CRP’s Nancy Brooks and Kieran Donaghy completed their book, The Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning, this summer. The book will be available in December, and was coedited by Gerrit-Jan Knaap of the University of Maryland. The essays in this volume aim to bridge the historical gap between urban planning and urban economics by exploring the common interest in some of today’s most pressing urban problems. The authors explore topics including the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and environmental uses.
Preserving the Textile Block at Florida Southern College, a report written by Jeffrey Chusid, associate professor of historic preservation, is now available online. The text was written for the World Monuments Fund and details the history of development of concrete textile block construction in the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. The buildings of the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, are the focus of the publication, which can be found at http://www.wmf.org.
In June, John Forester, professor in CRP, gave several invited lectures in Helsinki to the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and the urban planning program at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (YTK) at Aalto University. He also participated in sessions of the Nicis International Scientific Review Committee in Den Haag, The Netherlands.
In the spring of 2011, Ann Forsyth, professor of city and regional planning, conducted sabbatical research on suburbs. She was a visiting scholar at the School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada; the Tianjin Institute for Urban Construction; and the University of Leeds. In addition, she recently published several coauthored articles in the areas of sustainable and healthy communities. These articles include: “Compactness and Connection in Environmental Design: Insights from Ecoburbs and Ecocities for Design with Nature” in Environment and Planning (B 38, 2:267–288); “Urban Design: Is There a Distinctive View from the Bicycle?” in Journal of Urban Design (16, 4:531–549); and “Accelerometer Test-Retest Reliability by Data Processing Algorithms: Results from the Twin Cities Walking Study” in Journal of Physical Activity and Health (8:668–674). In addition, she published chapters on “Planned Communities and New Towns” in The Routledge Companion to Urban Design and “Connectivity: Street Patterns and Social Networks” in the Encyclopedia of Quality of Life Research.
George R. Frantz, visiting lecturer in CRP, spent June in Shanghai, China, where he worked with the faculty of the landscape architecture department at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) on a study of agricultural tourism development in the Shanghai metropolitan region. The study aims to assess the existing state of agricultural tourism in the region, and to develop recommendations for municipal and regional policy makers. Frantz also presented lectures on professional planning practice in the U.S., and on the protection of environmental and historic resources in New York. In August, Frantz assisted with teaching the second Cornell University/SJTU Landscape Architecture seminar. The program brought nine third and fourth-year landscape architecture students and two faculty members from SJTU to New York City and Ithaca. The SJTU students joined URS and landscape architecture students on tours of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston led by Peter Trowbridge and Kathryn Gleason from landscape architecture. The students also worked on designs for redeveloping the Gansevoort Plaza area in Chelsea, Manhattan.
Assistant Professor Stephan Schmidt won an Academic Venture Fund award from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) for his project Property Formalization and the Role of Technology in Tanzania. The project examines the possibilities and obstacles for using geographic information systems in formalizing and incorporating customary tenure in Tanzania, and also examines the role of technology in the development process. The awards, which were designed to stimulate original, cross-disciplinary research in sustainability science, were given to 10 interdisciplinary projects, and totaled over $700,000.
Four members of the Cornell in Rome faculty presented during the 2011 Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico (Biennial of Public Space) organized by the Italian National Institute of Urban Planning. The Cornell in Rome program cosponsored the event, which took place in May. Gregory Smith, visiting critic for the Department of City and Regional Planning in Rome, codirected a session on the history of public space in Rome, and also led a session on teaching urban studies workshops. Other members of the Cornell in Rome faculty who made presentations at the biennial include Professor Porus Olpadwala, Visiting Critic Jan Gadeyne, and Visiting Critic Lila Yawn.
