Faculty Profile

Currently on sabbatical August 2009-2010

Neema Kudva's research focuses on international urbanization particularly issues related to small cities and their regions, and on institutional structures for equitable planning and development at the local level. She has explored various aspects of the role of nongovernmental organizations in planning and development (primarily in south Asia) and is currently working on a project that focuses on rapidly growing smaller cities in southwestern India and eastern Africa.

At Cornell, Professor Kudva is affiliated with the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA), the South Asia Studies Program, the Visual Studies Program, and the Program on Gender and Global Change. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Carl Becker House and serves on the West Campus Council.

Prior to joining CRP in 2001, she worked as a planning consultant to public agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area and taught courses on community-based planning at UC Berkeley and Stanford. Before coming to the U.S., she worked as an architect in India and Europe.

• Dip. Arch., School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad, India, 1989
• M.Arch./M.C.P., University of California at Berkeley, 1993
• Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 2001

• “The Everyday and the Episodic, Understanding the Spatial and Political Impacts of Informality” in Environment and Planning A (forthcoming, 2009).
• “(En)Gendering Effective Decentralization: The Experience of Women in Panchayati Raj in India” (with Kajri MIsra) in Victoria Beard, Faranak Miraftab and Chris Silver eds. Planning and Decentralization: Contested Spaces for Public Action in the Global South. New York: Routledge (in press, 2008).
• “Teaching Planning, Constructing Theory” in Planning Theory and Practice 9: 2 (forthcoming, 2008).
• “Gender Quotas, the Politics of Presence and the Feminist Project: What does the Indian Experience Tell Us?” (with Kajri Misra) in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (forthcoming, 2008).
  
• “Growing Up in the new New York: youth space, citizenship and community change in a hyper-global city” (with David Driskell and Carly Fox) in Environment and Planning A, Special Issue on Children and Youth Geographies edited by Caitlin Cahill and Cindi Katz (forthcoming, 2008).
• “Conceptualizing NGO-State Relations in Karnataka: Conflict and Collaboration amidst Organizational Diversity” in Gopal Kadekodi, Ravi Kanbur, and Vijayendra Rao, eds., Development in Karnataka: Challenges of Governance, Equity, and Empowerment. Delhi: Academic Press (2008).
• “Shaping Democracy through Organizational Practice, The NGOs of the Tribal Joint Action Committee in Karnataka, India” in International Journal of Rural Management 2, 2: 227-243 (2006).
• “Strong States, Strong NGOs” in Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Raka Ray eds., Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power, and Politics. Boulder, Colorado: Rowman and Littlefield / New Delhi: Oxford University Press (2005).
• “Spatial Implications and Political Challenges of Urban Informality” in Neema Kudva and Lourdes Benería, eds., Rethinking Informalization: Precarious Jobs, Poverty, and Social Protection. Ithaca, NY: Internet-First University Press (2005).
• “Advocacy in the New Melting Pot, Reports from Fremont, California, and Portland, Maine” (with Pierre Clavel) in Progressive Planning 159, 3: 25-28 (2004).
• “Engineering Elections: The Experiences of Women in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka, India” in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 16, 3: 445-464 (2003).

• David Bell and Mark Jayne. 2006. “Small Cities: Urban Experience Beyond the Metropolis.” in Urban Studies (2008) 45, 1.
• Jane S. Jaquette and Gale Summerfield, eds. 2006. “Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice.” in Planning Theory 6, 2: 205-208 (2007).

• Bishwapriya Sanyal, ed. 2005. “Comparative Planning Cultures.” In Journal of Urban Affairs 29, 3: 336-337 (2007)

• “Give Us Some Space! Organizational Practices for Youth Participation” (with David Driskell, in review)
• “Why Small Cities Matter”
• “Regional Mobilities, Understanding Movement in Small Cities on India’s South-West Coast”
• "The Weakness of Strong Ties: Using Network Theory to Explain NGO Behavior”
• Small Cities in a Global World (edited book comprising selected papers presented at the Second Cities in a Global World International Conference, May 2004, Cornell University)

• CRP 101, The Global City
• CRP 106, Urban & Regional Studies Freshmen Seminar
• CRP 395/649, Qualitative Methods
• CRP 513, Introduction to Planning Practice and History
• CRP 615, Current Issues and Debates on NGOs
• CRP 659, Urban Livelihoods in Africa I & II

• CRP 416, The European City (neighborhood workshop)
• CRP 370, The Regional Question
• CRP 890, Graduate Internship Seminar

• Urban transformations in a small city region in south-western coastal India
• The role of organizational practice in shaping participatory planning
• Developing web-based interdisciplinary and collaborative resources for teaching urban development (with Faranak MIraftab and Ken Salo, UIUC, and Keith Pezzolli, UCSD)

• Co-chair, Play Area Steering Committee, Beverly J. Martin Elementary School, Ithaca, NY. 
• Adviser, Citizen’s Forum, Mangalore, India, on the Comprehensive Development Plan Process and providing citizen input.

• Changing Trends in International Urbanization, School of Planning Lecture Series, Arizona State University, Tempe. November 2007.
• Why Small Cities Matter, College of Architecture and Planning Lecture Series, University of Colorado, Boulder. October 2007.
• Regional Mobilities. Paper presented at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Annual Conference, Milwaukee. October 2007.
• Presentation on Cornell-Mercy Corps Project, Round Table on International Studio and Workshops, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, October 2007.
• The Ordinary and the Exceptional in a Small-City Region. Paper presented at the Urban Affairs Association Annual Conference, Seattle May 2007.
• Gender Quotas, the Politics of Presence and the Feminist Project: What does the Indian Experiment Tell Us? Gender and Global Change Series, Cornell University March 2007.
• Planning in the Age of Informality. Panelist, Roundtable on “The City at the Crossroads: Design, Planning, and Social Change,” International Studies in Planning Seminar Series, Cornell University, January 2007.
• Planning for the Future. Vision for Mangalore’s Infrastructure. Citizen’s Forum, Mangalore, Karnataka. December 2006.
• Urbanism on India’s South-West Coast. Presentation to the Citizen’s Forum, Mangalore, Karnataka. May 2006.
• Designing the Urban. Cornell Silicon Valley Summit 7, Computer Science Museum, Palo Alto, CA, May 2006.
• Current Issues and Debates on NGOs. Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Colloquium, Ithaca, NY. March 2006.