News & Activity

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti is writing a series of articles on the New York City Charter for City Limits magazine, as a panel appointed by the mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough presidents and city council is conducting the most comprehensive review and revision of the document undertaken in thirty years.

Part 1: Charter Debate is a Moment for NYC to Change—or Confirm—its Identity
https://citylimits.org/2019/04/03/opinion-charter-debate-is-a-moment-for-nyc-to-change-or-confirm-its-identity/

Part 2: Commission Must Tweak—Rather Than Transform—the Balance of Power in NYC
https://citylimits.org/2019/04/04/opinion-commission-must-tweak-rather-than-transform-the-balance-of-power-in-nyc/

Part 3: A Stronger New York Does Not Need a Weaker Mayor
https://citylimits.org/2019/04/05/opinion-a-stronger-new-york-does-not-need-a-weaker-mayor/

Part 4: Is the Charter Revision Commission Looking at the Wrong Campaign Reforms?
https://citylimits.org/2019/04/12/nyc-charter-term-limits-not-irv/

Associate Professor Victoria Johnson's book American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine inthe Garden of the Early Republic was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in American History.

Associate Professor Laura Wolf-Powers' co-authored article, Industrial inheritances: Makers, relatedness and materiality in New York and Chicago is published in the journal Regional Studies.

Prof. Sigmund Shipp was a panelist on the CUNY-TV forum "How Much is Too Much"? That focused on Amazon's decision to withdraw its proposed location in Long Island City. The show was taped March 27, 2019.

The APA Divisions Council has recently announced the winners of its 2019 Grant Awards. Profs. Sigmund Shipp and Jeffrey Lowe (Associate Prof at Texas Southern University) were awardees. Their research project entitled, "The First Generation of Black Planners Speak Their Truths" focuses on the first black professional planners and their work in major cities as they were changing from being largely white to largely African-American.

Associate Professor Victoria Johnson's book American Eden has been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the biography category.  https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-la-times-book-prize-finalists-20190220-story.html

A Chinese translation of UPP Chair and Professor Joseph Viteritti's book, Choosing Equality, has been published by Guangxi Normal University Press in China. The book, Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society was originally published by the Brookings Institution Press twenty years ago this year and has a new preface. The new edition is the second in a special series of five books by American authors on the subject of school reform in America being translated under the editorial direction of Chinese scholars at Beijing Normal University in Beijing and East China Normal University in Shanghai. The other American authors are on the faculties of UC, Berkeley; Stanford (two); and Harvard.

UPP Chair Professor Joseph Viteritti participated in an "Ask the Experts" Q&A with John Lentz, Editor-in-Chief of City & State magazine, about "What Can Amazon Do to Sell its HQ2 Plan in New York City" (February 5, 2019).

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti has written an opinion piece for the Daily News, "We're Not the City of Amazon After All: The Soul of the City Snapped Back." February 19, 2019

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was interviewed by AM New York for a piece on "President de Blasio? Mayor de Blasio ponders a White House run while testing the waters (Ice) in New Hampshire," February 12, 2019.

Laura Wolf-Powers, Associate Professor, is going to be part of a panel on blight at the Municipal Art Society of New York on March 6, 2019. https://mailchi.mp/mas/youre-invitedurbanist-breakfast-brainstorm-201489?e=f57fa703ca

Associate Professor Victoria Johnson’s book American Eden has been awarded a 2019 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies.

Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Associate Professor, is the recipient of the 2019 William R. and June Dale Scholar Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning.  The Dale Prize is awarded by California State Polytechnic University, Pomona’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Awarded since 2004, the Dale Prize recognizes planning excellence, creates dialogue between scholars and practitioners, and enriches the education of planning students. The Dale Prize is awarded in pairs, recognizing a scholar and a practitioner. Awardees spend two days on the Cal Poly campus, meet with students in classes, and participate in a colloquium and other public events. The 2019 theme is From Blueprint to Resilience: Planning when Change is the Norm.

Associate Professor Lynn McCormick is quoted in Next City article, "Can This Westchester Community Revitalize without Displacement?", December 3, 2108.

UPP Chair Professor Joseph Viteritti was a guest on CUNY TV's CUNY Forum for a discussion on "Outcomes 2018: What Comes After the Elections," December 5, 2018.

Associate Professor Jill Simone Gross is co-editor of the new book, Constructing Metropolitan Space: Actors, Policies and Processes of Rescaling in World Metropolises. The book explores the contested nature of metropolitan governance on four continents. The volume is derived from the efforts of 14 scholars, exploring the degree to which globalization is generating new configurations of power and politics. The book is the outcome of a four-year collaborative research project exploring the politics of metropolitan development in Berlin, Delhi, Istanbul, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and Shenzhen.

Professor Vivian Louie has been appointed to serve on the Russell Sage Foundation Advisory Committee for its Race, Ethnicity and Immigration Program and special initiative on Immigration and Immigrant Integration.

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti is the author of "Amazonian Lessons for Urbanists," Gotham Gazette, November 19, 2018, where he thanks the students in his "Governing the City" class for a stimulating discussion on the topic.

Associate Prof. Victoria Johnson's Op-Ed, "What really makes America great", is published in The Washington Post, November 15.

Associate Prof. Matthew Lasner was quoted in The Nation in an article analyzing recent housing bills in Congress and the role housing might play in the 2020 election.

UPP Chair Professor Joseph Viteritti was quoted in a Wall Street Journal (October 8) article on Mayor Bill de Blasio's decision to replace his SUV and other official vehicles with hybrid cars that are more environmentally friendly.

Laura Wolf-Powers recently published an article (co-authored with Naomi Adiv) in the journal Urban Geography: "User Fees and the permeability of public space at municipal pools and bathhouses in New York City 1870-present."  https://works.bepress.com/laura_wolf_powers/45/

Professor Victoria Johnson's book American Eden has just been named one of five finalists for the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/books/national-book-foundation-announces-finalists-for-69th-annual-award.html.

Prof. Matthew Lasner’s latest essay, “Architecture’s Progressive Imperative: Housing Betterment in the 19th and 20th Centuries” appears in a special issue of the UK journal AD devoted to the topic of social equity in housing. A review of the issue was published in Next City last week. Lasner also presented his research at a panel at the Center For Architecture earlier this month; video of the event can be seen on its Website.

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was interviewed by WAMU Radio, the NPR station in Washington D.C., regarding the merits (and limits) of governance arrangements that give mayors operational control over urban school districts. The interview ran on the day (September 17) that the District of Columbia City Council was considering a proposal to amend its governance law and end the system of mayoral control of schools that has been in effect since 2007.

Along with Weijie Wang at the University of Missouri, Dr. Ryan Yeung published an article in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory on the effectiveness of the NYC DOE’s Empowerment Zone Innovation. Click here for the article.

Associate Professor Jill Simone Gross published a new article (book chapter):
Gross, J. S. (2018). The governance of superdiversity: a tale of two North American cities. In The Routledge Handbook of the Governance of Migration and Diversity in Cities (pp. 251-261). Routledge. Click here for the description.

In addition, Prof. Gross has been chosen to serve as "President Elect 2019-20 of the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association" and asked to serve on the "2018-19 Robert A. Dahl Award" Committee of the American Political Science Association. The Robert A. Dahl Award is awarded annually to an untenured scholar who has produced scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy.

Prof. Sigmund Shipp has been selected in a CUNY-wide competition to co-teach a course in Spring 2019 at the CUNY Graduate Center for the Futures Initiative Program. The aim of the proposed course, to be team-taught with  Professor of Sociology, Public Health, & Urban Education  Juan Battle, is to support diversity, equity, and student-centered interdisciplinary learning at the graduate level, to strengthen faculty diversity at the Graduate Center, and to establish robust peer mentoring among faculty members across the CUNY system.

Associate Professor Victoria Johnson's book, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic is one of ten books on the list for consideration for a National Book Award in nonfiction.

Professor Victoria Johnson's new book, American Eden, about the first botanical garden in the United States (and how it became the site of Rockefeller Center), has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. American Eden has also been chosen as one of Amazon's "Best History books of June" and as an editors' pick at Nature, Scientific American, Popular Science, and the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Her book was published in June by Liveright, a division of W. W. Norton & Co.

Prof. Wolf-Powers was on a panel of respondents gathered to discuss Alan Mallach's new book The Divided City at an event co-sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Century Foundation on June 25th.
https://tcf.org/content/event/divided-city-discussion-alan-mallach/

Prof. John Chin was recently appointed to the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (https://www.oar.nih.gov/oarac/members.asp) and to the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars Program (http://healthpolicyresearch-scholars.org/about-the-program/).

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was quoted in a front page story in the New York Times (July 5) about the role of Asian Americans in New York City politics.

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was invited by NBC News to write an opinion piece on former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, which was posted online, as  "Losing It: The Tragic Self-Immolation of Rudy Giuliani," NBC News, Think, May 30, 2018.

Prof. Matthew Lasner is quoted in the current issue of The Nation, which includes several articles exploring the affordable housing crisis United States. Click here to read.

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was extensively quoted in a Gotham Gazette (May 10) article on the establishment of two Charter Commissions for New York City.

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti was interviewed by WNYC/NPR about Mayor de Blasio's proposal to a appoint a Charter Review Commission. Parts of the interview were aired on February 18th and 19th. He also was quoted extensively in a Gotham Gazette (February 21) article on the same subject.

UPP Professor Owen Gutfreund is quoted in am New York online article, “Cycling growth slows in NYC after decades-long boom, DOT report says” written by Vincent Barone, March 21, 2018.

UPP Prof. Ryan Yeung is the Co-author of two articles published by Springer, March 12, 2018. “The Impact of U.S. News College Rankings on the Compensation of College and University Presidents” written with Philip Gigliotti (SUNY, Albany) and Phuong Nguyen-Hoang (University of Iowa) and “The Impact of U.S. News College Rankings on the Compensation of College and University Presidents” written with Phuong Nguyen-Hoang.

Prof. Wolf-Powers' article, "The Maker Movement and Urban Economic Development," was the runner-up for the Journal of the American Planning Association's Best Paper of 2017. The article can be found through the Hunter College library and directly at the journal here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944363.2017.1360787.

On January 31st, UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti gave a book talk, followed by a signing, at the City Seminar hosted by Professor Kenneth Jackson at the Columbia University's Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History.

Associate Professor Laura Wolf-Powers is a co-author of the article "Manufacturing without the firm: Challenges for the maker movement in three U.S. cities," published in December in the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Prof. Wolf-Powers was quoted in Crain's New York business in October on the irrational mania prompting cities to overuse economic development subsidy to attract companies like Amazon.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20171015/POLITICS/171019919/amazon-will-expect-subsidies-nycs-record-on-attracting-jobs-through-incentives-is-mixed

UPP Chair Joseph Viteritti is the author of an essay, "De Blasio's Second Act Will Feature the Same Script but a Larger Audience," in City Limits magazine (December 7, 2017)

James Rausse (MUP '02), AICP, has been appointed as the APA Chapter Presidents Council Liaison to the AICP Commission. James previously served as APA-New York Metro Chapter President and Vice President for Professional Development. He will serve on the Chapter Presidents Council board, which represents APA's 47 Chapters. James also graduated with a second Masters Degree in Organizational Dynamics, concentrating in Sustainable Development from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2017.

Prof. William Milczarski is the co-author of two recently published articles.  “Injuries caused by falls from playground equipment in the United States” written with Peter Tuckel(Hunter's Sociology Department) and David Silverman (Yale) was published in Clinical Pediatrics.  “Injury-related falls from bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, and non-motorized scooters in the United States: 2005-2014” written with Peter Tuckel and Richard Maisel (NYU) was published in the Journal of Epidemiological Research.