John Accordino, Ph.D., AICP
Associate Professor
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 827-0525 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: jaccordi@vcu.edu
Teaching:
Urban economic development policy, planning & finance; Commercial revitalization, Community planning
practice; Analytical methods for development planning; European city planning and development.
Bio:
Dr. Accordino has written books, monographs and articles on urban revitalization and related topics,
as well as applied research reports and plans for government agencies, retail merchants associations
and community-based development organizations in economic development, commercial revitalization
and workforce analysis. He frequently takes students to Europe to study urban planning and
development issues there.
Research Interests:
Commercial and neighborhood revitalization methods; Impacts of community revitalization policies;
Comparative (U.S. and European) urban revitalization policies.
Helen Ruth Aspaas, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies
921 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
p: (804) 828-8086 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: hraspaas@vcu.edu
Teaching:
Introduction to Human Geography, World Regions Geography, Geography of Africa.
Research Interests:
Gender dimensions of rural economic development, Rural minority women’s participation in small
business, Microenterprise development in rural East Africa, Small business development in rural
southwestern U.S.A., Historical Native America land use and ethnobotany, Geography pedagogy, Land
conservancy movements in the Western U.S.
Xueming (Jimmy) Chen, Ph.D., AICP
Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies/Planning
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 828-1254 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: xchen2@vcu.edu
Teaching:
Transportation policy and planning, urban land uses, travel demand forecasting models, and GIS
applications.
Bio:
Dr. Chen joined the MURP faculty in Fall 2007. His interests include transportation policy and
planning, travel demand forecasting, and traffic impact modeling. He developed the Transportation
Planning & Analytics Certificate and teaches many transportation planning courses in the MURP
program.
Research Interests:
Transportation policy and planning, urban land uses, travel demand forecasting models, traffic
impact studies, general plan amendments, zoning changes, GIS applications.
Meghan Z. Gough, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Studies/Planning
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 827-0869 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: mzgough@vcu.edu
Teaching:
Dr. Gough's teaching interests include community involvement, planning processes, sustainable
development.
Bio:
Dr. Gough joined the MURP faculty in Fall 2008. Her research interests are in the area of regional
collaboration, citizen participation and the planning process, and sustainable community
development. She also serves as the faculty advisor of the Urban and Regional Planning Student
Association (URPSA).
Dr. Gough has been working with communities located along the Mississippi Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. As part of her research at Ohio State University, she assisted in leading graduate students to Mississippi to work with communities in planning for rebuilding. She has been part of multiple planning teams, which have produced plans for seven communities on the Coast.
Her research in Mississippi examines intergovernmental collaboration for land use planning following Hurricane Katrina. Due to the complexity of the planning dilemma following Hurricane Katrina, she is able to blend her research interests in collaboration, planning process, and sustainable development in this research area.
Dr. Gough is currently examining how citizens, planners, and other professionals in the public and private sector work toward achieving sustainable communities. As part of this research effort, she is preparing new work that involves the evaluation land use plans in the Mississippi Gulf Coast to determine if that region is planning for sustainable community development. Dr. Gough was a consultant at Ohio State University for the 2030 Harrison County Comprehensive Plan. This plan won the Vernon Deines Award for Outstanding Small or Rural Plan from the Small Town and Rural Planning Division of the American Planning Association.
In addition, Dr. Gough lead a group of graduate students at Ohio State University through the creation of the Harrison County Smart Growth Guide that was prepared to assist government officials, planners, developers, and citizens in Harrison County, Mississippi in thinking about how smart growth principles can be applied to achieve land use goals. This plan was awarded the Innovators Award from the National Association of Development Organizations. Dr. Gough has recently co-authored journal articles on some of her recent work completed in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
Evans-Cowley, Jennifer S. and Meghan Z. Gough. 2009. Do New Urbanist Comprehensive Plans Promote New Urbanism? Journal of Urban Design. (Forthcoming) Evans-Cowley, Jennifer S. and Meghan Z. Gough. 2008. Effective Citizen Engagement in Post-Katrina Planning. Cityscape, 10(3). Evans-Cowley, Jennifer S. and Meghan Z. Gough. 2008. “Evaluating Environmental Protection in Post-Katrina Plans in Mississippi”. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 51(3).
Elsie Harper-Anderson
Assistant Professor
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 828-7390 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: elharperande@vcu.edu
Bio:
Dr. Harper-Anderson received her BS from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1989, MS from
Carnegie Mellon University in 1991, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.
Research Interests:
Workforce Development, Economic Development, and Social Program Evaluation.
Damian Pitt, AICP
Assistant Professor
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 828-7397 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: dpitt@vcu.edu
Bio:
Dr. Pitt received his BS from the University of Tennessee in 1998, Master of Community and Regional
Planning from the University of Oregon in 2001, and Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University (Virginia Tech) in 2009.
Research Interests:
Land Use and Environmental Planning, Sustainable Urban Development, and Energy and Climate Policy.
Avrum J. (A.J.) Shriar, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Urban and Regional Studies/Planning
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 827-0788 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: ajshriar@vcu.edu
Teaching and Research Interests:
Rural Development, Farming Systems and Land Use, Natural Resource Management and Conservation,
Environmental Planning and Impact Assessment, Cultural and Political Ecology, Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Bio:
Dr. Shriar conducts research in the following related subjects: Rural Development, Farming Systems
and Land Use, Natural Resource Management and Conservation, Environmental Planning and Impact
Assessment, Cultural and Political Ecology, and Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular,
most of his work focuses on the factors contributing to poverty, land degradation, and
deforestation in rural regions of developing countries, mainly in Latin America, and on the policies
and strategies that can help alleviate these problems.
Over the last five years I have done field work in Guatemala and Bolivia. The Guatemala research looked at rural land use and economic changes in the northern (Petén) region of the country as it becomes increasingly integrated into national and international economic frameworks, thanks to road improvements completed in the late 1990s. An article about this work can be found (just online for the moment) in the Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER) while another is in press in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. The Bolivia research looked at a water resources development project in Cochabamba Department, which has created numerous problems, including the destruction of a traditional, sustainable irrigation system that had been in use for thousands of years. An article on that study is in progress.
In summer 2008 I participated in a VCU trip to the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, in part to discuss the possibility of research collaborations and student exchanges between the two institutions.
In summer 2008 I served as the principal investigator for VCU on Phase I of the proposed Cobbs Creek Reservoir Project, in Cumberland County, Virginia, in conjunction with colleagues at Virginia Tech. In support of planning and public consultation activities for the project, I completed a study and report entitled “Small Reservoirs, Land Use, and Economic Development – A Preliminary Study.”
In 2006, I served as the VCU Coordinator for the “Building a Cleaner James River Project” undertaken in conjunction with the James River Association and the Planning Programs at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. I coordinated the activities of VCU planning graduate students in analyzing the planning codes, zoning ordinances, and development-related regulations of the counties and cities within the lower James River Basin to gauge their consistency with low impact design (LID) approaches. I also conducted a presentation on impact mitigation tools at the project symposium.
Served from 2004 to 2008 as a member of the American Association of Geography’s Glenda Laws Award Committee which selects the recipient of this annual award for “outstanding contributions to geographical research on social issues.”
I-Shian (Ivan) Suen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program
Bachelor of Urban and Regional Studies Program
917 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 828-2721 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: isuen@vcu.edu
Teaching:
Land use planning, geographic information systems and data analysis techniques.
Bio:
Dr. Suen is the coordinator of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program. His interests
include land use planning, planning support systems, and the applications of geospatial technologies
for data analysis and visualization. He developed the Geographic Information Systems Certificate
and teaches many GIS courses in the MURP program.
Activities:
Member of the organization committee and scientific committee for the 5th International Conference on Geographic Information Systems. Istanbul, Turkey. 2006-08.
Member of the 4th GIS Days in Turkey Conference. Istanbul, Turkey. 2004-06.
Since Fall 2005, Dr. Suen and Dr. Zonta have provided technical assistance in the development and implementation of the DataShare Project lead by Dr. Kevin Alison. The DataShare Project is a resource for local data at the neighborhood level for the Richmond, Virginia metropolitan region. The purpose of this resource is to provide data to community residents and organizations for use in planning, allocating resources, and grant writing. Available at http://www.datashare.org/.
In Fall 2007, Dr. Chen and Dr. Suen received funding support ($30,000) from the Virginia Transit Association (VTA) to conduct a research project on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). The goals of this project were:
- To inventory national “best practices” related to transit and land uses, with a particular emphasis
on bus- and rail-related TODs in moderately sized cities or low-density suburban areas.
- To encourage greater integration of transit in local transportation/land-use planning efforts and
decision-making processes in the Greater Richmond area.
- To help establish VTA as a major educational resource and information line for transit professionals and others as they seek information on how to best deal with the transportation and land use integration issues.
- Proposal reviewer for the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschungs- und Technologiefonds) and the Wisconsin Innovation Service Center at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater.
- Paper manuscript reviewer for the Journal of Planning Education and Research.
- Book manuscript reviewer for the American Planning Association.
- Book proposal reviewer for the American Society of Civil Engineers Press.
- Book reviewer for the Journal of American Planning Association and the McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Niraj Verma
Professor
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
(P): (804) 828-6962 E-mail: nverma2@vcu.edu
Bio:
Dr. Verma received his BS from Birla Institute of Technology in 1980, MIP from Universitat
Stuttgart in 1985, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991.
Research Interests:
Planning Theory, Urban Planning and Management.
Michela Zonta, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Studies/Planning
923 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
P: (804) 827-0787 / F: (804) 827-1275
E-mail: mmzonta2@vcu.edu
Bio:
Dr. Zonta studies Asian immigrant communities and immigrant lending policies in the US. She
conducts planning study tours in England and is also building a student exchange relationship
between VCU and the University of West England in Bristol. She has extensive experience in U.S.
housing policy and planning, immigration, and the study of ethnic communities in the U.S. and
Europe.
Activities:
Every summer, Dr. Zonta leads a summer education abroad program – London Tour to offer a unique
opportunity for students to study how greater London has addressed the planning and urban
regeneration needs of the region in recent years. Students will explore the British approach to
housing and community development and compare it with the American experience. During the program,
participants will visit local housing planning agencies and mixed-use developments, speak with key
public officials and policy analysts, and record their own observations in the field. The tour also
includes lectures and visits to local ethnic communities and non-profit organizations that address
social cohesion in a city that, like many U.S. metropolitan areas, has traditionally attracted large
numbers of immigrants. In particular, participants will learn how immigrant groups of different
socio-economic and national origins adapt to London’s tight housing market.
Since Fall 2005, Dr. Suen and Dr. Zonta have provided technical assistance in the development and
implementation of the DataShare Project lead by Dr. Kevin Alison. The DataShare Project is a
resource for local data at the neighborhood level for the Richmond, Virginia metropolitan region.
The purpose of this resource is to provide data to community residents and organizations for use in
planning, allocating resources, and grant writing. Available at
http://www.datashare.org/.
