The below was originally published in the SACRPH November 2024 Newsletter

SACRPH held its 20th National Conference on Planning History online and in person at the University of California, San Diego, California last month. We would like to thank all organizers and attendees for a successful conference! The Society especially thanks the Local Arrangements Committee, led by co-chairs Nancy Kwak and Kevan Malone; and the Program Committee, led by co-chairs Meredith Drake Reitan and Evan Friss. We also thank Guadalupe García, Brad Hunt, Samia Cohen, Marta Gutman, Paige Glotzer, and Francesca Ammon for all their hard work organizing and communicating conference information.

The conference began with a virtual meeting on Saturday, October 19th. Guadalupe García opened the virtual session with the Presidential Address entitled “Planning History as American History,” which discussed the intricate relationship between urban planning and the broader histories of the American empire. We also hosted five virtual panels that day. The following weekend, we reconvened on the West Coast. On Friday, October 25th, conference attendees participated in tours of Urban Planning in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Chicano Park (focusing on Art as Resistance), Architecture and Preservation at Balboa Park, and the Salk Institute; and we wrapped up the evening with a reception and plenary on “Urgencies of Planning Histories Today.” In-Person sessions and a book fair and poster exhibit took place on UCSD’s campus on Saturday, October 26. Presenters spoke on a total of 30 panels and at a lunch and roundtable plenary that celebrated the work and intellectual practice of our former board member and friend, Ángel David Nieves.

The conference concluded on Saturday evening with a Membership Meeting and Awards Ceremony on the UCSD campus. The Society recognized Margaret Crawford and Mark Rose as awardees of the 2023 Laurence Gerckens Prize for sustained excellence in scholarship, teaching, and leadership in the field of American city and regional planning history; Mike Amezcua for the 2023 Lewis Mumford Prize for best book on American city and regional planning history; Maia Silber for the 2023 Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize for best scholarly article on American city and regional planning history in any journal; Todd M. Michney for the 2023 Journal of Planning History Prize for best article published in the Journal of Planning History; Daniel Graham Cumming and Kristian Erickson Taketomo for the 2023 John Reps Prize for the best doctoral dissertations in American city and regional planning history; Calvin Tran Nguyen for the 2023 John Reps Prize for the best master’s thesis in American city and regional planning history; and Genevieve Kane for the 2024 Graduate Student Paper Prize for the best paper presented by a full-time student at the 20th National Conference on Planning History. We also thanked our generous donors for enabling us to provide travel stipends to 16 graduate student presenters.

Thank you to all who joined us virtually or in-person for this conference. If you were not able to make it to San Diego, please check out the 2024 Conference Website for more information, including a copy of the program (with a few book discounts still in effect from our partner presses!), overviews of session topics, and descriptions of the tours.

The 21st National Conference on Planning History will be hosted by the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH, on October 15-17, 2026. We hope you can join us!

– Genna Kane, SACRPH Board Graduate Student Representative

President’s Message

I share in the excitement coming off of our recent conference! It was wonderful to reconnect – and also to meet for the first time – so many who helped make the event both enriching and fun. The conference also marked our regular moment of leadership transition, and I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize those who have recently started or ended their formal service to the organization.

We thank Marta Gutman, who just completed her consecutive terms as President-Elect, President, and Past-President. Among her numerous contributions over those many years, Marta oversaw a revision to the Society’s by-laws, helped get us in order financially, and directed our first conference—hosted by her own Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, in 2022—that included a virtual component and an expanded emphasis on tours. Thank you for your generosity, energy, and consistent voice of reason, Marta! And, we also enthusiastically welcome Matt Lasner as our next President-Elect!

At the conference, several board members—Willow Lung-Amam, Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, and Mark Souther— completed their terms of service. We thank them for their many years of dedication, including serving on both general and conference planning committees. Several other members also rotated off the board at various points over the past year, and we thank them as well for their many contributions. This includes Paige Glotzer, who reinvigorated SACRPH’s communications and initiated this very newsletter format for us; Bruce Stephenson, who resumed his role as Executive Secretary for part of the past year; Sanjeev Vidyarthi, who served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Planning History during 2022-24; and Ángel David Nieves, whose passing we marked at our recent conference.

We also welcome several new board members, each of whom I’m certain will enrich our thinking and capacity as an organization going forward. We welcome Aaron Shkuda to both the board and the Executive Secretary role. Aaron is your main point of contact for any membership concerns! We also welcome new board members Fallon Samuels Aidoo, Michael Allen; Karilyn Crockett, Michael Glass, Benjamin Holtzman, Kevan Malone, Pedro Regalado, and Genevieve (Genna) Kane—who joins us as our Graduate Student Representative and the new Communications Director (a role that includes creating these bimonthly newsletters – thank you, Genna!). To read more about any of these wonderful new additions to our team, please see their bios on our website.

Thanks to all for your involvement, past and present. And, if you are eager to get more involved with SACRPH, we welcome you to reach out to any of us with your ideas!

Francesca Russello Ammon

SACRPH President