Martin Meyerson

Martin Meyerson was founding director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard. Trained as a planner, he taught city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Harvard in 1957 as the first Williams Professor of City Planning and Urban Research. Meyerson played a critical role in establishing the Center’s mission and shaping it into the nation’s preeminent source of urban scholarship. Alongside his colleague, MIT Professor Lloyd Rodwin, Meyerson secured a $5 million award from the Ford Foundation to support the establishment of the Center. He left Harvard in 1963 to become Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as acting chancellor. From 1966 to 1970, Meyerson was president of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was also professor of public policy. He became president of the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and held that position until 1981, after which he remained active at Penn as a University Professor of Public Policy Analysis and City and Regional Planning. He wrote several books including Politics, Planning, and Public Interest, Boston: The Job Ahead, and Housing, People and Cities.