A Brief Bio

I am a Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. A human and urban geographer, I am interested in topics such as community ideation of place and locality, sustainable communities, the nexus of qualitative and quantitative methodologies (particularly as regards GIS), and the future of the city. I completed my M.A. at NYU/Gallatin, examining similar issues with a more cultural/narrative focus. If prompted appropriately, I can be induced into waxing lyrical on the topic of "narratives of place."

I believe that there is a disconnect between those who plan and develop human settlements and those who live in them. Some of that is the inevitable gulf between those who cultivate expertise in a particular field and those who do not. But part of it, I think, is that the development community has not taken up robust, appropriate communicative strategies to engage the communities whose spaces they develop. I am interested in a whole bundle of questions around community ideation and the impact of platial imagination on development.

In a more historical/personal vein, I grew up in Baltimore and did my undergraduate work at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. I have an abiding but somewhat conflicted interest in the history of transportation infrastructure (read: roads, rails, and planes). While Massachusetts has many virtues, I am actively considering what kinds of cities would be a better fit than the one in which I now reside.

I am rarely on IM these days; email is a better bet.

email:
my first name at joe pierce dot org

aim:
joefpierce