Student Profile

In the spring semester of my junior year abroad with the AAP in Rome program, I had the opportunity to team up with two of my URS classmates and study the small neighborhoods around the historic Via del Mandrione. Porta Furba, Tor Pignattara, Vigne, and Marrana represent the various urban fabrics that exist simultaneously in Rome. The Rome Workshop gave my team the opportunity to study and understand the social, economic and historic networks at play in Via del Mandrione. One week we were interviewing residents (a highlight was one very large, friendly family from Naples), the next week we were surveying the neighborhoods' architectural heritage. (CRP 4160: Rome Workshop)
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B.S. URS 2012

rms337@cornell.edu

Though he was born in New Orleans, and still calls her home, Ryan has lived in many other major cities around the country, including San Francisco, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, and Philadelphia. He attributes his fascination with cities to having had the opportunity to become acquainted with such a wide variety of urban places. However, his interest in studying cities and urban places was first sparked when he witnessed the destruction that transformed the landscape of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Ryan’s studies revolve around resilient and sustainable urban forms in an age of rapid climate change, natural disasters, and population growth. He chose Urban and Regional Studies at Cornell because he wanted to gain a solid foundation in how various urban systems work simultaneously to create the environments that we live in. Ryan spent his junior year spring semester abroad with AAP's Cornell in Rome program, studying public housing redevelopment, the historic Via del Mandrione area, and community action and guerrilla urban farming in green infrastructure in Rome. He spent the summer between his junior and senior years studying sustainable food systems in Utica and Oneida County, New York with the Rust to Green organization.