Faculty

Lawrence Susskind has served in a variety of roles in the DUSP over the past 35 years, including as Head of the Department. He is currently Director of the Environmental Policy and Planning Group. He is Founder of the Consensus Building Institute (a Cambridge-based, not-for-profit) that provides environmental mediation services around the world. CBI is currently involved with a wide range of resource management disputes including the mediation of Bedouin land claims in Israel, air quality management in Mexico City, and strategies for resolving facility siting disputes in Korea. Professor Susskind was one of the founders of the interuniversity Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, where he co-directs the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program.
His research interests focus on growth management in the Boston metropolitan area, autonomy for indigenous peoples around the world who want to manage their own lands and natural resources, negotiation of water and other multilateral treaties, the siting of alternative energy production facilities, and the resolution of science-intensive policy disputes. Professor Susskind is the author or co-author of fifteen books including, most recently, Breaking Robert’s Rules,(Oxford, 2006), Dealing with An Angry Public (Free Press, 1995), Negotiating Environmental Agreements (Island Press, 2001); Transboundary Environmental Negotiations (Jossey-Bass, 2003), and Better Environmental Policy Studies (Island Press, 2001). For more information, please see his website at www.lawrencesusskind.com.

Herman Karl is a principal scientist in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Science Impact program and co-director of the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative. He studies the role of science and scientists within a collaborative process model that applies a joint fact finding and adaptive management approach to environmental policy and natural resource management decisions. In this model, citizen stewards partner with government to achieve sustainable policies. Among his numerous publications is the book, Beyond the Golden Gate—Oceanography, Geology, Biology and Environmental Issues in the Gulf of the Farallones (USGS Circular 1198; http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/circular/c1198/) It has received the Association of Earth Science Editors Outstanding Publication of the Year, the USGS Shoemaker Award for Excellence, and the National Association of Government Communicators Award for Outstanding Achievement. He has served on many committees to render scientific and strategic planning advice, which include the USGS Strategic Planning Team and the Department of the Interior (DOI) 4Cs Partnership and Collaboration Action Team. His leadership, scientific and public service contributions to the USGS and the nation have been acknowledged with several honors including the DOI Superior Service Award.

Alan Berger is Founding Director of the Project for Reclamation Excellence (P-REX), a global think tank and multidisciplinary studio lab dedicated to solving the world's most challenging landscape reclamation and sustainability issues through creative design, strategic planning, and ecological thinking. He is a design consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund and Bilateral Brownscape Initiatives, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Berger's main area of interest focuses on landscape and urbanization. From abandoned mine pits, mountains of slag and pools of cyanide, to vacant land, landfills, military installations, infrastructure networks, and places associated with low- density urbanization, Berger's research and practice discovers new ways to see, measure, and act on highly disturbed sites and landscape systems earmarked for adaptive reuse by society. His work emphasizes the link between our consumption of natural resources, and the waste and destruction of landscape at regional and local scales.

Dr. Michael Flaxman is an assistant professor in the Urban Information Systems Group of MIT's Department of Planning. His primary research interest is in the use of spatial simulation modeling in the planning and design of cities and regions. He is particularly interested in the development of tools for stakeholder-based planning which present evaluative models in context using visual simulation. He has practiced GIS-based planning in 14 countries, including one year as a Fulbright fellow in Canada.
Dr. Flaxman previously served as Industry Manager for Design at Environmental Systems Research Incorporated (ESRI), the world's largest maker of geographic information systems (GIS). Prior to joining ESRI, Michael was a Lecturer in Landscape Planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Michael received his Doctorate in Design from Harvard in 2001, and holds a Masters in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon, and a Bachelor’s in Biology from Reed College.

Harvey Michaels is Energy Efficiency Lecturer in DUSP as well as a Research Scientist within the MIT Energy Initiative. He has provided leadership and maintained an active practice in the field of energy efficiency for 30 years, and continues to counsel policy leaders, utility executives, and venture investors on energy efficiency technology, policy, and business strategy. Harvey is a frequent speaker on a more efficient and customer-centric energy marketplace, and author of more than 50 papers, studies, and articles. Harvey has developed two energy efficiency companies; he is founder and former CEO of Nexus Energy Software (1997-2007), a leader in software systems for energy diagnostics and consumer information. Nexus’ energyguide.com site was recognized by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth as an important resource for consumers seeking to reduce their home energy use. Nexus is now Aclara Software, a division of ESCO Technologies (NYSE:ESE), a “Smart Grid” system provider. Previously, Harvey was president of XENERGY, an international energy efficiency engineering and planning consultancy. In the 1970’s, Harvey was Chief of Energy Resource Policy for Massachusetts.

Anne Spirn has worked in inner-city neighborhoods on the design of community space and landscape. She is a member of the CDD faculty and director of the West Philadelphia Landscape Project — integrating teaching, research, and community service — cited as a "Model of Best Practice" at a White House summit in March 1999. She has received numerous fellowships and has been honored by the Philadelphia School District for the Mill Creek Project, a collaboration with inner city teachers and students. She received the prestigious International Cosmos Prize for a lifetime of research contributing to the "harmonous co-existence of nature and mankind." Before coming to MIT, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Professor Spirn worked at Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd on diverse projects, including Woodlands New Community in Houston, the Toronto Central Waterfront, and a comprehensive plan for Sanibel, FL. Her books include The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, (1985) which won the President's Award of Excellence from the American Society and The Language of Landscape (Thomson-Shore, Inc. 1998).

James Wescoat is an historian of Mughal garden designs in Islamic South Asia, an environmental researcher focusing on water management and policy and a preservationist who worked with Professor Rahul Mehrotra on the restoration of the Taj Mahal. His research has concentrated on water systems in South Asia and the US from the site to river basin scales. For the greater part of his career, Professor Wescoat has focused on small-scale historical waterworks of Mughal gardens and cities in India and Pakistan. He led the Smithsonian Institution's project titled, "Garden, City, and Empire: The Historical Geography of Mughal Lahore," which resulted in a co-edited volume on Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, Prospects , and The Mughal Garden: Interpretation, Conservation, and Implications with colleagues from the University of Engineering and Technology-Lahore. These and related books have won awards from the Government of Pakistan and Punjab Government. The overall Mughal Gardens Project won an American Society of Landscape Architects national research merit award, as did a project on The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj led by Elizabeth Moynihan. This work has been generously supported by fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Asian Art, and the American Academy in Rome.
In 2002, Professor Wescoat became head of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois t Urbana-Champaign where he taught courses on "Landscape Experience, Inquiry and Design," the "Theory and Practice of Landscape Architecture," and design studios on urban ecological design in Chicago. Together with colleagues and students at the University of Illinois he contributed to a cultural landscape heritage conservation project at the Champaner-Pavagadh World Heritage Site in Gujarat, India, for the Baroda Heritage Trust. More recently, he has organized a garden and waterworks conservation workshop at the Nagaur palace-garden complex in Rajasthan for the Mehrangarh Museum Trust; and a workshop on the "Three Shalamar Baghs of Delhi, Lahore, and Srinagar" with colleagues from those cities.
At the larger scale, Professor Wescoat has conducted water policy research in the Colorado, Indus, Ganges, and Great Lakes basins, including the history of multilateral water agreements. He led a USEPA-funded study of potential climate impacts in the Indus River Basin in Pakistan with the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). More recently, he led an NSF-funded project on "Water and Poverty in Colorado." He is currently conducting comparative research on international water problems. In 2003, he published Water for Life: Water Management and Environmental Policy with geographer Gilbert F. White (Cambridge University Press); and in 2007 he co-edited Political Economies of Landscape Change: Places of Integrative Power (Springer Publishing) for LAF Landscape Futures Initiative.