09 community planning studio class followed two earlier studios which focused on HOPE VI developments in Baltimore. Among other things, his studio teams are looking at these mixed-income developments to test one of the goals of the program: that home-owners and public housing tenants should see themselves and act as members of a single community. Sidney participated in a discussion on HOPE VI at the Urban Institute, and was invited to present his studio findings at a national summit of public housing residents, held in Baltimore. Currently, he is working on a paper titled "The feasibility of mixed-income communities" to be presented in October of this year at an International Symposium jointly organized by IAPS - CSBE (Culture and Space in the Built Environment) Network and the IAPS - Housing Network to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. He continues to work as a consultant to Ashoka in a study evaluating the effect of alley gating and greening in Baltimore.
Kelly Clifton - URSP Associate Professor has played a key role in the formation and execution of the Transportation Policy Research Group in the National Center for Smart Growth and Maryland Department of Transportation. Kelly has been active in the development of tools to evaluate transportation planning policies including: the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model, Model of Pedestrian Demand (MoPeD), models of car ownership and use in the State of Maryland, and regional rail demand models. She is continuing her work on the links between transportation and health, including: physical activity, pedestrian safety, and climate. In late 2008, Kelly was a visiting scholar at the New South Wales Transport Ministry in Sydney, Australia, where she initiated work on climate and non-motorized transport. She is working with the Washington DC Office of Planning and Virginia Tech on "Envisioning the Future of the Federal Workplace in the Washington Region" for the US General Services Administration.
Jim Cohen - Director URSP Program is completing research, in collaboration with Marie Howland, Ph.D. graduate Doan Nyugen, Ph.D. Student Scott Dempwolf and MCP student Laura Ainsman, on trends in industrially-zoned land use in Prince George's County (MD) and the economic impacts and policy implications of those trends. The report acknowledges that while there are national and regional shifts from manufacturing and other industrial activities to high-tech and service employment, the County is hardly "post industria":-- nearly 27% of the County's jobs are in production, distribution and repair businesses. The report contains recommendations on where, and how, the County implements land use and other policies to maintain industrial employment.
In related research, Jim and master's student Becky Schaaf are exploring principles and considerations that inform green local economic development strategies, and will propose a template for local governments to use in planning and/or designating a green industrial cluster. Their intent is for the template to facilitate discussion of what "green" means in the local economic development context.
Jim was recently appointed to co-facilitate the Education Work Group of the Governor's Task Force on the Future of Growth and Development in Maryland. The task force will create a broad-based educational and outreach program smart growth, and will update the State's Planning Commissioner Certificate Program that was originated in 1999. A resident of Greenbelt, MD, Jim serves on the city's Advisory Planning Board, which is drafting a City pedestrian and bike plan. He continues to be involved with the Greener Greenbelt Initiative, which is developing strategies and designs for promoting livability, sustainability, affordability, and historic preservation in this New Deal era town.
Chengri Ding , URSP Associate Professor and the Director of the China Land Policy and Urban Development Program at the National Center for Smart Growth, has been actively involved in research/demonstration projects on China. Chengri has conducted research on the interaction of land policy and urban growth (with Prof. Erik Litchenberg) and has published papers in the Journal of Urban Economics. Chengri and Ph.D. student Xingshuo Zhao are investigating the impacts of emerging market forces on urban spatial structure by estimating the elasticity of the substitution between land and capital, and then examining its relationship with the elasticity of housing prices in Beijing. Their preliminary results suggest that Beijing's urban spatial structure is being reshaped due to market influences. Chengri is also preparing a working paper for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, on China's planning system. Another of his projects, also funded by the Lincoln Institute, is a demonstration of integrated planning practice in Wuyi, Zhejiang. The latter two projects involve faculty from the University of Maryland and other universities.
Bill Hanna - During the 2008-2009 academic year, Bill Hanna continued his involvement on issues with immigrants and immigration, with a special focus on Maryland's Langley Park neighborhood. The involvement includes research/writing, running the Action Langley Park nonprofit organization that connects College Park and other Maryland campuses with the neighborhood; teaching an honors course on Langley Park; working with two undergraduate student teams conducting research there; and issuing Barrio de Langley Park, a biweekly newsletter on immigration issues (many issues are on line at http://www.lasc.umd.edu/LangleyPark/blp.html). He is currently involved in efforts to preserve affordable housing in Langley Park in the face of a "sector plan" that could enable developers to replace much of these units with higher income housing. He organizes two major health events in Langley Park during the year, involving specialists from the University of Maryland's Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, Adventist Health, and more than a dozen other health organizations. His community work has led to a series of lectures on immigrants and immigration both on and off campus, including a presentation at the National Institutes of Health on Latino health. Bill also edits The Faculty Voice, a quarterly distributed to all faculty members in the Maryland System of Higher Education (issues are at http://www.facultyvoice.umd.edu/).
Marie Howland is working with Dr. Jim Cohen, post doctoral student Doan Nguyen, Ph.D. Student Scott Dempwolf and Masters Student Laura Ainsman on a study of Prince George's industrial lands. They will present results to the County Planning Department in the Fall of 2009. During the summer, along with Professor David Falk, and Architecture faculty Dean Rockcastle and BD Wortham, Marie is leading a class of 14 Master's students to St. Petersburg, Russia. This summer class will be offered in conduction with the St. Petersburg State School of Engineering and Architecture. Marie and Ph.D. graduate Doan Nguyen had an article published this past year in the Economic Development Quarterly on their joint research on the impact of immigration on urban structure. Marie continues to serve as the Director of the School's Ph.D. program in Urban and Regional Planning and Design. In April 2009 she was elected to a second term on the Association of Collegiate School of Planning executive board.
Gerrit Knaap, URSP Professor and Director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education (Center), has focused his work on three areas during the past year. First, with Parsons-Brinkerhoff and other consultants, The Center built Maryland's first statewide transportation model. This model will likely serve for years as an important tool for making statewide transportation investment and policy decisions. Second, the Maryland Scenario project has moved into its second phase. In addition to the statewide transportation model the Center has also built fiscal impact, nutrient loading, and residential energy consumption models. These models will be used to analyze the alternative ways in which the state could grow over the coming decades. Finally, Gerrit has worked closely with state policy makers, state agencies, and state land use stakeholders on a number of statewide policy initiates. Via its work with the Maryland Growth Task Force, the Smart Growth Subcabinet, and the Maryland Department of Planning, the Center is helping to promote several policy initiatives of the O'Malley administration, new land use laws, and the state development plan. Gerrit indicates that we can expect to hear a lot more about these exciting new planning endeavors in the next few years.
This year, while the Center lost John Frece (who how heads EPA's Office of Smart Growth), Reid Ewing (now a professor at the University of Utah), and Nikhil Kaza (to the University of North Carolina), it has added Charles Towe (from UMD' Dept. of Agricultural Economics) and Cinzia Cirillo (from the UMD Dept. of Civil Engineering), and Xin Ye (a post-doc transportation modeler). The Center is also on the verge of hiring some talented new people who will take the Center in new and interesting directions.
Qing Shen, URSP Professor has continued to work with PhD advisee Chao Liu and a University of Michigan research team led by Jonathan Levine and Joe Grengs on an EPA STAR project, which aims to develop comparative indicators for metropolitan transportation and land use planning. His recent publications include "Influence of Urban Form on Travel Behaviour in Four Neighbourhoods of Shanghai" published in Urban Studies (co-authored with Haixiao Pan of Tongji University and Ming Zhang of the University of Texas), and "An Examination of Traveler Responses to Real-time Bus Arrival Information Using Panel Data" published in Transportation Research Record (co-authored with PhD advisee Feng Zhang and colleague
Kelly Clifton). In addition to teaching and research, he is in the second year as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and as the Chairman of the International Association for China Planning (IACP). He served on the Organizing Committee of the 2008 International Forum on Urban Development and Planning organized by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction of the People's Republic of China, and is currently co-chairing the Organizing Committee of the IACP-Nanjing University Joint Conference to be held in Nanjing in June 2009. He was recently appointed by Tongji University as a Tongji Chair Professor, a prestigious visiting faculty position, and awarded the title of "Guest Professor" by Southwest Jiaotong University.