Synthesis Studio Students Showcase Skills at Montgomgery Housing Authority

This Synthesis Studio project is an outcome of the MCP program’s partnership with the Montgomery Housing Authority (MHA) on their Choice Neighborhood Initiative (CHI) grant. MHA received this $450K grant from HUD for planning the redevelopment of its affordable housing projects in Montgomery. MCP faculty Dr. Mittal has been collaborating with the MHA since the inception of the grant application over a year ago and developed the studio projects with the MHA staff.

23 students in 4 groups worked for developing a 2040 housing development plan for the city of Montgomery with each group working on a specific project. Among 4 groups, 3 groups studied sites with existing residents and 1 group studied a vacant lot. This studio consisted of detailed analysis of housing, allocation of funding, and relocation of residents with the promise of new development.

The final presentation was held at MHA with the staff and the County Mayor present. New ideas were highly appreciated and will be considered to address some of the key challenges faced by the residents within the City of Montgomery. Thank you to the Montgomery Housing Authority and Prof. Mittal for coordinating this project, and a HUGE thank you to the students for such a productive semester!

GIS Students Apply Their Skills to our Great State

The final project for Dr. Mahato’s GIS in planning and policy provided students the opportunity to synthesize and test their GIS skills that they learned during this course. Groups of two students each formulated their own project, identified issues and problems, opportunities, developed objectives and solutions. Using GIS, they defined the scope of the project, collected data, analyzed, and implemented their project through online ArcGIS platforms. Check out a couple of examples of student works below!

Congrats to our new Student Planning Association officers!

President: Avery Agostinelli

Vice President: Emma Pettey

Secretary: Jonathan Demirci

Treasurer: Patrick Patterson

International Student Rep: Riffat Farjana

Be sure to congratulate them when you see them around the Haley Center next semester and stay tuned for Spring 2022 meeting dates!

Doing Us Proud…

Kebo Nyathi and John William Whitlow presented their award-winning poster “Montgomery Housing Authority 2040 Affordable Housing Strategic Plan” at the 2021 Mississippi-Alabama Joint Chapter Fall Conference. Keep up the good work!

Peachtree City Tour

The Student Planning Association traveled to Peachtree City, GA for a golfcart tour from Planning & Development Director Robin Cailloux. Planning for an alternative transportation city is not easy and presents many challenges for the Peachtree Planning Department.

Guest Speaker: Dr. Lee

Associate professor at Univ. of Oklahoma Dr. Augean Lee spoke to the students about her new study Heterogeneity in Income: Effects of Racial Concentration on Foreclosures in Los Angeles, California. Students learned about the connection between race and foreclosures in LA. Thank you, Dr. Lee!

Guest Speaker: Brandie Townsend

Brandie Townsend, Director of Resident Services at the Montgomery Housing Authority, spoke to students about her experiences within MHA, affordable housing, and community development.

During the summer semester of 2021 Jelani Moore, Charles Rush, John William Whitlow, and Kebokile Nyathi were awarded an internship with the Montgomery Housing Authority (MHA) for real estate development. Moore worked throughout the summer to assist in the implementation of the MHA’s Centennial Hill Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant. Jelani is currently employed part-time with the housing authority while he finishes his final year in the MCP program.

John William Whitlow said this was a valuable experience in understanding the functions of affordable housing and the different ways it can function in hopes of benefitting residents in need.

(from left to right): Damon E. Duncan (Housing Authority CEO), Charles Rush (Graduate Intern), John William Whitlow (Graduate Intern), Kebokile Nyathi (Graduate Intern), Jelani Moore (Graduate Intern)

Jonathan Demirci completed an internship with the City of Opelika last summer and has been assisting Jay Mittal, PhD, MBA in his research and publications by studying international real estate projects and developing images and maps. Demirci has worked the program recruitment table on the Haley Concourse every week this semester in addition to his GRA responsibilities and coursework.

Riffat Farjana and Blaine Hoskins worked for the City of Dothan during summer 2021 to put together a survey regarding Downtown Living. They presented the survey process and the result of the survey in a City Commission meeting. Farjana also presented a poster titled "Rethinking Parkerson Mill Creek at AU Campus” in Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture conference. Just a few months later she presented another poster "The Impact of Climate Change on the Dynamics of Alabama's Landscape" in the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning conference.

Internships Galore: Check Out All the MCP Student Internships in Summer of 2021!

Avery Agostinelli- City of Mobile

Jonathan Demerci- City of Opelika

Riffat Farjana- City of Dothan

Blaine Hoskins- City of Dothan

Ben McGarr- Lee-Russell Council of Governments

Jelani Moore- Montgomery Housing Authority

Kebo Nyathi- Montgomery Housing Authority

Charles Rush- Montgomery Housing Authority

John William Whitlow- Montgomery Housing Authority

The all-nighters have finally paid off…

Congrats to our Fall 2021 graduates!

• Riffat Farjana

• Boyang Fei

• Blaine Hoskins

• Ndi Anabel Inuaeyen

• Yang Jiang

• Fuhao Li

• Siheng Lyu

• Davis Pemberton

• Yi Wei

Dr. Sweta Byahut co-authored with Dr. Binita Mahato and Dr. Jay Mittal their book chapter “Alabama City Year Program: A Two-way Tool for Planning Awareness and Recruitment” in Professional Awareness and Diversity Challenges in Urban Planning Education. Byahut’s review of "Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor" by Juned Shaikh was published in Journal of Urban Affairs. Along with Dr. LaFrombois, Dr. Rogers, and Prof. Lebleu, she presented “Landscape Patterns and Their Effect on Stormwater Runoff in Coastal Alabama and Mississippi Region” at the annual ACSP conference.

Dr. Binita Mahato presented two papers at the 2021 Annual Conference of Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP): “Does Park Segregation Still Exist? The Case of Urban Parks in Montgomery, Alabama” and “Proximity Matters: How Many Minutes is Your Neighborhood?”. Mahato also wroye a chapter titled “Teaching How to Conduct an Environmental Behavior Study” for Teaching Political Methodology to be published Spring 2022.

Dr. Megan Heim-LaFrombois co-authored two articles this fall: “The Uneven Shrinking City: Neighborhood Demographic Change and Creative Class Planning in Birmingham, Alabama,” published in Urban Geography; and “Changing Trends in Long-Term Sentiments and Neighborhood Determinants in a Shrinking City,” published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research. She was also elected to serve as the incoming Secretary of the Faculty Women’s Interest Group (FWIG) of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).

Dr. Jay Mittal wrote three publications this semester: “Two Scales of Planned Interventions in Smart Cities –ABD and PCS cases from Bhopal, Indore, and Satna, India” published in Smart Cities and Smart Communities: Empowering Citizens through Intelligent Technologies, “Self-Financing Urbanism in Developing Countries: A Land Value Capture (LVC) Toolkit” in Sustainable Urbanism in Developing Countries, and “Alabama City Year Program: A Two-way Tool for Planning Awareness and Recruitment” in Professional Awareness and Diversity Challenges in Urban Planning Education. He taught an executive class on land-based financing at the Institute of Housing Studies (Erasmus University, Netherlands). Along with Dr. Byahut, he partnered with MHA on their planning and affordable housing grant from HUD. He coordinated affordable housing and redevelopment planning for four public housing sites in Montgomery in the Synthesis Studio this semester.

Dr. Becki Retzlaff was awarded a Research and Communication Merit Award by the Alabama Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. This merit award was awarded for the “Alabama Historic City Plans Viewer”, a project to document historic urban plans in Alabama and make them available on a public GIS viewer for the Auburn University Library. She also published the updated 2021 edition of her book, Ohio Planning and Zoning Law. Retzlaff’s Historic Preservation planning class worked with the Garden District in Montgomery.

Student Testimonials

firsthand descriptions of what makes Auburn’s MCP program so great