Jennifer Minner

Jennifer Minner, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies 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 climate action and 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 and mentors the Cornell Undergraduate Research to Action-Youth (CURTA-Y) club. She is affiliated with the fields of City and Regional Planning, Regional Science, and Media Studies (Graduate Minor) and serves on the faculty advisory board of Cornell Cinema. Dr. Minner holds a Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning from Portland State University, and a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Washington.

Related Links

• Just Places Lab

Related News

• Town-Gown Awardees Foster Business, Community, Sustainability
• Building Deconstruction, Reuse Would Benefit NYS Jobs, Climate
• The Seine River is Set to Reopen for Swimming After 100 Years, Its Cursed Clean-Up is a Lesson for Future Olympics
• Community Engagement Awards Honor Exceptional People, Projects 
• The Paris Olympics' Seine River Plan is Bold, Audacious … and Risky

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)

• Town and Gown Award. CR0WD founding partners. 2024.
• Climate Neutral Cities Alliance. Jennifer Minner, Jocelyn Poe, Felix Heisel, Gretchen Worth. "Embodied Carbon and Embodied Justice: An Initial Framework". 2023–2024.
• Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Cornell University. 2030 [Fast Grant. Building a NYS Circular Construction Economy: A Policy Action Plan]. Felix Heisel, Jennifer Minner, Lori Lenard, Denise Ramzy. November 2023–December 2024.
• [U.S. Department of the Interior, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, grant]. 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–August 2025.
• Mui Ho Center for Cities. Scaling New York State Circular Construction: Leads: Felix Heisel and Jennifer Minner. [Policy Design Accelerator Phase I. 2023 Research grant.]

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• 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.
• Presentation of Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: Circularity in Practice for Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. (2024) Presenters: Jocelyn Poe, Jenni Minner, Felix Heisel, and Gretchen Worth.
• 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.
• Waste(d) Imagination Tour. (2023) A Walking Tour created by Just Places Lab and Historic Ithaca for Circularity, Reuse, and Zero Waste Development (CR0WD) network
• Deconstructing Demolition. (2022: May 11–September 3). Exhibition at the Tompkins Center for History and Culture. Cocurated by Circular Construction Lab (directed by Felix Heisel), Just Places Lab (directed by Jennifer Minner), Historic Ithaca, and Susan Christopherson Center for Circularity, Reuse, and Zero Waste Development network.
• Minner, Jennifer, Rangarajan, Shriya, Wang, Yu, and Heisel, Felix. (2022). Patterns of Demolition and the Potential of Deconstruction: Understanding the determinants of demolition to inform salvage and deconstruction supportive policies in Ithaca, New York. Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. Toronto, Canada.

Publications (Selected)

• Minner, Jennifer; Poe, Jocelyn; Heisel, Felix; Kopetzky, Ash; Porath, Maya; and Worth, Gretchen. (2024) Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: Circularity in Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
• Heisel, Felix, Minner, Jennifer, Augustine-Marceil, Wyeth, Cohen, Diane, Worth, Gretchen (eds.), Constructing a Circular Economy in New York State: Deconstruction and Building Material Reuse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Circular Construction Lab, Cornell Just Places Lab, and CR0WD. (2024).
• Abbott, Martin, & Minner, Jennifer "The art of resisting mega-event amnesia: reconstructing urban memory post-expo in Sydney and Brisbane." City, 28(3–4) (2024), 460–483.
• Hu, Dingkun, and Jennifer Minner. "UAVs and 3D City Modeling to Aid Urban Planning and Historic Preservation: A Systematic Review" Remote Sensing 15, no. 23, (2023), 5507.
• Circularity,  Reuse,  and  Zero  Waste  Development network. (2023)  "Toward  Building  Sustainable  Communities and  Circular  Economies:  A  Local  Government  Policy  Guide to  Alternatives to  Demolition through Deconstruction and  Building  Reuse."  Ithaca,  NY:  Just  Places Lab and CR0WD. 
• Small, Zachary and Minner, Jennifer. (2023). "Do Land Banks Represent Progress Toward Socially Equitable Urban Development? Observations from New York State." Urban Affairs Review. 
• Minner, Jennifer and Abbott, Martin. (2023) "Building Social Legacies at Former and Future Expo Sites: The Case for Equity." Bureau International des Expositions Bulletin 2023. Paris, France: Bureau International des Expositions, pages 146-159. 
• Minner, Jennifer S., Grace Y. Zhou, and Brian Toy. "Global city patterns in the wake of World Expos: A typology and framework for equitable urban development post-mega-event." Land Use Policy 119 (2022), 106163.