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 "Human-capital-centred Regionalism in Economic Development: A Case of Analytics Outpacing Institutions?" (Urban Studies, 2012); "Community Benefits Agreements in a Value Capture Context" in Value Capture and Land Policies. (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012) and "Aligning Secondary and Post-Secondary Credentialization with Economic Development Strategy, or If Low Educational Attainment = Poor Metropolitan Competitiveness, what can be done about it?" in Preparing Today's Students for Tomorrow's Jobs in Metropolitan America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). In March 2012, she gave a talk entitled "Teaching planners to deal: the pedagogical value of a (simulated) economic development negotiation" in the Emerging Voices series, part of the College lecture series at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan.

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 recently worked 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.