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Affiliated PhD Student

Tayeba Batool

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Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Anthropology

About

Tayeba Batool is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation research focuses on the urban and political ecologies of Miyawaki urban forests in Islamabad, Pakistan, by examining the impacts and transformations of a transnational ecological method on local practices, politics, knowledges, and experiences of greening in a postcolonial planned city. She employs participant and institutional ethnography as well multi-modal methods and spatial mapping in her analysis of how the Miyawaki urban forests are discoursed and adapted towards urban climatic resilience, landscape management, or spatial affect and aesthetic. Her preliminary dissertation work piloted methods to study tree care and practices in arboretums and urban spaces, as well as how landscapes shape forest imaginaries, and was supported by the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design Initiative, and Center for Experimental Ethnography at Penn. Tayeba holds a MA in International Affairs from American University, Washington DC. Her master's thesis investigated the politics of conservation, urban heritage, and community identity in the Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan. Prior to her time at Penn, she worked on international development projects in Pakistan that facilitated institutional capacity building, gender equity in economic participation, and private-public sector collaboration.

Faculty Fellow

Matthijs Bouw

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Rockefeller Urban Resilience Fellow

Professor of Practice

McHarg Center Fellow for Risk and Resilience

About

Matthijs Bouw is a Dutch architect and urbanist and founder of One Architecture (est. 1995), an award-winning Amsterdam and New York-based design and planning firm. He is the Rockefeller Urban Resilience Fellow for the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Bouw’s work at Penn theorizes and positions design as an integrator and innovator among scales, disciplines, actors and issues in urban resilience and water management projects. He is a driving force between RBD U, a network of design schools that collaborate on resilience issues, and is developing the Chief Resilience Officer curriculum for 100 Resilient Cities. Additionally, he researches how to achieve and increase ‘resilience value’ in the implementation of complex projects.

Bouw’s practice is known for its unique approach in which programmatic, financial, technical and organizational issues are addressed, communicated and resolved through design. Bouw has been a pioneer in the use of design as a tool for collaboration, for instance through the development of ‘Design Studios’ as an instrument to support the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment with its long term planning.

In New York City, the office co-leads the BIG Team that won the Rebuild by Design competition for the flood protection of Manhattan, and is currently part of the multi-disciplinary teams executing the first phase of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project for Lower Manhattan, as well as planning the Lower Manhattan Coastal Protection project. In Panama City, he is the urban designer in the ‘Water Dialogues’ team. In the Netherlands, One are part of the ‘Hackable City’ team for Buiksloterham, a large scale brownfield redevelopment in Amsterdam-Noord based on the principles of the circular economy.

Matthijs Bouw co-curated (with Kristin Feireiss) the 2000 Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale and has published articles and reviews in many architectural publications, such as Wiederhall, de Architect, Archis/Volume, Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, Bauwelt and MONU. In 2006, the Korean DD series published a monograph of One Architecture's work. In addition to his practice and publications, Matthijs Bouw teaches and lectures internationally. He was a guest professor at, TU Delft, Berlage Institute, TU Graz, University of Kentucky College of Design and Sci-Arc, and was professor i.V. of Gebaeudelehre und Grundlagen des Entwerfens at the RWTH Aachen.

In 2014, Matthew Stadler’s book on Bouw’s work, Deventer, was published by nai010publishers. The book describes the unique combination of project and process in his firm.

Bouw's most recent book, Building with Nature, focuses on nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation. 

Penn IUR Scholar

Reid Ewing

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Distinguished Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah

About

Reid Ewing, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, Distinguished Research Chair for Resilient Places, and associate editor of Cities. He holds master’s degrees in Engineering and City Planning from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Transportation Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ewing’s 12 books include Pedestrian and Transit Oriented Design, co-published by the Urban Land Institute and American Planning Association; Growing Cooler: Evidence of Urban Development and Climate Change, published by the Urban Land Institute; and Best Development Practices, listed by the American Planning Association (APA) as one of the 100 “essential” books in planning over the past 100 years. His 100-plus peer reviewed articles include “Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity,” the most widely cited academic paper in the Social Sciences as of late 2005, according to Essential Science Indicators; and “Travel and the Built Environment: A Meta-Analysis,” given the Best Article of 2010 Award by the American Planning Association and the second most widely cited article in JAPA’s 80-year history. A recent citation analysis by Virginia Tech found that Ewing, with 26,300 citations, is the 6th most highly cited among 1,100 planning academics in the U.S. and Canada.

Emerging Scholar

Samuel Geldin

About

Sam Geldin is a Postdoctoral Research at the Penn Institute for Urban Research. He got his PhD from the Department of City and Regional Planning with interests in climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and urban governance in the Global South. He is particularly passionate about enhancing subnational climate action efforts through policy, planning, and comparative urban studies. Sam previously supported two transnational climate action networks, policy formulation in the California Governor’s Office of Planning, and a research initiative facilitated by the UNFCCC Secretariat. He holds an MSc in Environmental Science from Yale, where his master’s thesis investigated the diffusion of adaptation practices through city networks in Indonesia. He also holds a BS in Environmental Science and a BA in Geography from UCLA.

Penn IUR Scholar

Tingting Hong

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Associate Professor, College of Architecture and Urban-Rural Planning, Fuzhou University.

About

Tingting Hong is an associate professor in College of Architecture and Urban-Rural Planning, Fuzhou University. She is a visiting scholar at the Penn Institute for Urban Research from 2022 to 2023, conducting research on resilient cities. She recieved a PhD degree in 2013 and is now a tutor for master students in urban and rural planning, and design and landscape design. She was awarded as one of the 21st century excellent talents of Colleges and Universities in Fujian province. In the past years, she has led many projects, including National Natural Science Foundation of China—“Research on Passive Disaster Prevention Greenbelt Planning in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong Based on Quantitative Technology”, one National Key Technology Support Program, five provincial-level projects and over 30 urban planning and landscape design projects. Besides, she has also edited two provincial-level local standard, published over 30 scientific papers both in national and international journals, and guided undergraduates to participate in competitions and publications of more than 20 papers. In the past 15 years, she has been mainly engaged in the research of urban disaster prevention and mitigation and emergency evacuation, and the function of urban passive disaster prevention and the optimization design of urban wind environment. 

Fellow

Carolyn Kousky

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Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund

School/Department

Areas of Interest

    About

    Carolyn Kousky is Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Kousky’s research examines multiple aspects of disaster insurance markets, disaster finance, climate risk management, and policy approaches for increasing resilience. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of climate risk and disaster insurance markets, and is routinely cited in media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, and The Financial Times, among many others. She is the recipient of the 2013 Tartufari International Prize from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. She is the vice-chair of the California Climate Insurance Working Group, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a non-resident scholar at the Insurance Information Institute, and a member of the Roundtable on Risk and Resilience of Extreme Events at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has a BS in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University.

    Selected Publications

    Kousky, C., M. Palim, and Y. Pan (2020). Flood Damage and Mortgage Credit Risk: A Case Study of Hurricane Harvey. Journal of Housing Research.

    Kousky, C. (2018). “Financing Flood Losses: A Discussion of the National Flood Insurance Program” Risk Management and Insurance Review. 21(1): 11-32.

    Kousky, Carolyn (2017).  “Revised Risk Assessments and the Insurance Industry.” In: Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents and Financial Crises.  Cambridge University Press: 55-81.

    Kousky, C., P. Raschky, and E. Michel-Kerjan (2018). “Does Federal Disaster Assistance Crowd Out Flood Insurance?” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 87: 150-164.

    Kousky, C., and  Shabman, L. (2017).  “Federal Funding for Flood Risk Reduction in the US: Pre-or Post-Disaster?”  Water Economics and Policy, 3(01), 1771001.

    Kousky, C., B. Lingle, and L. Shabman (2017). “The Pricing of Flood Insurance.” Journal of Extreme Events. 04, 1750001

    Fellow

    Eleni “Lenio” Myrivili

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    Global Chief Heat Officer, UN Habitat

    About

    Eleni “Lenio” Myrivili is Global Chief Heat Officer to UN Habitat and the Arsht Rock Resilience Center, building heat resilience in cities around the world. Myrivili is senior advisor for urban heat and a senior fellow at the Arsht-Rock Center at the Atlantic Council. She is also a member of the EU Mission Board for Adaptation at the European Commission. Myrivili served as elected Deputy Mayor for the City of Athens as well as Athens’ Chief Resilience Officer and as Athens’ Chief Heat Officer. She also co-chaired the Resilience Cities Network Steering Committee. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University and was a tenured professor for over a decade. 

    Faculty Fellow

    Simon Richter

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    Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German

    Department Chair, Germanic Languages and Literatures

    About

    Simon Richter is Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German and member of the Graduate Groups in Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, fellow of the Penn Institute of Urban Research, faculty advisory board member of the Water Center at Penn and affiliated with the Programs in Cinema Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. Courses he has recently taught include: “Water Worlds: Cultural Responses to Sea Level Rise and Catastrophic Flooding”; “Forest Worlds: Mapping the Arboreal Imaginary”; “Writing in Dark Times”; “Erinnerungsorte/Places of Memory”; and “Floating/Sinking: Phenomenologies of Coastal Urban Resilience.” From 2014-2019, Richter directed a hybrid online/study abroad course called “Comparative Cultures of Sustainability in Germany and the Netherlands,” which involved an intensive study visit to Berlin and Rotterdam. 

    Simon's research focuses on cultural aspects of the climate emergency, especially with regard to resilience, adaptation, and sustainability in Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the United States. As an environmental humanist, Richter engages in activities that blur distinctions between traditional scholarship, urban design, and environmental activism. In 2018/19, he was a member of One Resilient Semarang, an international team of urban designers, hydrological engineers, ecologists, and urban and environmental activists from Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the United States.

    Selected Publications

    “Goethe’s Faust and the Ecolinguistics of ‘Here,’” in German Ecocriticism, ed. Caroline Schaumann and Heather Sullivan (NY: Palgrave, 2017).

    “Betting on Water: The Hydrological Moment in Goethe’s Faust,” in Design in the Terrain of Water, ed. Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha (San Francisco: APD / ORO Editions, 2014).

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Benjamin (Benji) Smith

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    PhD Candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics Program

    About

    Benji is a doctoral candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics program specializing in urban and environmental economics. His ongoing research includes studying how policies in the Western US requiring new development to pay water utilities to develop water-intensive housing leads to denser development in new communities, and how local income shocks in metropolitan areas induce gentrification and the subsequent mobility patterns in cities (joint with Fernando Ferreira and Jeanna Kenney). Other interests include how housing markets are related to school choice programs, and the effects of urbanization on local water quality. Prior to graduate school, Benji worked as a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute in the Housing Center. He researched riskiness in mortgage lending and the housing market origins of the 2008 global financial crisis which is published in the Review of Finance. Benji earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Souther California, majoring in Economics and International Relations. 

    Selected Publications

    Davis, Morris, William Larson, Stephen Oliner, and Benjamin Smith. “A Quarter Century of Mortgage Risk,” Review of Finance, March 2023. https://academic.oup.com/rof/article/27/2/581/6586810

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Patricio Zambrano Barragan

    About

    Patricio Zambrano-Barragán completed his PhD in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on spatial planning and urban infrastructure development, with a special interest in Latin America. Prior to coming to the University of Pennsylvania, he has worked as Urban Development Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank; as a Senior Policy Analyst with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development; as an Advisor at the Mayor’s Office in Quito (his native hometown); and as a management consultant. Patricio has held research positions with a focus on climate-ready infrastructure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He holds a Masters in City and Regional Planning from MIT and a B.A. in political science from Yale University.

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