John Harris, director of the Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture and Design, and C. Aujean Lee, former faculty in the Gibbs PLAD division, recently published a paper in the Journal of the American Planning Association. The paper, “Practitioner Perceptions of City-Subcontracted Community Organizing,” examines local practitioner perceptions of a commonly used subcontracting arrangement using nonprofit subcontractors.
Municipal planning departments use nonprofit subcontractors to increase neighborhood community organizing. Lee and Harris’s study is the first of its kind to assess practitioner perceptions of this arrangement and its effect on racial inequities in communities. While nonprofits can be important partners in expanding neighborhood organization efforts, Lee and Harris’s study highlights the existing disparities in this process.
For their research, Lee and Harris conducted an exploratory study of Oklahoma City by interviewing residents and a nonprofit that is contracted to do neighborhood organizing. Their findings suggest that, while the practice improves some elements of community organizing, it also perpetuates existing disparities caused by the long-standing challenges of systemic racism.
Associate Professors Lee Fithian, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Pober have published a chapter in the recently released New Perspectives in Indoor Air Quality, published by Elsevier. Their contribution, titled “Chapter 16 – Architecture and the Challenges of Indoor Air Quality,” examines the relationship between architecture and indoor air quality.
Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, Assistant Professor of Regional and City Planning, has been selected to serve as Co-Chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG) for the 2025–2027 term.
The Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to recognize Tahsin Tabassum, a recent graduate of the college’s Master of Regional and City Planning program and current doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, for receiving the prestigious 2024–2025 American Planning Association (APA) Outstanding Student Award.
