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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.

Affiliated PhD Student

Jay Arzu

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Doctoral Candidate, City and Regional Planning

About

Jay Arzu currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a Co-Founder of the community engagement platform Collective Form, where he handles Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement.

Jay began his Ph.D. in City & Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design in Fall 2021. Mr. Arzu was a Transportation & Equity Research Fellow for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF).

He was responsible for data collection and the production of policy analysis and research. He analyzes best practices and policy solutions to promote integrated and comprehensive policy impacts in black communities nationwide.

Before joining CBCF, Jay was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Grant. He obtained his Master of Public Administration (MPA) at SDA Bocconi in Milan, Italy, while on Fulbright. Jay was also a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) intern at the U.S House of Representatives in 2015.

Selected Publications

Will Cuomo Botch the Sheridan Expressway Removal?

I-81 project an opportunity to create equitable, sustainable Syracuse

New Orleans needs a champion

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.

Fellow

MarĂ­a Alicia Becdach

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Practitioner Architect and Urban Planning Consultant

About

María Alicia Becdach is a practitioner architect and urban planning consultant. Her urban projects address informality in fragile ecosystems, one of them being the Urban Development and Territorial Plan for the Galapagos Islands with a focus on preserving the environmental services. Her research and teaching has focused on informal settlements, rapid urbanization and urban inequalities. Formerly she served as a professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Universidad de las Américas in Quito, Ecuador. She holds a bachelor of Architecture from Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Penn IUR Scholar

Richard Bernknopf

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Director of the Science Impact Laboratory for Policy Economics

Research Professor, Department of Economics, University of New Mexico

Areas of Interest

    About

    Richard Bernknopf is Research Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico. Previously, Berknopf was an economist with the USGS Western Geographic Science Center; his work with USGS has spanned more than three decades. Bernknopf’s research focuses on the demonstration of the relevance to society of natural science information including earth observation and the translation of that information into a form compatible with decision-making processes. He is currently associated with the Science Impact Laboratory for Policy and Economics at the University of New Mexico and the Wharton Geospatial Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. His areas of expertise include Natural Science Information and Policy.

    Selected Publications

    Labiosa, William, Paul Hearn, David Strong, Richard Bernknopf, Dianna Hogan, Leonard Pearlstine. 2010. The South Florida Ecosystem Portfolio Model: A Web-Enabled Multicriteria Land Use Planning Decision Support System. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS): 1-10.

    Bernknopf, Richard L., Sharyl J. M. Rabinovici, Nathan J. Wood, Laura B. Dinitz. 2006. The Influence of Hazard Models on GIS-based Regional Risk Assessments and Mitigation Policies. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management. 6(4/5/6): 369-387.

    Bernknopf, R., T. Smith, A. Wein. 2006. The Effect of Spatially Correlated Failures on Natural Hazard Damage Assessments. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting: abstract #GC43A-04.

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Rachel Bondra

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    Fellow in the Initiative in the History of the Built Environment

    Doctoral Student in City and Regional Planning

    About

    Rachel Bondra is a doctoral student in City and Regional Planning and the inaugural Fellow in the Initiative in the History of the Built Environment at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design. As an historian of the built environment, she studies the social and cultural history of urban environments and planning in the nineteenth and twentieth century United States as they are reflected and embedded in the built environment, discards, and visual and material culture. Her research cultivates a process of reading waste as an avenue through which to understand urban and social transformation. Broadly, she is interested in how the urban landscape is a repository for historical narratives, how waste shapes the planning and management of the modern city, what the histories of landfills and waste facilities convey as a city changes over time, and how—and to what end—planning scholars and practitioners transform these sites for the future.

    Her doctoral work is informed by her background in urban planning (Master of Urban Planning, CUNY Hunter College) and as an art and architectural historian (Bachelor of Arts, Ithaca College). Most recently Rachel was a Research Coordinator within the Office of Community Engagement and Inclusion at Barnard College in New York City where she conducted research with a community partner in the Bronx and supported college-wide infrastructure for engaged scholarship. She has also been a teaching assistant in the Urban Studies Department at Barnard and Columbia for courses including Shrinking Cities, Neighborhood and Community Development, and Crisis Management and Municipal Government. Rachel is interested in public history and digital humanities at the intersection of her work as both an historian and scholar of urban planning.

    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. 

    Emerging Scholar

    Elizabeth Bynum

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    Project Researcher, Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation

    School/Department

    Areas of Interest

      About

      Elizabeth Bynum is a Project Researcher at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation. She received a PhD in Music and Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Elizabeth conducted fieldwork at the Gnaoua and World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco. Through that project, she asked how festival organizers reimagine Morocco’s relationship with other regions in Africa and connect Gnaoua music to its sub-Saharan roots. In graduate school, her research interests have focused on questions of musical preservation in Mexico. Her dissertation project builds on that interest by exploring the conceptual and practical links between environmental and music/cultural conservation in Mexico City. 

      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.

      Faculty Fellow

      Thomas Daniels

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      Professor; Director of Land Use and Environmental Planning Concentration

      About

      Tom Daniels is Professor of City and Regional Planning and Director of the Land Use and Environmental Planning Concentration in the Department of City and Regional Planning in the School of Design. His main areas of interest are farmland preservation, growth management, and the connection between land use and water quality. Daniels often serves as a consultant to state and local governments and land trusts. He lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where for nine years he managed the county’s nationally recognized farmland preservation program. Daniels’ has taught at SUNY-Albany, Kansas State University, and Iowa State University and has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the American Planning Association. In 2002 he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

      Selected Publications

      Daniels, Thomas and John Keene. The Law of Agricultural Land Preservation in the United States. American Bar Association, 2018.

      Daniels, Thomas. 2014. The Environmental Planning Handbook, 2nd edition. APA Planners Press, 2014.

      Daniels, Thomas and Doug Walker. 2011. The Planners Guide to CommunityViz. APA Planners Press.

      Daniels, Tom. 2010. “Integrating Forest Carbon Sequestration Into a Cap-and-Trade Program to Reduce Net CO2 Emissions.” Journal of the American Planning Association 76(4).

      Daniels, Tom. 2009. “A Trail Across Time: American Environmental Planning from City Beautiful to Sustainability.” Journal of the American Planning Association 75(2).

      Daniels, Tom. 1999. When City and Country Collide: Managing Growth in the Metropolitan Fringe. Washington, DC: Island Press.

      Penn IUR Scholar
      Headshot of Lewis DijkstraHeadshot of Lewis Dijkstra

      Lewis Dijkstra

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      About

      Lewis Dijkstra is the Head of the Economic Analysis Sector of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy in the European Commission. He is the editor the Cohesion Report, which analyses economic, social and environmental issues in EU regions and cities. He is also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

      He works closely with the OECD, the UN, the World Bank, the European Environmental Agency, the Joint Research Centre and Eurostat.

      His recent work covers topics such as a global definition of cities and rural areas, measuring transport performance, the geography of EU discontent, quality of government and gender equality.

      He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University, New Jersey, an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Political Science from the University of Ghent, Belgium.

      Selected Publications

      Hugo Poelman, Lewis Dijkstra, and Linde Ackermanss. How Many People Can You Reach by Public Transport, Bicycle or on Foot in European Cities? Measuring Urban Accessibility for Low-Carbon Modes. European Commision. 2020.

      Lewis Dijkstra, Teodora Brandmüller, Thomas Kemper, Arbab Asfandiyar Khan, and Paolo Veneri (eds.). Applying the Degree of Urbanisation: A Methodological Manual to Define Cities, Towns and Rural Areas for International Comparisons. European Commision. 2020.

      Lewis Dijkstra, Hugo Poelman, and Paolo Veneri. The EU-OECD Definition of a Functional Urban Area. European Commission, OECD. 2019.

      Lewis Dijkstra, Aneta Florczyk, Sergio Freire, Thomas Kemper, and Martino Pesaresi. Applying The Degree of Urbanisation to the Globe: A New Harmonised Definition Reveals a Different Picture of Global Urbanisation. OECD. 2018.

      Mert Kompil, Chris Jacobs-Crisioni, Lewis Dijkstra, and Carlo Lavalle. Mapping Accessibility to Generic Services in Europe: A Market-Potential Based Approach. Sustainable Cities and Society. 2018.

      Faculty Fellow

      Karen Glanz

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      George A. Weiss University Professor, Biostatistics and Epidemiology

      Professor of Nursing

      Senior Scholar, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics

      Adjunct Professor, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

      About

      Karen Glanz is George A. Weiss University Professor, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, and Professor of Nursing in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences in the School of Nursing and Senior Scholar, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is Director of the UPenn Prevention Research Center and serves on the NHLBI Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health. Her research seeks to understand health behavior and improve it through education, public policy, and organizational change. A globally influential public health scholar, her work spans psychology, epidemiology, nutrition, and other disciplines. Her research in community and health care settings covers healthy eating, obesity prevention, cancer prevention and control, chronic disease management and control, reducing health disparities, and health communication technologies. She has published more than 440 journal articles and book chapters. Thomson Reuters named her one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015” in general social sciences. The Institute for Scientific Information has named her a Most Highly Cited Researcher. Over the past 15 years, Glanz has received more than $45 million in research funding. 

      Selected Publications

      Cain KL, Gavand KA, Conway TL, Geremia CM, Millstein RA, Frank LD, Saelens BE, Adams MA, Glanz K, King AC, Sallis JF. 2017 (in press). “Developing and validating an abbreviated version of the Microscale Audit for Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS-Abbreviated).” Journal of Transport & Health.

      Wang X, Conway TL, Cain KL, Frank LD, Saelens BE, Geremia C, Kerr J, Glanz K, Carlson JA, Sallis JF. 2017 (in press). “Interactions of psychosocial factors with built environments in explaining adolescents’ active transportation.” Preventive Medicine.

      Carlson JA, Mitchell TB, Saelens BE, Staggs VS, Kerr J, Frank LD, Schipperijn J, Conway TL, Glanz K, Chapman JE, Cain KL, Sallis JF. 2017 (in press). “Within-person associations of young adolescents’ physical activity across five primary locations: Is there evidence of cross-location compensation?” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity.

      James P, Hart JE, Hipp JA, Mitchell JA, Kerr J, Hurvitz PM, Glanz K, Laden F. 2017 (in press). “GPS-based exposure to greenness and walkability and accelerometry-based physical activity.” Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

      Glanz K, Johnson L, Yaroch A, Phillips M, Ayala G, Davis E. 2016. “Measures of Retail Food Store Environments and Sales:  Review and Implications for Healthy Eating Initiatives.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 48: 280-288.

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