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Faculty Fellow

Francesca Ammon

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Associate Professor

About

Francesca Russello Ammon is an Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning and Historic Preservation at the School of Design. As a cultural historian of the built environment, her teaching, research, and writing focus on the changing shapes and spaces of the 20th- and 21st-century American city. She grounds her interdisciplinary approach to this subject on the premise that the landscape materializes social relations, cultural values, and economic processes. In particular, she is interested in the ways that visual culture informs planning and design, the dynamic relationships between cities and nature, and the politics of place and space. 

Before joining the School of Design faculty, Ammon was a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has also held the Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship, jointly sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). While completing her Ph.D. in American Studies, she held long-term fellowships as a Whiting Fellow in the Humanities, Ambrose Monell Foundation Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and John E. Rovensky Fellow with the Business History Conference.

For the past year and a half, Ammon has been a Researcher on the Mellon Foundation-funded project on “Photography and/of Architecture” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. She is also currently a colloquium member of the Penn/Mellon Foundation Humanities + Urbanism + Design Initiative, and she is a recent past fellow of Penn’s Price Lab for Digital Humanities. 

Ammon is on the board of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH).

Selected Publications

Ammon, Francesca Russello. 2016. Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ammon, Francesca Russello. 2015. “Post-Industrialization and the City of Consumption: Attempted Revitalization in Asbury Park, New Jersey.” Journal of Urban History 41(2): 158-174.

Ammon, Francesca Russello. 2012. “Unearthing Benny the Bulldozer: The Culture of Clearance in Postwar Children’s Books.” Technology and Culture 53(2): 306-336.

Ammon, Francesca Russello. 2009. “Commemoration Amid Criticism: The Mixed Legacy of Urban Renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C.” Journal of Planning History 8(3): 175-220.

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

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. 

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. 

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.

Emerging Scholar

Caroline Cheong

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Former Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Central Florida

About

Caroline Cheong is a former assistant professor in the History Department at the University of Central Florida. Her research focuses on the relationship between urban heritage conservation and economic development, values-based conservation management, conservation economics and poverty reduction. She earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in City and Regional Planning, her MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and her BS in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. She was a US/ICOMOS International Exchange Intern in Al Houson, Jordan and a Graduate Intern at the Getty Conservation Institute where she evaluated the challenges and opportunities facing historic cities.  Previously, Caroline was the Director of Research for Heritage Strategies International and PlaceEconomics through which she published numerous research reports and professional publications focusing on the economic impacts of historic preservation with Donovan Rypkema.

Selected Publications

Macdonald, Susan and Caroline Cheong. The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Conserving Heritage Buildings, Sites and Historic Urban Areas: A Literature Review. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 2014

Cheong, Caroline. Instruments for urban regeneration: Mixed-capital companies. (2014). Manuscript submitted for publication. Prepared for Eduardo Rojas.

Cheong, Caroline. Creative Cities and Place. (2013). Manuscript submitted for publication. Prepared for Donovan Rypkema, Erasmus University and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands.

Cheong, Caroline. Cruise Ship Tourism: Issues and Trends. Prepared for the World Monuments Fund for “Harboring Tourism: A Symposium on Cruise Ships in Historic Port Communities,” 2012.

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.

Affiliated PhD Student

Joshua Davidson

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Doctoral Student, City and Regional Planning

About

Joshua Davidson is a doctoral student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Josh's research focuses on transportation equity and geography. He is currently conducting a mixed-methods study of how public transit users learn about and ultimately change their route choices, in addition to developing a project that models the ways that residential displacement impacts commute time. Josh has previously published work on the equity factors facing the reverse commuting population. He holds a BA in English from Oberlin College and a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a Research Specialist at Brandeis University, applying advanced quantitative methods to the study of the demography and sociology of the American Jewish Community. Josh is a recipient of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, during which time he conducted research on the geography of pilgrimage sites in the periphery of the country. Josh grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Selected Publications

Davidson, J., Feiglin, I. and Ryerson, M. (2021). “Spatially-Oriented Data, Methods, and Models to Plan Transit for Reverse Commuters,” Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 100 (November). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.103051.

Davidson, J., and Ryerson, M. (2021). “Modeling Regional Disparity and the Reverse Commute.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 150 (August): 124–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2021.06.005.

Ryerson, M.., Long, C., Fichman, M., Davidson, J., Scudder, K., Kim, M., Katti, R., Poon, G., & Harris, M. (2021). “Evaluating cyclist biometrics to develop urban transportation safety              metrics.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2021.106287

Ryerson, M., Long, C., Davidson, J., and Boggan, C. (2021). “New Rules for Old Roads: Updated safety methodologies can protect cyclists, walkers, and scooter riders on urban streets designed for cars,” Issues in Science and Technology 37, 2 (Winter): 26-30.

Davidson, J., and Ryerson, M. “Building Reverse Commute Typologies through Urban and Suburban Socioeconomic Characteristics.” Cities 81 (November 2018): 180–89. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2018.04.007.

Affiliated PhD Student

Stephanie Fenniri

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Doctoral Student, City and Regional Planning

About

Stephanie Rivera Fenniri is a doctoral student in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. Prior to her doctoral studies, Stephanie worked for more than 10 years as a nonprofit professional and social impact strategist. She has experience developing and implementing initiatives to promote the improved quality of life for diverse populations, and has a consistent record of nonprofit capacity building through community innovations, social impact, and public service. At Penn, Stephanie has co-instructed a graduate nonprofit leadership course on Social Impact Measurement, and served as a teaching fellow in the Center for Social Impact Strategy for four years. Stephanie holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, and Master of Public Administration in International Administration and Development from the University of Texas at Arlington College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs. In May 2019, Stephanie was the recipient of the University of Pennsylvania's Excellence in Social Impact Award.

Selected Publications

Ha, Y., McDonald, N., Hersh, S., Fenniri, S., Hillier, A., & Cannuscio, C. (2020). Using Informational Murals and Handwashing Stations to Increase Access to Sanitation among People Experiencing Homelessness during the COVID-19 Pandemic. American Journal of Public Health.  no. (): pp. e1-e3. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305961

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).

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.

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