Serving UIC's Great Cities Commitment: Solutions for Today's Urban Challenges

Please join us this Friday for a talk by Professors Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly. They have been planning professors for many years, spending much of their time in the Boston area. In more recent years they have been at UCLA where Professor Tilly ran the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and Professor Kennedy, who has always done participatory planning, is now Emeritus.  They were both early and committed members of Planners Network. On Friday, they will share insights from their recent participatory planning project in a village in Mexico.

Marie Kennedy is Professor Emerita in Community Planning, University of Massachusetts Boston, and a former Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California Los Angeles.  Throughout her academic career she has combined the roles of activist and scholar, working in and writing about community development, planning education and participatory action research.  Over the years, Marie has worked with and/or written about community and worker organizations and social movements in the Greater Boston area, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine and Nicaragua.  She chairs the board of Venice Community Housing and serves on the advisory committees of Grassroots International and of Planners Network.

Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, studies labor and inequality in the US and global context, with a particular focus on bad jobs and how to make them better.  Tilly’s books include Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market; Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Work Under Capitalism: Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America; The Gloves-Off Economy: Labor Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market, and Are Bad Jobs Inevitable?

From worst-case scenario to participatory plan: Lessons from a Mexican village for community development and planning education will take place at 2 p.m. in the Great Cities Institute conference room, this Friday, October 14. Join us for what is sure to be an intriguing discussion.

We are excited that Wim Wiewel, the first director of the Great Cities Institute, will be able to attend the November 16 anniversary celebration.

Wim was also the first Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). Before that, Wim was Director of the Center for Urban and Economic Development (CUED), during which time, CUED produced extensive analysis and reports on the changing economic landscape of the region. Dr. Wiewel is currently the President of Portland State University.

In our conversations with Wim he has emphasized the value and importance of a legacy such as the Great Cities concept. We look forward to his sharing some of his thoughts about why this concept remains important. UIC is notable in its commitment to being an urban university engaged in serving Chicago and its surrounding region.

UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis will provide the welcome. Former Chancellor and University of Illinois President James J. Stukel will speak. In addition, we will pay tribute to Robert Mier, former UIC Professor of Urban Planning and Policy and City of Chicago Commissioner of Economic Development under Harold Washington. Rob’s sister, Nell Newton, Dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School will join us, as will Joan Fitzgerald, Professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, who was married to Rob. Professor Fitzgerald will also present her research on green innovation on Friday, November 18 at noon at GCI.

We hope that you will be able to join us on November 16, 4:30 – 7:30 at the East Terrace Room of the Student Center East, 750 S. Halsted. Many of you have already sent an RSVP. Thank you. We are very excited that former members of the original committee that created the Great Cities concept will attend, along with former and current staff, faculty scholars, research fellows and various community and civic partners. We plan for a great afternoon, with good food, of course. Come celebrate, see old friends, and learn more about UIC’s Great Cities Institute.