Frederick Steiner (MRP’77, MA’86, PhD’86) is dean and Paley Professor of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Previously, he served as dean of the School of Architecture and Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin for 15 years. He previously taught at Penn and the following institutions: Arizona State University, Washington State University, the University of Colorado at Denver. He was a visiting professor of landscape architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Dean Steiner was a Fulbright-Hays scholar at Wageningen University, The Netherlands and a Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation at the American Academy in Rome. During 2013-2014, he was the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, and a Scholar at the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Dean Steiner helped establish the Sustainable SITES Initiative, the first program of its kind to offer a systematic, comprehensive rating system designed to define sustainable land development and management, and holds the SITES Professional (SITES AP) credential. In 2019, he co-founded The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology with Richard Weller, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture.
Dean Steiner was a presidential appointee to the national board of the American Institute of Architects and was on the Urban Committee of the National Park System Advisory Board. Previously he served as president of the Hill Country Conservancy (an Austin land trust) as well as in various capacities on the boards of Envision Central Texas and the Landscape Architecture Foundation. He worked on the Austin Comprehensive Plan (Imagine Austin) and on the campus plan for The University of Texas at Austin.
Dean Steiner earned a Master of Community Planning and a BS in Design from the University of Cincinnati, and his PhD and MA in city and regional planning and a Master of Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Dean Steiner received an honorary MPhil in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic, and in 2023, the University of Cincinnati honored him with the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning Outstanding Alumni Award.
Selected Books
Robert D. Yaro, Ming Zhang, and Frederick R. Steiner. Megaregions and America's Future. (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2022).
Frederick Steiner, Richard Weller, Karen M'Closkey, and Billy Fleming, editors. Design with Nature Now (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2019).
Frederick Steiner, Making Plans: How to Engage with Landscape, Design, and the Urban Environment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018).
Frederick Steiner, George Thompson, and Armando Carbonell, editors. Nature and Cities (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2016).
Danilo Palazzo and Frederick Steiner. Urban Ecological Design (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011).
Frederick Steiner. Design for a Vulnerable Planet (Roger Fullington Series in Architecture) (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011).
Frederick Steiner. The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning (second edition) (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2008).
Frederick Steiner and Kent Butler, editors. Planning and Urban Design Standards, Student Edition (Ramsey/Sleeper Architectural Graphic Standards Series) (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2006).
Frederick Steiner, editor. The Essential Ian McHarg: Writings on Design and Nature (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006).
Frederick Steiner. Human Ecology: Following Nature’s Lead (foreword by Richard T.T. Forman) (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002) (Paperback edition, 2016).
Ian L. McHarg and Frederick Steiner, editors. To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg (foreword by Robert Yaro) (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998).
George Thompson and Frederick Steiner, editors. Ecological Design and Planning (Center Books on Contemporary Landscape Design) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997).
Frederick Steiner. The Living Landscape (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991, translated into Italian by Maria Cristina Treu and Danilo Palazzo, Costruire il paesaggio: Un approccio ecologico alla pianificazione del territorio; second English edition, 2000; first Chinese edition, 2004; second Italian edition, 2004; paperback edition, 2008, Island Press).
