Urban Planning Conference Series University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning November 1, 2013 Helmut Stern Auditorium University of Michigan Museum of Art 9:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Continue the conversation on Twitter using hashtag: #taubmancollege
Sponsors: Urban and Regional Planning Program, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan
Presentations will be available on www.vimeo.com/taubmancollege
overview
can we plan without considering race or difference? As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which outlawed several forms of discrimination in schools, workplaces and in public accommodations and helped extend protection of all citizen’s rights to register to vote — much has changed in the social and political character of the United States. With the first African American president in the White House, our public discourse on race has swung from the highly unlikely to the possible and real. In the weeks and months following President Barack Obama’s landmark election in 2008, a “post-racial” discourse emerged suggesting that his election to the highest office in the free world might mark a long-awaited shift in U.S. race relations. In the five years that have passed since that event, the prospects of a nation overcoming the baggage of slavery and the various forms of historic racist oppression have become a bit dimmer following several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on voting rights, affirmative action, as well as local verdicts on controversial cases such as the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin. Moreover, the wreckage of the 2008 financial collapse, that disproportionately affected low-income and minority communities, has yet to be mitigated. In the 50 years that have passed since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, much has changed within the field and practice of planning. As a field, planning has evolved from a highly technocratic and rational exercise to one that considers the complexity and nuances of race, difference and inequality in the planning process. In addition to increasing the diversity of our field, planners also elected its first person of color to the presidency of the American Planning Association in 2010. Long before then the American Planning Association had evolved to include divisions dedicated to issues related to communities of color, as had other planning-related groups, including planning scholars. This symposium seeks to question the current state of the post-racial discourse and how it may apply to planning practice and thought. In questioning the concept that we may be “beyond race” we see the possibilities of human settlements that are more just, diverse and vibrant in the future. The risk in reaching such conclusions before racial justice has been established is an obfuscation of racial inequality and injustice that are still operating today. A secondary purpose of this symposium is to bring together some of the sharpest minds in the discipline of planning to highlight how existing scholarship can advance the cause of racial justice in cities and human settlements. We also hope to expose those ideas to a new audience of scholars and prospective students who might become the new thought leaders and practitioners who advance justice and equity in their professional practice.
schedule
9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. WELCOME: Monica Ponce de Leon – DEAN, taubman College “ DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE at MICHIGAN” LEster Monts – Senior Vice Provost, University of Michigan “ Diversity in The Planning Profession” Karen Umemoto – Chair, Diversity committee, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. panel 1: Contributions of PEople of Color to Cities and Planning Despite the often-negative images, rhetoric and scholarship that often characterize urban communities of color as chaotic or dangerous, these communities are in fact reflections of histories of survival and adaptation that benefited not only the people within them but also cities and metropolitan areas at large. North American cities and the urban life that fuels them would be far different without the presence of such communities, which have influenced music, food, sports, political leadership, and urban scholarship. Communities of color and their struggles for equality have profoundly affected the field of urban planning and its scholars, particularly in encouraging movement toward social equity and justice, and this has been true since the early twentieth century but most certainly since the 1960s. PANELISTS: William Goldsmith, Sigmund Shipp, Conan Smith, and Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. Moderator: June Manning Thomas 11:45 A.M. – 12:45 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Leonie Sandercock “The Bourgeois Blues: from Leadbelly to Tall Paul. The Colonial Present” 12:45 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. LUNCH UMMA LOBBY 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. panel 2: The context of Planning in 2013: Are we “Post-racial”? Planning is a field of sub-disciplines and specialities that all seek to create order and enhance human settlements through increased economic activity, enhanced housing options, innovative transportation infrastructure, sustainable place-making, environmental stewardship and dynamic physical design. However, planning and the processes that drive it are all inherently political and often reflect our larger social and economic order. If inequities influence the planning process, these inequities will almost always influence planning outcomes. The challenges and questions presented to this panel are: 1) does planning operate in a post-racial society and 2) is that possible or desirable? While the current tenor of race relations in the U.S. might suggest an easy answer to these questions, a more nuanced and constructive discourse is possible. PANELISTS: Lisa Bates, Teresa Córdova, Catherine Ross, and Karen Umemoto Moderator: Harley Etienne
3:15 P.M. – 4:45 P.M. PANEL 3: THE CHAnging Face of Planning With demographic projections predicting a majority-minority United States by the year 2043, the field of planning must consider the task of diversifying quickly enough to better address differences in society and to meet the needs of communities of color. The challenge is two-fold: preparing white planners to understand difference and economic inequality well enough to support the complex needs of diverse communities, and; secondly attracting a talented and diverse generation of students to the field of planning. This panel will consider the obstacles to meeting these challenges and the prospects for the field of planning moving forward. PANELISTS: Malik Goodwin, Clara Irazábal, and Betsy Sweet Moderator: Joe Grengs 4:45 P.M. Concluding Remarks: Richard K. Norton – Urban Planning Program Chair
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 P.M. BREAK
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 P.M. FILM SCREENING and Q&A with Leonie sandercock UMMA HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM FINDING OUR WAY A film by Giovanni Attili and Leonie Sandercock This is a story of a people dispossessed, deep historic wounds, and still unresolved conflict between Indigenous people, governments in Canada and industry. It’s a story of the struggles of two First Nations in the Carrier territory of north central British Columbia (Canada) for land and sovereignty, for healing and revitalization. The Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation (Burns Lake Band) have been in conflict with the Village of Burns Lake over appropriated lands for almost a hundred years, a conflict that culminated in the municipality shutting off water and sewerage services to their Reservation in the year 2000, and the Band taking the Village to the Supreme Court of BC. The Cheslatta Carrier Nation were evicted from their homeland in 1952 by Alcan’s hydroelectric project, and are still struggling to keep their heads above water. This is 21st century Canada, and this is a story with a question mark. After almost a century of apartheid in this region, the film asks: Is there a way forward? 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 P.M. MAP-PY HOUR RECEPTION PENDELTON ROOM (2nd Floor) MICHIGAN UNION
Panelists
LISA K. BATES
Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning Portland State University Lisa K. Bates is associate professor at the Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning of Portland State University. She does research related to housing policy and planning. Her work is particularly focused on social justice issues, including understanding how inequitable outcomes may arise from institutionalized racism in policy design and implementation. Her research also describes how people of color and low-income households make decisions about housing and neighborhoods, given their perceived choices and constraints. As a planner, Dr. Bates engages with space and place as important to the context of decisionmaking and policy-making, and has conducted research in diverse settings, including Chicago, post-Katrina New Orleans, and Portland. In Portland, Dr. Bates has served as the co-lead for the Technical Advisory Group on Equity and Civic Engagement for the Portland Plan and on the Creation Committee for the Office of Equity and Human Rights, which address institutionalized racism in city government. She has participated in the Partnership for Racial Equity, a working group convened by the Urban League of Portland to create a Racial Equity Strategy Guide for public agencies. She was also a co-lead for the Housing and Communities committee of the Greater Portland Pulse, a regional indicators project. Dr. Bates sits on the board of directors of the Portland Housing Center, which is one of the nation’s top homeownership education and counseling organizations. She is currently helping to evaluate the African-American oriented “Getting Your House in Order” course to assess the potential for culturally-specific financial literacy education to affect the racial homeownership and wealth gap. This work includes focus groups to gain insights into African-American attitudes, perceptions, and decisions about finances and homebuying and tracking customer outcomes as they move towards purchasing a home. In the classroom, Dr. Bates helps students move towards making commitments by actively choosing a stance in the world, values, and how to express them through action. She believes this is particularly crucial in the fields of urban planning and community development. Her approach focuses on working with students to recognize implicit values and surface assumptions in defining “wicked problems,” to test their commitments through dialogue, and to work with difference and diversity.
Teresa L. Córdova
Director, Great Cities Institute Professor of Urban Planning and Policy University of Illinois-Chicago Teresa Córdova is the newly appointed Director of UIC’s Great Cities Institute. She is also Professor of Urban Planning and Policy in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). Professor Córdova received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before her appointment as the third permanent Great Cities Director, she was department Chair and Professor of Community and Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Córdova is a former elected official on the Bernalillo County (New Mexico) Board of Commissioners. While a County Commissioner, she served on the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority; The Metropolitan Transportation Board; and was Chair of The Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Government Commission. While Commissioner, she brought needed infrastructure projects and improvements, economic development, amenities such as open space and parks, a medical clinic, youth facilities and various services to her district. She also initiated several long range planning projects. She is founder and former Director of the Resource Center for Raza Planning in the College of Architecture and Planning at UNM. While director, the Center engaged students in research, policy writing and analysis, public participation, design, strategic and sector planning, and curriculum related to issues of economic development, infrastructure (water, sewer, drainage and road improvement), land use, neighborhood stabilization, agricultural preservation and youth development. She was a National Research Council Fellow and has received multiple leadership awards and recognitions for her role in community economic development and infrastructure planning. She has sat on numerous national and local boards and steering committees of community development corporations, planning organizations, policy groups, and campus committees. Professor Córdova is currently President of the Board of Directors of The Praxis Project, a national, nonprofit organization that provides research, technical assistance and financial support to tackle issues impacting the well being of communities. She is currently the elected Secretary of the Governing Board of the Association for Collegiate Schools of Planning, a consortium of university-based programs offering credentials in urban and regional planning.
Harley F. Etienne
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan Harley teaches in the areas of urban community development, inner-city revitalization, neighborhood change, urban poverty, and qualitative research issues in planning. Etienne’s research focuses primarily on the intersection of social institutions and their relationship to processes of urban neighborhood change. He is keenly interested in the role that colleges and universities play in contributing to neighborhood-level change and regional economic development. In 2012, he released, Pushing Back the Gates: Neighborhood Perspectives on University-Driven Change in West Philadelphia on Temple University Press. He is currently finishing Planning Atlanta (with Barbara Faga) on the Planners Press. His current projects include an examination of the role of land tenure policy and land rights in the postearthquake recovery of Port-au-Prince Haiti and an edited volume, Planning Atlanta: Ruins and Resurgence which surveys the history of planning in that city. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Etienne worked in Philadelphia in the public policy and economic development sectors for Greater Philadelphia First (now merged with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce) and the Pennsylvania Economy League where he worked on various policy issues including university-industry partnerships, K-12 school reform, health care access, and welfare policy. Just before coming to the University of Michigan, Etienne taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Public Policy. He earned a B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College in Atlanta, an M.A. in Urban Studies from Temple University and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.
William W. Goldsmith
Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning Cornell University William Goldsmith teaches about the development and structure of cities, and the problems of neighborhoods, suburbs, and peripheries. He studies racial segregation, inequality, and low-density sprawl in U.S. cities and poverty, environmental degradation, regional development, and urbanization in Latin America. He won Fulbright awards to Colombia, Brazil, and Italy. His Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities won the Paul Davidoff award in 1993. A second edition was published in 2010. He is working on a book on new options for US urban policy. He served many years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee. Goldsmith received a B.S.C.E. from the University of California-Berkeley in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1968.
Malik Goodwin
Vice President, Project Development Detroit Economic Growth Corporation As vice president of project management for the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., Malik Goodwin has had a hand in some of the biggest redevelopment efforts in the city. He was the general manager on a number of streetscape improvements in the central business district, which included installing new sidewalks, curbs and gutters, high-efficiency LED street lighting, underground electrical systems, landscaping and irrigation systems — and even decorative banners. Under leadership from Goodwin and others at the DEGC, roughly $38 million in downtown public infrastructure improvements has helped to support nearly $850 million in public and private investments in the central business district since 2002. Goodwin also serves on nonprofit boards such as the Woodward Avenue Action Association and the WARM Training Center. He earned a Masters of Urban Planning from the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.
Joe Grengs
Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Taubman College of Urban and Regional Planning University of Michigan Joe Grengs is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on transportation planning and how metropolitan urban form contributes to uneven economic development and social disparities. His work argues for improving transportation systems by shifting from mobility to accessibility as the primary criterion by which transportation policy is evaluated. His accessibility research includes: showing how the concept of accessibility offers a more effective evaluation tool for advancing social justice than current planning practices; developing a method for making intermetropolitan comparisons of accessibility to offer a basis for advancing policy reform; and explaining why accessibility is experienced differently by race, ethnicity, sex, age, and income. Recent publications include “Job Accessibility and the Modal Mismatch in Detroit” published by the Journal of Transport Geography (2010), and “Intermetropolitan Comparison of Transportation Accessibility: Sorting Out Mobility and Proximity in San Francisco and Washington, DC.” published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research (2010). Grengs is a certified planner and a registered professional engineer with work experience in both the private and public sectors and in international settings. He holds a Bachelor’s of Civil Engineering and Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning degrees from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.
Clara Irazábal
Director, Latin Lab Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (GSAPP) Columbia University in the City of New York Clara Irazábal, Ph.D., is the Latin Lab Director and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, New York. She received a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and has two Masters in Architecture and Urban Design and Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and the Universidad Central de Venezuela, respectively. Irazábal has worked as consultant, researcher, and/or professor in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, and the US; and has lectured in many other countries. Irazábal’s scholarship can be synthesized in two interrelated research questions: What has planning done and what can planning do to serve as an instrument of community emancipation? The former question, what has planning done, uses an empirical methodological approach rooted mainly in qualitative (and often comparative) examination of case studies. The latter question, what can planning do, relies on normative approaches to scholarship composed of explorations into planning theory- and policy-making. She mainly performs these tasks through the examination of exemplary case studies in Latin America and the US, which are undercriticized in the planning literature. Irazábal’s scholarship is motivated by her concern for understanding social justice struggles as these are manifested in processes of transformation of urban space. Implicit or explicit in virtually all planning scholarship is the normative premise that acts of planning should be emancipatory, i.e., they should liberate communities from socio-spatial conditions that oppress them individually and collectively. But the evidence in all too many places is that acts of planning easily become the opposite—oppressive. On that premise, her “what has planning done” research aims to uncover the many guises under which planning does not deliver its emancipatory promise, and instead compounds the disenfranchisement of the subjects upon which it is deployed—a planning paradox. The challenge of her second question, “what can planning do,” seeks to point to ways of overcoming this paradox. Irazábal’s work also explores how markers of minoritized identity (gender, ethnicity, race, age, national origin, dominant language proficiency, ideological and religious affiliations, sexual orientation, etc.) and their intersections with one another are negatively impacted by planning processes, when the supposed mandates of planning urge respect, celebration, and nurturing of diversity. The urgency of this works grows steadily because urban communities around the world (and particularly in the U.S.) are becoming rapidly and increasingly multicultural.
Lester P. Monts
Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Senior Counselor to the President for the Arts, Diversity and Undergraduate Affairs, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Music University of Michigan As the senior vice provost, Monts works with the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs on matters related to budget, tenure and promotion, enrollment, and a broad range of academic issues. He oversees operations of sixteen central administrative units, including five centers and eleven academic service units. Monts has served on the music faculties of Edinboro University, University of Minnesota, Case Western Reserve University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. From 1988 to 1993, he served as dean of undergraduate affairs in the College of Letters and Science, where he directed Santa Barbara’s undergraduate honors program. Monts has focused his scholarly research on the musical and cultural systems among the Vai people of Liberia and is regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars on music and culture in the Guinea coast region of West Africa. His book, Vai Musical Language, is published by the Societe d’Etudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France; it explores Vai folk etymologies related to the intersection between music and other linguistic phenomena. His current research focuses on the influence of Islam on the continuity and change of music in funerary rituals among the Vai. He has published in numerous scholarly journals, such as Anthropos: International Review of Ethnology and Linguistics, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, African Arts, and the Liberian Studies Journal. He has presented his research at the conferences of many national and international learned societies, including the Society for Ethnomusicology, the African Studies Association, and American Anthropological Association. A professional trumpeter, Monts has performed with numerous orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Barbara Symphony and the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra. He also served as principal trumpet for the Allegheny Summer Music Festival and the Music Festival of Arkansas. Monts has memberships in the African Studies Association, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Liberian Studies Association and the College Music Society. He is the past chair of the governing board of the University of Michigan International Institute, a member of the governing board and research associate of the International Centre for African Music and Dance and a member of the Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and a past member of the visiting committee for the department of music at Harvard University. He is chair of the College Board’s board of trustees. His former roles with the College Board have included service to the Academic Assembly Council as Midwestern regional representative and chair.
Richard K. Norton
Program Chair and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan Richard K. Norton is an associate professor in the urban and regional planning program. He serves as chair of the program, as well as faculty coordinator for the land use and environmental planning concentration for the Master of Urban Planning degree. He also holds a joint appointment as associate professor with the University of Michigan’s Program in the Environment, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. He earned his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and his J.D. with honors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also holds Master Degrees in Public Policy Studies and Environmental Management from Duke University. Dr. Norton teaches and conducts research in the areas of sustainable development, land use and environmental planning, and planning law. He is interested in local governance for land use and development management, particularly as it relates to the theory and practice of urban and regional planning for sustainable development. He contributes actively to the Michigan Association of Planning (MAP) by serving on its planning law committee. Through those efforts he has taken the lead in preparing draft legislation for the Michigan Legislature to reform the state’s planning and zoning enabling laws, including reforms adopted by the Legislature in 2006 and 2008. He has also written amicus curiae appellate briefs to the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court on behalf of the American Planning Association and MAP regarding planning and zoning disputes in the state. Prior to completing his graduate studies, Dr. Norton worked in professional practice as a consulting environmental policy analyst and planner in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, California.
Monica Ponce de Leon
Dean and Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan President, Monica Ponce de Leon Studio Monica Ponce de Leon was appointed Dean and Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning of University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in September 2008. In 1991 she co-founded Office dA and in 2011 launched her own design practice, Monica Ponce de Leon Studio. Dean Ponce de Leon received a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1989 from the University of Miami and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1991. She joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty in 1996, where she was a Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Digital Lab. She has also held teaching appointments at Northeastern University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design, and Georgia Institute of Technology among others. She has received honors from the Architectural League of New York (Young Architects Award, 1997, and Emerging Voices, 2003) the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Award in Architecture, 2002), the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (National Design Award in Architecture, 2007), and the United States Artists (Target Fellows in Architecture and Design). Her practice has received over 60 design awards including the AIA’s Institute Honor Award for Architecture (Macallen Building, 2010), Wallpaper Design Awards Best New Restaurant (Banq, 2009), the AIA/LA Design Award (Helios House, 2007), the AIA/ALA Library Building Award (Fleet Library at RISD, 2007), the AIA/Committee on the Environment’s Top Ten Green Projects (Macallen Building, 2008), five I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review Awards and twelve Progressive Architecture Awards.
Catherine L. Ross
Director, Center for Quality Growth and Development Harry L. West Professor of City and Regional Planning College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Catherine Ross is an internationally recognized expert on transportation systems planning, urban planning and quality growth. She has extensive experience in both the public and private sector and directs Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD) where she also serves as serves as Harry West Professor and Advance Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning in the College of Architecture. She is a member of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and past president of the National Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). Dr. Ross has served on numerous National Academies committees including the Transportation Research Board Executive Committee, University Transportation Centers Program and on the board of directors of the ENO Transportation Foundation. She earned a Masters Degree and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and completed post-doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley. She has conducted research for numerous governmental agencies, foundations and the private sector. In July 2009, Dr. Ross was selected to advise the Obama Administration on the first-ever White House Office of Urban Affairs. She is the editor of Megaregions: Planning for Global Competitiveness (Island Press, 2009) and the co-author of The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century (1997). Dr. Ross has conducted research on transportation and urban planning and how to make cities, neighborhoods and regions safer, healthier places for all to live. She is the author of numerous articles, books, research reports and media publications including the Wall Street Journal, Urban Land Institute, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and speaks regularly to national and international forums.
Leonie Sandercock
Professor of Community and Regional Planning University of British Columbia Leonie Sandercock joined the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia in 2001 after teaching at UCLA and the University of Melbourne. Her focus now is in working with First Nations, through collaborative community planning, using the medium of film as a catalyst for dialogue, on the possibilities of healing, reconciliation, and partnership for social and economic development. Other research interests include the possibilities of a more therapeutic model of planning; the importance of stories and storytelling in planning theory and practice; and the role of multimedia in planning. She received the Davidoff Award (2005) from the American Collegiate Schools of Planning, for the best book in the field of urban, regional, and community planning, for Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century; the BMW Group Award for Intercultural Learning for her writing on Cosmopolitan Urbanism and my film Where strangers become neighbours (2007). In 2012 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for lifetime contribution to planning scholarship by Roskilde University in Denmark.
Sigmund Shipp
Associate Professor of Urban Planning Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY) Sigmund C. Shipp currently is the director of the undergraduate urban studies program. Under his supervision, the program has expanded to a 30 credit program with new offerings that include an urban studies workshop, quantitative analysis, and a structure internship program. His teaching has been far reaching and has included Urban Policies and Plans, Planning Economic Development, Citizen Participation, and the Urban Development Workshop. His research has ranged from a focus on worker-owned cooperatives, urban renewal, and neighborhood development in the African-American community to his current study of white poverty. His funded research has included support from the Ford and Anne E. Casey Foundations. He played a principal role in developing urban studies as a major for CUNY’s New Community College and helped convene Erasing Boundaries, a national conference on service learning in America, held at Hunter. He has served as a member of the IRB and the Pre-Health Committees at Hunter and was most recently invited to be a board member of the Martin Luther King Community Health Center — a subsidiary of the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital. He most recently developed the department’s first undergraduate/ graduate course that focuses on issues of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation in urban areas.
Conan Smith
Executive Director, Michigan Suburbs Alliance, Inc. Conan Smith is the third generation of public servants in his family. His wife, Rebekah Warren currently serves in the state Senate. His mother, Alma Wheeler Smith, represented parts of Washtenaw County as a County Commissioner and in the Michigan state Senate and House of Representatives. His aunt, Nancy Francis, is a Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge. His grandfather, Albert Wheeler was Ann Arbor’s first African American mayor. Commissioner Smith earned his B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Michigan’s Residential College and served as a speech writer on the Democratic staff of the Michigan Speaker of the House. He directed land programs with the Michigan Environmental Council for six years before becoming the executive director at the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of city governments focused on intergovernmental cooperation. He also represents the north and west sides of Ann Arbor on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners. An ardent environmentalist, Conan is a nationally recognized leader on land use, transportation and energy issues. He has served on the board of directors for Smart Growth America and remains a National Fellow in the Environmental Leadership Program. In 2009, he was honored by the state’s Clean Cities Coalitions as with their Michigan Clean Transportation Community Leader Award. Recognizing the increasing importance of energy policy to global economic and environmental sustainability, Conan has been appointed by Governors Rick Snyder and Jennifer Granholm to serve on the Michigan Utility Consumer Participation Board, which supports interventions in public utility rate cases to protect residential consumer interests. He also serves as the founding Board President of Michigan Saves, a statewide nonprofit established by the Michigan Public Service Commission to finance energy efficiency projects; as Board Treasurer of the Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office, a nonprofit collaboration of more than 20 local governments supporting renewable energy and energy efficiency policy and projects; and on the executive committee of Climate Communities, a national coalition of cities and counties that is educating federal policymakers about the essential role of local governments in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Conan believes that efforts to restore our communities’ prosperity should focus on economic opportunity across the full spectrum of work and job creation. He is a member of the Ann Arbor SPARK board of directors, a regional nonprofit economic development agency; an appointee to the Washtenaw Workforce Development Board; and represents local government officials as a member of the board of the Michigan Workforce Development Association.
Betsy Sweet
Visiting Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Geography and Urban Studies Temple University Elizabeth L. Sweet received her B.A. from Boston University in Soviet and East European Studies and her Masters in Urban Planning and Policy and her Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Illinois Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary critical scholar focusing on a triad of relationships between economies, identity, and violence (all broadly conceived). Her scholarship examines the role of planning and policy in the production and reproduction of social, economic, and spatial inequalities, particularly in Latino and Indigenous communities. Dr. Sweet comparatively studies Russia, Mexico, Colombia and U.S. populations and the complicated relationships between gender, citizenship, race, violence, economic opportunities and workforce development. For the last two summers, she has been conducting research in MedellĂn, Colombia with internally displaced women about food security and gender violence in the context of the long-standing civil war. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The George Soros Civic Education Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Scholars Program, the Illinois Department of Human Services, The Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society, The Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy, Catholic Charities for Human Development, and Temple University-Faculty Senate.
Henry Louis Taylor, Jr.
Founding Director, University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies Professor of Urban and Regional Planning University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY) Professor Taylor is an internationally known scholar, founding Director of the University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies (CENTER), and a full professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning at UB. Dr. Taylor is also the coordinator of the department’s Community Development and Urban Management Specialization. He teaches courses in race, class, and gender in the city and in community development and urban management. Professor Taylor is the editor of three books and a monograph and the author of a forthcoming book on neighborhood development in Havana, Cuba. He has written more than 80 articles, book reviews, commentaries, and technical reports on urban and regional planning, has appeared on ABC Nightline and has been quoted in numerous national publications, including the New York Times, USA Today, and Time Magazine. Dr. Taylor has made presentations at a number leading universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Ohio State University, the University of Cincinnati, and the Universidad de la Habana. Professor Taylor has received numerous awards for his research and neighborhood planning activities. Business First twice named him one of the 100 Most Influential Leaders in Western New York and he has received the Alpha Award from the Amherst, NY Chamber of Commerce. In 2001, along with Professor Sam Cole, he won the Fannie Mae Foundation Award for the best practice based paper at the American Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference and in 2005; he received the Distinguished Leadership Professional Planner Award from the American Planning Association, New York Upstate Chapter. Most recently, the Black Community Division of the American Planning Association gave him a Certificate of Appreciation for his work with the division’s Task Force on Hurricane Katrina. TIME Magazine selected his quote on Americans losing sight of Martin Luther King, Jr. dream in its best quotes -of-the-week section on January 30, 2008. As an urban planner, Dr. Taylor participates in projects on brownfield redevelopment, economic development, and neighborhood planning and community development. In 2005, he received the prestigious HUD Community Outreach Partnership Grant to launch a community development project in the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods. He is directing a major community outreach component of a New York State Brownfield Opportunity Area project in the City of Niagara Falls.
June Manning Thomas
Centennial Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan In 2003 she was inducted as a Fellow in the American Institute of Certified Planners. She is the current President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (2013-15). Her books include the co-edited Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows (Sage, 1996); Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, second edition Wayne State University Press, 2013); Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (Association for Baha’i Studies, 1999); the co-edited, Margaret Dewar and June Thomas, The City after Abandonment (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), as well as many articles and book chapters. Her work in progress includes the co-edited, June Thomas and Henco Bekkering, Mapping Detroit: Evolving Land Use Patterns and Connections (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2014), and ongoing research on both the aftermath of the foreclosure process in Detroit and the social equity dimensions of urban planning. Thomas writes about diversification of the planning profession, planning history, and social equity in neighborhoods and urban revitalization. Recent research assessed the role of minority-race planners in the quest for a just city, explored the relationship between the concept of social equity and the civil rights movement, and examined the land-use reactions of community organizations to vacant land in Detroit. She is the recipient of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning 1999 Paul Davidoff Award for her book Redevelopment and Race. She previously was a professor at Michigan State University, where she developed statewide initiatives to link urban planning services on campus with community development needs in Michigan cities. She and her husband are active members of the Bahá’í Faith, a belief system which has fueled their professional interests in promoting racial and international unity.
Karen Umemoto
Professor of Urban and Regional Planning University of Hawai’i at Manoa Karen received her doctorate from MIT in urban studies and her master’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA. Her research focuses on issues of planning and governance in a multicultural society, community development, and youth violence. Her book, “The Truce: Lessons from an LA Gang War” (Cornell University Press, 2006), examined responses among “multiple publics” to a case of gang violence in Los Angeles. Representative journal publications include: “Deliberative planning in a multicultural milieu,” “Walking in another’s shoes: Epistemological challenges in participatory planning,” and “Essential Elements for Community Engagement in Evidence-based Youth Violence Prevention.” She serves on the Governing Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the editorial boards of Planning Theory, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, AAPI Nexus, and Journal of Indigenous Community Development.
notes
Acknowledgements
The organizers of the symposium would like to thank the following individuals, departments and firms for their cooperation and assistance in organizing this event:
Our invited speakers and prospective students Rackham School of Graduate Studies The Faculty and Students of the Urban and Regional Planning Program Urban Planning Student Association American Studies Program, LS&A, University of Michigan Trotter Multicultural House, University of Michigan University of Michigan Art Museum AGORA Student Journal Editorial Board Dean Monica Ponce de Leon Lester Monts Aja Bonner Kanika Holt Laura Brown Liz Momblanco Jeanette Turner Deniz McGee Janice Harvey Cristina Sanchez Bryan Ranallo Guerda Harris & Staff at the Back Alley Gourmet Bell Tower Inn Ross School of Business Conference Center
taubmancollege.umich.edu/postracialplanning