Contact

elbirch@design.upenn.edu
http://www.design.upenn.edu/new/cplan/facultybio.php?fid=100

Interests

economics/economic development/real estate, housing/community development

Profile

Professor Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education. She teaches courses in community and economic development as well as planning history. In 2003, Professor Birch became a founding co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Professor Birch has published widely in planning history and contemporary urban revitalization. Her most recent books are Growing Greener Cities, Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century (2008) and Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (2006), both edited with Susan M. Wachter. In 2009, Routledge will publish the Urban and Regional Planning Reader (that she edited) and the International City/County Management Association and the American Planning Association will issue Local Government Planning, or the "Green Book," co-edited with Gary Hack, Paul Sedway, and Mitchell Silver.

Publications Related to Urban Issues

Books

Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century (2008) (with Susan M. Wachter)

Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (2006) (with Susan M. Wachter)

The Unsheltered Woman: Housing in the Eighties. New Brunswick, N.J. : Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1985. (editor)

Articles
"Having a Longer View on Downtown Living." Journal of the American Planning Association 68, 2002.

"Planning in a World City: New York and its Communities." Journal of the American Planning Association 62:4, 1996.