Laura Wolf-Powers

Work/Research

Professor Wolf-Powers' research focuses on job-centered economic development, workforce development, urban political economy and the role of community-based organizations in urban politics and governance. Recent refereed publications include "Community Benefits Agreements and Local Government: A Review of Recent Evidence" (Journal of the American Planning Association 2010) and "Chains and Ladders: Exploring the Opportunities for Workforce Development and Poverty Reduction in the Hospital Sector" (Economic Development Quarterly 2010). In 2011, she has been a featured speaker (again on community benefits agreements) at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's annual conference and at "Preparing Today's Students for Tomorrow's Jobs in Metropolitan America," co-sponsored by the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the UPenn Graduate School of Education. Papers written for these conferences are forthcoming in edited volumes to be published in 2012.

Professor Wolf-Powers' practical engagements center on workforce development and on urban manufacturing and industrial land use. She has served the University City District's West Philadelphia Skills Initiative in an informal advisory capacity and is an advisor to the Philadelphia Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN) on a Return on Investment study of its programs. In April 2010, she presented on urban industrial land use policy and strategy at the American Planning Association's annual conference in New Orleans. She served as a juror for the Community Design Collaborative's Design Challenge, Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites and organized "How Should We Grow? Philadelphia's Industrial Future", a forum highlighting the challenges and choices facing the city of Philadelphia as it attempts to recycle unsuitable industrial land for other purposes while supporting the city's still-substantial industrial employment base. She is currently working with the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City on a multi-phased industrial study for the City of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Publications

Professor Wolf-Powers has published extensively in the areas of local economic development and workforce development. She is currently writing a book that assesses public policy responses (spatial, economic and institutional) to the chronic and mutually reinforcing problems of joblessness, working poverty, and low educational attainment in central cities and poor suburbs.

To access Dr. Wolf-Powers' publications, please visit Selected Works

Courses

Professor Wolf-Powers teaches Urban Economics in the core curriculum for the Masters in City Planning as well as several courses in the Community and Economic Development concentration, including Techniques of Urban Economic Development and Metropolitan Labor Markets and Workforce Development. She was the 2011 winner of the G. Holmes Award for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Design.