Dr. Jerry Anthony, PhD, FAICP, is a global changemaker. Anthony has a bachelor’s degree in Architecture, a master’s degree in Town Planning, and a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning. He is a tenured faculty member at the School of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Iowa, a Carnegie-1 and AAU institution in the US
Dr. Anthony teaches courses in Sustainable Development, Housing Policy, Land Use Planning, Urban Growth Management, and International Planning. He has been named an Excellent Educator by the American Planning Association. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2015-2019. He has won numerous teaching awards at the University of Iowa. Students consistently rate his courses very highly, regard him as an outstanding teacher, and describe his classes to be life-transforming.
Dr. Anthony’s research interests are in housing policy and land use planning in the US and international contexts. His current research projects include a) the effects of high housing costs on economic growth in the largest U.S. cities, b) the rebuilding of the American city of Cedar Rapids after a devasting flood, c) methods to increase the replacement of traditional wood-burning cookstoves (chulhas) in India, and d) climate change responsive urbanism in India. He was named a HUD Urban Scholar in 2002. His publications are widely read, with a 2004 paper titled “The Effects of Florida’s Growth Management Act on Housing Affordability” named one of the top 10 most influential papers published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 25 years. His research has been funded by numerous entities, including the Brookings Institution, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the US Department of Housing & Urban Development.
In 2003, he co-founded the Housing Trust Fund of Johnson County that to date has distributed about $12 million to help build over 900 reasonably-priced homes in Iowa. In 2019, Dr. Anthony was given the University of Iowa’s Michael J. Brody award for Excellence in Service.
In 2020, Dr. Anthony was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners – the highest honor for urban planners in the U.S.
Cities are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Fortunately, cities are better resourced financially than rural areas, bring together people with varied skills and are crucibles for innovation. These advantages could be combined to facilitate sustainable urbanism. Many scholars believe that the war to stave off catastrophic climate change will be won or lost in cities. Much of the world’s urban population lives in the global South, where cities are expanding rapidly. Modifying the development patterns of these cities while they are growing affords significant opportunities for a sustainable future for humankind. Dr. Anthony, in his Fulbright-Kalam project, plans to document the climate change mitigating efforts of several Indian cities, assessing their effectiveness, and exploring their transferability to cities in other countries.