It was 1964 when the
Department of Urban and Regional Planning offered
its first class. President John F. Kennedy had been
assassinated months before. North Vietnam was moving
into South Vietnam. Elvis and the Beatles were creating
hysteria wherever they went. Cassius Clay, later
Muhammad Ali, had just knocked out Sonny Liston and
crowed, “I’m the greatest!”
On the University of Iowa campus, a new president,
Howard R. Bowen, was about to be inaugurated after
the 20-year term of his predecessor, Virgil M. Hancher,
came to an end.
Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising
that the decision to add a new program in the Graduate
College didn’t make headlines. But that has
been a problem for current faculty, staff, and students
trying to find archival material for the department’s
40th anniversary reunion in April.
Heather MacDonald, chair of urban and regional planning,
says 600 alumni have been invited to return to campus
April 2-4. Not only will alumni see changes in the
department, they’ll observe even bigger changes
in Iowa City and the surrounding countryside, she
says. Tours by foot, bicycle, and bus will show what
planning has done over the years in the city and
county.
Urban and regional planning, MacDonald explains,
offers a range of interesting challenges for graduates.
Planners develop and implement public policies in
such areas as transportation, economic development,
neighborhood planning, land use, the environment,
and housing. Their employers range from state and
federal government to environmental organizations
to private consulting firms.
“We have someone now working for a nonprofit
land trust negotiating easements with ranchers in
Colorado as a way to preserve the natural environment,” MacDonald
says. “In the San Francisco Bay area, someone
is working on how to build affordable housing—livable
but compact enough to be feasible financially—in
an unaffordable city.”
David Forkenbrock, professor of urban and regional
planning and director of the UI Public Policy Center,
joined the faculty in 1978. He says the department
graduated its first students by 1968 and got through
most of the 1970s by appointing temporary faculty.
Now the department has nine full-time professors
and four adjunct instructors, and an average of 50
students a year.
“The department has matured nicely,” he
says. “The faculty gradually has gotten better
and the curriculum has been solidified. There were
really big changes in the early 1980s but for the
most part, it has been a slow evolution.”
The department and individual professors have built
national and international reputations in their fields,
Forkenbrock adds.
Since the program’s early days, probably the
greatest change that has occurred in the field has
been the advent of computer-based analysis, MacDonald
says. GIS—geographic information systems—is
a technology that helps planners display, manipulate,
analyze, and visualize spatial data by linking computerized
databases to maps. From a planner’s point of
view, the combination of information, images, geographical
information, and data is a major tool. It can be
used to identify sensitive natural areas to protect
and neighborhoods where rehabilitation funds should
be targeted, or to predict future traffic problems.
“Our urban and regional planning program was
design-oriented in the beginning,” she adds. “Later,
we became policy-based. Now it is moving back to
the center and we talk about design issues again,
often in a policy context.”
Forkenbrock says new offerings in the department
present advantages to students that make them even
more marketable. He points to a certificate program
in transportation planning, available to engineering
students as well as urban and regional planning students.
The department also has joint degree programs with
law, public health, and social work.
“The certificate is very popular with students
and is a good tool for placement after graduation,” he
says.
The urban and regional planning reunion will feature
a talk by Blair Kamin, Pulitzer prize-winning architectural
critic of the Chicago Tribune, who will speak on
why urbanism matters and where it is going in the
future. For the full reunion agenda, see www.uiowa.edu/~urp/urban/Visitorsday.htm.
by Anne Tanner
|
