Ann Forsyth

Ann Forsyth is professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University.

Member for
18 years

Contributed 83 posts

Full Bio

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. Ann Forsyth’s 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 (walkability, social diversity, 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.

Skills in Planning: Writing Literature Reviews

Terrorized by the literature is the title of a chapter of Howard Becker’s excellent book, Writing for Social Scientists (1986, Chicago). Whether through terror or misunderstanding, the literature review is one of the areas that students in planning find most confusing. While I have dealt with the literature review briefly in my blog on writing <a href="/node/29949" target="_blank">proposals</a>, the tips below provide more detailed advice on how to compose a literature review and how to find important literature in the age of information overload.

Skills in Planning: The Planning Portfolio

With the return to prominence of physical planning and increasing use of GIS, planning students are becoming interested in developing portfolios of their work. This blog entry provides tips for this process exploring why portfolios are useful, who they are aimed at, and how to design the portfolio. It provides many of the resources needed to design your own!

Skills in Planning: The Time vs. Quality Opportunity Curve

Recently I’ve been writing about skills that planners need—the findings from surveys of employers and the key role or writing in the planning skill set. Skills like writing, graphics, data analysis, and the ability to listen are obviously important. As <a href="/node/34807" target="_blank">Ethan Seltzer and Connie Ozawa</a>’s 2002 survey found, however, several more general skills are also key. I reported these in an<a href="/node/34807" target="_blank"> earlier blog</a> and they include: working well with the public and with colleagues, being a self-starter, being able to finish work on time and on budget, and understanding public needs.

Communication: Online Advice about Writing for Planners

What do planners do? Last month I highlighted the findingsof several surveys of planners aiming to identify core skills for theworkplace. They highlight the importance of skills in communication,information analysis and synthesis, political savvy, and basic workplacecompetencies and attitudes. In all these surveys, however, the ability to writewell is at or near the top.

Defining the Planning Skill Set: Resources for Students

At the beginning of semester students are signing up for classes and planning their degrees. Lately, a question I have been asked quite frequently is which classes will make new planners most employable? Students ask if computer aided design or GIS will be key. However, surveys of planning practitioners show that a far more basic set of skills is important—skills in communication, information analysis and synthesis, political savvy, and basic workplace competencies and attitudes. Below, I highlight three of these studies from across three decades: