MUPP Alum Establishes Environmental Resiliency Scholarship Award

Laurel Appell Lipkin, MUPP ’92, Principal of LL Consulting in Chicago, has been working in the urban planning and policy sector for almost 35 years. Her passions in the field now, green spaces, walkable communities, equity, and planning for and adapting to climate change are what brought her back to establish CUPPA’s first environmental resilience scholarship.

Lipkin’s scholarship is meant to both encourage and affirm students who have chosen to pursue the environmental planning path at a time when funding a degree can be difficult and to encourage her fellow alumni to support students today.

“Laurel’s investment in our students shows remarkable insight into the future of planning and the difficulty students face in covering the cost of higher education today. With her help, the journey to building just, resilient, and livable communities becomes just a little easier,” said Stacey Swearingen White, dean.

The Environmental Resiliency Scholarship Fund, established by Lipkin, will provide a scholarship between $4,000 – $8,000 each for up to 5 currently enrolled MUPP students who will return to study in Fall 2026. This scholarship is open to students pursuing the Environmental Planning and Policy specialization or who demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and the environment in other ways. Eligible students should also demonstrate financial need and strong academic performance.

“I hope this support will be consequential for those who are selected; that someone unknown to them had faith in their choice and encouraged them. Issues around environment and climate need to be elevated. We are living through a period of denial. Not new, but the foes are tougher and more visible. This is why I’ve directed the scholarship toward this field of pursuit,” Lipkin said.

🌎

Laurel kindly answered a few more questions from CUPPA about her career and the future of the field of planning. Read on!

CUPPA: What first prompted you to give this scholarship?

LL: Whether you are a day student or an evening student, it can be difficult to fund a degree. I was a student who worked full-time and attended evening classes. I was fortunate my employer paid my tuition, so I did not have to step away from working nor did I want to. I don’t think there’s enough support for students at every level of educational pursuit, so a scholarship is helpful and, for me personally, to be able to do this, is rewarding. My time in the program set my career on a new path, introduced me to new people, ideas, and approaches to the field.

CUPPA: Why did you go to graduate school and why the MUPP program?  

LL: At the time I decided to go back to school, I’d been out of college for almost 10 years. I was working for an agency that finances affordable housing. I wanted less of a singular focus and to develop a broader understanding of how housing could and should be considered in economic and community development. I wanted to work more comprehensively in urban development and redevelopment on all project aspects. I was always interested in public policy; my initial work when I graduated from college was in public policy.

CUPPA: Do you have any particular memories of classes or special experiences/stories from when you were a graduate student in Urban Planning and Policy?

LL: I loved Sim City, a very early video game dating to 1989. It was a city-building activity and teaching tool. Video games were new then, as was widespread access to personal computers. The game was dynamic and interactive and quite complex. It introduced taxation, residential, commercial, and industrial development, zoning, open space, transit and transportation issues, and so much more as you played the game. It fascinated me.

CUPPA: Which professors/faculty/staff were influential to you?

LL: I had a rich experience with the faculty I came to know and learned from each of them. They were committed and engaged.  This is a small glimpse into the ways 3 faculty impacted my time at UIC and beyond.

Rob Mier was my advisor and I took more than one class with him. Together we did a deep dive into post WW II development in the city and the ways in which development changed following the war.

Greg Longhini’s class was dynamic; he brought in guest lecturers who worked in the field – commissioners and others.  It gave us the opportunity to ask practical questions and explore the day to day professional experience one could expect.

Raffaella Nanetti had a terrific survey course on the history of public housing and related political and policy issues.

CUPPA: Could you tell us about your professional experience and how your planning degree helped get you where you are today?

LL: After I graduated, I went to work at the Department of Planning and Development and later became a consultant, which has been my primary path for 30 years. I’ve worked on a wide variety of projects with diverse clients. My degree introduced me to urban and community development through case studies and taught me about community process, and that served as the foundation for much of my work and my interests. It was interdisciplinary, and that’s what’s needed for community-based work. You need to be able to marry physical, social, and economic planning— to bring them all together. Why separate out land use from its social impact? Or how do you identify amenities needed without engaging people in the community?

CUPPA: What are you most passionate about in the field?

LL: That list is long and includes green spaces, walkable communities, planning for and adapting to climate change, better-designed public spaces including more public art and interactive public art, thoughtful use of AI, creative approaches to housing of all kinds, issues around food and access to more usable green spaces for gardening, creating digital twins to guide decision-making, and equity, of course, equity.

Laurel spoke with her friend, Chris Hall, MUPP ’91, urban strategy leader at SOM about where planning is headed, how the city has changed, and the ways in which the program differs from when they were in school. Thanks for joining in, Chris!

CUPPA: Where do you think the field of planning is headed?

LL and CH: There is increasing expectation of and reliance on data and AI as decision-making tools. We still need to factor in the human element. Data and analytics will revolutionize the practice of planning. But the tools are not inexpensive, and there may be a divergence between communities that can access the tools and those that cannot.

Technological changes underway will affect people’s ability to obtain and sustain employment overall, which will impact cities, real estate and the tax base of most communities. Cities and communities will rapidly change, are rapidly changing. We need to plan for older corridors and parts of downtown where there is an abundance of office and commercial space, much of it vacant. We’ll need to find new ways to fund our cities when commercial real estate values decline.

The future of planning will continue to wrestle with the equity question, and the above changes may create new inequities for planners to address.

And how will public engagement happen in the future? Will it be online and through social media only? This is an open-ended question. 

CUPPA: How do you think the field has changed from when you graduated with your MUPP? 

LL: I graduated almost 35 years ago. Since that time, there has been a tech and communications revolution. I produced my papers and other work using a small Mac Classic and a noisy, slow dot matrix printer. The Web launched in the middle of my degree, but it wasn’t the research tool it is today. My experience was paper based. Everything is now online, and one can access all kinds of information easily. There is greater awareness of a wider world and how development and planning occur in other places. It’s easier to know what’s happening elsewhere, to learn from other cultures internationally, or to learn what’s happening in Boston. If I want to see images of affordable housing developments in Sri Lanka or artist housing in New York, it’s a keystroke away. The ability to access information immediately and learn what other people are doing has been transformational.  Not unlike how streaming has changed the film and tv industry, much has changed in planning with the internet. Additionally, GIS was in its infancy.

CUPPA: How has Chicago changed?   

LL and CH: There are the obvious changes like the highly developed South Loop, Fulton Market, and Randolph Street corridor. Lakeshore East is an entirely new neighborhood or sub-neighborhood. The Milwaukee Avenue/Blue Line Corridor has seen major changes. The campus expansion south of Roosevelt Road and the relocation of Maxwell Street and the South Water Market has changed the UIC context. There is the dramatic change in public housing at former sites of Cabrini Green, Stateway Gardens, Robert Taylor, and so on. There has been a significant loss of more traditional industries. The Loop is transformed by residential uses, and more resources are being directed towards the south and west sides in large-scale multipurpose development projects. Closer to the UIC campus, Greektown is smaller, and a favorite restaurant is now high-end residential development. Millenium Park opened in 2004 and its influence has been extraordinary. New communal working spaces have also impacted traditional office space.

CUPPA: How has the MUPP program changed?

LL and CH: There is a greater awareness of physical planning and equity in planning. Much of our focus had been on social planning. The term reparative planning was not in circulation.

CUPPA: What advice do you have for current UIC CUPPA students? 

LL: Take professional risks, join organizations, network, look for leadership opportunities which can be found in board service, seek out a mentor based on values and interests, volunteer with organizations that offer career opportunities, be a good employee and colleague and a contributing civic community member. Be engaged outside of work.