Gene Burd Urban Journalism Award (AEJMC)

2010

Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer
Joel Kotkin, Philadelphia Inquirer

Hired by the Inquirer in 1985 as a suburban reporter, Inga Saffron today is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. One of Ms. Saffron’s champions has said, “Ms. Saffron's writing is based on a deep understanding of Philadelphia's distinctive urban fabric, of which she is a passionate but critical advocate. Her great strength is her ability to explain to her readers how each piece of our city – a major new high rise, the demolition of an historic building, or a sidewalk utility box – improves or diminishes the city for its inhabitants. While many in this city still focus only on whether development takes place, Ms. Saffron has become our most vocal proponent for the good quality design and thoughtful planning needed to preserve the city's rich character and help achieve a more vibrant future.”

Another advocate has said: “Inga brings to her column and to greater Philadelphia a sensibility that is often associated with the phrase “everyday urbanism.” In Inga’s world, an individual building or park or streetscape or interior or piece of furniture is important not because it appeals to the elites or cognoscenti, but because it works for everyday Philadelphians.

Joel Kotkin is an internationally recognized authority on urban trends and their global, economic, political and social ramifications. As a journalist, he has regularly explored urban landscapes, people, and policy for more than two decades. His writings on urban housing and urban planning have appeared in a range of magazines and journals that include The Wharton Real Estate Review, Inc, Newsweek, The American Interest, Commentary, and Metropolis. He also has contributed frequent pieces on urban landscapes and policy for more than two decades in newspapers that include The Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Times.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape; The City: A global History and the recently published The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

His opinions are widely disseminated on Internet blogs that provide forums on individual cities (such as Houston Strategies) and overviews on city issues (such as Planetizen); his voice is also heard regularly on numerous radio and television public affairs programs (such as NPR and CNN). And, finally, his scholarship on changing urban realities has been commissioned by foundations such as The Brookings Institute, The New America Foundation, and The Milkin Institute.

2009

Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker

Paul Goldberger has been writing the New Yorker’s “Sky Line” column since 1997. He holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at the New School in New York City. His career started at the New York Times where he won the Pulitizer Prize for Distinguished Journalism in 1984. Paul Goldberger is the contemporary extension of Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Ada Louise Huxtable.

In his letter supporting Paul Goldberger’s nomination Kent Barwick, President of the Municipal Art Society of New York said “Paul’s greatest contribution is his writing about cities. How architecture hits the pavement, how projects relate to their surroundings, how physical change affects how we feel about places is his genius.”

Darren Walker of the Rockefeller Foundation said that Goldberger is “a great journalist whose writing has been invaluable in promoting a deeper and more intelligent understanding of urbanism, city making and sustainable urban development.”

Blair Kamin, architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune describes Goldberger’s criticism as “at once elevated and street smart, able to convey sweeping cultural meaning yet precise in its description of architectural detail.”

2008

Steward Brand, Whole Earth Catalog

Steward Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog was called a conceptual forerunner of the search engine by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It was Brand’s desire to help people find any information they might find useful to themselves that inspired him to publish the massive catalog.

Brand was visiting scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory out of which he produced his 1997 book The Media Lab: Inventing the Future. His other books include How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built (1994) and The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility (1999). At MIT Brand pondered “this new configuration” of the “computerized global city.” His recent focus on the “city planet” probes the social and communication consequences of global urbanization seeing the rural to urban exodus as “the largest movement of humanity in history.” In 1966 he convinced NASA to release a satellite image of the earth as seen from space. It appeared on his first catalogue cover and stimulated the ecological awareness leading to the environmental movement and Earth Day.

2007

Peter Applebome, New York Times Columnist for “Our Towns”
Joel Garreau, Washington Post Writer, Author of Edge City

Peter Applebome writes twice a week for the New York Times “Metropolitan Page” on the towns, the suburbs, and those locations outside the immediate place usually referred to as the metropolis. He is a journalist, a commentator, and a story teller. His columns focus on the human dimensions of living in a geographic place, the shifting connection between individuals and their environment, and the changing values that accompany the fluid and global landscape. The voices and lives of people in changing communities stand out in his articles.

Joel Garreau has represented his talents over a long period of time in the Washington Post, Wired Magazine, Whole Earth Review, and in his three books: Nine Nations of North America (1981), Edge City (1991), and Radical Evolution (2005). Through the urban and communication context he has built bridges between journalistic practice and academic research; stimulated interdisciplinary dialogue among urban theorists and practitioners in policy and professorial circles; and as the Post’s “cultural revolution editor”, he is a leading thinker and consultant on the implications of the new Communication technologies and the emerging urban culture of global cities and regions.

2006

John King, San Francisco Chronicle

John King, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his emerging significance as a national urban critic, continues the long San Francisco Chronicle tradition of support for local critical commentators and analysts of urban life like that of the late Allan Temko and Herb Caen. King also follows in the footsteps of acclaimed national urban critics such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Ada Huxtable and Grady Clay, who have also seen and written about cities through the architectural lens to interpret, critique, and mediate the interaction of city planners, urban policies and the public. King educates readers about the interface of urban form and function, and the relationships of the natural and built environment through his weekly column “Place”.

Gene Burd Urban Journalism Research Prize

2011

Kristin Gustafson
Kristin is a lecturer at University of Washington Bothell. Her research examines the symbiotic relationship between social movements and grassroots U.S. newspapers. Her most recent project focuses on the histories of two grassroots, activist Seattle newspapers that emerged in the post-Civil Rights era. Both newspapers, published since the 1970s, provide a voice for those absent from or often times stereotyped in mainstream media including one paper serving multiple generations of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, and other Asian Americans and the other for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer people in Seattle. Related to these questions about journalism practices, she also asks where and how marginalized communities use their political voice.

Lokman Tsui
Lokman is an Assistant Professor in Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2008 - 2009, Lokman was also a Student Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His research interests center around new media, global communication, and journalism, with a focus on issues of freedom of expression, media policy and justice. He was born and raised in the Netherlands and used to run the unofficial website for filmmaker Wong Kar Wai for many years.

2010

Christopher W. Anderson
C.W. Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island (City University of New York.) His forthcoming book, Networking the News, is based on his dissertation. It chronicles the history of online journalism in Philadelphia from 1997 until the present, and discusses what the lessons of Philadelphia can teach us about journalism in the digital age.

At CUNY, Anderson teaches classes in both journalism and media studies. From 2009-2010, he was a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. From 2009-2011, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. He has published in numerous academic journals and book collections, and writes occasionally at the Nieman Journalism Lab and the Atlantic Online. His website is at http://cwanderson.org.

Gary Gumpert Research Incentive Prize (NCA)

2010

Giorgia Aiello, Institute of Communication Studies University of Leeds, "The Local, The European and the Global: The Visual Material Communication of Urban Space in the European Capital of Culture Scheme."

Caitlin Bruce, Rhetoric and Public Culture Department of Communication, Northwestern University, "Community Mural Arts, Urban Polemic, and Political Tourism: Place-Based Strategies in Media Space."

2009

Ece Algan, California State Unversity, San Bernardino, "Transformations in the media environment and the cityscape of Şanlıurfa (Turkey)."

Shannon C. Mattern, Dept. of Media Studies and Film, the New School, "Cities before cinema: Mediating urban space and experience before the mechanically reproduced image."

2007

Eric Gordon, Dept. of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College, "Hub2: Using Emerging Technologies to Strengthen Community and Civic Identity in Boston."

Laura Foriano, Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism, "Generation Mesh: Understanding the Users of WiFi Networks in Urban Spaces."

erin d.mclellan, Dept. of Communication, Denison University, "Rhetorics of Place and Space in the Public Squares: Savannah, Georgia."

2006

Tim Simpson, University of Macau, China, “Transnational Urban Spaces and Post-Socialist consumption in Macau.”

Lee Humphreys, Ph.D. Candidate, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

“Mobile Social Networking in Urban Environments,”

2005

Matthew Matsaganis Ph.D. Candidate, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, “The role of Communication Space in Building Social Capital”

Casey Man Kong Lum, William Patterson University, “Outdoor Advertising and Urban Communication: A study of Outdoor Signs in and Across Contested Urban Landscape in China.”

The Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Award (NCA)

2011

Lindsay Bremner, Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998-2008 (Fourthwall Books, 2010).

Amy Mills, Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, and National Identity in Istanbul (University of Georgia Press, 2010).

2010

Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel and Environmental Justice (University of Alabama Press, 2007).

Stephen A. Goldsmith & Lynne Elizabeth, What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs (New Village Press, 2010).

2009

Andrew Wood, City Ubiquitous: Place, Communication, and the Rise of Omnitopia (Hampton Press, 2009).

2008

Scott McQuire, The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (Sage Publications, 2008).

2007

Paul Mason Fotsch, Watching the Traffic Go By: Transportation and Isolation in Urban America (The University of Texas Press, 2007).

Timothy A. Gibson and Mark Lowes, Urban Communication: Production, Text, Context (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006).

2006

First Prize: Steve Macek, Urban Nightmares: The media and the Moral Panic over the City (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Second Prize: Jane Golden, Robin Rice, and Natalie Pompillo with Photographs by David Graham and Jack Ramsdale, More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell (Temple University Press, 2006).

2005

Daniel Makagon, Where the Ball Drops: Days and Nights in Times Square (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

The James W. Carey Urban Communication Award (ICA)

2010

erin d. mclellan, Department of Communication at Boise State University, "A Study of Boston's City Hall Plaza."

2008

Yong Jun Shin, Doctoral Candidate, Urban Communication
School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Interaction Between Urban Politics and Communication Ecology: With the Case of a Local Low-Income Housing Policy."

Michael Brill Grant in Urban Communication and Environmental Design

2011

2011 is the first year this grant will be awarded. See the main awards page for more information.

Applied Urban Communication Research Grant

2011

Erick Garrett, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Duquesne University
The Rhetorical Importance of Public Space in Low-Income Urban Communities

The Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) has awarded Dr. Eric Garret the third annual Eastern Communication Association/Urban Communication Foundation Applied Urban Communication Research Grant. Dr. Garrett, a professor in the Department Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University, was presented with the 2011 grant at the Eastern Communication Association Awards Luncheon held on Friday April 15 in New Haven, CT.

Dr Garret was presented with the $1000 for his proposal The Rhetorical Importance of Public Space in Low-Income Urban Communities

2010

Alfred G. Mueller II, Department of Communication arts and Sciences, Penn State Mont Alto
Eisenhower's rhetoric of the road

2009

No awards given.

2008

Lewis Freeman, Dept. of Communication and Media studies, Fordham University
Communication 'urban' in an environmental magnet elementary school

The Urban Communication Foundation Prize for
Translational Communication Research (ECA)

2007

Lewis Freeman, Fordham University, “Communicating ‘Urban’ in an Environmental Magnet Elementary School.

Communicative City Award

2011

2011 is the first year this grant will be awarded. See the main awards page for more information.

Lifetime Achievement Awards

2008: Grady Clay, Urban Analyst, Author

Grady Clay, 91, the first urban affairs editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and editor for 23 years of Landscape Architecture magazine, past president of the American Society of Planning Officials (now American Planning Association) and jury chairman for the Viet Nam War Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C..

Clay was selected for his work as a distinguished urban observer-critic and “extraordinary scholar/journalist who has written about the city for many years”. Grady Clay is a unique journalist/scholar/critic sensitive to the changing nature of the urban landscape. He pioneered in recognition of the inherent connection of design, architecture, quality of life and communication technology. He is a voice to be returned to and heard at a time of the increasing globalization of urban/suburban space.

Clay’s books include Close-Up: How to Read the American City (1973); Alleys: A Hidden Resource (1978); Right Before Your Eyes: Penetrating the Urban Environment (1987); and Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America’s Generic Landscape (1994). He also contributed to landmark urban anthologies: The Exploding Metropolis (1958) and The Changing Metropolis (1969), and has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Architectural Forum, Horizon, Southern Living, House and Home, House Beautiful, Ekistics, and many other publications. Clay also provided weekly public radio commentary in his “Crossing the American Grain” at WFPL-Louisville; and he originated and directed a TV documentary called “Unknown Places”.

2005: William Mitchell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William Mitchell was given the first Urban Communication Foundation Special Achievement Award for his lifetime achievements in urban scholarship exemplified by his book City of Bits: Space, Place and Infobahn (1995). Mitchell holds the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. (1954) Professorship and directs the Media Lab's Smart Cities research group. He was formerly Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, both at MIT. Among his other important works are Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (MIT Press, 2005);Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (MIT Press, 2003); and e-topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It, (MIT Press, 1999).