Office: Maloney Hall, Room 437

Email: spiersj@bc.edu

Faculty Advisor: Marilynn Johnson

Curriculum Vitae: please click here

Education

MA, History, Clemson University, 2007
BA, History and Secondary Social Sciences, Longwood University, 2005

 
Fields of Interest

U.S. urban and suburban studies; environmental studies; city and regional planning; social activism and civic engagement; public policy and governance

 
Academic Profile

My research focuses on urban growth and development, with particular interests in political decision-making, environmental issues, and social and civic activism. My current project examines the relationship between suburbanization and environmental concerns in the Washington metropolitan area since 1970.  It explores how ordinary citizens and environmental activists used civic organizing and policies that expanded the scope of public participation in the planning process--often in more affluent suburbs--to advance resistance to development, promote the preservation of rural land, and protect natural resources.  This project reveals why the paradigm of environmental mitigation can no longer resolve the escalating fiscal and environmental costs of suburban development.  It suggests that a decision-making process that enables meaningful civic engagement can mobilize public support for innovations in the public and private sector to promote sustainable development.

 
Publications

• “Landscaping the Garden City:  Transportation, Utilities, and Parks in Newton, Massachusetts, 1874-1915.”  Forthcoming in Historical Geography.
• “‘Planning with People’:  Urban Renewal in Boston’s Washington Park, 1950-1970.” Journal of Planning History.  Vol. 8, No. 3 (August 2009):  221-247.

 
Papers Presented

• “Rural Land in Suburbia:  Public Decision-making and the Creation of the Agricultural Reserve of Montgomery County, Maryland,” Social Science Historical Association 2011 Conference, Boston, MA, November 17-20, 2011.
• “Sprawl Blocker or Rural Amenity?  The Agricultural Reserve of Montgomery County, Maryland,” presented at the Workshop for the History of the Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Sciences (WHEATS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, October 1, 2011.
• “The Long and Winding Road:  A History of the Intercounty Connector, 1950-2006,” Montgomery County History Conference, Montgomery College - Germantown (Maryland), January 22, 2011.
• “Ameliorating ‘An Accidental Circumstance’: Public Poor Relief in Boston, 1865-1880,” Fourth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association, University of Houston, November 5-8, 2008.
• “Inhabiting the Motor City: The Detroit Urban League and Housing, 1916-1940,” Third Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association, Arizona State University, October 19 – 22, 2006.
• “Leaving Home: The Detroit Urban League and Housing, 1916-1929,” 91st Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Atlanta, Georgia, September 25 – October 1, 2006.
• “A Volatile Union: Second Wave Critiques of Psychoanalysis and Marriage,” 28th Annual Mid – America Conference, University of Arkansas, September 14 – 16, 2006.
• “‘The Burden of Black Women’: The Gendered Leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois During the Niagara Movement,” The Niagara Movement and the Dawning of Twentieth Century Civil Rights, Academic Symposium for the Niagara Movement at Harpers Ferry Centennial Commemoration, Harpers Ferry, WV, August 16-18, 2006.