Eugenie L. Birch
Biography
A.B., Bryn Mawr College
M.S.U.P., Columbia University
Ph.D., Columbia University
Professor Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Chair of Urban Research and Education. She teaches courses in planning history and global urbanization.
Professor Birch has been active in the field's professional organizations and in academia in the United States and abroad. In 2000, she was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners and made a member (honorary) of the Royal Town Planning Institute. She has been a member of the Planning Accreditation Board, having served as its chair from 2004-2006. She has been President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning; President, Society of American City and Regional Planning History; and co-editor, Journal of the American Planning Association. She is currently President, International Planning History Society and Associate Editor, Journal of the American Planning Association.
She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning History, and Planning Perspectives.
She has been Visiting Scholar, Queens University, Foreign Scholar, University of Hong Kong and Visiting Professor, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning has given her the Margarita McCoy Award, "in recognition of her outstanding contribution to furthering the advancement of women in the planning academy" (994), the Jay Chatterjee Award for Distinguished Service that "recognizes an individual whose exceptional service, actions and leadership have had a lasting and positive impact on the ACSP"(2006) and the Distinguished Educator Award (2009) in recognition of her teaching and research. The Society of American City and Regional Planning History awarded her its Lawrence C. Gerckens Prize (2009) in recognition of her contributions to planning history.
Professor Birch's civic commitments include serving on the board of trustees of the Municipal Art Society of New York, Scenic Hudson, Inc and the International Downtown Association. She is co-chair, UN-HABITAT's World Urban Campaign. In the early 1990s she was a member of the City Planning Commission, New York City and in 2002, she served on the jury to select the designers for the World Trade Center site.
Work/Research
Projects include: project director, "Knowledge Repository for Policy, Markets and Behaviors Task Group," Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (Department of Energy, 2010 to present); co-convenor, Changing Cities - Linking Global Knowledge to Local Action, seminar held with the East West Center (2011); co-convenor, Penn Roundtable on Anchor Institutions, whose focus in 2011-2012 will be stadiums and university-based neighborhood revitalization; co-editor Penn Resolution, Educating Urban Designers for Post-Carbon Cities (2011), the output of the conference, Urban Design After the Age of Oil, (2008); co-editor, Journal of the American Planning Association, Centennial Issue (2009); co-editor of special issue, Annals of American Academy of Social & Political Science (2007);; and co-convenor, Rockefeller Foundation's Innovation for an Urban World, A Global Urban Summit, Bellagio, Italy, 2007.
Publications
Dr. Birch has published widely in planning history and contemporary urban revitalization. In 2011 Penn Press published Health and the World's Cities (co-edited with Afaf Meleis and Susan Wachter), Global Urbanization (co-edited with Susan Wachter) and Neighborhood and Life Chances (co-edited with Harriet Newberger and Susan Wachter). In 2009, Routledge published the Urban and Regional Planning Reader (edited by Dr. Birch) and the International City/County Management Association and the American Planning Association issued Local Government Planning or the "Green Book" (co-edited with Gary Hack, Paul Sedway and Mitchell Silver). Other recent books are Growing Greener Cities, Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century (2008) and Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster, Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (2006), both edited with Susan M. Wachter. Dr. Birch is currently developing a monograph expanding "Hopeful Signs:Urban Revitalization in the 21st Century," Ingram, G. and YHong, (eds), Issues in Urban Development, (Cambridge, Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2007). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Urban History and Planning Magazine.
Other Recent Publications Include:
"Making Urban Research Intellectually Respectable: Martin Meyerson and the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1959-1964," Journal of Planning History (Summer: 2011)
"From CIAM to CNU: The Roots of Urban Design," in Banerjee, T. and A. Loukaitou-Sideris (eds), Urban Design Companion (London: Routledge: 2011)
"Downtown in the 'New American City,'" in Birch, E. and S.Wachter (eds), "The Shape of the New American City," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 626 (November 2009)
"One Hundred Years of Planning," Journal of the American Planning Association 75: 2 (Spring, 2009): 113-122 (with Christopher Silver).
Forthcoming Publications:
"Cities, People and Processes as Case Studies in Urban Planning, " in Crane, R. and R. Webber (eds), Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning (New York: Oxford).
"Living Downtown in the 21st Century, Past Trends and Future Policy Concerns," in Wagner, F. and R. Caves (eds), Community Liveablity (London: Routledge).
Courses
Dr. Birch teaches Introduction to Planning History. Global Urbanization and Doctoral Seminar.Centers & Progams
Dr. Birch is the founding co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research.
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