New award honours Edward Blakely  

USA: The Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG), a group affiliated with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), is pleased to establish the Edward Blakely Award.

This achievement award will be given each year to a worthy candidate who has supported the cause of social justice, particularly in urban planning or development, for communities of colour. It may go to planning or related academics or to professionals who have supported the cause of social justice for communities of color in their work. Such awardees will not be limited to residents of the US or to faculty of ACSP member schools.

The award is in honour of Edward Blakely, who has offered extraordinary service, both as scholar and practitioner. He has followed examples from his family, including his father, Edward Blakely, his mother, Josephine Carter Blakely, and all of his uncles, aunts and cousins who lived and worked for social justice in communities of colour, especially, during the years of legally-enforced racial segregation.

Edward Blakely is Honorary Professor of Urban Policy at the US Studies Centre, University of Sydney, Australia, and previously served for two years as Executive Director of the Office of Recovery and Development Administration for New Orleans, following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

One of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of urban policy, Professor Blakely has been Dean of the School of Urban Planning and Development at the University of Southern California and Dean of the Robert J Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University in New York City. He has also held professorial appointments at the University of California Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and the University of Sydney. He is the author of five books and more than 100 scholarly articles, as well as many essays and opinion pieces. His books include:

• Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in US Cities;
• My Storm: Managing the Recovery of New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina;
• Fortress America;
• Planning Local Economic Development: Theory and Practice; and
• Rural Communities in Advanced Industrial Society.

Professor Blakely is a regular contributor to Crisis Response Journal and a new book, Managing Urban Disaster Recovery - Policy, Planning, Concepts and Cases, which he has edited with Eugénie L Birch, Roland V Anglin and Haruo Hayashi, published by Crisis Response Publications, will be available on Amazon in January.

Professor Blakely’s extensive record of public service includes advising the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, state and federal governments in Australia and the United States, as well as governments in Korea, Japan, Sweden, Indonesia, New Zealand and Vietnam. A Fulbright Scholar, he earned his BA at the University of California Riverside, his MA at University of California Berkeley, and a PhD at UCLA.