Faculty Profile

Rolf Pendall is an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. He teaches land use planning, growth management, affordable housing, infrastructure planning, and quantitative methods. Some of his current research projects are:

• Examining components of regional resilience in meeting challenges of rapid economic growth, large scale immigration, deconcentration of urban poverty, and long-term economic decline (funded by the MacArthur Foundation)
• Planning for economic competitiveness, environmental protection, and social inclusion in polycentric metropolitan areas in the U.S. (San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland), the Netherlands (Randstad), and Italy (Emilia-Romagna)
• Home ownership in Rochester, Binghamton, and Albany, NY, demonstrating the links between spatially segmented housing markets, sprawl, and racial segregation
• Politics of environmental and planning regulation in slow-growing conservative small towns along the Lake Ontario shoreline of Upstate New York
• Whether the no-holds-barred approach of Houston has resulted in higher rates of home ownership and social mobility for its residents.

• B.A., Anthropology/Sociology, Kenyon College, 1984

• M.S.C.R.P. (Community and Regional Planning), University of Texas, 1989

• M.A., Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1989

• Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 1995

Professor Pendall has been working on a project for Rockland County, NY, using GIS to project the location of housing and jobs in the county to the year 2035.

“Inclusionary Zoning,” Revisiting Rental Housing, ed. Eric Belsky, Brookings Institution Press. 2008.

Professor Pendall's research concerns why communities adopt land use controls; how the controls vary across the U.S.; whether they work as intended; and whether they have desirable or undesirable consequences for affordable housing, ethnic and racial diversity, and the environment. In particular, he is interested in the prevalence and patterns of exclusionary zoning in U.S. cities. He also researches land use change using geographic information systems (GIS) and qualitative methods to analyze the patterns of and reasons for transition from rural to urban land use. Other research interests include tenant-based housing assistance, inclusionary zoning, and private property rights. He is pursuing the following specific research areas:

• Sub-project of the Building Resilient Regions research network, sponsored by the MacArthur foundation
• Analysis of the suburbanization of poverty. Initial results presented at PolicyLink’s 2008 Regional Equity Summit
• With CRP Assistant Professor Stephan Schmidt, analyzing a survey of Lake Ontario (NY) property owners
• Examination of regulations, public housing, and sprawl with researchers in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"Polycentrism from California to Upstate New York," presented at the Upstate Chapter, American Planning Association conference, Binghamton. 2007.

• Rolf Pendall Webpage
• MacArthur Foundation's Building Resilient Regions Network
• CV