The Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize ($500) is awarded to the best peer-reviewed article in American (United States and Canada) city and regional planning history. Transnational or comparative histories that include the United States or Canada are also eligible.
For the current awards cycle, articles must have an OnlineFirst publication date between August 1, 2023 and December 31, 2025.
To nominate an article, email a PDF of it as an attachment (no links) with subject line “Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize” to committee chair Clare Robinson (clarerobinson@arizona.edu).
Committee: Clare Robinson (chair; clarerobinson@arizona.edu), Robert Bruegmann, and James Zarsadiaz
Past Winners
2023: Maia Silber, “The Home Front: World War I, Tenant Activism and Housing Policy Before the New Deal,” Journal of Urban History 50, no. 2 (Mar. 2024; OnlineFirst 2022)
2021 co-winner: Dylan Gottlieb, “Hoboken is Burning: Yuppies, Arson, and Displacement in the Postindustrial City,” Journal of American History, 106, no. 2 (Sept. 2019): 390–416
2021 co-winner: LaDale Winling and Todd Michney, “Roots of Redlining: Academic, Governmental, and Professional Networks in the Making of the New Deal Lending Regime,” Journal of American History 108, no. 1 (June 2021): 42–69
— 2021 honorable mention: Matthew Gordon Lasner, “Segregation by Design: Race, Architecture, and the Enclosure of the Atlanta Apartment,” Journal of Urban History, 46, no. 6 (Nov. 2020): 1222-1260
2019 co-winner: Megan Asaka, “’40 Acre Smudge’: Race and Erasure in Prewar Seattle.” Pacific Historical Review 87, no. 2 (2018): 231-263
2019 co-winner: Clare Robinson, “Unrepressing Class to Reinterpret the Tradition of Midcentury Modern Architecture and Its Preservation in Tucson, Arizona,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review XXIX-1 (2017): 21-34
2017: Brian D. Goldstein, “‘The Search for New Forms’: Black Power and the Making of the Postmodern City,” Journal of American History 103, no. 2 (Sept. 2016): 375-399
2015: A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, “Latino Landscapes: Postwar Cities and the Transnational Origins of a New Urban America,” Journal of American History 101, no. 3 (Dec. 2014): 804-831
2013: Martin Meeker, “The Queerly Disadvantaged and the Making of San Francisco’s War on Poverty, 1964-1967,” Pacific Historical Review 81, no. 1 (Jan. 2012): 21-59
2011: Jennifer S. Light, “Nationality and Neighborhood Risk at the Origins of FHA Underwriting,” Journal of Urban History 36, no. 5 (Sept. 2010): 634–671
2009: Domenic Vitiello, “Machine Building and City Building: Urban Planning and Industrial Restructuring in Philadelphia, 1894-1928,” Journal of Urban History 34 no. 3 (Mar. 2008): 399-434
2007: Michael E. Smith, “Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning,” Journal of Planning History 6, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 3-47
— 2007 honorable mention: Guian McKee “Blue Sky Boys, Professional Citizens, and Knights in Shining Money: Philadelphia’s Penn Center Project and the Constraints of Private Development,” Journal of Planning History 6, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 48-80
2005: Joseph Heathcott and Maire A. Murphy, “Corridors of Flight, Zones of Renewal: Industry, Planning, and Policy in the Making of Metropolitan St. Louis, 1940-1980,” Journal of Urban History 31, no. 2 (Jan. 2005): 151-189
2003: Richard Harris and Tricia Shulist, “Build Your Own Home: State-Assisted Self-Help Housing in Canada, 1942-75,” Planning Perspectives 17, no. 4 (2002): 345-372
2001: Larry Keating and Carol A. Flores, “Sixty and Out: Techwood Homes Transformed by Enemies and Friends,” Journal of Urban History, 26, No. 3 (Mar. 2000): 275-311
1999 co-winner: Raphael Fischler, “The Metropolitan Dimension of Early Zoning: Revising the 1916 New York City Ordinance,” Journal of the American Planning Association 64, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 170-188
1999 co-winner: Kingston Heath, “The Howland Mill Village: A Missing Chapter in Model Workers Housing,” Old-Time New England 75 (1997): 64-111
1997: Thomas Hanchett, “U.S. Tax Policy and Shopping Center Development in the 1950s and 1960s,” American Historical Review 101, no. 4 (Oct. 1996): 1082-1110
1995: Raymond A. Mohl, “Making the Second Ghetto in Metropolitan Miami, 1940-1960,” Journal of Urban History 21, no. 3 (Mar/ 1995): 395-427
1993: Sy Adler, “The Transformation of the Pacific Electric Railway: Bradford Snell, Roger Rabbit, and the Politics of Transportation in Los Angeles,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 27, no. 1 (Sept. 1991): 51-86 1989: Christopher Silver, “Urban Planning in the New South,” Journal of Planning Literature 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1987): 371-383
1989: Christopher Silver, “Urban Planning in the New South,” Journal of Planning Literature 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1987): 371-383