Domenic Vitiello
Biography
B.A., Wesleyan University
M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Domenic Vitiello is associate chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning and helps lead its Community and Economic Development concentration. He teaches courses on strategic planning, food systems, immigration, and urban history. He also teaches for Penn's Urban Studies Program (http://urban.ssc.upenn.edu/) and is a senior fellow of Penn's Center for Public Health Initiatives (http://www.cphi.upenn.edu/).
Trained as a planner and historian, Domenic's research focuses on community and economic development institutions, migration, and urban agriculture. His historical scholarship includes forthcoming books on the economic development and decline of Philadelphia. He has published articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Urban History, and Progressive Planning, as well as book chapters on community development and planning history.
As a practitioner, Domenic has worked with public, private, and third sector organizations, primarily in community development, historic preservation, and food systems planning. He is founding president of the Philadelphia Orchard Project (http://www.phillyorchards.org/); a director of JUNTOS/Casa de los Soles (http://www.vamosjuntos.org/) and the African Cultural Alliance of North America (http://www.acanaus.org/); and has served on the board of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/sacrph/).
Through Domenic's courses, MCP students have planned refugee housing systems, urban farming enterprises, and transnational development projects; helped the City of Philadelphia develop food policy; and produced research and reports for a wide variety of community development organizations. In 2007, he received the Michael B. Katz Award for Excellence in Teaching in Urban Studies at Penn.
Work/Research
Domenic's current research examines community development in immigrant communities and the connections between urban agriculture and food security. He is authoring a book comparing community development in the Puerto Rican, Chinese, Indochinese, Korean, African, Arab, and Mexican communities of Philadelphia. He helps lead the Philadelphia Migration Project, a research initiative with colleagues in Penn's Schools of Arts and Sciences, Social Policy, Law, and Education, supported by the Penn Institute for Urban Research (http://www.history.upenn.edu/philamigrationproject/). During the summer, Domenic has been working with Michael Nairn (Urban Studies) and Jeane Ann Grisso (Public Health), quantifying the production and documenting the distribution of food from community gardens and farms in Philadelphia, Camden and Trenton, NJ. This project aims to understand the economic and health impacts of formal and informal urban agriculture.
Publications
Selected Publications
Domenic Vitiello, "The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning," Journal of the American Planning Association Centennial Issue, vol.75, no.2 (March 2009), 245-255.
Audrey Singer, Domenic Vitiello, Michael Katz, and David Park, Recent Immigration to Philadelphia: Regional Change in a Re-emerging Gateway (Brookings Institution, November 2008).
Domenic Vitiello and Michael Nairn, "Everyday Urban Agriculture: From Community Gardening to Community Food Security," Harvard Design Magazine no.30, vol.2 (Fall/Winter 2009).
Domenic Vitiello, "Machine Building and City Building: The Planning and Politics of Urban and Industrial Restructuring in Philadelphia, 1891-1928," Journal of Urban History vol.34, no.3 (March 2008).
Courses
Professor Vitiello teaches The Immigrant City and Metropolitan Food Systems. He also oversees the Community Development Praticuum.
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