If Paul Davidoff has Email Should I Write?

Information Strategies for Answering Fundamental Planning Questions In universities in the northern hemisphere, April and May are months for completing work and moving closer to graduation. Assignments are due. Exams are looming. Students are too tired to write well and professors are too tired to notice. In the crunch for time, enterprising students look to the power of new information and communication technologies to reach out beyond their harried contexts to experts who can help them answer important questions. If Paul Davidoff (now dead) had email, they reason, he would have been happy to respond.

3 minute read

March 17, 2007, 10:11 AM PDT

By Ann Forsyth


Information Strategies for Answering Fundamental Planning Questions

In universities in the northern hemisphere, April and May are months for completing work and moving closer to graduation. Assignments are due. Exams are looming. Students are too tired to write well and professors are too tired to notice. In the crunch for time, enterprising students look to the power of new information and communication technologies to reach out beyond their harried contexts to experts who can help them answer important questions. If Paul Davidoff (now dead) had email, they reason, he would have been happy to respond.

I've recently talked with a number of important planning scholars and practitioners and they disagree. They share the same problem--hundreds of emails including dozens from students not at their institutions asking questions that are too basic. This puts them in the position of having to be rude and not answer emails, or to take time away from their own students or their activist planning to convey information available elsewhere. In an attempt to help create an etiquette of emailing experts, the following represent tips for maximizing your chance of getting an answer.

If you are writing to ask where to start, don't write. Instead, read! Read the expert's web site, her three most recent or most relevant books, her last decade of reports, her twenty most recent articles. Google her. Search three or four article indexes at the library. When you have read her publications, then read the relevant books and articles and reports and web sites she mentions in the text. Take notes. Make summaries. You can learn a lot this way, typically more than you'd learn from an answered email.

If you still have questions .

Go visit a faculty member in your own institution. Sign up for office hours. Ask them to help you frame your question well. Write it out and give them a copy to mark up. Read the books and articles and reports and web sites the faculty member recommends. Go to sites he mentions. Go visit other on-campus experts that the faculty member suggests. Read the books and articles and reports and web sites they in turn recommend. Take notes. Make summaries. Visit more sites.

If you still have questions .

Go to the library and ask a reference librarian. You could also do this before seeing the faculty member. The job of reference librarians is to help you find information. If people don't ask them questions, they can't do their jobs. They may know other online databases or new search engines. They can help find new books. And then read the books and articles and reports and web sites you locate. Take notes. Make summaries.

If you still have questions after reading and summarizing dozens of books, articles, web sites, and reports and after talking with several key faculty members on campus then you can likely send an email. At that stage you'll be an expert of sorts and you'll be asking a very different kind of question.

When to make an exception. There is, however, one time when it is fair game to email earlier, that is when someone has no publications, reports, or web sites; and no one has written about them or their work. In those cases you need to email and they should expect some queries; though if they may be less inclined to communicate. But the rest have produced those outputs at least in part so they can spend their time working with current students and making a difference in the world.

So in summary: read first, and write much, much, much later.

Ann Forsyth currently manages several web sites including www.designforhealth.net. She wrote an earlier advice article for faculty published in the Journal of Planning Education and reprinted kindly by Randy Crane at http://planningresearch.blogspot.com/2006/10/forsyth-on-writing-and-ten…


Ann Forsyth

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a professor of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 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.

portrait of professional woman

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

Get top-rated, practical training

Close-up of front of blue locomotive with Amtrak logo.

What the US Intercity Rail System Could Look Like

An FRA study shows how new Amtrak lines could connect tens of millions more Americans to rail travel.

January 30, 2025 - Fast Company

View up at US Department of Housing and Urban Development building in Washington, D.C.

National Housing Group Criticizes Executive Orders

The National Low Income Housing Coalition issued a statement charging that Trump’s executive orders would worsen the housing crisis.

January 27, 2025 - National Low Income Housing Coalition

Amtrak train with downtown Seattle in background.

Amtrak Cascades Line Breaks Ridership Record

The route linking Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC served nearly one million riders in 2024.

February 2, 2025 - Daily Hive

Two bicycles in apartment building stairwell landing with white painted brick walls.

Single-Stair Reform Gains Strength

The movement to legalize single-stair multi-story buildings is gathering momentum, with the typology offering a more efficient, flexible, and healthy way to build housing.

32 minutes ago - Greater Greater Washington

Multiple MBTA buses parked in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Boston Bus Signal Priority Project Yields Faster Travel Times

The city now plans to expand a year-long pilot project that reduced the time buses waited at traffic signals.

1 hour ago - Cities Today

Colorful five-story condo buildings with retail on ground floor in Gresham, Oregon.

Condos, a Key Source of Affordable Housing for Homeowners, Are in Jeopardy

Decades of increasing costs and deferred maintenance could lead to people losing their homes unless changes are made.

February 5 - Shelterforce Magazine

Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools

This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.

Planning for Universal Design

Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.

Write for Planetizen