News from

Urban Planning

Reset All Filters
139 Results
Protecting and celebrating civil rights heritage and Black histories
armstrong house

The two-acre site of the Armstrong School, which has been out of use since the mid-1950’s, includes a church, burial ground, and school house. Researchers at Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites and Tuskegee University are collaborating on stabilizing the structure and developing an interpretation plan for the historic site. (Image: Kwesi Daniels)

Protecting and celebrating civil rights heritage and Black histories

Launched last fall, Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights sites is fostering new and ongoing partnerships while preserving the legacy of civil rights in the U.S.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Why $46 billion couldn’t prevent an eviction crisis
The New York Times

Why $46 billion couldn’t prevent an eviction crisis

Vincent Reina of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design spoke about the challenges faced by officials, landlords, and tenants in distributing and accessing federal housing aid amid the pandemic. “We asked state and local governments to do something they’d never done before,” said Reina. “They had to design large programs with complex systems in real time, then modify them in real time—and at the same time, we’re expecting these programs to resolve longstanding problems in the housing market.”

A visual archive of an iconic American boulevard
a 1960s car parked in front of the motel sunset in los angeles

Artist Edward Ruscha amassed a huge collection of photographs of Sunset Boulevard during the late 20th century. Now, Penn’s Francesca Ammon is leading a digital humanities project called “Sunset over Sunset,” which will use these images to understand the impacts of small-scale changes on the urban environment. (Image: From Sunset Blvd. shoot, Ed Ruscha, 1966. Streets of Los Angeles Archive. The Getty Research Institute, 2012.M.1. © Ed Ruscha)

A visual archive of an iconic American boulevard

A trio of undergraduate students worked this summer with Professor Francesca Ammon to catalog and organize photographs for the digital humanities project ‘Sunset over Sunset.’

Erica K. Brockmeier

Urban renewal, community activism, and green spaces in Historic Germantown
Leo Wagner on a city street

In addition to his interests in urban planning, Wagner, pictured in Prague in summer 2019, is also minoring in Spanish, French, and Latin American/Latino Studies

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.

Erica K. Brockmeier

One way the US could have prevented the fight over the eviction moratorium
Vox.com

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.

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

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.

A new metric for designing safer streets
megan ryerson cycling down a city bike lane

Using eye tracking data from cyclists navigating through Center City, researchers from the lab of Megan Ryerson (above) describe how biometric data can be used to find potentially challenging and dangerous areas of urban infrastructure. (Image: Thomas Orgren)

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.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Americans face looming rent crisis
Brick facades on a rainy day

Ahousing complex in Albany County, New York on May 5, 2021. Image: Tyler A. McNeil.

Americans face looming rent crisis

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

Kristina García

Urban planning and politics in Atlanta
A black and white image of high-rise buildings collapsing in a cloud of dust

The 1972 demolition of the St. Louis, Missouri urban housing projects known as Pruitt-Igoe less than 20 years after their completion in 1956 illustrates the lack of maintenance given to public housing in the United States. 

  • 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.

    Kristina García