Summary

This initiative will produce a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization plan centered on housing repair, blight elimination, infrastructure improvements, and expanded economic opportunity for residents. Grounded in community engagement and aligned with citywide priorities related to health, safety, youth development, and economic mobility, the project will deliver a strategic roadmap for sustainable neighborhood transformation.

Author Information

Jesus J. Lara, Ph.D., is a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the School of Planning, Design, and Construction at Michigan State University. His research and teaching focus on sustainable urban design, Latino Urbanism, community development, and the sociocultural factors influencing planning and design. He co-edited and contributed to Remaking Metropolis: Global Challenges of the Urban Landscape (Routledge, 2013) and guest-edited a special issue of the Journal of Urbanism titled “International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability in 21st Century American Cities.” Prof. Lara also curates and contributed to the extensive literature review on Latino Urbanism in the Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Urbanism and authored Latino Placemaking and Planning: Cultural Resiliency and Strategies for Re-urbanization (University of Arizona Press, 2018), which explores the application of Latino Urbanism principles in revitalizing American cities.

Throughout his career, Prof. Lara's research has addressed emerging approaches to planning, design, and development that respond to the lifestyles, cultural preferences, and economic needs reflected in the built environment. His current work focuses on three primary subfields: 1) planning and placemaking for emergent immigrant communities, 2) community development through service-learning education, and 3) pedagogic approaches to sustainable urban design.

Prof. Lara earned a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from California State Polytechnic University in 1994, a Master’s in both Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture from the University of Southern California in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning from Arizona State University in 2006. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University in the Netherlands from 2003 to 2004, where he researched sustainable urban design practices. From 2014 to 2015, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for European Urban Studies (IfEU) at Bauhaus Universität, Weimar, Germany, funded by the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD).

During the 2022-2023 academic year, Prof. Lara received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and a DAAD Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists Award for his project "A Place to Call Home: A Study of the Relationship Between Social Change and the Built Environment, and the Role of Immigrant Populations in Sustainable Urban Design, Informality, and Placemaking." He was hosted at the Institute of Sustainable Urbanism (ISU) at the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University Berlin, where he taught courses on placemaking and urban design and conducted research.