Papers by Eugenie L Birch
The increase of housing in downtowns represents an important niche market that has evolved over t... more The increase of housing in downtowns represents an important niche market that has evolved over time. During its development, levels of population, numbers and types of households, rates of homeownership, and downtowner demographic characteristics have changed. This paper documents the changes from 1970-2000 for 46 downtowns in 45 cities representing 19% of the nation's cities with populations of 100,000 or more. It reports national, regional and individual city trends. It also offers comparisons of these features for the sample cities and their suburbs. While it outlines population changes, it highlights changes in households as the key to understanding downtown living. It records the concentration of downtown households in three places: the Northeast, the Midwest Circle and the California coast, and predicts that if high-growth-rate downtowns, including Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and Dallas, continue to increase at their 1990-2000 levels, they will join the current leaders. It argues that by 2000, five types of downtowns emerged distinguished by their varying degrees of growth, size, density and other characteristics. It concludes with a discussion of three policy concerns that emerge from the analysis revolving around development issues, demographics and market potential and density.
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2019
The Routledge Handbook of Planning History, 2017
Teaching Space, Place, and Literature, 2017
AbstractIn recent decades, such global institutions as the United Nations (U.N.) have promoted su... more AbstractIn recent decades, such global institutions as the United Nations (U.N.) have promoted sustainable development, loosely defined as improving the human condition without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In its advocacy, the U.N. has called for the crafting of measures to benchmark current conditions and mark progress toward the overall goal. As national and subnational governments have undertaken these activities, they have also been involved in developing a wide range of monitoring tools, especially defining indicators reflective of their distinctive programs in this arena. The work of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities (PSC), an alliance between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, founded in 2009, provides an example of this phenomenon. Working with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research and ...
Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2018
city and regional planning goes well beyond Philadelphia, the city in which he spent nearly four ... more city and regional planning goes well beyond Philadelphia, the city in which he spent nearly four decades of his professional life. His many contributions to planning education and practice are reflected in the ACSP's Martin Meyerson Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education, created in 2005, and a festschrift in volume 10, issue 3 of the Journal of Planning History. Meyerson's influence on the field is immense but understudied, perhaps because his career was bifurcated between planning and higher education administration. While he devoted more than a quarter century to active participation in planning in the United States and abroad (1942-1966), he spent another two decades presiding over (and transforming) three major universities-UC Berkeley, SUNY/ Buffalo, and the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently played an influential role in higher education globally, assuming a professorship in city planning at Penn from 1981 to 2007. One theme flows through Meyerson's life: reliance on his training in planning that cultivated a belief in the power of utopian visions revised by research and field experience, refined through community discussion, and acted on by informed leaders. He was, to coin an expression, a pragmatic utopian, who learned from more senior colleagues such as Lewis Mumford and David Reisman and shared his knowledge with his many students, including Herbert Gans, John Friedman, and Janet Abu Lhugod. He inspired and worked with armies of urbanists, including
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2016
In an exploration of the potential impact of Habitat III, the all–United Nations (U.N.) conferenc... more In an exploration of the potential impact of Habitat III, the all–United Nations (U.N.) conference that meets every 20 years, I suggest that, in addition to government commitments, clear messaging and strong civic engagement are essential to its success. The basis for these critical elements is already in play, but is it strong enough? In answering this question, I discuss the treatment of cities and human settlements within the U.N. system, the legacies shaping the conference, and the views on sustainable urban development being put forth in its outcome document, the New Urban Agenda (NUA), arguing that the current draft NUA differs from its predecessors, leaving room for strengthening the required advocacy. I conclude with a short challenge to city and regional planners worldwide to become advocates.
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 2013
M uch has been made recently of the role of place-based institutions in the development of cities... more M uch has been made recently of the role of place-based institutions in the development of cities and regions (AITF, 2009). In fact, the whole notion of the “city” as a “region ” is becoming rather compatible with the broader 21st century geography of “urban ” (Brookings Institution, 2008). For humans, the whole concept of the “urban ” is taking on a species-(re)defining nature. Almost everyone, especially beginning with the work of geographer David Clark (2002) and moving forward to demographers, such as the United Nations ’ global specialist George Martine (2007), suggests that the human species has been forever altered—with more people now living in “urban ” rather than rural settlements. Everyone in this emerging urban majority may not live in a city’s downtown district, but everyone does live in some form of conurbation or metropolitan city or region. Just as the social and demographic conditions of everyday life for a majority of humans are shifting in the early 21st century, so too are the governmental structures related to these residential groups.
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2015
As the United Nations (UN) processes to finalize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are comp... more As the United Nations (UN) processes to finalize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are completed, understanding the complexities of the subject along with the interplay of all the SDG element...
Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1978
... to housing reform came from the social sciences while Bauer's stemme... more ... to housing reform came from the social sciences while Bauer's stemmed from architecture and planning. ... These men became interested in the design of low-cost dwell-ings during World ... administration's leanings, the proceedings were premised on Secre-tary of Interior Roy L ...
Economic and Political Weekly, Nov 14, 2014
Planning, Jul 1, 2007
A good master plan envisions making a place beautiful, efficient, just and green. This article di... more A good master plan envisions making a place beautiful, efficient, just and green. This article discusses the essential features of a successful master plan and describes how Philadelphia's master plan has helped transform the city into a modern metropolis. A successful master plan articulates strong and broad goals; addresses complex city systems simply and visibly; outlines initiatives that build on and strengthen the city's historic structure; posits strategic government action, selects public activities that frame the issue and provides a healthy climate for private investment; and has a champion with the desire and power to implement its key elements. Philadelphia's master plan, developed in the 1960s, possesses many of these features. The plan overlaid transportation, land-use and open space systems to revitalize the Center City area of the city. Although implementation of the plan has taken decades and is still ongoing, the city has succeeded in attracting new residents and businesses. Another initiative that incorporates similar elements of a successful master plan is underway in West Philadelphia.
The Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning, 2012
This article examines the importance of case studies in urban planning. It explains that case stu... more This article examines the importance of case studies in urban planning. It explains that case studies are used to analyze urban behaviors in the political arena, in neighborhoods and in other places, and in providing exemplars of best practices in physical planning. The article describes the nature of case studies used in urban planning and the pattern of their application. An analysis of representative studies reveals several patterns, including an effort to develop cases that translate knowledge into action, that pay attention to place or the physical dimensions of a question, and that have a tendency to revisit and re-evaluate a phenomenon which has been studied at an earlier time.
Neighborhood and Life Chances, 2011
List of Abbreviations Preface -Eugenie L. Birch, Harriet B. Newburger, and Susan M. Wachter PART ... more List of Abbreviations Preface -Eugenie L. Birch, Harriet B. Newburger, and Susan M. Wachter PART I. PEOPLE AND PLACES: HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND SAFETY Chapter 1. Health and Residential Location -Janet Currie Chapter 2. The Place of Race in Health Disparities: How Family Background and Neighborhood Conditions in Childhood Impact Later-Life Health -Rucker C. Johnson Chapter 3. Educational Interventions: Their Effects on the Achievement of Poor Children -Brian A. Jacob and Jens Ludwig Chapter 4. Before or After the Bell? School Context and Neighborhood Effects on Student Achievement -Paul A. Jargowsky and Mohamed El Komi Chapter 5. Neighborhoods, Social Interactions, and Crime: What Does the Evidence Show? -Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll Chapter 6. Daily Activities and Violence in Community Landscapes -Douglas J. Wiebe and Charles C. Branas PART II. GEOGRAPHIES OF OPPORTUNITY Chapter 7. Exploring Changes in Low-Income Neighborhoods in the 1990s -Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O'Regan Chapter 8. Reinventing Older Communities Through Mixed-Income Development: What Are We Learning from Chicago's Public Housing Transformation? -Mark L. Joseph Chapter 9. Reinventing Older Communities: Does Place Matter? -Janet Rothenberg Pack PART III. MOVING PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY Chapter 10. An Overview of Moving to Opportunity: A Random Assignment Housing Mobility Study in Five U.S. Cities -Lisa A. Gennetian, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, and Jens Ludwig Chapter 11. How Does Leaving High-Poverty Neighborhoods Affect the Employment Prospects of Low-Income Mothers and Youth? Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment -Xavier de Souza Briggs, Elizabeth Cove, Cynthia Duarte, and Margery Austin Turner Chapter 12. Teens, Mental Health, and Moving to Opportunity -Susan Clampet-Lundquist Chapter 13. Changing the Geography of Opportunity by Helping Poor Households Move Out of Concentrated Poverty: Neighborhood Effects and Policy Design -George Galster PART IV. SEGREGATION: THE POWER OF PLACE Chapter 14. Are Mixed Neighborhoods Always Unstable? Two-Sided and One-Sided Tipping -David Card, Alexandre Mas, and Jesse Rothstein Chapter 15. Preferences for Hispanic Neighborhoods -Fernando Ferreira Chapter 16. Increasing Diversity and the Future of U.S. Housing Segregation -Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon Chapter 17. Understanding Racial Segregation: What Is Known About the Effect of Housing Discrimination? -Stephen L. Ross Contents Notes Bibliography List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments
Planning Theory, 2006
... he terri-fied me. For example, as a young assistant professor looking to promote planning his... more ... he terri-fied me. For example, as a young assistant professor looking to promote planning history, I conducted a survey of planning programs questioning the efficacy of teaching this subject. Among my respondents, one whom I thought would be sympathetic, was Seymour. ...
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Papers by Eugenie L Birch
Urbanisation aims to publish comparative as well as collaborative interdisciplinary scholarship that will illuminate the global urban condition beginning with a firm footprint in the Global South. A platform that brings together inter-disciplinary scholarship on the urban, it is equally interested in critical and reflexive discussions on diverse forms and sectors of urban practice. It seeks to do so not only to inform urban theory, policy and practice but also to enable the construction of diverse forms of knowledge and knowledge production needed to enable us to understand contemporary urban life.
Urbanisation is a response to a particular moment of 21st century global urbanisation within an increasingly re-arranged world. The drivers and locations of contemporary urbanisation are after a long historical gap, in the ‘Global South’ i.e. the countries of Asia, Africa and South America. This moment poses challenges for which we possess neither effective knowledge nor adequate practice. Urbanisation emerges out of three interconnected responses to this moment.
The first is to provide a platform to understand contemporary global urbanisation with a firm footprint in the South. In doing so, we see the ‘Global South’ not as a physical location but as a representative of a particular set of challenges and opportunities that determine the central questions of our age and demand critical analysis and effective intervention.
The second is to build on this new knowledge to re-think the epistemological canon of urbanisation and its associated systems and processes. This ‘canon’ built on a 19th and 20th century imagination and practice has proved to be particular rather than universal. The journal stands firmly with the ‘southern turn’ in urban theory, building new knowledge from the experiences of cities and regions of the Global South to speak with all cities and settlements and re-think the foundations of current urban theory.
The third is to reflexively engage with and theorise practice. Urban questions refuse simple boundaries of sector or domain in addition to discipline or the assumed ‘theory-practice’ divide. The ‘wicked problems’ of cities, city-regions and hybrid rural-urban settlements are sites that defy most canonical knowledge, techniques, methods, categories and terms. Yet there remain few platforms within which to document, reflect upon, critique and analyse practice, let alone imagine new forms and techniques of practice. Some of this is because of the continuing persistence of hierarchies between forms of knowledge and its production – an artificial separation that this journal explicitly seeks to address.