UTSOA

11.06.2009

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The Layers, Faces and Impacts of Planning: A community's dilemma and an organization's challenge

The challenges of community planning extend beyond American cities and regions into villages, cities, and neighborhoods world-wide. In summer 2009, CRP students conducted a viability and vitality assessment of a community school in Nairobi, Kenya. They worked closely with community members and conducted field visits, sensitized parties to the process, interviewed a wide range of stakeholders, and held a community forum.

This student-led City Forum will focus on the students’ work, the challenges they faced, and the lessons learned from this experience.

Panelists:
Robyn T. Emerson, CRP student and board member of Providence Ministries. Robyn has worked in Kenya on the Nation's national development plan, VISION 2030 and with other national organizations as a consultant developing strategic plans and their monitoring and evaluation plans.

Nathan Laughlin, CRP Student and lead engineer for the Lower Colorado River Authority.

S. Bennett Powell, a CRP student.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

10.23.2009

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Cultivating Cities: Austin’s Urban Agriculture Movement

The phrase ‘urban agriculture’ conjures up many thoughts: safe, local, healthy, sustainable, etc. The movement encompasses everything from backyard gardens to large organic farms, and everything in between.  As Americans are becoming aware of toxins in their food system and the effect of food miles in global warming, it has become increasingly important that we not only know how our food is produced but also how far it has travelled to get to our tables. This City Forum will address the efforts and challenges of urban agriculture in Austin, including: initiatives from government and non-profit organizations, opportunities for participation, as well as food access and the social justice realm of local food.

Panelists:

Stephanie Scherzer, an urban farmer in East Austin, has a long history of installing and developing landscapes throughout the Austin area. She worked with the Natural Gardener for six years, and was co-owner of Rain Lily Design for eight years. In 2003, she and her partner Kim Beal bought the home and land on Shady Lane that has become Rain Lily Farm, a place rich with its own produce and livestock resources, which has become a much-loved gathering place for culinary and community events. Stephanie recently became co-owner of Farmhouse Delivery, an innovative online local produce company that provides solutions to the challenges of local produce distribution by bringing farm fresh local produce to customers’ doors in the Austin area.

Marysol Valle has used her hands to cultivate food at Hands of the Earth, a small organic farm in east Austin for the past three years,.  Her passion for farming began in upstate New York at Sacred Seed farm where she developed her skills in growing veggies and was first introduced to CSAs.  Upon returning to Texas, Marysol began working on Oasis Farm which she has transformed in her own 120 member CSA called Hands of the Earth.  Each week Marysol participates in 2 farmers’ markets and prepares 75 baskets of fresh produce for Austin residents.

Jenna R. Neal has a Bachelors of Landscape Architecture from Texas Tech University and an Associates of Applied Science in Commercial Art and Advertising from Texas State Technical College.  Her career began in the private sector and in time her focus shifted to Parks and Trails Master Planning for municipalities.  In 2006 she joined the City of Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department (PARD).  Her primary focus is the Long Range Plan for Land, Facilities and Programs, which is a guide for PARD on how to address residential growth and recreational demands within the city for the next five years. (www.ci.austin.tx.us/parks/longrangeplan.htm)

Max Elliott currently serves on the Austin/Travis County Sustainable Food Policy Board.  In 2006, he co-founded YouthLaunch’s Urban Roots program, which creates empowering opportunities for high school students to give back to their community by growing food on a 4 acre farm in east Austin.  He received a Master's Degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Essex in Colchester, England, and is currently a MSW student at the UT School of Social Work.  He has extensive experience in urban agriculture through his work with Austin Community Gardens and the New Orleans Food and Farm Network. 

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

Please contact Kathryn Howell with questions, e-mail Kathrynlh@gmail.com

10.09.2009

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Home means everything: Planning and affordable homes

Rapid gentrification in Austin has resulted in the loss of thousands of unsubsidized, affordable housing units. As more families find themselves fighting rising rents and property taxes, maintaining a diverse city population remains a challenge. Although the City has increased new construction of affordable housing units in some areas, such as the Mueller airport redevelopment, more efforts are needed to stem this trend. This City Forum will focus on the current housing situation, efforts to preserve affordability, and challenges to these efforts.

Panelists:
Francie Ferguson is the chair of the National real estate team, NeighborWorks America, HousingWorks Board, the Founding Director of Foundation Communities and a consultant on the Affordable Housing plan for Mueller Airport.

Cathy Echols serves on the boards of Liveable City, a local civic organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all in Austin, and Housing Works. She has participated in local planning issues as a community leader for many years, helping to shape the Triangle development on behalf of a local neighborhood. Over the past few years, she has helped ensure attention to housing needs in such planning efforts as the downtown plan, the PUD ordinance, and vertical mixed use design standards.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

Please contact Kathryn Howell with questions, e-mail Kathrynlh@gmail.com.

09.18.2009

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Austin’s Comprehensive Plan: Opportunities and Challenges for Citizen Engagement

The City of Austin has just initiated its first comprehensive planning process, 30 years since the last Comprehensive Plan. Because of the important implications for the city’s long-term development, citizens and community organizations are eager to participate in the planning process. In this City Forum, representatives of the City of Austin and the Planning Commission will discuss goals and strategies for citizen engagement and answer questions from the audience.

Garner Stoll
Garner holds a B.A. in Anthropology and an M.S. in Regional and City Planning, both from the University of Oklahoma.  He has worked as Planning or Community Development Director for the cities of Lawrence, Kansas; Lincoln, Nebraska; Boulder, Colorado; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Parker, Colorado. He currently serves as Assistant Director of the Planning and Development Review Department, City of Austin, where he directs the comprehensive planning process.  His professional interests include transportation, comprehensive, downtown, and neighborhood planning, and the development of greenways, trails, and open spaces. He is a charter member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. His work has been the recipient of numerous professional recognitions and awards. Garner and his wife Jane live in Austin with their two teenage sons, William and Evan, both students at Bowie High School.

Dave Sullivan
Dave Sullivan has a B.A. in Engineering and Applied Sciences from Harvard University, an M.S. in Operations Research, and a Ph.D. in Management Sciences/Information Systems, both from UT-Austin.  He bicycle-commutes to his day job as a Research Associate at the UT Austin Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, where he studies air pollution. He was previously a section manager at the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality and had an earlier career as an aerospace engineer.  He has served on several non-profit steering committees and on the City of Austin Planning Commission from 1994 to 1999 and 2001 to the present, the Smart Growth Task Force in 1999, two Bond Oversight Committees since 1999, the Bond Election Advisory Committee in 2005, and the Live Music Task Force in 2007.  The Planning Commission has recently initiated work on a new Comprehensive Plan and Dave is actively involved in the process of developing a public participation plan.

For more information on Austin’s Comprehensive Plan: www.ci.austin.tx.us/compplan/

09.11.2009

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The Everday Lives of Planners: Diverse Opportunities in a Changing Field

As more jurisdictions search for answers to the most pressing challenges surrounding growth, resource management and sustainability, planners are working in a multitude of ways to find solutions in the public and private sectors. This City Forum brings together four planners who represent some of the diverse perspectives, personal backgrounds, and career trajectories that characterize this profession. They will reflect on the challenges and opportunities they encounter in their daily work, discuss the role and goals of professional planning education, and respond to questions and comments from students.

Ross Frie, AICP, received his MS degree in City/Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Arlington and is a nationally certified city planner (American Institute of Certified Planners). Before beginning his study of Planning, Frie attended UT as a Civil Engineering student for 3 years but transferred to UTA to where he received a BS in Architecture. Prior to forming Frie Planning and Development Concept in 2002, Ross worked as a City Planner and City Planning Director for the fast-growing Texas cities of Austin, Euless, Plano, San Marcos and Taylor. In addition, Ross worked for the Capital Area Planning Council of Governments in Austin and was the Building Official/Code Enforcement Officer for the City of Taylor. Ross also serves on the Board of Directors for the American Planning Association in both the Central Texas region and the State of Texas. Frie Planning & Development Concepts, LLC (FriePDC) is an Austin-based professional land planning, engineering, architectural services and real estate development services firm. The firm assists cities/counties/states in developing comprehensive plans, ordinances, regulations and policies to manage growth in Texas and/or assist the agencies in operating more efficiently.

Oscar Garza is a graduate of the College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in math and science with a minor in engineering. After graduation he worked with private firms conducting environmental site assessments and providing remediation contract administration. For the past 15 years he has been serving as an Environmental Compliance Specialist with the City of Austin’s, Watershed Protection Department. In this capacity he is the coordinator of an environmental justice program, the East Austin Environmental Initiative, which involves close communication with community organizations and citizens. As a Certified Hazardous Material Manager he is responsible for emergency response to hazardous and non-hazardous material spills and manages environmental remediation projects and ecological restoration projects. He also provides environmental training for the Spanish-speaking population who seek certification to work in environmental fields.

Joi Harden, a fourth generation Austinite, holds a Bachelors of Science from Texas A&M University and a Masters of Science in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin. Joi currently serves as a Senior Planner for the City of Austin in the Planning and Development Review Department. She is responsible for the management of zoning cases in the eastern sector of Travis County. Joi also facilitated the implementation of the Residential Design and Compatibility Ordinance (McMansion), which established size limitations, side wall articulation and building tents for residential structures. Prior to her position at the City, Joi worked as legislative staff in the Texas House of Representatives focusing on transportation, housing, and environmental policy issues. Joi also worked in the private sector as a Project Director overseeing commercial and residential development for Esperanza Development Corporation.

Ashley McLain studied at Stanford University (BA American Studies, 1990) and the University of Texas at Austin (MSCRP, 1997). She has worked as a water quality monitoring volunteer trainer at the Lower Colorado River Authority and as a researcher for the United Nations Environment Program in Paris, France. From 1997 to 2007, Ashley was a Senior Planner and Principal at Hicks & Company. She started her own environmental consulting firm, Cox|McLain Environmental Consulting (CMEC), with colleagues in the fall of 2007. CMEC specializes in the National Environmental Policy Act and conducts regulatory compliance studies for transportation, water/wastewater infrastructure, and other development projects. Each fall, Ashley organizes Young Scientists’ Day at Travis Heights Elementary School where approximately 18 professional scientists come from throughout Austin to teach students for half a day. She has been a Committee Chair for WTS: Advancing Women in Transportation Heart of Texas Chapter for the past three years.

04.17.2009

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Environmental Justice and the Multicultural City: The Transformative Role of Urban Planning

People of color and low-income communities have disproportionately suffered from the environmental burdens generated by consumption and production choices made by others.  Responding to these injustices, neighborhood activists have been fighting for over 30 years for the right to live, work, and play in healthy environments.  In this City Forum, the panelists will share their insights from research and activist work, and discuss the potential role of planning educators, students and practitioners in addressing environmental justice concerns.

Susana Almanza is co-founder of PODER, Austin’s leading environmental justice organization. Martina E. Cartwright, professor, Texas Southern University, is an attorney who advocates on behalf of environmental justice communities through the legal system.  Wendy Jepson, assistant professor, Texas A&M University, addresses environmental inequities through community-action research and teaching.

More about the speakers:

Susana Almanza is a founding member and Co-Director of PODER (People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources), a grassroots environmental, economic and social justice organization.  Ms. Almanza has overcome poverty, prejudice, and segregated schools to face down some of the world’s most powerful transnational corporations. She is a longtime community organizer, educator, mother and grandmother.  Ms. Almanza has served on the city of Austin’s Planning Commission, the Environmental Board, and was recently appointed to the Community Development Commission. She has served as co-chair of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (a bi-national network) and is a member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council Enforcement Sub-Committee, sanctioned by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  She continues her struggle for human rights demanding environmental justice and a better quality of life for people of color, for all humanity and for future generations.

Martina E. Cartwright serves as the Managing Attorney/Clinical Instructor for the Thurgood Marshall School of Law's Civil Clinic—Land Use and the Wills and Probate Clinic. Prior to serving as the Managing Attorney for the Civil Law Clinic, Ms. Cartwright served as the Managing Attorney/Interim Director of the Environmental Law & Justice Center, where she handled a number of air and waste related cases, including, but not limited to, permit challenges by various environmental justice community groups. Ms. Cartwright received her Juris Doctorate degree from the American University, Washington College of Law where she pursued a concentration in International and Environmental Law. She received her Bachelors of Arts degree in History from the University of Baltimore. Ms. Cartwright serves as Director for the Housing and Environmental Taskforce for the Earl Carl Institute, a legal think tank at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Ms. Cartwright is also a board member for T.E.J.A.S.--a EJ non-profit devoted to outreach services in the East End community of Houston.

Wendy Jepson, Assistant Professor of Geography at Texas A&M University, is a human geographer who examines the complex interaction among society, political economy, and the environment. She addresses issues related to environmental disparities through university teaching and mentoring undergraduate research.  Her current research examines broad socio-environmental inequities related to water and poverty, focusing on the political economy of water and household water insecurity in the lower Rio Grande Valley. Ms. Jepson and colleagues in the Geography Department are currently planning a community-based research project on geospatial and environmental science with colonias communities currently served by the Texas A&M University Colonias Program.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

04.10.2009

Equity and Access in Transportation System Planning and Delivery: It's More Than You Think It is

Video not available for this City Forum.

Dr. Sandra Rosenbloom will explain the six ways in which equity and access in transportation are reduced or compromised in government transportation programs and policies and will discuss the causes--as the first step in fashioning solutions.

Dr. Talia McCray will present a framework that connects activity patterns with personal safety perceptions. She will discuss case studies that she has designed to capture social inequities related to activity patterns. She will end with a brief discussion of designing a travel study for Huston-Tillotson University.

More about the speakers:

Dr. Sandra Rosenbloom is Professor of Planning and Adjunct Professor of Engineering and of Natural Renewable Resources at the University of Arizona where she teaches courses in land use and transportation planning and the financing of community infrastructure.  Dr. Rosenbloom is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles (the sole or senior author of most), over a dozen book chapters in award-winning and influential publications, and multiple research studies and professional reports for organizations including the National Science Foundation, AARP, the US Departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation, the Office of the White House, as well as the European Union, the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, and the governments of Australia, France, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.  She has conducted studies on urban service delivery and capital financing, social inclusion, the travel behavior and needs of salaried women with children, older people, and people with disabilities, as well as the traffic safety consequences of the aging of society.  She is currently studying the equity implications of alternative transportation financing strategies.

Dr. Rosenbloom is an appointed member of the Executive Committee of the US Transportation Research Board, an arm of the US National Academy of Sciences as well as a member of the Board’s Strategic Policy and Planning Review sub-committee. In 2005 Dr. Rosenbloom was appointed a life-time Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences and granted the highest award given by the Transportation Research Board, the Roy P. Crum Award in recognition of her ground breaking transportation planning scholarship.

Dr. Rosenbloom is active in the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (an organization she served as President), the American Planning Association, and WTS (Women’s Transportation Seminar).  She is Associate Editor of the leading scholarly journal in planning, The Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) and an active member of the editorial boards of leading academic peer-reviewed journals in planning.

Dr. Talia McCray is an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin.   She specializes in transportation planning and accessibility challenges for low-income populations, who are often dependent on public transportation.  Her research explores innovative data collection methodologies which capture the “why” of travel demand and unsatisfied demand.  Her work has taken her to South Africa to model the socio-economic and environmental factors that affect prenatal care for women living in rural South Africa and to Quebec City, Canada, where she utilized GIS to organize and analyze data taken from focus groups and the self-mapping of individual space of low-income women, to better understand the challenges of using public transportation to access activities.  Recent work includes studies that have both a research and outreach focus in analyzing the activity patterns of low-income youth in Providence, RI, and Austin, TX.  The Rhode Island study sought to capture how youth experience their lives with respect to violence, and considered implications for their use of the city around them through tracking their activities.  The project also designed educational curriculum teaching students GIS, nonviolent training, and transportation planning.  Current projects include addressing the accessibility needs of Huston-Tillotson University, a Historical Black University, in East Austin.  This study involves applying innovative data collection techniques, both in the form of GIS focus groups and surveys, that attempt to link perceptions of safety to walkability of neighborhoods and public transit use.  

Dr. McCray earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, in urban technological and environmental planning, specializing in transportation planning.  Her MS is from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, in electrical engineering.  She graduated with high honors from Bennett College (BS mathematics) and North Carolina A&T State University (BS electrical engineering), both in Greensboro, NC.  Dr. McCray teaches in the areas of transportation social equity, accessibility, health care planning, quantitative methods, and general planning courses.

03.27.2009

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Keeping it Rural: Tradition and Innovation in a Competitive Economy

In this City Forum presentation, panelists will discuss opportunities and challenges for rural communities as they engage in sustainable economic development.  Travis Brown of the Office of Rural and Community Affairs (ORCA) will review the development of wind power in West Texas and  the potential for rural communities to engage in various forms of renewable energy, including biomass, solar and biofuels. Stefan Schuster of DB Stephens and Associates will discuss the relevance of the regulatory environment, competition for supplies, and legislative challenges with regard to rural water rights. Andrew Smiley of the Sustainable Food Center will talk about how to strengthen local food economies through urban-rural relationships.

Panelists:

Travis Brown, Office of Rural and Community Affairs (ORCA)
Travis Brown has been the renewable energy program manager for the state Office of Rural Community Affairs since 2005.  Before that, he worked three years as energy projects director for the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, and 20 years as a journalist, reporting for newspapers in Dallas, El Paso, Lubbock, Temple, Denton and Sacramento, California.  He also has experience in environmental activism, including organizing and heading up a citizens’ group in North Texas that is fighting water pollution from large dairies and a citizens’ group in Central Texas that is battling air pollution and other threats from the strip-mining and coal-burning operations of Alcoa and Luminant.  He lives in Lee County.

Stefan Schuster, P.G., DB Stephens & Associates, Austin
Stefan Schuster is directing the Texas Water Resources Group for DBS&A  Prior to joining DBS&A, he worked for 5 years as a project manager for Freese & Nichols, Inc. on regional planning and water supply projects. Prior to joining the private sector, Mr. Schuster was a project manager with the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) on SB1 Regional Planning, and also worked for the predecessor of TCEQ, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC). Mr. Schuster has also worked for the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District in Austin and has several years’ experience as a  consultant on groundwater issues in Texas. Mr. Schuster has an MS degree in Hydrology and an MSCRP in Community and Regional Planning, both from the University of Texas at Austin. He was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany and became a U.S. citizen in 1996.

Andrew Smiley, Sustainable Food Center, Austin
Andrew W. Smiley has over 15 years’ of experience with sustainable agriculture and food systems, including on-farm production, agricultural marketing, micro-enterprise development, food journalism, farmer training and technical assistance, and food-service management.  Andrew received his B.A. in political science from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  He is the former Executive Director of Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance, Inc. (BREADA).  Andrew is an active supporter of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Southern SAWG) and Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (TOFGA), and has applied his passion for gardening, small-scale farming, and healthy cooking to his work with the Sustainable Food Center since 2005.  Andrew currently works with Sustainable Food Center in Austin, Texas as Farm Direct Projects Director, which includes management of several farm marketing and food systems education initiatives, including Sprouting Healthy Kids – SFC’s farm-to-school pilot project.

03.13.2009

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Regional Development in Austin: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century

Central Texas continues to grow at a fast pace and the challenges to improve how we manage that growth - as a region - has never been more urgent. This City Forum includes two presentations by planners engaged in the challenges and opportunities of regional development. Jim Walker will give an overview of Envision Central Texas and their efforts to influence regional thinking, and Joseph Cantalupo, Executive Director of CAMPO, will describe CAMPO’s new policy framework, alternative growth concept, and efforts to make the regional transportation system and all our communities more sustainable.

Speakers:

Joseph Cantalupo, Executive Director, Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization
Joseph Cantalupo joined the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) as its Executive Director in April of 2008. Since coming to CAMPO, Mr. Cantalupo has concentrated on strengthening CAMPO’s role and prominence as the regional transportation agency for Central Texas; creating partnerships with other agencies and organizations involved in transportation; and helping to shape the development of the 2035 long range transportation plan as a tool for creating an integrated transportation system and making good transportation choices. Mr. Cantalupo came to CAMPO from Parsons Brinckerhoff in Austin, where he served as a planning task manager for a long-range transportation plan for the United States Territory of Guam, and as a technical reviewer for the Illinois Long Range Transportation Plan, and the City of Lawrence Long Range Transportation Plan. Prior to joining Parsons Brinckerhoff, Mr. Cantalupo was the Deputy Director of Planning for the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT). In this role, Mr. Cantalupo was responsible for administering and managing the technical work of over 30 professional staff engaged in statewide and regional long range transportation planning; regional and local land use and transportation studies; community based bicycle and pedestrian studies; statewide program development and administration; travel demand forecasting; and air quality analysis.

Jim Walker, AICP, Chairman, Envision Central Texas
In 1998, Jim Walker completed a Master's degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2009 he was recognized with an Honorable Mention by the alumni of the MSCRP program for his body of work since earning his degree. In 2000, Mr. Walker became the Executive Director of the nonprofit organization Central Texas Sustainability Indicators Project (CTSIP), which covers the five counties of the Austin-Round Rock MSA: Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson Counties. The mission of the CTSIP is to promote sustainability by providing data and analysis on the interdependent nature of social equity, the environment, economy, and engagement in our region. The CTSIP reports on over 40 regional indicators are available at www.centex-indicators.org. He also serves on the national board of the Community Indicators Consortium. He is now Chairman of Envision Central Texas, which is a non-profit organization composed of a diverse group of citizens, including neighborhood, environmental, business leaders and policy makers, who share the common goal of addressing growth in the Austin region with the interests of the region's citizens in mind. Mr. Walker has served as a spokesperson for the Mueller Neighborhoods Coalition since 1996 and recently began his second year as the moderator of the Leadership Austin Engage series. In 2007 he was invited to become a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2008 he was named Under 40 Austinite of the Year.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

02.27.2009

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Forum on Community and Regional Planning: Alumni Reflections on Careers, Planning Education, and the Future of the Profession

Please note room change to the Texas Union Theater.

This panel is a part of CRP@50, the 50th anniversary celebration of the Community and Regional Planning (CRP) Program. Those presently and formerly from within the CRP program and anyone interested in planning, are invited to this panel of distinguished alumni. This session will feature the reflections of alumni on their careers, on planning education, and on the future of the planning profession. The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and participate in the discussion. Dr. David Campt, a nationally renowned speaker, facilitator, and consultant on diversity and public policy, dialogue, and community, will facilitate the forum.

Alumni Panelists:

Mr. Raul Alvarez is a former Austin City Council Member.  He earned an Industrial Engineering Degree from Stanford University and a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Alvarez worked as a Community Outreach Specialist for the East Austin Health Clinic, and a legal assistant for the environmental law firm of Henry Lowerre, Johnson, Hess and Frederick, and as the Environmental Justice Director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. Mr. Alvarez established his own consulting firm, and within this firm worked to pass the Housing Bond Proposal in November 2006 and to increase Hispanic participation in the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Since June 2007, Alvarez has also worked as the Grassroots Community Coordinator for the Office of Redesign of the Austin Independent School District.

Ms. Alice Glasco worked for the City of Austin for 21 years. She retired in January 2006 and started Alice Glasco Consulting, an urban planning firm that provides land development services to developers and individual property owners. During her tenure with the City of Austin, Ms. Glasco directed two departments, namely the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department, where she was in charge of planning neighborhoods, and the Development Review and Inspection Department, where she directed all land development processes including zoning, subdivision, site plans, building permits and inspections. Ms. Glasco received a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin.  She is a member of the Real Estate Council of Austin and Commercial Real Estate Women. 

Mr. Eric Hartzell works in the fields of community development and affordable housing, focusing on rural Texas. He received a BS in Geography from Ohio University and graduated from the University of Texas with his MSCRP in 1993. Following work at the City of Austin Water and Wastewater Utility and the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, he started work at GrantWorks in 1995. The for-profit firm specializes in management of Community Development Block Grants, HOME, and similar programs that provide economic and community development assistance to small cities and rural areas. He is also a partner in BETCO Development, which he is currently developing affordable multifamily properties in three rural communities using Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

Mr. José E. Martínez, President, AICP, has been a planning profession for 36 years. He was a municipal planner in the City of Austin's HUD-funded Model Cities Program, a planner for the Capital State Council of Government, and engaged in health systems planning in Central Texas with the Central Texas Health Systems Agency. He supervised the City of Austin's community development block grant program, worked on the City of Austin's comprehensive planning process, and assisted in creating the public improvement district in downtown Austin. Mr. Martinez started a community development consulting firm in 1996. In the US, he has consulted for the City of Austin, Capital Metro, the federal government, and national architectural, urban design, landscape, economic development, and transportation firms. He has also done international consulting work for a variety of agencies abroad. As an Adjunct Instructor he has taught small town comprehensive planning at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

Ms. Ashley McLain, AICP, studied at Stanford University (BA American Studies, 1990) and the University of Texas at Austin (MSCRP, 1997).  At UT, Ashley focused on environmental planning and studied community-based conservation in Wisconsin and Belize for her thesis research.  She worked as a water quality monitoring volunteer trainer at the Lower Colorado River Authority and as a researcher for the United Nations Environment Program in Paris, France.  From 1997 to 2007, Ashley was a Senior Planner and Principal at Hicks and Company.  She started her own environmental consulting firm, Cox|McLain Environmental Consulting (CMEC), with colleagues in the fall of 2007.  She has been a Committee Chair for Women's Transportation Seminar: Advancing Women in Transportation Heart of Texas Chapter for the past three years. 

Mr. José Portillo was initially trained as an Architect in Venezuela, and holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin.  Mr. Portillo practiced architecture professionally in Venezuela and as a faculty member at the University of Zulia for six years. Since 1999, Mr. Portillo has practiced as a Land Planner for Bosse and Pharis Associates of Austin, Texas.  His work focuses in geospatial analysis applications to Strategic Regional Land Conservation and Planning.  He has worked with the Nature Conservancy, the Hill Country Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, the National Audubon Society and private organizations responsible for key land conservation initiatives in the Texas Hill Country, the Big Bend Country, the Piney Woods of East Texas and the Gulf Coast.

02.20.2009

Environmental and Cultural Politics of Indigenous Peoples in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

This event is canceled.

Speaker:
Astrid Ulloa from Universidad Nacional, Colombia

In her presentation, Astrid Ulloa will discuss the local effects of global environmental discourses in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), Colombia.  The cultural and environmental politics of indigenous peoples of the SNSM are premised on the integration of culture, environment, and territory as established in the Law of Origin. Indigenous environmental management and food security are based on six principal concepts that are embedded in a series of ceremonial practices: senúnulang (the whole territory and the relationship among nature and society), ezwama (ancestral law), nujwákala (sacred places), kualamas (production and harvest of seeds and animals), tuke (familiar relationships) and calendars. Their principal goals are to preserve traditional knowledge, protect collective rights, and maintain food security by recovering seeds, maintaining traditional ways of cropping, and protecting sacred places. In this way, indigenous people's environmental and cultural politics are confronting, influencing, and changing the global view of sustainable development by setting out environmental strategies according to local values and conditions as they understand them.

Astrid Ulloa received her PhD in anthropology at University of California-Irvine. She is currently associate professor in the Department of Geography at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. She previously worked as an investigator at the National Institute of Anthropology and taught in different universities in Colombia. Her research focuses on indigenous peoples´ movements, ethnicity, and the anthropology of the environment and development. She is author of numerous articles and books about community-based management of fauna, climate change, and indigenous peoples´ cultural and environmental politics in Latin America and Colombia. Her most recent book is The Ecological Native: Indigenous Movements and Ecogovernmentality in Colombia (Routledge, 2005).

Co-sponsored by LLILAS Cluster on Environment, Development and Social Change and the Abriendo Brecha VI Activist Scholarship Conference.

02.06.2009

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Moving Forward, Looking Back: Institutionalized Racism and the Complexity of Urban Space

In 1928, the city leaders of Austin enacted a zoning ordinance that codified segregation, designating the city east of East Avenue (the present day I-35) as the minority district. The plan, though long since repealed, still shapes racial demographics to this day. It is instructive to revisit this issue 81 years later if for no other reason than to learn from the past and to remember how it shapes our future.  Racially motivated planning has caused myriad injustices, led to marginalization of populations of color, and ignored the thoughts and concerns of all but the privileged.  Is the planning of today determined to shed its predominantly white affiliation and embrace the panoply of views afforded by American cities?

Please join us as we discuss with our distinguished panelists the historical overview of the 1928 Plan, impacts on affordable housing today as a result of the 1928 and similar plans, and the interaction of complex physical and social systems.

More about the speakers:

Mr. Melvin G. Wrenn, Center for Mexican-American Cultural Arts past president, current secretary, Travis County Housing Authority Commissioner, and market coordinator for ADAPT companies. Mr. Wrenn has been involved in community, economic and business development since 1980. He has assisted companies with corporate financing, bank loans and debt restructuring, equipment leasing, venture capital, factoring, inventory loans, government financing through city, county, state and federal programs. Mr. Wrenn was the Founding Principal of Local Community Management Company that specialized in the revitalization of distressed low-to-moderate communities, nonprofit capacity building and technical assistance to companies in business and strategic planning. He has over ten years experience in management and business ownership along with professional training in marketing and sales. He also provides technical assistance in grant, proposal and business plan writing.

Dr. Elizabeth Mueller, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development. Dr. Mueller is active at both the state and local levels in community organization and affordable housing policy for low-income individuals. She is on the advisory board of the Austin Design and Community Development Center.  She also serves on the Boards of both the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service and Livable Cities. Dr. Mueller's current research includes Housing Report Cards for Texas Cities, a report on the potential impact of inclusionary zoning on the supply and location of affordable housing in Austin.

Dr. Reuben McDaniel, Jr.,Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the UT McCombs School of Business and Editor of Uncertainty and Surprise in Complex Systems. Dr. McDaniel holds the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Regents Chair in Health Care Management in the Graduate School of Business. His present research interest is in management of complex adaptive systems, with a particular interest in organizational designs and information systems for more effective sense making and decision making. He is especially interested in these phenomenon in health care organizations and he has conducted studies in a wide variety of health care settings. Complexity science has been a source of new insight in physical and social systems and has demonstrated that unpredictability and surprise are fundamental aspects of the world around us.

This City Forum was organized by the CRP Diversity Council.

11.21.2008

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Development of the Poor or the Poverty of Development?

Towards a Pedagogy of Inequality from the Perspective of Indigenous Women in Chiapas, Mexico

Rosalinda Santis Díaz will discuss the ways in which women and men of indigenous communities in Chiapas experience inequality day to day through a lack of education, health services, and economic opportunities. She challenges indigenous women to contextualize their conditions within the larger map of inequality. She will also talk about the ways communities organize to improve their immediate conditions as well as to contest the broader system.

Raquel Pacheco will discuss the centrality of Chiapas and specifically indigenous peoples to development projects designed and directed by the Mexican state and international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank. She will discuss the consequences of these development projects, in particular the ways in which these undercut the viability of their livelihoods.

Sean Sellers will talk about the impact of NAFTA on social and economic conditions in Mexico, especially how NAFTA has contributed to changes in the agricultural livelihoods of rural communities and driven many people to migrate.

This City Forum is co-sponsored by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

Speaker Biographies:

Rosalinda Santis Díaz is a long time indigenous activist from the highland region of the state of Chiapas, Mexico. She began weaving in the Mayan style at the age of 8. Along with other women, Rosalinda has strengthened what once was a small weaving cooperative begun in 1984. In 1996, Rosalinda helped found this cooperative formally as a Cooperative Society named Jolom Mayaetik, which in Tzotzil means Mayan Weavers. Jolom Mayaetik is currently a strong collective of 250 women from 11 communities from five different municipalities in Chiapas, which serves as a space and vehicle for indigenous women to sell their products at a better price, distribute profits equally and more regularly, as well as to discuss and organize around community needs, issues, rights, and politics. As President of the Cooperative from 1998-2001, Rosalinda traveled throughout the US, Spain, Germany, and Peru to share the story of Jolom Mayaetik and the issues of indigenous women in Chiapas. Her journey has led her to concentrate on the relation between health and inequality as well as on alternative medicine. Though she continues as an advisor to Jolom Mayaetik, her primary role is as health promoter in indigenous communities on health issues and inequality.

Raquel Pacheco is a graduate of the UT Latin American Studies Master's Program. She is familiar with the work of Jolom Mayaetik through her volunteer experience in 2003 with Kinal Antsetik, an NGO in Chiapas, which collaborates with the cooperative. Raquel's work examines the limits of Mexico's recent turn towards multicultural recognition and its simultaneous expansion of neoliberal economic policies. In 2004, she completed a B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College.

Sean Sellers, a student in the UT Latin American Studies Master's Program, studies neoliberalism, human rights, and grassroots social movements. His organizing and academic research center around the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based worker organization comprised primarily of Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian immigrants working in the East Coast agricultural industry. From 2004 to 2007, Sean lived in Immokalee, Florida and served as the co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a national network of students and youth organizing with farmworkers to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. Sean completed a B.S. in political communication from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.

11.14.2008

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City Forum Panel on Bicycle Research, Planning, and Advocacy

Many regard planning for bicycle transportation as an essential element in creating sustainable cities, improving public health, and providing for transportation choices. This panel will explore recent research into ideal configurations for bicycle facilities, the state of planning efforts at the City of Austin, and bicycle advocacy in the Austin area. Panelists will have the opportunity to address the interaction between research, planning, policy, and advocacy.

Panelists:

Dr. Randy Machemehl, Director of the Center for Transportation Research and Associate Professor within the University of Texas at Austin Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering will discuss a research project that investigated cyclist and driver interactions in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, and describe how this study has influenced transportation planning and policy decisions

Annick Beaudet, Project Manager at City of Austin Bicycle and Pedestrian Program, will present the most recent bicycle planning efforts of the City of Austin, including the Bicycle Master Plan Update. She will also discuss how technical research and community involvement are integrated in bicycle planning in Austin, and how planners can work with the development community to ensure that bicycle planning is successfully included in projects.

Rob D'Amico, President of the League of Bicycling Voters, will speak briefly on current advocacy efforts and the state of bicycle advocacy in the Austin area and will follow up with an overview of the top challenges facing bike advocates, both in general terms and specifically for the Austin area.

Speaker Biographies:

Randy Machemehl, Ph.D., P.E., is a Professor within the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering. He has served as Director for the Center for Transportation Research since 1999. Dr. Machemehl has performed research and taught about the transportation system for more than 25 years. His current research includes transit ridership forecasting, and making public mass transit more desirable as a transportation mode.

Annick Beaudet, AICP, is a Project Manager at the City of Austin Bicycle & Pedestrian Program. She serves as the City Bicycle Program Manager and is responsible for bicycle and pedestrian planning and bicycle project implementation. Her current projects include management of the City's Bicycle Master Plan, creation of the City's Sidewalk Master Plan, and management of the City's bicycle project funding. Previously, Annick worked as the Land Development Coordinator for Brown McCarroll, LLP in Austin, Texas, as a Principal Planner with the City of Austin Neighborhood Planning & Zoning Department. Annick is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and holds three degrees from the University of Texas a Austin: a Bachelor of Art in Geography,  a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, and Bachelor of Art in French. One of Annick's first planning jobs was as a staff planner with the City Bicycle Program from 1997 to 2000. Now back with the Program, she has the unique opportunity to apply her recent planning experience to the Program.

Rob D'Amico is president of the League of Bicycling Voters (LOBV), an Austin-area non-profit focusing on bicycle advocacy. Although the group originally formed as a "ragtag bunch of advocates" in 1995, LOBV incorporated officially this year after staging a successful effort to stop approval of a mandatory helmet law for adult bicyclists in Austin. Since that time the organization has focused on more proactive efforts, such participation in the city's Street Smarts Task Force and working with developers on inclusion of bicycle facilities in planning efforts. D'Amico is former community relations supervisor for Captial Metro's light rail planning efforts and a former consultant who worked with local governments and companies on marketing alternative transportation commuter programs and clean air efforts. Currently a communications director for Texas AFT, he also is a long-time journalist writing for newspapers, magazines and the Austin Chronicle, and he has been involved in several Austin planning initiatives, such as participation in the Triangle project.

10.31.2008

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Austin's Economic Future: Economic Development Planning in the Current Crisis

Photo by Rich Evenhouse. Licensed under Creative Commons

This panel will discuss the potential effects of the current economic downturn on the Austin regional economy. The status of current economic development strategies to diversify and strengthen future performance will be reviewed with special emphasis on the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Opportunity Austin 2.0 strategy. The panel will also debate ways to achieve comprehensive participatory economic development planning for the region and more transparent policies and inventive granting processes.

Panelists

• Jeremy Martin, Vice President of Government Relations
  Austin Chamber of Commerce
• Brian J. Kelsey, Director, Community & Economic Development
  Capital Area Council of Governments
• Michael Oden, Associate Professor
  Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin

Jeremy Martin

Mr. Jeremy Martin currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Government Relations for the Austin Chamber of Commerce.  In this position, he leads the Chamber's public policy and advocacy efforts at all levels of government on issues such as economic development, regional mobility, and fiscal policy.

In his career of government affairs and management consulting, Jeremy has advised a diverse set of companies ranging from multinational Fortune 500 corporations to sole proprietorships on issues related to strategy, finance, organizational excellence, process design, land use/transportation and advocacy.

Jeremy earned a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University with a double major in Mathematical Economic Analysis and Spanish in addition to a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in Community and Economic Development.

Brian Kelsey

Brian Kelsey is director of community and economic development at the Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG), where he publishes research on the Austin economy and advises local officials on economic development strategies. Brian is a frequent public speaker and media contributor, and his work at CAPCOG has received two awards from the National Association of Development Organizations.

Before joining CAPCOG in 2005, Brian worked for the Council on Competitiveness, a non-profit association of CEOs, university presidents, and labor leaders, where he specialized in measuring innovation capacity of U.S. regions. Brian has also worked in economic development at the local and state levels, including positions at the Sonoma County Economic Development Board in Santa Rosa, California, and the Center for Transportation Research in Austin.

Brian was a double-major in economics and history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Distinction. Brian also earned a master's degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Oden

Michael Oden is currently an associate professor in the Community and Regional Planning Program (CRP) at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Oden's research areas include local and regional sustainable economic development, regional growth dynamics and affordable housing policy. Dr. Oden received his Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research in 1992. Prior to joining The University of Texas he worked at the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at Rutgers University, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, and as the senior economist on the Appropriations Committee of the Michigan State Senate.

Over the last decade, Dr. Oden has carried out a number of major projects related to economic and community development. He recently published a major report, Building a More Sustainable Economy: Economic Development Strategy and Public Incentives in Austin, for Liveable City. Other recent publications on information and telecommunications technology and economic development that he has authored or co-authored include: Beyond the Digital Access Divide; Developing Meaningful Measures of Information and Communications Technology Gaps, New York: The Ford Foundation, November 2004; Information and Telecommunications Technology and Economic Development: Findings From The Appalachian Region, Appalachian Regional Commission, May 2004; and "Digital Divide or Digital Opportunity in the Mississippi Delta Region," in Telecommunications Policy, Spring 2002.

In addition, Dr. Oden is engaged in local politics and advocacy in Austin, Texas, serving on the board of Livable City and as a member of the Austin Community Cultural Plan Leadership Council.

10.24.2008

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Design for Network of Parks in Beijing through Multi-disciplinary and International Collaboration

In a joint design studio, students and faculty from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin are working in collaboration with Tsinghua University to propose a network of parks for a 200-acre site in Beijing. Over the summer, 15 UT students traveled to China for site visits and explored Cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou that are known for traditional Chinese gardens and landscapes. In fall 2008, Tsinghua students and faculty will come to Austin for a joint midterm studio review. Studio participants from both universities will present their travel experiences and park design proposals at City Forum.

Studio Participants from UT:
Faculty: Fritz Steiner, Wilfried Wang, and Ming Zhang.
Students: Erin Leigh Bernstein, Cameron Campbell, Caroline Leigh Castello, Julia Barton Diana, Colleen Flynn, Sara Marie Hammerschmidt, Catherine Irene Jaramillo, Kevin Hadsell Moore, James Watson Oppelt, Heather Pfaff, Tyler Pierce Porterfield, Wen Shang, Erin Elizabeth Stark, and Bo Wu.

Studio Participants from Tsinghua:
Faculty: Jie Hu, Youbo Zhuang, and Yufan Zhu
Students: Guanhua, Cheng, Ting-yun Hsu, Wangjing Ji, Xue Shen, and Lei Tie

10.17.2008

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Panel on Homelessness: Perspectives from Research, Providers and Policy Development

Homelessness has recently gained more attention in media and planning efforts.  This is partially a result of the federal agency Housing and Urban Development requiring the development of plans to end homelessness in order maintain federal funding for homeless services; it is also related to the scale of displacement experienced by people who survived Hurricane Katrina.  This City Forum session will present research related to urban homelessness in Austin and Seattle, and will include perspectives from a local service provider and a participant in the Austin/Travis County plan to end homelessness.  This session will be moderated by Sarah Dooling, faculty in the UT School of Architecture.  

Beth Bruinsma is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Social Work Research at the University of Texas at Austin. She coordinated the project, "A study of Public Solicitation in Austin" which collected information on the housing status, health conditions, employment history, and service use among roadside solicitors. 

Sarah Dooling is newly appointed faculty at the University of Texas School of Architecture.  She will present results from her doctoral research related to homelessness in Seattle, Washington in which she compared notions of home among homeless adults and notions of housing among providers and policymakers.  

Frank Fernandez is the Executive Director of the Austin-based non-profit organization Community Partnership for the Homeless.  Frank will speak about his organization’s efforts to help end homelessness by providing safe, affordable housing and access to supportive service for people working to achieve independent living.  He served as Chair of the affordable housing bond campaign that successfully advocated for the passage of the $55 million City of Austin affordable housing bonds in November 2006.

John Nyfeler is an Austin-based architect and principle in charge at the firm Aguirre Roden, and is also a board member of Ending Community Homelessness Organization (ECHO).  As a member of ECHO, John is involved in the Austin/Travis County effort to end homelessness.  He will talk about Austin/Travis County’s ten year plan to end homelessness goals, strategies and challenges for implementation.

10.03.2008

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Dr. David Campt

Planning for diverse constituents: what public servants don't know — but should — about inclusion, diversity, and engaging the public

Dr. David Campt has been called upon by international organizations, the White House, mayors, and other clients to design large-scale, interactive public meetings of up to 4,000 people. In this interactive session, he will explore strategies for engaging constituents of diverse cultures and backgrounds. Dr. Campt is a nationally renowned speaker, facilitator, and consultant on diversity and public policy, dialogue, and community. He served as a senior policy adviser on President Clinton's Initiative on Race. In 1997, Dr. Campt received a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from the University of California-Berkeley. Before that, he climbed the corporate ladder in the publishing industry. Dr. Campt is the author of The Little Book of Dialogue for Difficult Subjects. For more information see www.davidcampt.com.

09.19.2008

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Dr. Michael Holleran

Cultural Resource Survey 2.0: Expert Meets Wiki

Identifying historic resources has long been a job for experts, operating in a paradigm that straddles science and connoisseurship. The question they answer is the “significance” of resources. The Internet gives us the alternative of asking directly what people find meaningful in their environment. G.I.S. makes it possible to collect and portray comprehensive historical information on the whole built environment, rather than only point-by-point investigations.

Michael Holleran directs UT’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. He came to UT in 2006 from the University of Colorado, where he served as Associate Dean of Research in the College of Architecture and Planning, and led several projects using GIS for large-scale cultural resource analysis. He earned his MCP and PhD from MIT.

11.13.2009

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Politics of Public Space: Control, Survival, and Resistance in Three Global Cities

Cities are both real and imagined.  Social constructions and narratives influence the way we think about neighborhoods, streets, buildings and public spaces, and these imaginaries in turn shape policy strategies and planning practices. In this City Forum, three University of Texas scholars will examine the connections between such social constructions, state control and planning practice, and everyday efforts by people to claim access to urban spaces. Their presentations draw on their research in Karachi, Pakistan; Ahmedabad, India; and Vienna, Austria.

Panelists and Abstracts

Kamran Asdar Ali, associate professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin.

Gender, Ethnicity and Class: Living with "Disagreements" Among Karachi's Poor

How the poor survive in their private and work life in Pakistan's expanding cities are stories and histories that are yet to be seriously explored. In this paper, I argue that in response to the total abandonment of the state to provide for its own citizens and the non-existence of welfare regimes, many turn to informal forms of "getting by" through kin networks and by manipulating social capital. Hence the paper is an attempt to understand some of the ways in which the poor experience life in Karachi. In pursuing this goal I engage with gender as a category of analysis and follow the social life of working class women. Based on fieldwork within working class communities in Karachi, I will give examples of the various ways in which women experience public spaces and confront ethnic and gendered difference in their daily lives. In conclusion, the paper will seek to represent a social and political space that may be emblematic of contemporary Pakistan where a diverse, multi-lingual and ethnic population considers the challenges, pitfalls and compromises of co-existence.

Kamran Asdar Ali is the author of Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves (UT Press, 2002).  He is the co-editor of Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (Palgrave 2008) and Comparing Cities: The Middle East and South Asia, both with Martina Rieker, with whom he also coordinates the Shehr Network on Comparative Urban Landscapes. He has also published several articles on issues of health and gender in Egypt and on Pakistani politics and popular culture. He previously taught at the University of Rochester and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1998-99). His more recent work has been on ethnic, class and gender issues in Pakistan. He is currently finishing a book length manuscript on the social history of the working class movement during Pakistan's early years.

Ipsita Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin

Violent Morphologies: Spatial Complicity in Violence

Violence represents annihilation of life and livelihood through death, entrapment, exclusion. In order to comprehensively comprehend how injustice and alienation acquires longevity through violence, it is important to analyze how processes of exclusion and marginalization are intertwined with space. Socio-spatial processes like landscaping, bordering and scaling play an important role in constructing violent morphologies that are deeply exclusionary. Cities in a globalizing world embody violent morphologies of exclusion. Using examples from Ahmedabad, India, I will explicate how landscapes are destroyed to annihilate material existence, new and unjust landscapes are erected to extend hurt and trauma, segregation and entrapment are produced by re-imagining borders, and scaling strategies are adopted by actors with greater global reach to intimidate those who are more spatially fixed. A combination of ethno-religious identity politics and neoliberal urban renewal strategies are used to spatially inscribe an unjust city. I will argue that justice entails democratization of space by altering violent morphologies in cities like Ahmedabad.

Ipsita’s research focuses on issues of globalization, urban transformations and conflict. Chatterjee is particularly interested in understanding space-place contradictions, capital-labor confrontations, and Fordist-Post Fordist transitions in the context of contemporary globalization. She also investigates municipal neoliberalism and urban exclusion in the current global regime of entrepreneurial urban renewal. Chatterjee’s most recent publication includes “Social Conflict and the Neoliberal city” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Another article titled “Violent Morphologies: Landscape, border and scale in Ahmedabad conflict” is forthcoming in Geoforum.

Steven Hoelscher, Professor of American Studies and Geography, and Chair, Department of American Studies, University of Texas at Austin

The Social Construction of a Good Vibe: Ambient Power in the MuseumsQuartier, Wien

Few topics in contemporary urban studies have generated more scholarship in recent years than concerns over the “end of public space.” The privatization of the public realm, the invasion of the market into the sphere of public culture, and the rise of the omnipresent shopping mall, commentators agree, have seemingly done much to undermine the variety and uniqueness of urban life. Such trends, moreover, have been supported by a “militarization” and “hardening” of public space, whereby unsettling modes of electronic surveillance and increasing forms of physical barriers wall off glitzy, sanitized festival marketplaces from the “real” public realm of diversity. While evidence for these developments is readily evident, in this presentation I wish to complicate our understandings of power in public space. In particular, I argue that ambient power—or the creation of a particular character in an urban setting that is felt and experienced—has become an important way of controlling public space, beyond our typical expectations of guards and gates. As a case study, I present the MuseumsQuartier Wien, a major cultural complex in the heart of historical Vienna, where innovative and seductive design effectively encourages a real experience of public space, at the same time that it closes down non-conforming options and behavior.

Born and raised in the Upper Midwest, Steve got to Texas as soon as he could. He arrived in Austin in 2000, after first teaching at LSU and, before that, completing his Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Wisconsin. During 2003-2004, he was Senior Fulbright Professor in the North American Studies Program at the University of Bonn, and today is Professor of American Studies and Geography and Chair of American Studies at UT. His research interests include: North American and European urbanism; social constructions of space and place, landscape and region; ethnicity and race; cultural memory; the geography of tourism; and the history of photography. His books include Picturing Indians (winner of the 2009 Wisconsin Historical Society Book Award of Merit), Heritage on Stage, and Textures of Place (co-edited with Karen Till and Paul Adams), and he has published more than 30 peer-review book chapters and articles in such journals as American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Quarterly, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Ecumene (now, Cultural Geographies), Geographical Review, GeoJournal, Journal of Historical Geography, Public Historian, and Social and Cultural Geography.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

Please contact Kathryn Howell with questions, e-mail Kathrynlh@gmail.com

11.20.2009

Comprehensive Planning: The Fort Worth Experience

In cities across the United States, comprehensive planning is used to fulfill legal mandates, establish growth and development strategies, and provide opportunities for residents to play a role in defining the future of their communities. In a previous City Forum, panelists explored Austin’s progress on the current Comprehensive Plan, including timelines, public participation. and challenges and opportunities. This City Forum will explore the comprehensive planning experience in Fort Worth and discuss possible lessons for Austin.  This is the second in a series of City Forums devoted to Austin’s comprehensive planning process, developed and presented jointly by the Program in Community and Regional Planning and the City of Austin.

Fernando Costa, FAICP

Fernando Costa is a nationally acclaimed city planner with a career of leadership spanning 32 years, including ten years as planning director for Fort Worth and eleven years as planning director for Atlanta. He has served as Assistant City Manager for the City of Fort Worth since April of 2008.  In this capacity, he oversees and coordinates the activities of several departments, including planning and development, transportation and public works, aviation, water, and environmental management.  Fernando is the founder and chair of Vision North Texas, a public/private partnership that promotes sustainable development in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.  He serves as a part-time faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches courses in city planning and management. He is also chair of the national Planning Accreditation Board.

First-come, first-served light lunch will be provided. Mr. Costa will also be available for an extended question and answer session immediately following City Forum.

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization and the School of Architecture's Community and Regional Planning Program.

Please contact Kathryn Howell with questions.