Master of Urban Spatial Analytics

Faculty

The Master of Urban Spatial Analytics (MUSA) program brings together faculty and staff from several of Penn’s twelve schools, including PennDesign, the School of Arts and Sciences, and Penn Engineering, as well as preeminent local and international leaders in the field of urban research and practice. Principal faculty for the core required courses, as well as the urban content areas of Criminology, Design, Economic and Community Development, Education, Local and State Government, Public Health, Real Estate and Land Use, Social Welfare, Transportation and Urban Demography, can be found below. The Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program is supported by the Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania and by Penn’s College of General Studies (CGS).

Required Course Faculty

Paul Allison:Professor of Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences. Professor Allison teaches courses on sociological methods and statistics. He is the author of numerous books and articles on regression analysis, log-linear analysis, logit analysis, latent variable models, missing data, and inequality measures. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is also on the editorial board of Sociological Methods and Research.

Tony Smith: Professor of Systems Engineering and Regional Science, Penn Engineering. Professor Smith’s primary research area is in the theory and application of probabilistic models to spatial interaction behavior, specifically the structural analysis and axiomatic foundations of such models. Other areas of interest are: probabilistic theories of choice behavior; spatial statistical analysis; GIS; and transportation and land use modeling. He is currently co-editor of Networks and Spatial Economics and an associate editor of the Journal of Regional Sciences and Geographical and Environmental Modeling.

Dana Tomlin: Professor of Landscape Architecture, PennDesign, and Co-Director of the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory. Professor Tomlin is also a member of the Visiting Faculty at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His teaching, research, and consulting work focuses on the development and application of geographic information systems (GIS), a field in which Professor Tomlin is recognized as one of the world’s leading contributors. He has also participated directly in the development of some of today’s most widely-used GIS software, including the Map Analysis Package.

Criminology

Lawrence Sherman: Director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology; Director, Fels Institute of Government; Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations and Chair of the Graduate Group in Criminology, School of Arts and Sciences. Since beginning his career as a civilian research analyst in the New York City Police Department, he has collaborated with over 30 police agencies around the world, evaluating policies designed to prevent crime, reduce domestic violence, and help victims of crime. His research has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as by the Blair Government in Great Britain as the basis for its $400 million crime prevention program. He is currently collaborating with the Australian Federal Police on an evaluation of victim-centered restorative justice programs for juvenile violence and crime, and serves as President of the International Society of Criminology in Paris.

Design

Gary Hack: Dean and Paley Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign. He formerly chaired the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and has prepared plans for over 30 cities worldwide, including urban redevelopment schemes, new large scale developments, and metropolitan development plans. Recently, he collaborated with Daniel Libeskind on the preparation of the winning proposal for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in New York City. Professor Hack is the author of several important works in the fields of planning and design, including Site Planning, the standard text in the field. His research interests also include urban design techniques, development of Asian cities, and innovation in urban development.

Mark Stern: Professor of Social Work and History, School of Social Work. He teaches courses on social policy and racism, directs the Urban Studies Program, and conducts research on the history of poverty and welfare and the role of arts and cultural institutions in urban communities.

Economic and Community Development

Eugenie Birch: Chair and Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign; Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Professor Birch’s research interests include the history of planning and contemporary planning and housing. A former member of the New York City Planning Commission, she has also served as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, co-edited the Journal of the American Planning Association, and was President of the Society of American City and Regional Planning History. In 1994, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning gave her the Margarita McCoy Award "in recognition of her outstanding contribution to furthering the advancement of women in the planning academy."

Lynne Sagalyn: Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign, and Professor of Real Estate Development and Planning, the Wharton School. An expert in real estate finance, Professor Sagalyn is a director of United Dominion Realty Trust and Capital Trust. She is widely known for her research on public/private development, and she is the author of Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon. Her current research interests include the politics of rebuilding the World Trade Center site and the political economy of preservation.

Education

Kathleen Hall: Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education. Professor Hall is a sociocultural anthropologist and the author of Lives in Translation: Sikh Youth as British Citizens. Her research interests include: citizenship, immigration, race, class, and education in the United Kingdom and the United States; science and public sector management; and developments in global education. Her current research focuses on globalization, public sector governance/politics, and science-based urban school reform.

Rebecca Maynard: University Trustee Professor of Education and Social Policy and Chair of the Policy, Management, and Evaluation Division, Graduate School of Education. Professor Maynard teaches courses in research methods, economics, and education policy, and pursues an active research agenda focused on youth risk reduction and skills attainment. Currently, Dr. Maynard directs the National Evaluation of Title V Abstinence Education Programs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and a Project to Improve and Disseminate Guidelines for Conducting Systematic Reviews of Research in Education and Social Welfare Policy (Smith Richardson Foundation and Hewlett Foundation).

Local and State Government

Donald F. Kettl: Stanley I. Sheerr Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences. A leading scholar of public policy and public administration, Professor Kettl joined the department of political science at the start of this academic year, after previously serving for 14 years as a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin. At Penn, he teaches courses on public management, public policy, and American politics. In addition to his academic service, Professor Kettl is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, executive director of the Century Foundation’s Project on Federalism and Homeland Security, and academic coordinator of the Government Performance Project, a multi-year initiative funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts that seeks to assess America’s management capacity. He has delivered testimony for more than a dozen congressional hearings and continues to be widely consulted on contemporary political issues.

Public Health

Shiriki Kumanyika: Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Graduate Program in Public Health Studies, School of Medicine. Professor Kumanyika’s external activities include serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Promotion Council, as Vice Chair of the American Heart Association Expert Panel on Population and Prevention Science, and as Chair of the Prevention Reference Group of the International Obesity Task Force. Professor Kumanyika’s research focuses on the role of nutritional factors in the primary and secondary prevention of chronic diseases, with a focus on obesity and related health problems.

Real Estate and Land Use

Thomas Daniels: Professor of City and Regional Planning and Director of the concentration in Environmental Planning and Growth Management, PennDesign. His main areas of interest are farmland preservation, growth management, and connections between land use and water quality. He has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the American Planning Association, and in 2002, he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Professor Daniels is the author of When City and Country Collide: Managing Growth in the Metropolitan Fringe, and co-author of Holding Our Ground: Protecting America's Farmland and The Small Town Planning Handbook.

Susan Wachter: Professor of Real Estate, Finance, and the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management, the Wharton School; Professor of City and Regional Planning, School of Design; Director of the Wharton GIS Lab; Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Professor Wachter’s main research interests include: real estate economics; urban economics; housing finance; default and delinquency models; tenure choice and home ownership affordability; real estate price index methodologies; and the modeling of neighborhood change. From 1999 to 2001, she served as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban and on the White House Interagency Task Force on Smart Growth. She was also the first woman to head the American Real Estate Urban Economics Association.

Social Welfare

Dennis Culhane: Professor of Social Welfare Policy, School of Social Work, and Co-Director of the Cartographic Modeling Lab. His primary areas of research are homelessness, housing policy, and policy analysis research methods, and his current work focuses on the impact of homelessness on the utilization of health, corrections, and social services in New York City and Philadelphia. He has recently completed studies that model the process of housing abandonment and assess the neighborhood effects of assisted housing programs. He is currently leading an effort to integrate property, neighborhood, and human services data from Philadelphia into several geographic information system applications in order to support policy analysis and program planning and evaluation.

Transportation

Vukan Vuchic: UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation Engineering, Penn Engineering; Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign. In addition to his work at Penn, Professor Vuchic has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the cities of Belgrade, Edmonton, Naples, Philadelphia, and Lima. He also has worked for the Transit Agency in Hamburg, Germany (HHA), and Connecticut’s Wilbur Smith and Associates. Professor Vuchic is also the author of Urban Public Transportation Systems and Technology and a recipient of the Dr. Friedrich Lehner Medal for his dedication to and excellence in the field of urban public transportation. His most recent book, Transportation for Livable Cities, focuses on international comparisons of urban transportation systems and policies

Rachel Weinberger: Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign. Professor Weinberger teaches courses on transportation methods, land use, and planning methods. Her research interests include: land use and transportation interactions; gender, class, and racial equity in transportation; and individual decision processes and the transportation outcomes of individual decisions. As a transportation consultant, her recent projects have included a parking policy evaluation for Center City Philadelphia and a street management framework for Lower Manhattan.

Urban Demography

Elijah Anderson: Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences. Professor Anderson is an expert on African-American sociology. His research interests include race relations, gender studies, and the urban underclass. His recent publications include The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999) and Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States at the Century's End (2001, co-editor). His various honors include a Ford Foundation fellowship and the Robert E. Park Award from the American Sociological Association. Professor Anderson is Vice President of the American Sociological Association and director of the Philadelphia Ethnography Project.

Janice Madden: Robert C. Daniels Foundation Term Professor of Urban Studies, Regional Science, Sociology and Real Estate, School of Arts and Sciences/the Wharton School. Professor Madden has also served as Vice Provost for Graduate Education from 1991-1999. She directed the Women's Studies Program from 1988-1991 and again from 2002-2004. She is also former North American editor of the international journal Urban Studies and continues to serve on the editorial board. Professor Madden's research dealing with the effects of race, gender, and urban location on labor market outcomes and metropolitan variations in income distribution has been published in four books and in a variety of economics journals.