Piper Rae Gaubatz

Piper Gaubatz is an urban geographer specializing in the study of urban change, development and planning in East Asia and the U.S. She earned a B.A. in Sociology from Princeton University (1984) and M.A. (1986) and Ph.D. (1989) in Geography from the University of California Berkeley. Trained as an urban morphologist, she is particularly interested in the processes which shape urban space, and especially in the historical and contemporary linkages between policy, practice and physical and social urban forms. She is currently engaged in three separate research projects: (1) an ongoing analysis of the diffusion of urban planning practices and ideologies from eastern China to western China, which places urban transformation within the contexts of regional inequality and environmental change; (2) an analysis of the growing influence of environmental discourses in Chinese urban planning initiatives and the divide between those cities which have been designated as models for new sustainability initiatives, which are primarily located in eastern China, and those cities which suffer the worst environmental impacts, which are primarily located in western China; and (3) a joint project with geographer Stan Stevens which analyzes the environmental history of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia and its hinterlands. For more information, see http://blogs.umass.edu/gaubatz