Understanding cities and shaping communities: Penn IUR turns 20

Housed in the Weitzman School of Design’s Meyerson Hall, just off the corner of 34th and Walnut streets, the Penn Institute for Urban Research (IUR) is a campus-wide enterprise that draws from the collective wisdom of urban experts around the University and beyond.

Now entering its third decade, Penn IUR has stood at the crossroads of research and action, informing public policy to foster sustainable growth in cities worldwide.

The team has forged dynamic internal collaborations—including with Penn Press on “The City in the 21st Century” book series, which counts more than 50 publications. Experts have helped to redefine the University’s role as an anchor institution in West Philadelphia and represented Penn in meetings concerning urban development around the globe—most notably at the United Nations through UN-Habitat and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and U-20, the engagement group for the G-20.

Penn IUR has become a vital force in bridging scholarly inquiry with the urgent, shifting realities of urban life at home and abroad.

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The early days

In 2003, President emerita Judith Rodin convened a group of faculty from different Schools—planners, economists, sociologists, lawyers, physicians—to discuss how they might engage broadly in urban-focused research.

Determined to foster a University-wide effort, Rodin tapped two professors to co-found a new Institute of Urban Research: Susan Wachter, the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at the Wharton School, and Eugénie Birch, Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research & Education, a School of Design urban planner with a global perspective. Gary Hack, then dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts (now the Weitzman School) offered space for Penn IUR in Meyerson Hall, a building named for Penn President emeritus Martin Meyerson, who had been a city planner.

“They had both the expertise and the energy and ambition to do something big, something different,” Rodin says of Birch and Wachter.

A decade prior, Rodin had established the West Philadelphia Initiatives, a bold effort to address systemic urban issues through multiple strategies. Rodin, the University’s first permanent female president, a West Philadelphia public school graduate, and Penn alumna, was interested in looking for ways for the University to partner with the community to improve the neighborhood and to restore trust.

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“The University sat in the middle of a neighborhood facing post-industrial decline,” recalls Rodin.

 A psychologist by training, Rodin’s plan took a data-driven approach.

The University worked to enhance safety with brighter street lighting, graffiti cleanup, tree planting, and other efforts to reclaim public spaces. Next, it worked to accelerate economic development with a “buy and hire West Philadelphia first” policy, focused on local procurement and hiring. Penn also invested $2 million to rehabilitate derelict homes and sell them to local families at a loss, ensuring affordability. And Penn worked to improve public education by building the Penn Alexander School, which the University committed to funding with an additional $1,000 per pupil for its first decade.

Over time, the efforts paid off—streets became safer, and families remained. By the early 2000s, Penn’s engagement was recognized as a national model for how urban universities could support their communities while strengthening themselves.

Rodin distilled the experience in “The University and Urban Renewal” published in Penn IUR’s City in the 21st Century series. The book became a blueprint for university leaders and students around the world.

The Institute’s charge

From the outset, Penn IUR’s mission had sweeping aspirations, evident in its tagline: “Understanding Cities, Understanding the World,” a phrase Birch and Wachter have pursued literally and figuratively in the past two decades.

Urbanization, note Birch and Wachter, a defining trend of the past century, continues to accelerate, and cities have become microcosms of global challenges—driving economies, fostering culture, and advancing scientific knowledge. “By 2050, we’ll have 2.5 billion more urban residents and need to build the equivalent of a city of 2 million people every week, mostly in Asia and Africa,” says Wachter. “The necessary infrastructure has yet to be built,” adds Birch.

How we shape those cities will, says Birch, “determine the welfare of humanity” in terms of climate sustainability and social equity. “No pressure, right?” she quips.

Rodin and then-Provost Robert Barchi also charged Penn IUR to break down the walls inside Penn and encourage faculty from all 12 Schools to share and collaborate on urban research—and turn that knowledge outward to make a tangible difference beyond campus.

The task, says Wachter was aspirational and “daunting.”

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Common ground for urban research

Penn IUR is lean—Birch, Wachter, and students or fellows manage multiple projects around the University. Amy Montgomery has served as the managing director since its early days.

IUR has intentionally shaped their work to be supportive and additive, says Montgomery. “A large part of our mission is to highlight, disseminate, and champion the work of others,” she says. In delivering the charge of “giving voice to Penn’s robust and decentralized urban scholars, we need to be inventive,” she adds, pointing to partnerships and collaborations that span the University and stretch around the globe.

IUR helped launch the master’s in urban spatial analytics (MUSA), now housed in the Department of City and Regional Planning. It also developed and continues to support the Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium, which pairs students with faculty or Ph.D. candidates for research collaborations.

In 2018, the Institute introduced the highly competitive, noncredit Urban Leadership Fellows program, offering undergraduates monthly meetings and field trips with top urban leaders. At the doctoral level, it convenes and co-sponsors the annual Penn Urban Doctoral Symposium with the Urban Studies program to celebrate new Ph.D. affiliated graduates.

Throughout the academic year, Penn IUR hosts seminars, “Urban labs,” and colloquia, encouraging dialogue across disciplines. IUR has held or contributed to conferences, collaborating on topics like feeding cities, partnering with the School of Veterinary Medicine; greening vacant lots in Philly, partnering with the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, to plant trees and gardens in derelict spaces; and exploring urban nature-based solutions globally, partnering with UNEP, the German development agency GIZ, and the World Resources Institute.

Recently IUR added the Nussdorf Student Leadership Awards, named for Penn IUR’s first and most devoted donor, the late Lawrence C. Nussdorf, a Wharton alumnus, to recognize outstanding undergraduates chosen from among the Urban Leadership Fellows program and the students in the undergraduate research colloquium.

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Expanding the reach

Over time, Penn IUR has invited practitioners into the conversation—the mayors, the policy aides, the NGO leaders, the real estate developers.

Birch and Wachter’s team have mentored a new generation of urbanists, helping cities develop climate action plans and resilience strategies. They have connected Penn experts with city halls to address issues from affordable housing finance to transit-oriented development.

The co-directors themselves straddle the academic and practical worlds. Both primarily academics, Wachter came to Penn IUR directly after her term as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Research and Development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she led the team that brought about the new markets tax credit program and President Clinton’s Places Left Behind policy focus. Birch had served on the New York City Planning Commission in the 1990s, was a member of the six-person jury to pick the design for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and worked on global urban initiatives through the United Nations. She knew how city halls and international agencies operated. Both experts understood the chasm between scholarship and practice, and they were keenly interested in bridging it.

In addition to the City in the 21st Century series, IUR publishes the SSRN Urban Research eJournal, periodic white papers on topics like a green cities guarantee fund and climate finance. They also developed a podcast series on state and local finance with the Volcker Alliance as well as a monthly Urban Link eDigest.

Through the U.S. Department of State Diplomacy Lab, they co-sponsored a graduate student project on rebuilding Bucha, Ukraine, presenting findings in Washington to officials from the State and Housing Departments and the Ukrainian Embassy.

“We want to amplify scholarly voices and engage scholars with practitioners and policy makers,” Wachter says.

Penn IUR has created a forum to confront the challenges facing cities globally, and to shine a light on both failures and progress, hosting the Urban Leadership Forum. It has honored visionary city leaders at this event, including Renée Glover, who overhauled public housing in Atlanta; Marc Morial, former Mayor of New Orleans and the transformative President and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization; and Manny Diaz, the mayor of Miami who inherited a city in shambles and turned it around.

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Global impact

Birch has expanded Penn IUR’s reach into global urban policy. She led the General Assembly of Partners for the UN’s Habitat III conference in 2016, helping incorporate stakeholder input into international agreements on sustainable cities, and connecting faculty and students with UN-Habitat projects and World Bank research.

Today, Penn IUR plays a key role in another global urban development effort, serving as the secretariat for the SDSN Global Commission on Urban SDG Finance, co-chaired by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, and economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Established in 2023, the Global Commission includes more than 100 members—mayors, bankers, lawyers, and academics, as well as leaders of major city networks like C-40 and ICLEI. Penn IUR is tasked with researching innovative financing for climate-resilient infrastructure, developing advocacy strategies, and contributing critical data to the International Panel on Climate Change.

The anchored University

Throughout its work, IUR has not shied away from conversations about challenging issues, notes Birch. On the issue of affordable housing, “We convened a roundtable on housing and anchor institutions,” she says, “bringing together universities from around the nation, grappling with similar tensions.” By inviting city officials, community organizers, and college administrators, Birch notes IUR was able to create a space for honest dialogue, the kind that might spur collective action and potential fixes.

As Birch puts it, anchors like Penn often face challenges that are remarkably common from city to city. This pragmatic approach is a way to “learn from each other’s mistakes and successes and work to do better,” she says.

The IUR model, a university-wide, interdisciplinary, practice-oriented urban institute, was novel enough that soon other universities took notice, finding a template they might follow, says Wachter, pointing to Johns Hopkins University as an example.

Penn IUR has excelled at bridging academia and governance from local to national levels. It is, she says, “a model for how an academic institution could partner with mayors … to implement their vision successfully,” notes Rodin.

Making a difference

Montgomery says that one of the most important elements of Penn IUR’s work going forward will be the continued exploration of how cities can respond to change in ways that help communities thrive, whether that is responding to the shock of a pandemic or disaster, changing climate, evolving political or economic context, or a new innovation.

Birch and Wachter aren’t resting on their laurels. They’re busy planning.

“What makes me excited is how we can next make a difference,” Birch says, “through our students, through our colleagues, through the work that we do; the publications, the research, and contributions to instruction, we can make a difference.” The hope that they could meet some of the challenges that cities are facing and take advantage of their opportunities to promote shared prosperity, is what keeps her committed.

“We can make a difference by engaging across disciplines, across the practitioner and academic divide,” adds Wachter. “We will keep doing this on issues that are critically important for people residing in urban areas, globally and nationally.”

“We built fluidity into the mission from the start,” Rodin says, reflecting on Penn IUR’s adaptability. The Institute was never meant to be static; it was meant to chase the moving target of urban issues, always recalibrating for the next crisis or opportunity.

A recipient of a recent Draw Down the Lightening grant, Penn IUR will look again at the anchored University in the project “Penn as an Anchor Institution: Imagining the Next Steps, 2025-2040.”

Twenty years of Penn IUR has stimulated and disseminated scholarship that has changed views on urbanism, trained and inspired leaders in the arena of urban policy, and fostered the next generation of urban leaders through its support of undergraduate and graduate education. It has proven that an idea—the idea that cities can be understood and changed—can take root in concrete.

“It’s an unbelievably important moment for this kind of urban vision and expertise,” Rodin observes. “The world is going to need more institutions like Penn IUR.”

The Penn Institute for Urban Research will mark this milestone with the 20th Annual Urban Leadership Forum, “Urban Leadership for the 21st Century” on April 25 | 11-12:30 pm.

Three pathbreaking urban leaders: Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone; Patrick Harker, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, will receive the 2025 Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize.