Charles Connerly
Chuck Connerly joined the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning in 2008 as professor and director. Prior to that, he taught urban planning at Florida State University for 27 years including his last 10 years there as department chair. His research has been published in top journals, including the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the Journal of Planning Literature, Housing Studies, the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of Planning History, and Urban Affairs Quarterly. He wrote the Most Segregated City in America: City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 (University of Virginia Press, 2005) and co-edited Growth Management in Florida: Planning for Paradise, published by Ashgate Publishing in 2007.
The Most Segregated City was named one of the top 10 planning books in 2006 by Planetizen. In 2007 the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) named the book a recipient of the Paul Davidoff Award, which recognizes an outstanding book publication promoting participatory planning and positive social change, opposing poverty and racism as factors in society and seeking ways to reduce disparities between rich and poor; white and black; men and women. For five years he co-edited the Journal of Planning Education and Research and for nine years he co-edited Housing Studies.
In 2011-2013, Chuck served as President of ACSP, the national learned society of planning schools, faculty, and students in the US. His most recent book, Green, Fair, and Prosperous: Paths to a Sustainable Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2020, September 1) is an assessment (part history, part contemporary analysis) of Iowa's sustainability challenges and responses. It builds on Connerly's work with the community engagement initiative of which he is the principal founder, the UI Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (http://iisc.uiowa.edu/). In 2015, he received the Michael J. Brody award for faculty service presented by the University of Iowa Faculty Senate and the UI Provost's Office. In 2018, he was presented with the Jay Chatterjee Award for Service by the ACSP.
Under Chuck’s direction, the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Iowa obtained approval from the Iowa Board of Regents in 2019 for a new master’s degree in public affairs 2 and in 2020 the Regents approved a name change to the School of Planning and Public Affairs. Prior to retiring in May 2021, the Iowa Board of Regents awarded Chuck its Faculty Excellence Award.
Chuck is currently writing a book, Iowa in the 1960s: Politics, Public Policy, and Governance in an Era of Change. The book tells the story of the state’s chronic tug of war between its rural, conservative politics and policies and the growing influence of the state’s larger and generally more progressive urban areas. All of this takes place during one key period in which an urban-based coalition of progressives and labor attempted to move the state into a modern governance system and into a more diversified economy, all in the midst of emerging issues, including rights and opportunities for the state’s Black residents, campus unrest over the Viet Nam War, women’s rights, and the emerging environmental movement.
For a short biographical video and profile, see https://grad.uiowa.edu/news/2021/07/chuckconnerly-leader-iowa-community-sustainability
Areas of Interest:
Community Development
Urban Planning History
Civil Rights and Urban Planning
CV:
