AUTHOR BIOS Andrew Dawson is in the MCP class of 2010. His coursework has been split between land use/environmental planning and urban design. The topic of land use and wilderness was part of a semester focusing on growth management and land preservation issues. As an avid skier, his interests include planning and design in mountain environments, and he is currently working on a second-year capstone project evaluating mountain resort town design. Lauren Faber studied development in North and East Africa as a political science and economics double major at Bryn Mawr College. She has experience working and studying abroad in Egypt and Tanzania and served a year as an Americorps Construction Crew Leader for Habitat for Humanity. At PennDesign she concentrates in public/private development and is interested in the financing and development of housing and infrastructure and emerging markets and the use of GIS in studying the effect of policy on urban spatial development.
Michelle Lin will graduate PennDesign in 2011 with dual degrees in city planning and landscape architecture. Her planning focus is in community and economic development. Michelle interned with GMDC in summer of 2009. She would like to thank Grace Lee Boggs, Cassandra Smith, Professor Laura Wolf-Powers, and Monique Luse for sharing and contributing their feedback and insights for this article.
Boris Lipkin (MCP ’11) is concentrating in transportation. He grew up riding the metro, trolleys, trolleybuses, and buses of Moscow before moving to California. He became interested in SEPTA’s history and approach to system operations after moving to Philadelphia from California and seeing the unused trolley infrastructure in the city that places like Los Angeles are paying millions of dollars to replicate. Beth McKellips (MCP ’10) focuses in community and economic development. As such, she expanded her curriculum to include a study of how environmental and economic issues weave together and overlap. This exploration has led her to cultivate a comprehensive understanding of urban food systems, which she continues to develop. Meg Merritt (MCP ‘11) is a concentrating in transportation. She joins PennDesign by way of Louisiana and Texas and is most interested in investigating ways to attract new riders to transit. She worked as a TOD planner in Austin, Texas during the construction of the city’s first commuter rail line and as a real estate analyst for ERA in New York. She holds a Bachelor’s in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin and is a struggling golfer.
Akua Nyame-Mensah is a sub-matriculate in the (MCP) program at PennDesign and a senior completing her degree in growth and structure of cities at Bryn Mawr College. She is half-Ghanaian and grew up next door in Cote d’Ivoire and therefore has always had an interest in the development of sub-Saharan African cities. Her submission is based off her undergraduate thesis research that was made possible through a summer research grant from the Hanna Holborn Gray Undergraduate Research Program in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences at Bryn Mawr College. Outside of studying human settlements, she enjoys running, frisbee, and soccer and is looking forward to the FIFA World Cup. Laura Podolnick is a first-year MCP student focusing in transportation. In addition to writing papers about highways, she also writes fiction.
Joseph Portelli (MCP ‘11) is a student concentrating in public private development. His hometown of Wayne, New Jersey has its own dead mall, which provided inspiration for his article. He has worked in affordable housing development and urban design and is a sub-matriculate from Penn’s urban studies program. Bryan Rodda (MCP ’10) is concentrating in transportation planning. He comes to Philadelphia by way of Ohio, and to transportation by way of his interest in geography, bridges, transit systems and cycling. His strong interest in the public realm of cities and the U.S. Constitution led to his article on the legal interface between architecture and urban environments.
Jeffrey P. Tiell (MCP ’10) is concentrating in community and economic development. He is interested in the intersection between communities, schools, globalization, and economic development. He has lived in Louisville, Providence, Copenhagen, Washington, DC, and is proud to presently call Philadelphia home. Hobbies include reading and writing both fiction and nonfiction, as well as trying to attend as much live music as his meager budget will allow.
Rachel Van Tosh (MCP ’11) is concentrating in community and economic development. Her paper stems from her interest in the politics of public spaces, and it allowed her to review some of the wide breadth of theorists who write on this topic and then apply them to concrete places within a city she knows well. When not writing about public spaces, she is interested in immigration, economic development, and international housing and infrastructure provision.