SILVER SPRING, MD – As Montgomery County planners continue to analyze the local housing stock and factors affecting the quantity and quality of area homes and neighborhoods, the Montgomery Planning Board welcomes an expert on suburban change to present at its regularly scheduled meeting Thursday.
Bernadette Hanlon, research analyst at the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, is the latest presenter in the board’s Excellence in Planning Speaker Series. Hanlon will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday about suburban growth trends and how aging communities fare with respect to newer, outer-ring suburbs.
Hanlon will discuss her recent research on indicators of neighborhood success and decline. That research aims to provide an overview of the Maryland suburb and how the age and location of a community affects its housing stock. In a recent paper, Hanlon concludes that older, inner-ring suburbs gradually deteriorate due mainly to the modest, cheaply built homes constructed between 1945 and 1969.
At the board meeting, Hanlon will describe how indicators such as population change, income change and change in poverty level define whether a community is declining. At a subsequent planning board meeting, planners will present their analysis of changes in Montgomery County neighborhoods, based on Hanlon’s methodology.
A former educator who taught youth and welfare recipients in such diverse places as Dublin, Ireland and New York City, Hanlon studied social welfare and child poverty and health. More recently, she switched gears to research suburban growth and decline, urban policy and planning, and the intersection between environmental and recreational policies and poverty and poor health.
Hanlon co-wrote a publication about Baltimore’s changing population and its impact on the city’s economy with Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson and other researchers in 2002. Since then, she has written extensively about creating functional open space in urban areas, one strategy Montgomery County planners are exploring to improve the environment and human health.
Learn more about the Excellence in Planning series online, where the board has posted video archives of selected speakers.
WHO:
Bernadette Hanlon, research analyst and doctoral candidate in public policy, University of Maryland-Baltimore County
WHAT:
“Growth and Decline in U.S. Suburbia” presentation to the Montgomery County Planning Board
WHEN:
7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 22
WHERE:
Park and Planning Headquarters
8787 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD