Thomas J. Campanella
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Thomas J. Campanella is a historian of city planning and the urban built environment. He teaches and writes about the culture-space nexus in a variety of contexts, seeking to explain the manifold agents, actors, and forces that have shaped urban landscapes around the world. Though primarily an Americanist, he has also studied and written about the extraordinary growth of Chinese cities in the post-Mao era.
Campanella has received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the James Marston Fitch Foundation. His books include Brooklyn: The Once and Future City (2019), The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (2008), and Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (2003), winner of the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. He has held visiting appointments at Columbia, Harvard GSD, Nanjing University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Campanella holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999), an M.L.A. from Cornell (1991), and a B.S. from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (1986).
"My career as an academic is driven by a yearning to inspire others to appreciate the richness, depth, and complexity of the everyday urban world, to develop a lifelong curiosity about landscape, place, and the built environment."
Academic Research/Specialty Areas
- Cities
- Historic preservation planning
- Planning history
- Real estate development
- Urbanism
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Classes (Selected)
- CRP 3100/5100 Urban Form and the Global City
- CRP 9920 Doctoral Dissertation
Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)
- Brendan Gill Prize (finalist, 2020)
- James Marston Fitch Foundation (2012)
- Rome Prize Fellowship (2011)
- Guggenheim Fellowship (2009)
- Spiro Kostof Book Award (2005)
- John Reps Prize (1999)
- Fulbright Fellowship (1999)
Publications (Selected)
- Campanella, Thomas J. Brooklyn: The Once and Future City. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019
- Campanella, Thomas J. The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
- Campanella, Thomas J. Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003
- Campanella, Thomas J. Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001
