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.
Past Winners
2026: Brent Cebul and Michael R. Glass, “Mortgaging Out: FHA Credit Policy, Segregated Rental Housing, and the Remaking of Metropolitan America,” Journal of American History 112, no. 1 (June 2025)
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