Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a professor of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, focusing on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. The big issue behind her research and practice is how to make more sustainable and healthy cities given an aging population. More information about research, publications, and projects is elsewhere on this site.
Her contributions have been to identify the complexity of making healthier and more sustainable places and developing new ways of assessing those environments. She has examined how (much) the physical environment and urban planning can improve health and well-being, evaluated innovative planning and design in new towns and suburbs, and critiqued planning education and theory. She has undertaken research, developed evidence-based guidance for practice, and developed new planning and measurement tools.
Affiliations
At Harvard, Forsyth has been the Director of the Masters in Urban Planning program (2012-2025) and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (2023-2025). She co-directs the Healthy Places Design Lab, and the New Towns Initiative. Forsyth is an affiliate of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, the Harvard University Asia Center, the Harvard-China Project, and the Harvard Global Health Institute. She has directed several longer-term projects described under reflective practice on the research page.
From 2007-2012, Forsyth was a city and regional planning professor at Cornell. She taught previously 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.
Publications, Editorships, and Awards
She is the author or co-author of five books and over 220 refereed and magazine articles; edited collections, chapters, monographs, editorials, and book reviews; and dozens of professional reports, reprints, translations, and works in other media.
The Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association from 2019-2023, Forsyth has been review editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, a co-editor of Planning Theory journal, and a co-editor of Progressive Planning magazine. She has also made several websites. She has a Planetizen blog focused on advice for planning students.
Forsyth has won over sixty awards, citations, named lectureships, and fellowships for individual and collaborative professional and research work. These include national awards for professional and research contributions from the American Planning Association (APA), American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), Planning Institute of Australia (PIA); and state level awards from APA, ASLA, and PIA. Publications have received awards and honorable mentions and have been listed as official finalists or in the top ten lists by the Association for European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Best Paper Prize, PIA, Australian Peter Harrison Memorial Prize, Journal of the American Planning Association, and Planetizen, as well as state-level awards from the APA, PIA, and ASLA.
Projects and publications receiving multipe awards, commendations, or official finalist statuses have included both individual and collaborative work:
- The book Constructing Suburbs (1999)
- The advocacy work of the Urban Places Project (UPP, 1995-2000)
- A specific UPP project, the YouthPower Guide, communicating work by El Arco Iris in Holyoke (1998-2000)
- The publications and programs of the Metropolitan Design Center (that Forsyth directed in the mid-2000s)
- The Corridor Housing Initiative’s early work (2003-2007), a collaborative MDC project led by the Center for Neighborhoods and now by LISC, and
- Design for Health (2006-2012)
Such groups as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Federal Highway Administration, USDA Forest Service, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lincoln Land Institute, and Graham Foundation have funded Professor Forsyth’s research. Forsyth has also been a Fulbright scholar.
Publications
Academic and Professional Publications
Other Media
Tools, Manuals, and Methods
