About . . . Christopher Silver

Dr. Silver's planning interests converge from three distinct but related areas, including urban and planning history, international planning, and housing and community development. Planning history has been the central focus of his published research, including three books, Twentieth Century Richmond: Planning, Politics and Race (1984), The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968, with John Moeser (1995), and Planning the Twentieth Century American City, with Mary Corbin Sies (1996). He is currently completing a history of planning in the urban South from the 1890s through the 1950s.

Beginning with a Fulbright Senior Lectureship in 1989-90, he has been teaching, researching and consulting on international planning, with a focus on urban development and decentralization in Indonesia, over the past decade. This includes three years (1995-1997) as an Urban Development Advisor to Indonesia under a U.S. Agency for International Development project based in Jakarta. A new book project links this international work with planning history through an examination of the emergence of Jakarta as a megacity in the twentieth century. The focus of Dr. Silver's teaching, consulting and research is housing and community development, including the role of historic preservation in urban revitalization. Through collaboration with several Indonesian universities, that work has been broadened to incorporate democratization, social capital formation, and community-based planning. Current research involves a critical assessment of the current decentralization and democracy movements in Indonesian cities.