Domenic Vitiello

Courses Taught 

(recent syllabi are avaliable to download at the bottom or righthand side of this page)

Introduction to City and Regional Planning: History, Theory, and Practice (CPLN 5000 / URBS 4400) - fall

Research Interests

Migrant communities 

Urban agriculture 

Urban and planning history 

Recent and current projects focus on:

Immigrant communities, civil society, and sanctuary, including: 

• The Sanctuary City: Immigrant, Refugee, and Receiving Communities in Postindustrial Philadelphia (Cornell University Press, 2022), winner of the Urban History Association's 2023 Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book on North American Urban History. The book traces Central American, Southeast Asian, Liberian, Arab, and Mexican communities' experiences in the Philadelphia region since the 1970s. It is open access (free to download as an ebook or PDF), thanks to Weitzman Dean Frederick Steiner and the Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities + Urbanism + Design initiative at Penn. You can also read Domenic's op-ed in the Washington Post about southern states busing and flights taking asylum seekers to sanctuary cities. 
• Ongoing research and collaboration with migrant-led community associations in Sicily. Since 2019, Domenic has been researching migrant rights movements in the city of Palermo, and more recently in rural Corleone and Campobello di Mazara in Western Sicily. Since 2022, Domenic and City Planning Prof. Allison Lassiter have partnered with leaders of the Associazione Diaspore per la Pace and Palermo's elected migrants' council, the Consulta delle Culture, to support capacity building among associations in Palermo and Marsala working on community development and environmental planning in their members' home towns and regions in North and West Africa. In 2024-27, Domenic and Penn Social Policy Lecturer Obed Arango are working with these and other partners in Palermo on community-driven participatory action research and organizing focused on realizing immigrant rights and access to services in the city.  
• Ongoing research on the destruction, preservation, and neighborhood change in Chinatowns in the US and Canada with partners including Asian Americans United and Save Chinatown Coalition (Philadelphia), the Chinese Progressive Association and Greater Boston Legal Services (Boston), and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (New York). You can read about Domenic's research with Penn Urban Studies alum Arthur Acolin on property ownership and neighborhood change in Boston and Philadelphia. 
• You can also read Domenic's essays on immigration and community development in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and PlanPhilly.

Urban agriculture and poverty in the global North and South, including: 

• Comparative research on the community economic development impacts of urban farming and gardening around the world, with Penn MCP and PhD students.  
• A book project with Urban Studies Prof. Michael Nairn, entitled Everyday Urban Agriculture, on the social impacts of community gardening in Camden, Chicago, and Philadelphia, based on over 15 years of research and practice. Here you can read reports on research in the U.S. and student work on urban agriculture and community food systems and Domenic's most recent article on the ways urban agriculture has been valued and supported in recent decades in Philadelphia and Chicago. 

*Penn students have participated in all of this research, also sometimes students from other colleges and universities, including the University of Palermo. 

Selected Publications

Immigration:

Domenic Vitiello, The Sanctuary City: Immigrant, Refugee, and Receiving Communities in Postindustrial Philadelphia (Cornell University Press, 2022). Open access (free) - click here to download the entire book as an ebook or PDF (or click here to download PDFs of individual chapters). 

Domenic Vitiello and Zoe Blickenderfer (Penn Urban Studies alum), "The Planned Destruction of Chinatowns in the United States and Canada since c.1900," Planning Perspectives (2020). 

Domenic Vitiello, "Sanctuary and the City," The Metropole (2019). 

Arthur Acolin (Penn Urban Studies alum) and Domenic Vitiello, "Who Owns Chinatown: Neighborhood Change and Preservation in Boston and Philadelphia," Urban Studies (2018). 

Domenic Vitiello and Arthur Acolin, “Institutional Ecosystems of Housing Support in Chinese, Southeast Asian, and African Philadelphia,” Journal of Planning Education and Research (2017).

Domenic Vitiello and Thomas J. Sugrue, editors, Immigration and Metropolitan Revitalization in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Chapter 9 by Domenic Vitiello and Rachel Van Tosh (Penn Master of City Planning alum), “Liberian Reconstruction, Transnational Development, and Pan-African Community Revitalization."

Domenic Vitiello, "The Politics of Immigration and Suburban Revitalization," Journal of Urban Affairs (2014), reprinted in Urban Politics: A Reader, edited by Stephen McGovern (Sage, 2016). 

Food and Urban Agriculture:

Domenic Vitiello, "Urban Agriculture as a Public Good," in Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture in the United States: Future Directions for a New Ethic of City Building, edited by Samina Raja, Marcia Caton Campbell, Alexandra Judelsohn, Branden Born, and Alfonso Morales (Springer, 2024). open access - free to download. 

Domenic Vitiello, "'The highest and best use of land in the city': Valuing Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia and Chicago," Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (2022). open access - free to download. 

Domenic Vitiello, Jeane Ann Grisso, Rebecca Fischman (Penn Master of City Planning alum), and K. Leah Whiteside (Penn Master of City Planning alum), “From Commodity Surplus to Food Justice: Food Banks and Local Agriculture in the United States,” Agriculture and Human Values (2015).

Domenic Vitiello and Catherine Brinkley (Penn Planning PhD alum), “The Hidden History of Food System Planning,” Journal of Planning History (2014). Honorable mention for the JPH Prize for best article in the journal, 2013-2015, from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History.

Domenic Vitiello and Laura Wolf-Powers, “Growing Food to Grow Cities? The Potential of Agriculture for Local Economic Development in the Urban United States,” Community Development Journal (2014).

Urban and Planning History:

Domenic Vitiello, “Infrastructure: Lifelines, Mobility, and Urban Development,” in Planning History Handbook, edited by Carola Hein (Routledge, 2017).

Domenic Vitiello, Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Domenic Vitiello, “Monopolizing the Metropolis: Gilded Age Growth Machines and Power in American Urbanization,” Planning Perspectives (2013). Winner of the Planning Perspectives Prize for best article in the journal, 2012-14, from the International Planning History Society. 

Domenic Vitiello with George E. Thomas, The Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the City It Made (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 

Domenic Vitiello, "Machine Building and City Building: Urban Planning and Industrial Restructuring in Philadelphia, 1894-1928," Journal of Urban History (2008). Winner of the Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize for Best Article in Planning History, 2007-09, from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History.  

Degrees and Experience

B.A. in Archaeology, Wesleyan University
M.C.P. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D. in History, University of Pennsylvania

Domenic and his students have worked with numerous community organizations in the Philadelphia region, Sicily, and transnationally, helping design, implement, and evaluate programs and cooperative enterprises with community development corporations, migrant associations, immigrant and refugee resettlement agencies, and food and urban agriculture organizations. He has served on the boards of the African Cultural Alliance of North America, JUNTOS/Casa de los Soles, Philadelphia Orchard Project, and presently the International Planning History Society and the Society for American City and Regional Planning History.  Domenic is Editor for the Americas for the world's leading urban history journal Urban History.