UPP’s Phil Ashton Chosen For I-SITE FUTURE’s Visiting Professors Program In Paris
CUPPA is pleased to announce that Phil Ashton, associate professor of urban planning and policy, has been chosen to participate in I-SITE FUTURE's "Visiting Professors" program, giving him residency in Paris for the next three summers. The I-SITE FUTURE (French UniversiTy on Urban Research and Education) program is a collaborative consortium between seven Parisian universities, working together with the explicit goal of creating the cities of the future. According to the I-SITE website, candidates chosen must be "seasoned, top-notch international researchers who are well-known for their work." Professor Ashton was chosen based on his sterling example of engaged academic research, and while participating in the program, he will be expected to produce collaborative work between his colleagues in CUPPA and his fellow researchers in Paris.
Professor Ashton will be working the Laboratoire Techniques Territoires et Sociétés (LATTS), a research institute where he was a visiting scholar during the summer 2017. His research will explore public-private partnerships for investments in green building technologies, understanding how the prioritization of public facilities as strategic sites for local climate action has translated into positioning public building retrofits as opportunities for private financial investment.
“Using a comparison of similar energy retrofit programs in Chicago and Paris, we're going to examine how energy flows in public buildings (schools, libraries, fire stations, etc.) are fixed as financial assets and sold to private investors,” Ashton said. “We're also concerned with how this process of ‘assetizing’ public buildings transforms the orientation of public action from public service delivery to risk management.”
“Professor Ashton’s research on infrastructure finance makes him an ideal scholar into the financialization of energy retrofits of government buildings, which is the focus of his three-year visiting professor appointment,” Dean Michael Pagano said. “Phil’s work with LATTS is critically important in building a stronger and more lasting relationship with the Universite Gustave Eiffel. Professor Ashton’s appointment will continue to allow him to teach UPP classes while he maintains a presence in both Chicago and Paris.”