Main Discipline(s):
Main Professional Societies:
Affiliation(s):
- Urban Planning
- American Planning Association
- Associate Professor, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Wayne State University
I have a B.A. in English, a Master of Urban Planning, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning, all from the University of Michigan.
Right now I’m working on three different research areas. I’m studying how local comprehensive plans handle issues of equity. I’m also studying how local arts and cultural plans deal with issues of equity, how they see universities as anchors, and how they talk about and use placemaking. Finally, I’m working on how the issues planners will encounter as their communities encounter both land use changes and workforce disruption from climate change and decarbonization.
I worked as a planner for a couple of years before returning to school for my Ph.D. While I was working, I wanted to know how we could evaluate the decisions we were making. That wasn’t part of my job then, so I became a researcher so I could help planners develop best practices. The work on equity and on climate change has built on earlier work I did evaluating plans more generally. I realized that equitable protection from hazards and equitable distribution of resources is so important and most plans didn’t talk about it.
I’d like to study how we can build more support for affordable and workforce housing among existing homeowners. There is a shortage of high quality, reasonably priced housing in many of the most desirable and most economically competitive areas and there’s a huge amount of opposition to increasing the housing supply in those areas. I think we must need better ways to talk about it.
I think my favorite STEM book is still Nature’s Metropolis, by William Cronon, about how natural and human systems interacted to contribute to the rise of Chicago in the 19th Century.
There are many women who I studied with, interacted with at conferences, or whose careers I observed from afar who demonstrated how to be a respected researcher, a generous colleague, and a person with a full life at the same time. Liz Gerber and Jenna Bednar at Michigan, Lucie Laurian at Iowa, and Mildred Warner at Cornell are all role models of mine in that way.
I have three kids, ages 14, 11, and 8, so I spend a lot of my time hanging out with them. They are always up to something interesting! I am also a violist, runner, and tennis player and love to travel with my family.