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Jennifer Minner

  • Associate Professor
  • Director, Just Places Lab
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Contact

Academic Research Areas

  • Adaptive reuse
  • Architectural theory
  • Drawing
  • Incremental design
  • Infrastructure
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Photography
  • Circularity
  • Circular economy

Jennifer Minner, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She directs the Just Places Lab, a platform for research and creative action on how communities care for, preserve, reuse, repair, remember, and imagine places. Minner’s research investigates urban change and memory in a variety of contexts and media, from research on building circular cities through preservation and material reuse; to the spatial footprints and social legacies of mega-events (e.g., World Expos and the Olympic Games); to future land use scenarios and spatial analytics; to the reflections of the city in art and film.  Minner cofounded the Circularity, Reuse, and Zero Waste Development (CR0WD) network. Student researchers in her lab and in her classes run the youth program Cornell Urban Research to Action – Youth (CURTA-Y).

Minner’s research, creative practices, and collaborations are aimed at deepening the social impacts of historic preservation. Minner’s research is informed by leadership experience in preservation. She served as a member of the Expert Advisory Committee for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. She chaired the City of Olympia, Washington’s Heritage Commission. She is a co-founder and Past President of the MidTexMod of Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement-US (Docomomo-US). She served as a heritage commissioner on City of Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Dr. Minner holds a Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in historic preservation and portfolio in Sustainability. She holds a Master in Urban and Regional Planning from Portland State University, and a B.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Washington.

Woman with blond hair and glasses in a black cardigan

Academic Research Areas

  • Adaptive reuse
  • Architectural theory
  • Drawing
  • Incremental design
  • Infrastructure
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Photography
  • Circularity
  • Circular economy
  • Drone image of city with brick red buildings
  • Collaged cover page of a white paper depicting construction, maps, and people with teal accents
  • Infographic of New York state illustrating the circular economy of construction

A still image from Circular Visions: Binghamton through the eyes of youth, a video by Chengyu Wang, Jennifer Minner, and students in Circular Cities and Research to Action class. image / provided

Cover image by Medha Kulkarni (M.R.P. ’25), Just Places Lab. Report by Minner, Jennifer; Poe, Jocelyn; Heisel, Felix; Kopetzky, Ash; Porath, Maya; and Worth, Gretchen. 2024. image / Dreaming on Hudson poster created by Kellen Cooks (B.S. URS ’23) and Wyeth Augustine-Marceil (M.R.P. ’24), Just Places Lab.

Cover of the white paper “Constructing a Circular Economy in New York State: Deconstruction and Building Material Reuse.”

In my research on creative place-keeping and circular cities, I ask: How can city planning and preservation engage with material care for the built environment while advancing more equitable communities and just places?

Publications

Classes

  • Circular Urban Research Workshop (Land Use, Environmental Planning, and Urban Design Workshop)

    CRP 3072/5072

  • Circular Cities and Research to Action

    CRP 3850/5850

  • Land Use and Spatial Planning Methods

    CRP 5530

  • Special Topics in History and Preservation: Mega-Events and City Media

    CRP 6690

  • Seminar in Advanced Planning Theory

    CRP 8100

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • Preservation League of New York State

    An Analysis of Preservation Trades in New York State. Jennifer Minner and John Carruthers.
    2025

  • Faculty Instructor, Student Project Award

    Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association. Cornell Undergraduate Research to Action and Circular Cities and Research to Action.
    2025

  • Town-Gown Award

    Town-Gown Award from Cornell University to members of the Circularity Reuse and Zero Waste Development network including Just Places Lab.
    2024

  • Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance

    Jennifer Minner, Jocelyn Poe, Felix Heisel, Gretchen Worth. “Embodied Carbon and Embodied Justice: An Initial Framework” and “Phase II of Embodying Justice in the Built Environment.
    2023–25

  • Historic Ithaca

    Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Jennifer Minner, and Courtney Bower. Partnering organization: Historic Ithaca. “Community-based Model-building and Institutional Choices: Agent-based Modeling to Understand Decision-Making Along a Spectrum of Building Reuse and Climate Action to Demolition and Waste.”
    2024–25

  • 2030 Fast Grant

    Felix Heisel, Jennifer Minner, Lori Lenard, and Denise Ramzy. Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Cornell University. 2030 Fast Grant. “Building a NYS Circular Construction Economy: A Policy Action Plan.”
    November 2023–December 2024

Selected Exhibitions and Presentations

  • Hope in Circulation: Places Where Circularity and Reuse Build Community and Spark Innovation.

    Minner, Jennifer. (2025). Keynote for Circularity in the Built Environment conference. Tampere, Finland.

  • Scenario Planning and Agent-Based Modeling to Envision the Circular City: Exploring Urban Development Choices and Carbon Neutral Futures.

    Bower, Courtney; Lotfi-Jam, Farzin; Minner, Jennifer S.; Synn, SungHo; Tseng, Hung Ming. Computing in Urban Planning and Urban Management. London, UK. June, 2025.

  • Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: A Series of Guides, Workbooks, and Practice Stories about Circularity, Waste, and Land Use Transitions

    Minner, Jennifer; Poe, Jocelyn; Heisel, Felix; Kopetzky, Ash; Porath, Maya; Worth, Gretchen; and Stevenson, Dylan. (2025) International Conference on Urban Affairs in Vancouver, British Columbia.

  • Re-Imagine and Re-Build: Expanding the Toolbox for Youth Engagement and Interest in Reparative, Urban Harvesting

    Boghossian, Andrew; Minner, Jennifer; Abduljalil, Najeh; Guba, August; and Heisel, Felix. (2025) Virtual presentation for 3rd Building Beyond Borders Symposium in Hasselt, Belgium.

  • The Other City for Sale: Filmic Protests to Brisbane as Sold to the World

    Abbott, Martin; and Minner, Jennifer. (2024) Presented at “Real Estate Agency: Land, Housing and Finance in Urban and Planning History,” Australasian Urban History Planning History Conference in Sydney, Australia.

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