URSP Faculty Activities 2004-2006
Faculty were active in the 2005 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Conference. A listing of their activities is available.
Professor Howell Baum is doing research on the history of Baltimore school desegregation and writing a book with the working title Liberalism, Race, and School Desegregation in Mid-Twentieth Century America. He has presented papers with preliminary research findings at meetings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the American Educational Research Association, and the History of Education Society and will be presenting papers at upcoming Urban Affairs Association, ACSP, and HES conferences. He recently published “How Bad Structures Drive Communities–and Planners–Crazy” in Planning Theory and Practice and “Liberalism and the Network Society: Lessons from Community Action for Planning” in Planning in the Network Society, edited by Louis Albrechts and Seymour Mandelbaum.
Professor Sidney Brower's paper, “Residential Settings and Civic Engagement” was presented at the 42 nd International Making Cities Livable Conference in Charleston , S.C. in March 2005. In July 2005, his paper, “The Nature of Residential Communities” was presented at the Third International Symposium of the CSBE (Culture and Space in the Built Environment) Network in Istanbul, Turkey, and was published in Social Change and Spatial Transformation in Housing Environments. In April 2006, he will present a paper, “Living In Neverland: How We Create False Images of Where We Live, And Why,” at the 36th Annual Popular Culture Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
Associate Professor Alex Chen spoke at the October 2005 Governor’s Workforce Housing Conference. His presentation was titled, "A Census Profile of the Elderly, 1990 to 2000".
Assistant Professor Kelly Clifton has been involved in three multi-year research projects, focusing on the intersection of pedestrians, the built environment and public health. As part of an Active Living Research grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she is working with Dr. Daniel Rodriguez and a team from UNC to examine the associations between the built environment and physical activity among adults in Montgomery County. In Baltimore City, she is a part of a team led my Dr. Carolyn Voorhees examining the same issues among teenagers as part of another grant by RWJ foundation. Dr. Clifton was recently awarded funding to continue the development of a pedestrian demand model from the Maryland State Highway Administration. Information about these projects is available from the National Center for Smart Growth.
Lecturer Jim Cohen had the opportunity to travel to Shenzhen, China in December 2005 in connection with the China Land Policy and Urban Management Program of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education. He gave presentations to a delegation of provincial and local planning officials on a variety of issues related to land use planning in a market economy. He hopes the Chinese never get tired of such discussions with Americans. In 2005 Jim also finished a research project for the Center on implementation of adequate public facilities ordinances by counties in Maryland. He continues to facilitate a 2-day Planning Commissioner Certificate Program held twice per year, and co-facilitate the Smart Growth Center’s National Smart Growth Leadership Training. In June 2006, he will be taking over from Alex Chen as director of the Urban Studies and Planning program.
Associate Professor Chengri Ding expanded his work on land and land tax policy in China on behalf of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP). Playing a key role in policy reform assistance to China, Dr. Ding has addressed three significant challenges: 1) reforming urban planning practice to better deal with rapid urbanization and emerging markets; 2) land reform focusing on the balance between land demand derived from economic growth and increasing pressure on farmland preservation and the concern of food security; 3) the introduction of property taxation in China. Dr. Ding was the P.I. for the "Beijing Urban Master Plan Revision Technical Assistance" for the Beijing Urban Planning Commission. He has orchestrated the collaboration between LILP, the Development Research Center of the State Council, the State Administration of Taxation, and the Ministry of Finance on studies of property taxation and public finance. Bringing together LILP and the Ministry of Land and Resources, Dr. Ding helped to increase collaborative land related policy studies. He delivered the keynote speech at a conference on Land Policy and Management in Taiwan in November, 2005. Dr. Ding also gave presentations at the 8th IRRV International Conference (Spain, 2005) and UNDP funded International Workshop on Property Taxation in Wuhai, China, 2005.
Associate Professor Reid Ewing co-authored, with master's student Amy Hostra, the article "Traffic Calming Initiatives - Approaching the Tipping Point" which appeared in this the February, 2007 edition of Planning Magazine. Dr. Ewing has also recently published in ITE Journal (Institute of Transportation Engineers), Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, and Journal of Physical Activity and Health. His involvement with the field of public health was further solidified by winning new grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by having his article on urban sprawl and obesity in American adults be the most widely cited paper in the Social Sciences as of late 2005, according to Essential Science Indicators. A follow-up article on urban sprawl and youth obesity is currently under review. Ewing is an associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, the flagship journal in the planning field, and is editing the special issue on Planning and Transportation due out this summer.
Professor Bill Hanna added to his overload during 2005. He continues his scholarly research and writing; included were invited papers at an international geography conference in Mexico City and NIH in Maryland. He has papers under publication consideration on neighborhood economy and the battle over the use of public space, and a book manuscript is in process on immigration and immigrant life. During summer 2005, he led a group of six graduate students in research on the transportation system in Mexico City, with special attention to possible ways to improve the system’s value to tourists. (Copies of the report are available by request at bhanna@umd.edu.) Hanna continues to run the nonprofit organization, Action Langley Park; to organize health fairs and other service events for the immigrant community of Maryland; to be an active advocacy planner for area immigrant neighborhoods; and to publish the Barrio de Langley Park monthly newsletter. The Langley Park activities involve scores of University of Maryland students as well as faculty members. In Spring 2005, Hanna accepted the editorship of The Faculty Voice, a publication by and for faculty members within the University System of Maryland. (Email subscriptions, PDF format, are available upon request.)
Professor Marie Howland and post-doc fellow Jungyul Sohn had a paper accepted for publication. The title is "Has Maryland's Priority Funding Areas Initiative Constrained the Expansion of Water and Sewer Investments?" in Land Use Policy, forthcoming, 2006. She, along with graduate student Sebastian Oliva, presented a paper on the "Immigrant Residential Location and Sprawl: Washington, D.C. " at the 2005 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference in Kansas City . She continues to direct the Ph.D. program and serve as book review editor for Economic Development Quarterly.
Professor Gerrit Knaap was awarded the 2006 Planner of the Year Award for "Outstanding Planner" from the Maryland APA Chaper. Gerritt was also appointed by the Governor to serve on the Maryland Development Capacity Task Force to develop a standardized method for Maryland counties and cities to use in estimating future development capacity. With other University of Maryland colleagues, he is involved with a pair of research projects involving the implementation of adequate public facility ordinances in Maryland's Washington suburbs and the metropolitan Baltimore area. In addition, he led the highly successfully regional planning exercise called "Reality Check - Envisioning Our Region's Growth". He will be a panelist at the Resources for the Future Conference in March, 2006 for a panel discussion entitled " Regulation, Markets, and Choice in Metropolitan Land Use".
Associate Professor Qing Shen recently published articles in Journal of Urban EconomicsHousing Policy Debate (with Tom Sanchez of Virginia Tech), and Environment and Planning B (with Mizuki Kawabata of University of Tokyo). These publications address questions about the effects of residential neighborhood and transportation accessibility on workers’ labor market outcome. During the winter break he traveled to Shanghai, China to give a series of lectures at Tongji University. His lectures, entitled “Social Aspects of Urban Transportation in the U.S.”, “Economic Analysis of Urban Transportation Policy Issues”, and “Information and Communication Technologies and Their Impacts on Urban Spatial Structure, Activity Participation, and Travel” were sponsored by the Department of Urban Planning at Tongji. (with Casey Dawkins and Tom Sanchez of Virginia Tech),