Jennifer Minner

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 classes run the youth program Cornell Urban Research to Action – Youth (CURTA-Y). 

Minner’s research, creative practices, and collaborations aim to deepen 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 cofounder and Past President of the MidTexMod of Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement-US (Docomomo-US). She served as a heritage commissioner on the 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 a portfolio in Sustainability. She has a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning from Portland State University, and a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Washington. 

"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?"

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Adaptive reuse
  • Circular economies
  • Cities
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Historic preservation planning
  • Land use/spatial planning
  • Participatory and collaborative planning
  • Planning history
  • Social justice and equity
  • Sustainability
  • Urbanism

Related Links

Related News

Classes (Selected)

  • CRP 3850/5850 Special Topics in Planning (and Preservation): Circular Cities and Research to Action
  • CRP 5530 Land Use and Spatial Planning MethodsThis course provides an introduction to land use planning methods, especially those that are employed by local and regional governments. The course surveys analytical and participatory methods to shape urban form and the built environment in order to achieve more equitable and sustainable communities. Methods include the application scenario planning tools and methods, drafting and applying zoning regulations; creation of comprehensive plans, neighborhood, district and corridor plans; conducting inventories of natural and cultural resources, vacant and buildable lands, and community greenhouse gas; and conducting suitable and susceptibility to change analysis, among other methods. The course incorporates methods of community engagement, as well as methods of analysis. Methods are presented in the context of learning about topics to contemporary spatial planning.
  • CRP 8100 Seminar in Advanced Planning TheoryThis doctorial level seminar creates an academic space for in-depth inquiry into what work planning theories do and how they give shape and depth to advanced social sciences-based scholarship in planning and urban studies. The seminar focuses on critical exploration of intellectual traditions and debates in planning theory including the epistemological and ontological implications of an array of theories of knowledge, society, urban space, and rationality that serve as frameworks and undercurrents in urban studies and planning literature. The aim of this seminar is to help students gain an awareness of their own positionality relative to a wide spectrum of theories and to scaffold intellectual growth and increase the theoretical depth of their own scholarship.
  • Other classes include a wide range of special topics: preservation, place, community memory, social justice and equity, arts, media, technology, and the city.

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

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

  • Upstate Chapter, American Planning Association. Student Project Award for Cornell Undergraduate Research to Action and Circular Cities and Research to Action. Students advised by Jennifer Minner. 2025.

  • Town and Gown Award. CR0WD founding partners. 2024.

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

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

  • U.S. Department of the Interior, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Principal Investigators: Jennifer Minner and Farzin Lotfi-Jam. Preservation within a Full Spectrum of Reuse: Scenario Planning Using Agent-Based Modeling and 3D Visualization to Explore Options to Conserve Embodied Carbon and Preserve History. August 2023–25.

    Mui Ho Center for Cities. Scaling New York State Circular Construction. Leads: Felix Heisel and Jennifer Minner. Policy Design Accelerator Phase I Research Grant. 2023.

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

  • Minner, Jennifer. (2025). Hope in Circulation: Places Where Circularity and Reuse Build Community and Spark Innovation. Keynote for Circularity in the Built Environment conference. Tampere, Finland.
  • Bower, Courtney, Lotfi-Jam, Farzin, Minner, Jennifer S.; Synn, SungHo; Tseng, Hung Ming. Scenario Planning and Agent-Based Modeling to Envision the Circular City: Exploring Urban Development Choices and Carbon Neutral Futures. Computing in Urban Planning and Urban Management. London, UK. June, 2025. 
  • Minner, Jennifer, Poe, Jocelyn, Heisel, Felix, Kopetzky, Ash, Porath, Maya, Worth, Gretchen, Stevenson, Dylan. (2025) Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: A Series of Guides, Workbooks, and Practice Stories about Circularity, Waste, and Land Use Transitions at the International Conference on Urban Affairs. Vancouver, British Columbia.
  • Boghossian, Andrew, Minner, Jennifer, Abduljalil, Najeh, Guba, August, Heisel, Felix. (2025, February) Re-Imagine and Re-Build: Expanding the Toolbox for Youth Engagement and Interest in Reparative, Urban Harvesting. Virtual presentation for 3rd Building Beyond Borders Symposium in Hasselt, Belgium.
  • Abbott, Martin and Minner, Jennifer (2024) The Other City for Sale: Filmic protests to Brisbane as Sold to the World. Presented at Real Estate Agency: Land, Housing, and Finance in Urban and Planning History. Australasian Urban History Planning History conference in Sydney, Australia.
  • Minner, Jennifer. (2023). Embodied Carbon and Embodied Justice? Participatory research on deconstruction, reuse, and the socially just care of places. National Trust for Canada. Ottawa, Canada.

Publications (Selected)

Selected Work

  • a collection of images of construction and houses

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

  • An Aerial view of Binghamton

    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

  • A collection of images of construction and demolition of houses with construction workers wearing hard hats.

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

  • Deconstruction site with backhoe, construction workers, debris and houses in the background.

    Deconstructing Demolition poster. 2022. image / poster created by Wyeth Augustine-Marceil and Melody Chen, Just Places Lab

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