Lawrence Vale is Ford Professor Urban Design and Planning and former Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. He has taught in the School of Architecture and Planning since 1988. He holds degrees from Amherst College (B.A. in American Studies, summa cum laude), M.I.T. (S.M.Arch.S.), and the University of Oxford (D.Phil.), which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Professor Vale is the author or editor of six books examining urban design and housing. Architecture, Power, and National Identity (1992), a book about capital city design on six continents, received the 1994 Spiro Kostof Book Award for Architecture and Urbanism from the Society of Architectural Historians. A revised, 2nd edition of the book was published by Routledge in 2008.
Much of Professor Vale's most recent published work has examined the history, politics, and design of American public housing, with a focus on Boston. He served as a consultant to the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing in 1992, and his articles about the past, present, and future of low-income housing have appeared in numerous journals and edited books. In 1995, he served as Guest Editor of the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research for a special issue on "Public Housing Transformations." His book, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Harvard University Press, 2000) received the 2001 "Best Book in Urban Affairs" Award from the Urban Affairs Association. The book traces American cultural attitudes toward the spatial isolation of the poor all the way back to the time of the 17th-century Puritans. A second volume, Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods, was published by Harvard University Press in 2002, and received the Paul Davidoff Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning in 2005. This community-focused research has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has received both the 1997 Chester Rapkin Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and a 1999 EDRA/Places Award for “Place Research.” His work with the Commonwealth Tenants Association received the 2004 John M. Corcoran Award for Community Investment, as well as citations from both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate.
Professor Vale is also Co-Editor, with Sam Bass Warner, Jr., of Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 2001), and co-editor, with Thomas J. Campanella, of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005), which was recognized as one of the “Ten Best Books for 2005” by Planetizen, the Planning and Development network. Finally, he is the author of a monograph about the history of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Changing Cities: 75 Years of Planning Better Futures of MIT (SA+P Press, 2008).
