Urban Planning | Penn Today

Urban renewal, community activism, and green spaces in Historic Germantown

As part of a Summer Humanities Internship, rising junior Leo Wagner conducted research on community responses to infrastructure projects in the mid-20th century and how the member sites are currently using their green spaces.

One way the US could have prevented the fight over the eviction moratorium

Vincent Reina of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design said the U.S. lacks a standardized system for contacting landlords, which complicates rent-relief programs. “There have been calls over time for some national effort around trying to create better national and local owner registry systems, and if there was ever a time this was clearly needed, it is now,” he said.

This urban planner created a new metric to find a city’s most frightening intersections

Megan Ryerson of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design is using biometric data to identify dangerous zones for urban cyclists. The data “can be used to measure safety rather than waiting for someone to die,” she said.

Philadelphia home repair grants linked to decreased neighborhood crime, Penn study finds

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine, School of Arts & Sciences, and Stuart Weitzman School of Design found that the crime rate on a given block was reduced by nearly 22% when the city of Philadelphia funded repairs for even a single house. “The social fabric of a neighborhood is very connected to the physical environment,” said the medical school’s Eugenia South.

megan ryerson cycling down a city bike lane

A new metric for designing safer streets

Penn researchers demonstrate how biometric data can help city planners more proactively design and evaluate the safety of urban infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Americans face looming rent crisis

When the CDC’s eviction moratorium is lifted, 11 million Americans will face housing instability.

A black and white image of high-rise buildings collapsing in a cloud of dust

Q&A

Urban planning and politics in Atlanta

Akira Rodríguez’s new book, “Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta’s Public Housing” explores how the intersection of race and public housing development planning in Atlanta created a politics of resistance.

the philadelphia city skyline looking north on a sunny day

How has COVID-19 changed ‘superstar cities’?

A new analysis found that overall mobility in large U.S. cities has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, and some are also experiencing changing segregation patterns, with potential implications that could last well beyond the pandemic.

Does the federal housing policy do enough to stop evictions?

Vincent Reina of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design discusses the reliance on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) to solve all housing affordability problems. “We’re relying on LIHTC as our only housing production program to solve all our housing affordability problems and that’s a tall order for any program,” he says.

Testing how navigable SEPTA is, with glasses that see what riders see

Megan Ryerson of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design is leading an experiment that is using high-tech glasses to assess the navigability of Philadelphia’s public transit system. “I think of it as epidemiology for navigation,” she said.

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