Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Lawrence J. Vale

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 10-485

Cambridge, MA 02139

(617) 253-0561

e-mail:

Date of Birth: 17 February 1959

EMPLOYMENT

Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Head of Department, 2002-2009. Previously, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor, MIT,1990-2002.

EDUCATION

Amherst College, Amherst, MA;

B.A. in American Studies,summa cum laude, May 1981.

Thesis: “Housing an Ideology: Public Housing and the Jeffersonian Tradition”

New College, Oxford University, England;

Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations, June 1985.

Dissertation: “The Limits of Civil Defence”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;

Master of Science in Architecture Studies, June 1988.

Thesis: “Designing National Identity”

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Architecture, Power, and National Identity (Yale University Press, 1992); Spiro Kostof Book Award in Architecture and Urbanism, conferred by the Society of Architectural Historians, for Architecture, Power, and National Identity, 1994.

From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors(Harvard University Press, 2000; 2007)."Best Book in Urban Affairs" (published in 1999 or 2000), Urban Affairs Association, 2001.

Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half-Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods (Harvard University Press, 2002);Paul Davidoff Book Award, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, 2005

Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, 2001) Co-editor with Sam Bass Warner, Jr.

The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005). Co-editor with Thomas J. Campanella; “Top Ten Book of 2005,” chosen by Planetizen, the Planning and Development network.

Architecture, Power, and National Identity, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2008).

Planning Ideas that Matter: Livability, Territoriality, Governance and Reflective Practice, ed., with Bishwapriya Sanyal and Christina Rosan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012); Best Edited book published in 2013 or 2014, International Planning History Society, 2014.

Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Best book in United States planning history published in 2013 or 2014, International Planning History Society, 2014; "Best Book in Urban Affairs" (published in 2013-2015), Urban Affairs Association, 2015.

Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality and Social Policy, co-edited with Nicholas Bloom and Fritz Umbach, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters:

“All Mixed Up: Making Sense of Mixed-Income Housing Developments,” with Shomon Shamsuddin, Journal of the American Planning Association 83, 1 (Winter 2017).

"Hoping for More: Redeveloping U.S. Public Housing Without Marginalizing Low-Income Residents?” With Shomon Shamsuddin, Housing Studies (June 2016, online at:

“Lease it or Lose It: The Implications of New York’s Land Lease Initiative for Public Housing Preservation,” Urban Studies (forthcoming, 2016; online at With Shomon Shamsuddin.

“Moralism and Urban Evolution: Excavating Mumford’s The City in History,” Built Environment 41, 3 (2015), 420-433.

“Resilient Cities: Clarifying Concept or Catch-all Cliché?” Cities Reader, 6th Edition, edited by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout (Routledge, 2015).

“Capital Architecture and National Identity,” in Michael Minkenberg, ed. , Power and Architecture (Berghahn Books, 2014).

“Tsunami+10: Housing Banda Aceh After Disaster,” with Shomon Shamsuddin and Kian Goh, Places, December 2014.

“What Affordable Housing Should Afford: Housing for Resilient Cities,” with Shomon Shamsuddin, Annemarie Gray, and Kassie Bertumen. Cityscape 16, 2 (summer 2014), pp. 21-49.

“The Politics of Resilient Cities: Whose Resilience and Whose City?” Building Research and Information42, 2 (2013), pp. 1-11.

“The Displacement Decathlon: Olympian Struggles for Affordable Housing from Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro,” with Annemarie Gray, Places, April 2013.

“From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing: 75 Years of American Social Experiments,” with Yonah Freemark. Journal of the American Planning Association 78, 4 (December 2012).

“Capital Architecture and National Identity,” in Michael Minkenberg, ed., Power and Architecture (Berghahn Books, forthcoming 2014).

“Public Housing in the United States: Neighborhood Renewal and the Poor,” in Naomi Carmon and Susan S. Fainstein, eds., Policy, Planning and People: Promoting Justice in Urban Development (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

“Public Housing,” entry for Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).

“Housing Chicago: From Cabrini-Green to Parkside of Old Town,” Places, February 2012.

“Interrogating Urban Resilience,” in Tigran Haas, ed., Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond (New York, Rizzoli, 2012).

“The Temptations of Nationalism in Modern Capital Cities,” in Diane Davis and Nora Libertun de Duren, eds., Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Politics in Urban Spaces (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

“The Ideological Origins of Affordable Homeownership Efforts,” in William Rohe and Harry Watson, eds. Chasing the American Dream (Cornell University Press, 2007); with Chinese translation of chapter published in Urban Planning International, 2007.

“Restoring Urban Viability,” in Eugenie Birch and Susan Wachter, eds., Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

"Comment on Mark L. Joseph’s "Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?” Housing Policy Debate 17, 2 (2006), pp. 259-269.

“The Urban Design of 20th Century Capitals,” in David Gordon, ed., Planning Twentieth-Century Capital Cities (London: Routledge, 2006).

“Are Cities Resilient?: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” The Optimist, Winter 2005-2006.

“Securing Public Space,” Places 17 (3), fall 2005.

“Symbolic Settlements: The American Ideological Tension Between Private Homes and Public Housing,” in Tony Atkin and Joseph Rykwert, eds., Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 2005).

“Standardizing Public Housing,” in Eran Ben-Joseph and Terry Szold, eds., Regulating Place: Standards and the Shaping of Urban America (New York: Routledge, 2005).

“The City Shall Rise Again: Urban Resilience in the Wake of Disaster” (with Thomas J. Campanella, The Chronicle Review, Vol. 51, Issue 19, January 14, 2005, pp B1,6; reprinted in IEEE Engineering Management Review Vol 33, no 3 (3rd quarter, 2005).

“Introduction: ‘The Cities Rise Again,’” (with Thomas J. Campanella) in Vale and Campanella, eds., The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

“Axioms of Resilience,” (with Thomas J. Campanella) in Vale and Campanella, eds., The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

"New Public Realms: Re-imaging the City-Region," in Lawrence J. Vale and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., eds., Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 2001), pp. 419-437.

"Urban Images on Children's Television," in Lawrence J. Vale and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., eds., Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 2001), pp. 301-330. (With Julia R. Dobrow).

"Urban Design for Urban Development," in Bishwapriya Sanyal and Lloyd Rodwin, eds., The Profession of City Planning: Changes, Images and Challenges: 1950-2000 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 2000).

"Mediated Monuments and National Identity," Journal of Architecture 4 (Winter 1999), pp. 391-408.

"The Future of Planned Poverty: Redeveloping America's Most Distressed Public Housing Projects," Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 14 (1999), pp. 13-31.

"From the Puritans to the Projects: The Ideological Origins of American Public Housing," Harvard Design Magazine, Summer 1999, pp. 52-57.

“Public Housing and the American Dream: Residents’ Views on Buying Into ‘The Projects,’” Housing Policy Debate 9, 2 (1998), pp. 267-298.

“Empathological Places: Residents’ Ambivalence Towards Remaining in Public Housing,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 16 (3) (March 1997), pp. 159-175.

“Public Housing and Ethnic Space,” in Gary Gumpert and Susan Drucker, Eds. Huddled Masses: Immigration and Communication (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1996). (With Julia R. Dobrow).

“From Facade to Interface: Representing Institutional Power in Cyberspace,” in Randall Ott, ed., Proceedings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Conference on “Building as a Political Act,” Berlin, Germany, 1997.

“The Revitalization of Boston’s Commonwealth Public Housing Development,” in Willem van Vliet--, Ed, Affordable Housing and Urban Redevelopment in the United States, Sage Urban Affairs Annual Reviews 46 (Sage, 1996), pp. 100-134.

“Public Housing Redevelopment: Seven Kinds of Success,” Housing Policy Debate 7,3 (Autumn 1996), pp. 491-534.

“Destigmatizing Public Housing,” in Dennis Crow, Ed., Geography and Identity: Exploring and Living the Geopolitics of Identity (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies/Maisonneuve Press, 1996).

“The Imaging of the City: Public Housing and Communication,” Communication Research 22 (6)[Special Issue on “Urban Communication”] (December 1995), pp. 646-663.

“Transforming Public Housing: The Social and Physical Redevelopment of Boston’s West Broadway Development,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Vol.12, No.3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 278-305.

“Beyond the Problem Projects Paradigm: Defining and Revitalizing Severely Distressed Public Housing,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 4, No. 2 (November 1993), pp. 147-174.

“Capitol Complexes: Urban Design and National Security,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Vol.10, No.4 (Fall, 1993), pp. 273-283.

“Designing ‘National Identity:’ Post-Colonial Capitols as Intercultural Dilemmas,” in Nezar alSayyad, ed., Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Experience (London: Avebury/Gower House, 1992).

“Designing Global Harmony: Lewis Mumford and the United Nations Headquarters,” in Thomas Hughes and Agatha Hughes, eds., Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS and AWARDS

• President, Society for American City and Regional Planning History, 2011-2013
• Bousfield Distinguished Visitorship in Planning, University of Toronto, 2013
• MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning Students’ Award for “Outstanding Advising,” 2013, and in 2016.
• Selected by MIT to hold the Ford Professorship (endowed chair), July 2009-present.
• MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning Students’Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Life, 2008

• John M. Corcoran Award for Community Investment, given for “Excellence in Housing Education” by the Commonwealth Tenants Association, 2004; also accompanied by citations from the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Massachusetts Senate.
• "Place Research" Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and Places, for research on public housing, 2000
• Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellowship, for excellence in teaching, 1999-2008
• Chester Rapkin Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning for Best Professional Paper, 1997 (for “Empathological Places” article, JPER)
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for work on American public housing, 1995-96
• Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, 1982-1985.
• Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Amherst College, 1981.

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