Penn IUR Honors Leaders In Urban Affairs At the Seventh Annual Urban Leadership Forum

PHILADELPHIA - - The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) hosts the 7th Annual Urban Leadership Forum, “Building the Sustainable Community,” to celebrate exemplary leaders who are guiding cities toward a sustainable and vibrant future. The Penn IUR Urban Leadership Award is awarded annually to urban leaders who have made outstanding contributions to urban scholarship and to building cities that successfully respond to the challenges of the 21st Century. This year’s awardees are Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Henry Cisneros, Executive Chairman, Cityview, and former Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Jane Golden, Executive Director, City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program; and John Timoney, former Miami Chief of Police and author, From Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities. Their past accomplishments and forward thinking are paving the way forward for today’s cities to be global leaders in building sustainable communities.

Raphael Bostic was sworn in as HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research on July 16, 2009, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. As a key member of HUD’s senior leadership, he is the principal advisor to the secretary on overall departmental policy, program evaluations, demonstrations and research. He leads a multidisciplinary team of economists, analysts, engineers, architects and social scientists, and oversees the Department’s sustainability policy research initiatives.

Henry Cisneros is Executive Chairman of the CityView companies, which work with the nation’s leading homebuilders to create homes priced within the reach of average families. CityView is a partner in building 40 communities in 12 states. In 1981, Cisneros became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. The scholarly study The American Mayor ranked Cisneros one of the nation’s 15 best mayors of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1992, President Clinton appointed Cisneros as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a member of President Clinton’s cabinet, Cisneros initiated the revitalization of many of the nation’s public housing developments and formulated policies which helped lead to the nation’s highest ever homeownership rate.

Jane Golden is Executive Director of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program. Since the program began in 1984 as a component of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, Jane Golden has been its driving force, overseeing its growth from a small city agency into the nation’s largest mural program, a catalyst for positive social change and a model for community development across the country and around the globe. Under Golden’s direction, in partnership with communities, grassroots organizations, city agencies, schools and philanthropies, the Mural Arts Program has created more than 3,000 landmark works of public art, earning Philadelphia international recognition as the “City of Murals.”

John Timoney was appointed Chief of Police of the Miami Police Department on January 2, 2003. Prior to that, he served four years as the police commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, where he commanded a diverse police force of approximately 7,000 officers and more than 900 civilian employees in the fifth-largest metropolitan city in the United States. The majority of his career, 29 years, was spent in the New York City Police Department, where he rose through the ranks to become the youngest four-star chief in the history of that department.

Penn IUR is proud to honor the work of these exceptional urban leaders in its annual Urban Leadership Forum. Past award recipients include Mayor Shirley Franklin, City of Atlanta, GA; Parris Glendening, President, Smart Growth Leadership Institute, and former Governor, Maryland; Bruce Katz, Vice President and Founding Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution; and William Hudnut III, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Urban Land Institute, and former Mayor, Indianapolis, IN.