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Penn IUR Scholar

Timothy Beatley

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Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

About

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities and Chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Beatley’s work focuses on creating sustainable communities and cultivating creative strategies through which cities and towns can reduce their ecological footprints. Beatley is an author of or contributor to more than fifteen books concerning sustainability. 

Selected Publications

Beatley, Timothy. 2010. Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times, Washington, DC: Island Press, July, 2009.

Beatley, Timothy. 2005. Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Beatley, Timothy, Peter Newman and Heather Boyer. 2009. Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Beatley, Timothy, David Brower and Anna K. Schwab. 2001. An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Beatley, Timothy. 1999. Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Faculty Fellow

Eugénie L. Birch

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Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education

Chair of the Graduate Group in City and Regional Planning

Co-Director, Penn Institute for Urban Research

About

Eugenie Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Chair of Urban Research and Education. She teaches courses in global urbanization and the doctoral seminar and serves as chair, the Graduate Group in City and Regional Planning, co-director, of Penn Institute for Urban Research, co-editor, City in the 21st Century Series, University of Penn Press, and co-editor, SSRN Urban Research e-journal. With Penn IUR she recently completed a project “Entrepreneurship & Innovation in Connecticut’s Higher Education System,” for the state of Connecticut.

Professor Birch’s current research focuses on global urbanization with recent publications including: Slums, How Informal Real Estate Markets Work, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press (2016) (edited with Susan Wachter, Shahana Chattaraj); “Midterm Report: Will Habitat III Make a Difference to Global Urban Development?” Journal of the American Planning Association 84:4 (Fall 2016); “The Institutions of Metropolitan Governance,” in D.A. Gomez-Alvarez, E. Moreno and R. Rajack (eds), Steering the Metropolis: Metropolitan Governance for Sustainable Urban Development (Nairobi: UN Habitat, 2017); “Inclusion and Innovation: The Many Forms of Stakeholder Engagement in Habitat III,” Citiscape (July 2017); “Implementing the New Urban Agenda in the United States, Building on a Firm Foundation,” Informationen zur Raumentwicklung (Information on Spatial Development) (Summer 2017).

Professor Birch has been active in the field’s professional and civic organizations in the United States and abroad. She is president, General Assembly of Partners (GAP), the engagement platform for the implementation of the UN’s New Urban Agenda and associated global agreements, co-chair, Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Thematic Group on Cities, and an Associate Editor, Journal of the American Planning Association. In the past, she has been president, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning; president, Society of American City and Regional Planning History; president, International Planning History Society; and co-editor, Journal of the American Planning Association. She has been a member of the Planning Accreditation Board, having served as its chair from 2004-2006. She has been a member of the editorial boards of Planning Theory and Practice, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Planning Education, and Research and Planning Perspectives. In the early 1990s, she was a member of the New York City Planning Commission, and in 2002, she served on the jury to select the designers for the World Trade Center site. She has chaired the Board of Trustees of the Municipal Art Society of New York and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Regional Plan Association of New York.

Professor Birch lectures widely. She has been Visiting Scholar, Queens University, Ontario, Canada; Foreign Scholar, University of Hong Kong; and Visiting Professor, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. In May 2017, she delivered the keynote address, “Making Cities Safe, Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable,” at the Dresden Nexus Conference, Dresden, Germany, and “Post Habitat III Stakeholder Engagement: An Update” at the Wilson Center, Washington, DC.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning has given her three awards: the Distinguished Educator Award in recognition of her teaching and research (2009), the Jay Chatterjee Award for Distinguished Service which “recognizes an individual whose exceptional service, actions and leadership have had a lasting and positive impact on the ACSP”(2006), and the Margarita McCoy Award, “in recognition of her outstanding contribution to furthering the advancement of women in the planning academy” (1994). The Society of American City and Regional Planning History awarded her its Lawrence C. Gerckens Prize (2009) in recognition of her contributions to planning history. The American Planning Association honored her with their APA President’s Award in 2013.  This award is given out every other year in recognition of leadership in the field of planning. In 2000, she was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners and made a member (honorary) of the Royal Town Planning Institute.

The statement made by Professor Birch at the closing ceremony of the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) can be found here:  http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/watch/professor-of-education-and-research-of-university-of-pennsylvania-habitat-iii-closure-ceremony/5179115593001 

Selected Publications

Birch, Eugenie. 2017. “The Institutions of Metropolitan Governance.” In Steering the Metropolis: Metropolitan Governance for Sustainable Urban Development, edited by D.A. Gomez-Alvarez, E. Moreno, and R. Rajack. Nairobi: UN Habitat.

Birch, Eugenie. 2017. “Inclusion and Innovation: The Many Forms of Stakeholder Engagement in Habitat III.” Citiscape (July).

Birch, Eugenie. 2017. “Implementing the New Urban Agenda in the United States, Building on a Firm Foundation.” Informationen zur Raumentwicklung (Information on Spatial Development) (Summer).

Birch, Eugenie, Susan Wachter, and Shahana Chattaraj , eds. 2016. Slums, How Informal Real Estate Markets Work. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Birch, Eugenie. 2016. “Midterm Report: Will Habitat III Make a Difference to Global Urban Development?” Journal of the American Planning Association 84:4. 

Penn IUR Scholar

Catherine Brinkley

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Associate Professor, Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis

Areas of Interest

    About

    Katie Brinkley is an Assistant Professor, Department of Human Ecology, University of California. Brinkley completed her Ph.D. in Regional Planning at PennDesign in December 2013 and recently finished her last clinical year in the VMD program at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School. Brinkley’s Ph.D. in Regional Planning and Master’s degree in Virology, along with her current work as a Veterinary student, inform her research in ecosystem management; this research concentrates particularly on the prevention of animal-to-human disease and sustainable resource planning. Her research interests include public health, the rural-urban interface, animal agriculture, and food security. Brinkley’s dissertation uses GIS and spatial analytics to explore urban development morphologies as they impact the agricultural sector, regional economies and food distribution. She has worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to assess food access and waste management in low-income nations and is a former Fulbright Fellow.

    Selected Publications

    Brinkley, C. (2012). “Evaluating the Benefits of Peri-Urban Agriculture.” Journal of Planning 

    Literature. 27(3): 259-269.

    Brinkley, C. (2013). “Avenues into Food Planning: a Review of Scholarly Food System Research.” International Journal of Planning Studies. 18(2): 243-266.

    Brinkley, Catherine, Eugenie Birch, and Alexander Keating. (2013) “Feeding cities: Charting a research and practice agenda toward food security.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development.

    Brinkley, C. forthcoming. “Decoupled: successful planning policies in countries that have reduced per capita GHG emissions with continued economic growth,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy.

    Fellow

    Seung Ah Byun

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    Director of the Chester County Water Resources Authority

    About

    With 20 years of experience, Dr. Byun is a Director of the Chester County Water Resources Authority. Prior to this, Seung Ah, was a  Water Resource Engineer with the Delaware River Basin Commission and a Senior Planner for Water Resources with the Brandywine Conservancy’s Municipal Assistance Program. Her responsibilities involve developing and managing innovative stormwater management practices, green stormwater infrastructure tools, and source water protection projects at the watershed and site levels. She also provides technical expertise to municipalities on compliance with state and federal water quality regulations such as MS4 permits and TMDL requirements. Seung Ah received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design’s Department of City and Regional Planning. She has also served as a water resources engineer at CDM Smith, primarily consulting to the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Watersheds and CSO Program.

    Dr. Byun obtained a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Drexel University and a bachelor’s of science in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Seung Ah is a licensed Professional Engineer and is a LEED Accredited Professional.

    Selected Publications

    Byun, Seung Ah. James T. Smullen, Mark Maimone, Robert E. Dickinson, and Christopher S. Crockett. (2003) “Overcoming Obstacles for the Application of SWMM to Large-scale Watersheds.” Practical Modeling of Urban Water Systems, Monograph 11. Edited by James, William. CHI, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

    Penn IUR Scholar

    Daniel Aldana Cohen

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    Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative

    Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California

    About

    Daniel Aldana Cohen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and co-directs the climate + community project. He is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green Deal (Verso 2019), which received glowing reviews in The New York Review of BooksForeign Policy, the Los Angeles Review of BooksScience for the People, and elsewhere. He works on the politics of climate change, investigating the intersections of climate change, housing, political economy, social movements, and inequalities of race and class in the United States and Brazil. As Director of (SC)2, he is leading qualitative and quantitative research projects on Whole Community Climate Mapping, green political economy, and eco-apartheid. In 2018-19, he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was also co-founder and co-PI of the Superstorm Research Lab, in New York City. 

    Selected Publications

    Wachsmuth, David, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Hillary Angelo. 2016. “Expand the frontiers of urban sustainability: Social equity and global impacts are missing from measures of cities’ environments friendliness.” Nature 536(7618): 391-393.

    Cohen, Daniel Aldana. 2016. “The Rationed City: The politics of water, housing, and land use in drought-parched São Paulo.” Public Culture 28(2): 261-289.

    Fellow

    Brian English

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    Founder and Owner, Origin Studio

    About

    Brian English is the Founder and Owner at Origin Studio and an urban planner that works at the intersections of sustainability, technology and economics.

    Brian is the Director of Program Innovation for Global Communities (formerly CHF International), an international development organization in Washington DC. For the past 10 years, Brian has managed inter-disciplinary teams on urban development projects in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. From 2009-2011, Brian was Country Director for CHF International in India and directed a $6 million program called SCALE-UP funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce urban poverty. After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Brian managed community revitalization programs in the Eastern Caribbean for the Unites States Agency for International Development. Brian has consulted on a broad range of development projects including special economic zones, innovations clusters, and city master plans.

    Brian’s work has been featured in New York Times, Scientific American, Business Week and Harvard Business Review. Brian was an Aspen Scholar at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival and presented at a TEDx on Forces of Change in June, 2012. In 2014, Brian was selected as a Resident Fellow by Rockefeller Foundation at their Bellagio Center in Italy.

    Faculty Fellow

    Billy Fleming

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    Wilks Family Director, Ian L. McHarg Center

    About

    Billy is the Wilks Family Director at the Ian L. McHarg Center with a background in urban design and policy development. He graduated with a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Arkansas where also served as the Student Government President during his final year – the first design student to do so in the University’s 140-year history. Upon graduation, he was presented with the Senior Citation Award, which honors the top undergraduate man and woman across the entire campus. Billy then practiced as a landscape architect in the Middle East, specializing in the development of afforestation strategies in water-scarce environments before returning to graduate school at the University of Texas. While there, he served as a research assistant to Dean Fritz Steiner and was presented with the award for the top master’s thesis within the UT School of Architecture. After graduation, Billy worked in the White House Domestic Policy Council during the first term of President Obama’s Administration and his portfolio included the Sustainable Communities Initiative and the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative (National Parks Service). His dissertation work is focused on the nature of climate change adaptation in coastal cities and it is informed greatly by his work and academic experience.

    Selected Publications

    B. Fleming. 2015. Towards a Megaregional Future: Analysing Progress, Assessing Priorities in the US Megaregion Project. In J. Harrison and M. Hoyler (Eds.), Megaregions: Globalization’s New Urban Form?, (pp. 200-229). London: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    B. Fleming. 2015. “Can We Rebuild by Design?“LA+, 1(1): 104-111.

    B. Fleming. 2015. “Book Review: Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans.” Journal of the American Planning Association, 84(2): 158-159.

    B. Fleming. 2015 (in-press). “Double-Book Review: The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong & The Social Roots of Risk: Producing Disasters, Promoting Resilience.” Journal of the American Planning Association, 84(4).

    B. Fleming 2016 (in-press). “Lost in Translation: The Authorship Structure and Argumentation of Resilience.” Landscape Journal, 35(1).

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Spencer Folk

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    PhD Candidate at GRASP Lab

    About

    Spencer is a robotics researcher at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania where he studies how wind affects perception, planning, and control for UAVs operating in urban environments. His approach harnesses synergies between classical model-based estimation algorithms, machine learning, and fluid dynamics to enable fast predictions of urban wind flow fields from minimal onboard sensors and computation. Spencer strives to enable UAVs to reason about the complex wind that forms within the urban canopy layer and use this capability to operate safely, efficiently, and autonomously in future city airspaces. 

    Beyond his role as a PhD student at GRASP, Spencer works with NASA as a Pathways Intern, utilizing UAVs as mobile in-situ wind sensors. This initiative aims to improve the accuracy and timeliness of urban weather forecasts, inform policy for future urban airspaces, and catalyze advancements in urban air mobility technologies. Prior to his PhD, his previous research for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory centered on designing 3D printed UAVs. Looking ahead, Spencer aspires to one day develop algorithms for extraterrestrial UAV probes, empowering the scientific exploration of our solar system's atmospheres.

    Spencer holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lafayette College and an M.S.E. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania. 

    Faculty Fellow

    David Gouverneur

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    Associate Professor of Practice, City and Regional Planning

    About

    David Gouverneur is Associate Professor of Practice, City and Regional Planning. Previously, he was the Chair of the School of Architecture and Professor in the Departments of Architecture, and City and Regional Planning at Universidad Simón Bolívar; Director of Urban Development of Venezuela; Co-founder and Professor of the Urban Design program, and Director of the Mayor’s Institute in Urban Design at Universidad Metropolitana, in Caracas. He is the two-time recipient of the G. Holmes Perkins Award for distinguished teaching at PennDesign and co-recipient of the Venezuelan National Architecture award in 2000 and in 2016. His professional practice focuses on improvement of existing informal settlements, the rehabilitation of areas affected by extraordinary natural events, areas of new centralities, new mixed-use districts, and the rehabilitation of cultural landscapes. His main area of research focuses on the notion of Informal Armatures, a method to address the rampant Self-Constructed urbanization, the dominant urban form in many countries of the Global South. He has lectured extensively, written articles and organized seminars and workshops, particularly in Latin America. He received his M.Arch in Urban Design from Harvard University (1980), and B.Arch from the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1977). 

    Selected Publications

    Planning and Design for Future Informal Settlements: Shaping the Self-Constructed City. Routledge 2014.

    El diseño de nuevos asentamientos informales. Universidad de La Salle/Universidad Eafit, Colombia, 2016

    Editor of Revisiting Urban Renewal: Alternatives for Public Housing in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. PennDesign/Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2012

    Co author of: The Rehabilitation of the Littoral Central, Venezuela, with the support of Universidad Metropolitana/Harvard University,Toddman Editores, Caracas, 2000.

    Emerging Scholar

    Albert T. Han

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    Assistant Professor, Urban Planning, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

    About

    Albert Tonghoon Han is currently an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research fellow with the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design. His research focuses on studying how growth management, land use planning, and environmental policies affect the natural environment in metropolitan areas in the North America and other fast-growing cities around the world. He is also interested in studying how planning efforts based on market-based approaches can mitigate the impacts of climate change, particularly in regards to improving building energy efficiency in cities. Albert received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from University of Pennsylvania in 2015. Prior to Penn, he worked on various global environmental projects at the Korea Environment Institute from 2011 to 2012. He obtained his master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Iowa in 2011 with specialization in environmental planning and spatial analysis. His devotion to studying land use and environmental planning originated from his background in Life Science and Biotechnology from Korea University where he received his bachelor’s degree in 2009.

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Sa Min Han

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    Doctoral Student, City and Regional Planning, University of Pennslyvania

    About

    Sa Min Han is a doctoral student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a BA degree in Landscape Architecture from the Seoul National University and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her arrival, she worked as a certificated landscape architect and urban planner at Samsung C&T in Korea for 8 years. She also interned at AECOM in Hong Kong. Ms. Han’s research interest lies in resilient and sustainable planning. She eagerly hopes to study mapping process related to vulnerability indexes and regional assessment, for use when engaging in site prioritization and preparations for natural hazards caused by climate change. Her goal is to support policymakers, planners, and urban designers hoping to better understand how coastal cities should respond to natural hazards caused by climate change and to help them to establish appropriate policies for mitigation and adaptation.

     

    Selected Publications

    Korea Water Resources Corporation. “Application and Management Plans for the Flood Control Plains in Korea” (2007)

    PennDesign Urban Planning Studio. “Alternative Futures for the New Jersey Shore: Climate Change Adaptation & Natural Hazard Mitigation Strategies”, IFLA World Congress (2014)

    11st ULI / Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, honorable mention (2013)

     

    Faculty Fellow

    Mark Alan Hughes

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    Professor of Practice

    Founding Faculty Director and current Co-Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy

    About

    Mark Alan Hughes is Professor of Practice in the School of Design and founding Faculty Director of Penn’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. He is also the founding Faculty Director of the Fels Policy Research Initiative in the School of Arts and Sciences, a Senior Fellow of the Wharton School’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership, and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Penn’s Fox Leadership Program. Hughes has published in the leading journals of economic geography, urban economics, political science, policy analysis, and won the National Planning Award for his research in city and regional planning. He was Chief Policy Adviser to Mayor Michael Nutter and the founding Director of Sustainability for the City of Philadelphia, where he led the creation of the city’s Greenworks Plan. He has designed and fielded national policy research projects in a variety of areas including the Bridges to Work program in transportation, the Transitional Work Corporation in job training and placement, the Campaign for Working Families in EITC participation, and the Energy Efficient Buildings Hub in regional economic development. 

    Selected Publications

    Hughes, Mark Alan, Cornelia Colijn, and Oscar Serpell. 2017. “Comparative Pathways to Regional Energy Transition.” Kleinman Policy Digest available at http://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/pathways.

    Hughes, Mark Alan, Cornelia Colijn, and Oscar Serpell. 2017. “Managing Risk in the Energyshed.” LA+ Journal 6(Fall).

    Hughes, Mark Ala. 2017. “No Acceptable Alternative to Paris.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 15. http://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2017/06/12/there-no-acceptable-alternative-paris.

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