Remembering Dr. Perry, Emeritus Professor, Past Interim Dean, Past GCI Director
Remembering Heading link
David Perry, professor emeritus of Urban Planning and Policy, passed away on December 2, after a long illness.
He most recently served as professor of Urban Planning and Policy after stepping down from almost 12 years as director of the Great Cities Institute and as associate chancellor for the university’s Great Cities Commitment. While he retired from UIC officially in 2018, his mark is still felt in the college as he also served two years as interim dean from 2000-2002, taught many students in planning and policy courses, and advised a few dozen PhDs.
Dr. Perry, he began his academic career receiving his PhD from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He went on to teach in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin and chaired the Urban Planning Program at the University at Buffalo. He held the visiting Albert A. Levin Chair at Cleveland State University and was a senior faculty fellow of the State University of New York’s Rockefeller Institute. He also held joint appointments as professor of Public Administration and professor of Political Science at UIC.
Dr. Perry wrote/edited over a dozen books and over 150 articles, book chapters and reports on urban “anchor” institutions, urban and regional economic development policy, race, politics and urban violence, contested cities, public infrastructure and the production of urban space, and the role of universities and community foundations in American cities. His work also appeared in such non-academic places as The New York Times, The Nation, and Metropolis magazine.
He was equally experienced as a policy practitioner having worked with numerous community partners and having served on national and local public boards and commissions, including Chicago’s Zoning Reform Commission, the Urban Land Institute’s National Public Infrastructure Committee, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Rudy Bruner National Award Selection Committee, the National Task Force on Anchor Institutions and the Strengthening Communities Strand of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities of the Association of Public Land Grant Universities.