Spectrum - Volume 20 Issue 27 April 9, 1998 - Knox to speak at Graduate Ceremony

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Knox to speak at Graduate Ceremony

By Susan Trulove

Spectrum Volume 20 Issue 27 - April 9, 1998

Paul Knox, university distinguished professor and dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech, will be the Graduate Commencement speaker at the Spring 1998 Graduate Ceremony on Friday, May 8.
To say that Knox's urban studies research has "given voice to disadvantaged places in urban and regional policy making as his work was recently described on WVTF public radio--would be an understatement.
He is one of 20 the most widely cited scholars in the entire field of human geography in the United States. His research, scholarship, and teaching in the areas of comparative analysis of urbanization and urban planning; social production of the built environment and, recently, the evolution of the American urban medical care delivery system, have alerted policy-makers world wide to the influence previously ignored groups, places, and ways of life have on the well-being of all society.
His recent textbook, Places and Regions in Global Context (Prentice Hall, 1997, co-authored by Sallie Marston, professor of geography at the University of Arizona), points out the pressures being created by the globalization of the economy while governments remain locked into 19th-century territories and institutions, meaning nations are more vulnerable than ever to economic slumps, poverty, unemployment and homelessness. He also points to the environmental stresses--air and water pollution--by poor nations and regions striving to live more comfortably.
Knox received the Virginia Social Science Association Scholar Award "For Expanding the Horizons of Knowledge in Geography" (1998), and before that the Erskine Fellowship from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (1995).
He teaches Urbanization, Comparative Urbanization, and Social Production of the Built Environment and has an average student-evaluation score (on a 4-point scale) of 3.7 from undergraduates and 3.8 from graduate students over the past seven years. He received the College of Architecture and Urban Studies Award for Teaching Excellence in 1989.
He is also much in demand world wide as a lecturer, and as an editor and committee member. Presently he is co-editor of Environment and Planning , a member of the editorial board of seven international journals and co-editor of both the World Cities series and the Key Themes in Human Geography series.
Publications include: World Cities in a World-System (edited, with P.J. Taylor and also published in Japanese), Cambridge University Press, 1995; The Restless Urban Landscape (edited volume), Prentice Hall, 1993; and The Geography of the World-Economy (with J. Agnew and also published in Italian), 3rd edition, Edward Arnold, 1998. His book, Urban Social Geography (Longman Scientific, 3rd edition, 1995) was published in Japanese.
He has written seven books and five textbooks; more than 25 book chapters; numerous other publications and reports from funded research; and more than 40 refereed articles in scientific journals, including: Architecture & Behavior, Cities, Habitat International, Policy and Politics, Progress in Human Geography, Social Science & Medicine, Town Planning Review , and Urban Affairs Quarterly .
Knox is past chair of the Urban Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.
Knox first came to Virginia Tech as a visiting professor in 1981. Before becoming dean this year, he was director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and director of the Environmental Design and Planning Program. He received his education in the United Kingdom, where he took a B.A. (Hons) 1st Class and a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Sheffield.