Alan Altshuler
Professor
Department of Urban Planning and Design

 


Curriculum Vitae

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Full-time Academic and Professional Employment :
1988- Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, Harvard University (joint appointment, John F. Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Design)
 
Within Harvard:
• Dean, Graduate School of Design (Feb. 2005-Dec. 2007)
• Acting Dean, Graduate School of Design (July 2004-Jan. 2005)
• Academic Dean of the Kennedy School (March 1993-Aug. 1995)
• Founding Director of the Kennedy School's A. Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government (1988-2004)
• Director of its Program on Innovations in State and Local Government (1988-1999, 2000-2001)
• Founding Director of its Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston (2000-2004)
1983-88 Dean, Graduate School of Public Administration, New York University
1975-83 Professor of Political Science and Urban Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology (joint appointment, Departments of Political Science and of Urban Studies & Planning).
 
• Head, Department of Political Science, 1977-1982.
1971-75 Secretary of Transportation and Construction, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
1966-71 Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 
• Professor (1969-71)
• Associate Professor (1966-69)
1962-66 Assistant Professor of Government, Cornell University
1961-62 Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago (on leave to serve as Smith-Mundt Visiting Assistant Professor, Makerere College, Uganda)
1960-61 Instructor, Department of Political Science, Swarthmore College
Part-time Professional Activities (selected):
1996-99 Co-Chair, National Research Council Committee on The Future of Cities and Metropolitan Governance
1990-94 Faculty leader, Transportation Issues Seminars, U.S. Department of Transportation. These were three-day executive training sessions for the department's Senior Executive Service employees
1985-86 Chair, New York City Commission on Small Retail Business. This commission, appointed by Mayor Edward Koch, was charged with advising on whether public intervention would be advisable to moderate rapidly increasing retail rents in New York City.
1984-85 Chair, Advisory Committee on the Implementation of Federal Law Pertaining to Leaking Underground Storage Tanks and Small Quantity Hazardous Waste Generators, National Academy of Public Administration. This committee was established at the request of the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after Congress enacted legislation increasing the number of point sources of pollution subject to federal regulation by a factor of ten, but neglected to provide EPA with any significant increase in staff or appropriations.
1983-84 Chair, Committee on the Costs and Benefits of the National 55 Mile Per Hour Speed Limit, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council. This committee, appointed at the request of Congress, was charged with appraising the 55 mile per hour speed limit at the end of its first decade, and advising on potential changes.
1978-83 Founding partner, Policy and Management Associates, Boston, Massachusetts.
1975-77 Chair, Transportation Advisory Committee, Federal Energy Administration.
1970-71 Director, Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR), Commonwealth of Massachusetts; also, Transportation Advisor to Governor Francis W. Sargent. (This was part-time; I was on partial leave from MIT.) The BTPR was a direct outgrowth of the report of the Governor's Task Force on Transportation, which recommended a moratorium on interstate highway construction in Greater Boston, and development of a wholly new regional transportation plan. The BTPR recommendations guided most state transportation investment in Greater Boston for the next quarter-century.
1969-70 Chair, Governor's Task Force on Transportation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts--appointed by Governor Francis W. Sargent to advise on on a wide range of highway and airport expansion issues then highly controversial in the Greater Boston region.
AWARDS AND HONORS
2003 Career Achievement Award, Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Research Council (NRC). NRC is the research arm of the U.S. National Academies of Science and Engineering. TRB makes one such award per year.
1997 Elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992 Distinguished Transportation Researcher (career achievement) award, Transportation Research Forum (TRF). TRF makes one such award per year.
1984 Elected to membership in the American Institute of Certified Planners on the basis of career achievement, though not trained as a planner.
1975 Elected to membership in the National Academy of Public Administration.
1974 Named by Time Magazine as one of 200 outstanding American leaders under the age of 45

PUBLICATIONS

Books
2003 Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (co-author with David Luberoff), Brookings Institution Press. Selected in 2004 by the Urban Section of the American Political Science Association as Best Book of the Year.
1999 Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan America (co-author and co-editor) National Academy Press.
1997 Innovation in American Government (co-editor and chapter author), Brookings Institution Press.
1993 Regulation for Revenue: The Political Economy of Land Use Exactions (co-author with Jose Gomez-Ibanez), Brookings Institution Press.
1985 55: A Decade of Experience (co-author), National Academy Press.
1984 The Future of the Automobile (co-author), M.I.T. Press.
1979 The Urban Transportation System: Politics and Policy Innovation, M.I.T. Press.
1979 Current Issues in Transportation Policy (editor and chapter author), Lexington.
1970 Community Control: The Black Demand for Participation in Large American Cities, Bobbs-Merrill.
1968 The Politics of the Federal Bureaucracy (editor and chapter author), Harper & Row, (co-editor and chapter author of second edition, 1977).
1965 The City Planning Process, Cornell University Press.

Articles and Reports
2003 "Government interventions: Tense Commandments: Federal Prescriptions and City Problems." (Book Review), Journal of the American Planning Association, v. 49 no. 4, p. 443-444.
1999 "The Ideo-Logics of Urban Land Use Politics," in Martha Derthick, ed., Dilemmas of Scale in America's Federal Democracy, Cambridge U. Press, pp. 189-226.
  "The Politics of Controlling Air Pollution" (with Arnold M.Howitt), in Jose Gomez-Ibanez, William Tye, and Clifford Winston eds., Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy, Brookings Institution Press, pp. 223-55.
1997 "Transportation and Air Quality as a Problem of Federalism"(with Arnold M. Howitt), in Environmental Consequences of a Reduced Federal Role in Transportation, Eno Transportation Foundation.
  "Bureaucratic Innovation, Democratic Accountability, and Political Incentives," in Alan A. Altshuler and Robert D. Behn, eds., Innovation in American Government, Brookings Institution Press, pp. 38-67.
1996 Mega-Project: A Political History of Boston's Artery/Tunnel Project (with David Luberoff), Taubman Center for State and Local Government.
1994 "The Politics of Regulatory Federalism: Clean Air and Transportation" (with Arnold M. Howitt and Joshua P.Anderson). Delivered at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, September 1994.
1992 "Local Government and Economic Development in the United States" (co-author with Christopher Howard), in Will Decentralization Succeed? National, Regional, and Local Development in Multi-Party Democracies, Kennedy School of Government, Project Liberty.
  "The Politics of Deregulation," in Harvey M. Sapolsky, et. al., editors, The Telecommunications Revolution, Routledge.
1991 "Politics and Efficiency," in Alicia H. Munnell, ed., Is There a Shortfall in Public Capital Investment, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, p. 206-13.
1990 "Teaching Leadership," paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Public Policy and Management, October.
  "Innovation and Public Management" (with Marc Zegans), Cities, February, pp. 16-24.
1989 Review article, of leading books on infrastructure, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Summer, pp. 505-508.
  "Sarge in Charge: The Management Style of Governor Francis W. Sargent," in Journal of State Government, July-August, pp. 153-60.
1986 Final Report of the New York City Small Retail Business Study Commission, June 1986. (Chaired commission and wrote the report.)
1982 "The Political Scientist in Government," in Joseph Nagelschmidt, ed., The Public Affairs Handbook, American Management Association, pp. 267-72.
1980 "The Future of the Automobile" (with C. Kenneth Orski and Daniel Roos), in Transatlantic Perspectives, March, pp. 1-8.
1979 "The Political Economy of Airline Deregulation" (with Roger Teal), in Altshuler, ed., Current Issues in Transportation Policy, Heath, pp. 43-61.
  "Equity Issues in Urban Transportation," in Altshuler, ed., Current Issues in Transportation Policy, Heath, P. 135-48.
  "The Transit Funding Process at the Local Level" (with James P. Womack), U.S. Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Report UMTA-MA-11-0030, May.
  "U.S. Urban Transportation Policy Since World War II," in Proceedings of the M.I.T.-C.N.R.S. Colloquium, Science and Decision, February.
1977 "Changing Patterns of Policy: The Decision Making Environment of Urban Transportation", in Public Policy, Spring, pp.171-203. A slightly different version appeared as "The Decision Making Environment of Urban Transportation, in George E. Gray and Lester A. Hoel, eds., Public Transportation, Prentice-Hall, 1979, pp. 40-64.
  "The Politics of Urban Transportation Innovation," in Technology Review, May, pp. 51-58.
  "The Study of American Public Administration," in Alan Altshuler and Norman Thomas, eds., The Politics of the Federal Bureaucracy, Harper & Row, pp. 2-16.
  Review article, "The Costs of Sprawl," Journal of the American Planning Association, Spring, pp. 207-209.
1976 "The Federal Government and Paratransit," in Special Report 164, Paratransit, Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, pp. 89-104.
1975 "The Changing Political Environment of Urban Development Policy -- Shared Power or Shared Impotence" (with Robert Curry) in Urban Law Annual, pp. 3-41.
  "Decision Making," in Special Report 157, Transportation Programming Process, Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, pp. 59-64.
1974 "A Decade of Change in Urban Transportation Planning," in The Future Role of Professionals in the Built Environment, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design.
1969 "The Politics of Full Employment," in Transaction, May 1969, pp. 43-47.
  "The Potential of 'Trickle Down'," in The Public Interest, Spring, pp. 46-56.
  "Transit Subsidies: By Whom, For Whom?" in Journal of the American Institute of Planners, March, pp. 84-89.
  "The Values of Urban Transportation Policy," in Special Report 105, Transportation and Community Values, Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, pp. 75-86.
1968 "New Institutions to Serve the Individual," in William R. Ewald, Jr., ed., Environment and Policy: The Next Fifty Years, Indiana University Press, pp. 423-44.
1965 "The Goals of Comprehensive Planning," in Journal of the American Institute of Planners, August, pp. 186-95.
  "Means and Ends in Planning," Public Administration Review, Summer, pp. 65-74.
EDUCATION
1961 Ph.D., University of Chicago (Political Science)
1959 M.A., University of Chicago (Political Science)
1957 B.A., Cornell University (Major in Government)
PERSONAL
Married to the former Julie Maller, two adult children, five grandchildren.