Faculty Updates
Howell Baum has published a book on the history of Baltimore school desegregation: Brown in Baltimore: School Desegregation and the Limits of Liberalism (Cornell, 2010). The book argues that liberalism limited school officials’ ability to understand race and end racial segregation. He has talked about the book on the radio, in universities, and with school officials, teachers, community organizers, and lawyers. Links to podcasts and a video can be found on his web page at http://www.arch.umd.edu/people/faculty_and_staff/bio.cfm/60. He published a chapter on “How the 1968 Riots Stopped School Desegregation in Baltimore” in Baltimore ’68: Riots and Re-birth in an American City, edited by Jessica Elfenbein, Thomas Hollowak, and Elizabeth Nix (Temple, 2011).
He is currently studying how different Americans’ views about human nature lead them to define different social conditions as problems and to support different policies for addressing problems. He is comparing liberal, conservative, evangelical, and libertarian perspectives on human nature, with attention to how they lead to different positions on poverty and racial inequality. He published “Planning and the Problem of Evil” in Planning Theory (May, 2011) and presented a paper on “Theories of Human Nature for Planning: Liberalism and Libertarian, Evangelical, and Conservative Alternatives” at the October, 2011 conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.
Sidney Brower - During the past year and a half, Sidney Brower led three community planning studios. Two of the studios focused on Baltimore‘s West Side. The Spring 2010 studio report is entitled “Baltimore‘s Downtown West,” and the Fall 2010 report is entitled “Arts Impact: Examining the Establishment of an Arts District on Baltimore's West Side.” In the summer of 2010, Sidney also led a studio in Cape Town, South Africa leading to the report, “Cape Town and the 2010 World Cup: Assessing the Development Impacts.” The three reports are available on the School‘s web site at http://www.arch.umd.edu/student_work/planning/index.cfm/Studio_Reports. The topic of Sidney‘s Fall 2011 studio is the commemoration of the bicentennial of the War of 1812. The class will look particularly at celebratory events that can be of a long-term benefit to Baltimore.
In April of 2011, Sidney organized a session at the APA conference in Boston on the subject of his new book, “Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Elements of Successful Community Design,” published by APA Planners Press. In October he presented a paper, "Neighbors and Neighborhoods from Olmsted to Jacobs," at the APA Pennsylvania Chapter annual conference, in Scranton. PA. In November, he will present a paper, “Corner Stores in Canton,” at the annual conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) to be held in Baltimore. This year, Sidney wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book, “Building a New City: Columbia Maryland 1967 – 2007,” edited by Robert Tennenbaum with Joe Mitchell.
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 continues to teach an undergraduate lecture class on urban life and change focusing on the USA and Mexico. The course is cross-listed with the Latin American Studies Center. A new undergraduate class expands the scope to the globe; it is part of the campus's new "i" general curriculum. One of his graduate seminars last year was about urban life and change as portrayed in the cinema (among the feature films were Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," Paul Haggis's "Crash," and Gaston Kaboré's "Zan Boko"). This year, his seminars are more conventional: one on neighborhood planning and another on planning urban areas in so-called "developing" countries.
Bill has been very active in Prince George's County's planning politics. Must energy is focused on trying to prevent the county from demolishing the affordable apartments of thousands of families in the working class immigrant Langley Park neighborhood; the county wants to replace the apartments with a new mixed-income mixed-use neighborhood but without any provision for affordable relocation or the sustaining of the community. His health involvement includes annual lecturing at NIH on Latino health and health disparities generally, running two local health fairs, and working to get better health facilities in clinic-deprived areas. He advises the student organization, Beyond These Walls, which is devoted to outreach among the area's immigrant children and adults.
Bill edits the quarterly The Faculty Voice (now on-line at www.facultyvoice.umd.edu) and the biweekly immigrant-focused Barrio de Langley Park, and he's continuing to work on a book-length manuscript about Langley Park and the marginalization of its residents and small businesspeople.
Marie Howland - Based on a presentation given in Venice, Italy, Marie Howland‘s paper – “The Impact of Contamination on the Industrial Land Market” is forthcoming in Scienze Regionali (Vol. 10 – Suppl. n. 2, 2011, pp. 25-44) the Italian Journal of Regional Science Special Issue. This paper is based on Marie‘s research on contaminated property in the Carroll Camden area of Baltimore, MD. A second paper from this same Baltimore research was published in the HUD publication Cityscape in 2010 (12, 3, 2010). Ann Pieson (URSP) and Lynette Boswell (URPD) assisted as research assistants on these papers. Marie led a team of URSP faculty and students in a funded, three-year study of industrial land use policy for Prince George‘s County. Assisting Marie in the research were Jim Cohen, Ph.D. students Scott Dempwolf and Doan Nguyen, along with recent URSP graduates Amy Hofstra and Laura Ainsman. Marie‘s paper on this research, “Planning for Industry in a Post Industrial World,” was published in the January 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. In the fall of 2011, Dr. Howland will be teaching “Microeconomics for Planning and Public Policy” while Gerrit Knaap is on sabbatical. Marie is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the School. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.
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.