Alan Altshuler

Alan A. Altshuler is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and the Ruth and Frank Stanton Research Professor in Urban Policy and Planning (emeritus) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Design. His teaching and research focus on urban politics, land use policy and transportation. Altshuler's prior appointments include Dean of the Graduate School of Design, Director of the Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government and its Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Academic Dean of the Kennedy School, Dean of NYU's Graduate School of Public Administration, and Professor of Political Science and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his three and one-half years as Dean of GSD, he doubled the number of senior women faculty, increased financial aid for master's students, and significantly improved the GSD's finances. Altshuler also served as Secretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1971 to 1975. His books include The City Planning Process; Community Control; The Urban Transportation System; The Future of the Automobile (co-authored with Daniel Roos and others); Regulation for Revenue (co-authored with Jose Gomez-Ibanez); Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (co-authored with David Luberoff); and Transforming Urban Transport (co-edited with Diane Davis). Altshuler received the B.A. degree (1957) from Cornell University and the M.A. (1959) and Ph.D. (1961) in political science from the University of Chicago.