Lawrence Vale

Lawrence Vale is Associate Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, which he headed from 2002-2009. He was president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History from 2011-2013, and has directed MIT’s Resilient Cities Housing Initiative since 2013. Vale holds degrees from Amherst College in American Studies, from M.I.T. in Architecture, and from the University of Oxford in International Relations. A Rhodes Scholar and Guggenheim fellow, Vale is the author or editor of twelve books and more than sixty articles examining urban design, housing, and planning. His writing on the history, politics, and design of low-income housing in the United States has included four sole-authored books and two co-edited volumes which have, collectively, won “best book” prizes from Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, from the Urban Affairs Association (three times), and from the International Planning History Society (three times). On more globe-spanning topics, his prize-winning book on designed capital cities (Architecture, Power, and National Identity) and his co-edited volume on post-disaster planning (The Resilient City) have each been cited more than a thousand times. 

At MIT, Vale has won the Institute’s highest awards for teaching and for graduate student advising as well as departmental awards for advising and service to students. Most recently, SACRPH has announced that he is the 2022 recipient of the Laurence Gerckens Prize, “awarded to a scholar-teacher who has demonstrated sustained excellence in the teaching of planning history.”