The Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) has revealed its first-ever “Remarkable Women in Transport” report, and has included the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Diane E. Davis as one of its inaugural honorees. Davis joins 49 other visionary transit and transportation leaders, including Zipcar CEO Robin Chase and European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc.
“To make the daily work of women who transform urban mobility more visible, we are proud to present the first TUMI Remarkable Women in Transport Publication,” TUMI notes on its website. TUMI continues in the publication’s introduction: “Furthermore, transport systems can only become truly inclusive and gender-responsive if the voices, perspectives, and experiences of women are reflected at all levels in the transport sector. Thus, as it is still a largely male-dominated field, it is imperative to focus on increasing the number of women working on transport.”
The full publication is available for free download via TUMI’s website.
At the GSD, Davis serves as Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, a position she has held since 2015. She joined the GSD faculty in 2012, before which she served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also had a term as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. He research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, comparative urban governance, socio-spatial practice in conflict cities, urban violence, and new
territorial manifestations of sovereignty. Over the years she has written several books that examine the politics of urban policy and their impact on city form, the contributions of urban growth to national economic prosperity, the strategies and tactics used to transform urban transport, and the inter-relationships between cities and sovereignty.
Davis has recently completed two separate initiatives on which she was principal investigator: a three-year project funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) focused on the role of political leadership in transforming urban transport, and a three-year project funded by Mexico’s national workers’ housing agency (INFONAVIT) geared toward developing more sustainable social-housing policies for Mexican cities. She also serves as faculty director of the GSD’s Mexican Cities Initiative.