UPenn’s School of Design Announces a New Home for PlanPhilly

PHILADELPHIA--The University of Pennsylvania School of Design is pleased to announce that PlanPhilly, Philadelphia’s highly-regarded, digital news organization covering planning, design and development, will be moving from its original home within PennPraxis to WHYY/NewsWorks, effective this month.

PennPraxis and PlanPhilly will continue the innovative, collaborative relationship that has provided Philadelphians unparalleled coverage of planning and civic issues and promoted informed civic discourse and vibrant public dialogue since 2006.

PlanPhilly was founded nine years ago as a project of PennPraxis with initial funding from the William Penn Foundation and subsequent support from the Wyncote Foundation. Since its inception, PlanPhilly has worked within PennPraxis, the School of Design’s applied research and practice arm, to give readers unprecedented access to all aspects of the planning process. At a time of urban renewal and fast-paced development, PlanPhilly has helped to transform Philadelphia by engaging thousands of residents in a meaningful dialogue about the city’s most important planning and design issues. 

The decision to move PlanPhilly was made jointly by the School of Design, Wyncote and WHYY, the region’s leading public media news service, in an effort to strengthen PlanPhilly’s impact and resources by nesting it within a respected, multi-platform media organization committed to high-quality journalism and presentation of important civic issues. 

David Haas, vice chair of the Wyncote Foundation, said, "We at Wyncote Foundation are proud to support PlanPhilly's in-depth, high-impact coverage of built environment issues, and we're grateful to PennPraxis and PennDesign for providing strong institutional support and subject-matter expertise as a foundation for its watchdog reporting. We look forward to supporting PlanPhilly as a project of WHYY, where we believe it will be successful in building a broad base of support for its mission.”

“PlanPhilly is changing its location but not its mission,” said PennDesign Dean Marilyn Jordan Taylor. “The great reporting, our collaborative research efforts, and our joint engagement in civic dialogue with Philadelphia’s communities will all continue.  We’re delighted that the newsroom environment and WHYY’s multi-media capacity will provide new resources and working relationships for PlanPhilly.” 

“WHYY and NewsWorks could not be more pleased to welcome PlanPhilly into our journalistic family,” said Chris Satullo, vice president of news and civic dialogue at WHYY. “We've worked closely with Matt Golas and his team over the last five years, and have always admired their energy, accuracy, sense of fairness, and passion to serve the Philadelphia community. We're excited about the potential of what we can do together to broaden the reach of their expert reporting through audio, video and community events.”

From its beginnings covering the extensive Central Delaware Riverfront Planning Process in 2006-2008, an initiative funded by the William Penn Foundation, to the citywide reporting it is well known for today, PlanPhilly has broadened its scope, expanded its audience, and helped to transform the face of Philadelphia. PlanPhilly’s coverage includes in-depth reporting on the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, the Philadelphia Zoning Code Commission, historic preservation, transportation, casinos and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, the reformed waterfront governing entity.

For the past nine years, PlanPhilly has been managed by Matt Golas, who worked in the daily newspaper business for 32 years, including 20 at the Philadelphia Inquirer where he was Metropolitan Editor. "With this move to an organization steeped in deep news coverage and essential civic engagement, the PlanPhilly and Eyes on the Street team is looking forward to many more fruitful years of covering the built environment in Philadelphia and the region,’ commented Golas. “We are most grateful for the association we developed with the Design School of the University of Pennsylvania over the past eight years and we are looking forward to a continuing relationship with PennPraxis”.

Published exclusively on the web and via social media, PlanPhilly has produced over 10,000 articles and staged over a hundred public events.  PlanPhilly has become an essential resource for many residents of our region. It has successfully filled a void left by traditional forms of mainstream media and made great strides in creating convergence with other new media models, leading the way in the region’s digital media, developing new audiences and keeping Philadelphians informed about planning-related news.

For more information, visit http://planphilly.com or www.design.upenn.edu. 

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