Eric D. Kelly

Eric Damian Kelly is a city planner and lawyer who is a Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University. Kelly came to Indiana in 1995 as Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State; he resigned from that position in 1998 but remains on the BSU faculty and served for two and one-half years as acting chair of his department. He is a native of Colorado and spent 5 years as Chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning at Iowa State University before moving to Indiana. At the Fall 2000 Convocation at Ball State, Kelly was named one of three University Teaching Professors for the 2000-01 academic year.

A graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Kelly also received Juris Doctor and Master of City Planning Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in public policy from The Union Institute. In 1999, Kelly was named one of the first 46 members of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Kelly was national president of the American Planning Association from 1997-99 and has also served it as a chapter president (Iowa) and as chair of its Planning and Law Division. In 1999, Gov. Frank O'Bannon appointed Kelly to the new Indiana Land Resources Council; he was reappointed to a reformulated council by Governor Mitch Daniels in 2007. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi honorary society. He currently (2008-10) chairs the Muncie-Delaware County Government Reorganization Committee, created under the Indiana Government Modernization Act of 2006.

In addition to his academic and scholarly work, Kelly maintains a consulting practice with Duncan Associates; he is a vice president of that firm, which is based in Austin, Texas, and also has a Chicago office. In 35 years of consulting (20 of those in association with Jim Duncan), he has worked with more than 150 local governments in more than three dozen states. In addition to assisting local governments with plan implementation, he serves as an expert witness and litigation consultant; much of the litigation with which he is involved deals with the intersection of the First Amendment and land-use regulations as they affect signs, billboards and sex businesses.

In addition to books available through Amazon, he is general editor of a 10-volume leagal treatise, ZONING AND LAND USE CONTROLS, available from Matthew Bender, a Lexis-Nexis Company. Some of this technical reports that are not available through Amazon are available from the Planners Book Service at www.planning.org