Ann Forsyth
Ann Forsyth is professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University.
Contributed 85 posts
Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a The Halloran Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of Sydney and Research Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she taught full time from 2012-2026. From 2007-2012 she was a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell. She taught previously at at the University of Minnesota, directing the Metropolitan Design Center (2002-2007), Harvard (1999-2002), and the University of Massachusetts (1993-1999) where she was co-director of a small community design center, the Urban Places Project. She has held short-term positions at Columbia, Macquarie, and Sydney Universities. Her work focuses on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. The big question behind her research and practice is how to make cities more sustainable and healthy. Forsyth’s contributions have been to analyze the success of planned alternatives to sprawl, particularly exploring the tensions between social and ecological values in urban design. Several issues prove to be the most difficult to deal with in planning better places and provide a focus for some of her more detailed investigations: suburban design more generally (sense of place, overall layout) and other aspects of healthy places (aging, walkability, housing, green space, food). Forsyth received her B.Sc. in Architecture from the University of Sydney, an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell.
Planning Processes: Some Resources
<span><span style="font-size: small"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman">Over the last six months some of my blog entries have highlighted plans and places. This month I turn to processes that are important in planning. This is a bit trickier than plans and places as the web presence of processes tends to be dominated by project examples and how-to instructions. It’s also hard from the web to get a sense of how processes have developed over time—for example what passes as rational comprehensive planning today, complete with numerous participatory processes and evaluation strategies, is quite different from the much criticized technical model of the 1950s and 1960s. Of course that’s a good reason to go to planning school.
Planning Faculty Blogs
<span style="widows: 2; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; border-collapse: separate; font: medium 'Times New Roman'; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; letter-spacing: normal; color: #000000; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px" class="Apple-style-span"> <div style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px"> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span>One of my first posts back in 2007 dealt with planning faculty blogs (see </span><a href="/node/24748" target="_blank">http://www.planetizen.com/node/24748</a>).<span class="Apple-converted-space">
Plans, Places, and Processes: Do You Need to Travel to Understand Them?
<span style="widows: 2; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; border-collapse: separate; font: medium 'Times New Roman'; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; letter-spacing: normal; color: #000000; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px" class="Apple-style-span"> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span>In recent blogs I have written about places and plans in many different locales and through time. Students often ask, “do I need to visit places to know about them”?
Planning History: A Few of the City and Metropolitan Plans You Should Know
<span style="widows: 2; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; border-collapse: separate; font: normal normal normal medium/normal 'Times New Roman'; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #000000" class="Apple-style-span"><p style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px" class="MsoNormal">Last month I highlighted some important <a href="/node/44923" target="_blank">places</a> in the history of planning. Responding to student requests, this month I turn to plans.
Planning History: A Few of the Late 19th and 20th Century Places you Should Know
<p style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><span>Earlier blogs have explored books and journals for finding out about the basics of planning <a href="/node/43730" target="_blank">history</a>. In this blog I add to this by listing a just </span>few of the places it is important to recognize as a planner. It is of course difficult to make such lists but students ask for them with some frequency. Of course, places are one thing and planning processes quite another--and in planning process is very important. Upcoming blogs will deal with plans and processes.</span></span> </p>