Letter from the Chair of Planning

Welcome to the Department of City and Regional Planning, also known as PennPlanning.

If you are thinking about applying to Penn Planning, please check out our MCP (Master of City Planning) and PhD degree programs, our certificate and dual degree programs, and our admissions procedures and deadlines.

If you are a returning student and are wondering what's new and what courses to take this semester, read on. Also, be sure to check the updated core curriculum and concentration requirements, some of which have changed a bit.

If you are an alum or friend, read on to see what our students and faculty have been up to, as well as some of the lecture and speaker series on tap for this year.

This was my second year as a PennPlanning faculty member, and first as department chair, so let me take a minute to introduce myself. I was thrilled to arrive at Penn in August 2007 to join the faculty of one of the nation's top planning programs in one of its best design schools. What drew me to PennPlanning is the program's 'just right' balance between theory, practice and skills; its matchless synergy opportunities with other departments and programs around real estate development, urban design, land conservation, architecture, landscape architecture, and historic preservation; great student and faculty colleagues; and the sense that Philadelphia was becoming America's next great city. I hope you share some of these views and aspirations.

From 1987 to 2007, I was on the faculty of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and before that, Georgia Tech, and the University of Rhode Island. My degrees are from MIT (undergraduate) and Berkeley (graduate). While in California, I was able to work closely with state and local lawmakers, planning officials, and advocacy groups to help shape the state's urban development agenda. It was tremendously satisfying, and I hope to continue that work in Pennsylvania. I like to travel, visit cities, hike, scuba dive, go to movies, read about recent history, and take on (too many) home improvement projects.

Change is in the air everywhere at PennDesign and Penn Planning. We have a new dean, Marilyn Taylor (formerly head of the urban design and airport planning groups at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill). Marilyn was also the first woman and architect to be president of the Urban Land Institute. She is an accomplished architect and planner with a worldwide perspective, and we look forward to hearing her ideas about we and our professions are headed next.

The biggest changes, however, are in Philadelphia itself. In Michael Nutter, Philadelphia has a dynamic, new mayor who truly believes in planning and getting things done. City government-including its planning functions-has been reborn. Center City has come back strongly from the economic doldrums of the 1970s and 1980s, and many other neighborhoods are starting to come back as well. To help, we at PennPlanning are making 2008-2009 'The Year of Philadelphia,' and we will focus many of our workshop, studio, lecture series, and research efforts on the greater Philadelphia region, and its communities, neighborhoods and issues. So keep an eye out for our Year of Philadelphia events.

This doesn't mean we'll give short shrift to things happening beyond Philadelphia. As always, we'll be looking for studio, study, and seminar opportunities (try saying that five times fast) throughout Pennsylvania, the Northeast, the U.S., and around the world. We hope to work more closely with the Pennsylvania Planning Association, the American Planning Association, and other professional planning and planning advocacy organizations. We'll be forging new links with our sister fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and historic preservation around issues of sustainability and international development and design. We're also expanding our connections to Penn's career services office; so, if you are looking for a job or have a job to offer, think of PennPlanning first.

That's all for now.

John Landis, Chair
127 Meyerson Hall
210 South 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
T: 215-898-8329
F: 215-898-5731
cityplan@design.upenn.edu