Faculty Profile

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth works mainly 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. Professor Forsyth's contributions have been to analyze the success of planned alternatives to sprawl, particularly exploring the tensions between social and ecological values in urban design. Several issues prove to be the most difficult to deal with in planning better places and provide a focus for some of her more detailed investigations: suburban design, walkability, affordable housing, social diversity, and appropriate green space. In doing this work she has created a number of new tools and methods in planning—an urban design inventory, GIS protocols, health impact assessments, and participatory planning techniques. Professor Forsyth is also a reflective practitioner/theorist and has created several new ways of understanding social and intellectual diversity in planning and design.

Ann Forsyth has mixed academic work and practice. From 2002-2007 she was a professor in both architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota, directing the Metropolitan Design Center. She has also taught at Harvard Design School (1999-2002) and at the University of Massachusetts (1993-1999) where she was co-director of a small community design center, the Urban Places Project. She has won over fifty awards, citations, and fellowships for individual and collaborative professional and research work. She has had visiting appointments at Columbia University, the University of Sydney, and Macquarie University. She has practiced in the private sector in both the United States and Australia and is a certified practicing planner in the Australian Planning Institute.

Ann Forsyth is author of three books: Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and The Woodlands (2005, University of California Press); Designing Small Parks: A Manual Addressing Social and Ecological Concerns (2005, Wiley, with Laura Musacchio); and Constructing Suburbs: Competing Voices in a Debate Over Urban Growth (1999, Routledge/Gordon and Breach). She has also published reviews, monographs, chapters, and articles in the areas of planning, design, geography, and public health. Dr. Forsyth has been review editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research and has co-edited the Planning Theory journal Progressive Planning magazine. She has a blog on Planetizen that provides advice to students and recent graduates. More details about publications are on her personal website.

• Sustainable and healthy cities—suburban design, walkability, housing, diversity, and green space
• New planning tools—for measurement and participation
• Understanding social and intellectual diversity in planning and design

Professor Forsyth's research has been funded by 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.

• Design for Health
• Planetizen (Ann Forsyth's Blog)