Photo: Rolf Pendall

Rolf Pendall

Professor and Chair

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Education

  • Ph.D., City & Regional Planning, University of California at Berkeley
  • M.S.C.R.P., Community & Regional Planning, The University of Texas at Austin
  • M.A., Latin American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

Research

  • Land use planning and politics
  • “Zoning for equity”
  • Housing and community development planning & policy

Rolf Pendall, Ph.D., AICP, is Professor and chair of the Department of Community & Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico. His mission is to learn and show how planners can contribute to greater spatial justice. Over his 35-plus years as a practitioner, scholar, and teacher, he has researched and taught about the connections between core planning domains—especially land use and housing policy—with harmful outcomes like urban sprawl and spatial injustice. Before joining the faculty at UNM, Pendall was Professor (2018-25) and Department Head (2018-23) of the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; he previously directed the Urban Institute’s Center for Metropolitan Housing & Communities (2010-18) and held positions on the planning faculties at Cornell University (1998-2010) and the University of Rhode Island (1995-97). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and master’s degrees in planning and Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.


Dr. Pendall has taught a wide range of courses in land use policy, plan making, affordable housing, planning history and theory, and professional practice. His teaching experience includes both graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of Illinois and Cornell University, with new courses in development as a professor at the University of New Mexico.

Recent Courses

  • Equitable Land Use: Zoning for Equity (Illinois)
  • Planning History & Theory (Illinois)
  • Professional Planning Colloquium (Illinois)
  • Land Use Planning and Policy (Illinois)
  • Plan Making (Illinois)

For a complete list of publications, see Google Scholar profile.

Book chapters

Pendall, Rolf. 2017. “Varieties of U.S. Growth Management: Lessons from New York and San Francisco.” In André Sorensen, Peter Marcotullio, and Jill Grant, eds., Towards Sustainable Cities: East Asian, North American, and European Perspectives on Managing Urban Regions, pp. 80-94. Routledge.

Poethig, Erika, Pamela Blumenthal, and Rolf Pendall. 2015. “Housing Policy and Demographic Change,” in HUD at 50: Creating Pathways to Opportunity, ed. Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, pp. 219–250, available: https://www.huduser.gov/portal//hud50th/HUDat50Book.pdf.

Pendall, Rolf, Juliet Gainsborough, Kate Lowe, and Mai Nguyen. 2012. “Bringing Equity to Transit-Oriented Development: Stations, Systems, and Regional Resilience.” In Margaret Weir, ed., Building Resilient Regions: Urban and Regional Policy and its Effects, Volume 4, Brookings Institution Press.

Pendall, Rolf. 2009. “How might inclusionary zoning affect urban form?” In Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, volume 2. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Pendall, Rolf. 2008. “From Hurdles to Bridges: Local Land-Use Regulations and the Pursuit of Affordable Rental Housing,” in Nicolas Retsinas and Eric Belsky, Revisiting Rental Housing, pp. 224-273. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Journal Articles

Kim, Minjee, Ivis Garcia, Edward Goetz, Bernadette Hanlon, Paavo Monkkonen, Rolf Pendall, Deirdre Pfeiffer, Jason Reece, and Andrew Whittemore. 2025. Commentary: “Bring Zoning Back Into the Planning Curricula.” Journal of the American Planning Association. Online ahead of print at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2025.2455162.

Pendall, Rolf, Natalie Prochaska, Dustin Allred, and Caitlin Hillyard. 2024. “A new skyline for Champaign: An urban dormitory transformed." Housing Policy Debate 34 (5): 722–745.

Ehlenz, Meagan M., Sarah L. Mawhorter, and Rolf Pendall. 2024. “The complexities of student housing.” Housing Policy Debate 34 (5): 603–619.

Pendall, Rolf, Lydia Lo, and Jake Wegmann. 2022. “Shifts toward the extremes: Zoning change in major US Metropolitan areas from 2003 to 2019.” Journal of the American Planning Association 88 (1): 55–66.

Pendall, Rolf, Jake Wegmann, Jonathan Martin, and Dehui Wei. 2018. “The Growth of Control? Changes in Local Land-Use Regulation in Major US Metropolitan Areas From 1994 to 2003.” Housing Policy Debate 28 (6): 901–919.

Pendall, Rolf, Brett Theodos, and Kaitlin Hildner. 2016. “Why High-Poverty Neighborhoods Persist: The Role of Precarious Housing.” Urban Affairs Review 52 (1): 33–65.

Pendall, Rolf, Christopher Hayes, Arthur (Taz) George, Casey Dawkins, Jae Sik Jeon, Elijah Knaap, Evelyn Blumenberg, Gregory Pierce, and Michael Smart. 2015. “Driving to Opportunities: Voucher Users, Cars, and Movement to Sustainable Neighborhoods.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research 17 (2): 57–87.

Pendall, Rolf, Brett Theodos, and Kaitlin Franks. 2012. “Vulnerable people, precarious housing, and regional resilience: an exploratory analysis.” Housing Policy Debate 22 (2): 271–296.

Pendall, Rolf, Kathryn Foster, and Margaret M. Cowell. 2010. “Resilience and Regions: Building Understanding of the Metaphor.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society 3 (1).

Book Reviews and Responses

Pendall, Rolf. 2024. Book Review: Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning.Journal of Planning History, 24 (2): 136–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/15385132241254866

Pendall, Rolf. 2021. “Growth+ Climate Emergency: We’re Already Too Late Getting Ready. Exclusionary Zoning Makes Matters Worse.” Urban Affairs Review 57 (1): 284–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087419889181. Response, “Urban Colloquy and Exclusionary Zoning.”

Pendall, Rolf. 2020. “Knowing What Land Use Regulations Localities Have ‘On the Books’ Can Reveal Regulatory Stringency—And Much More.” Journal of the American Planning Association 86 (2): 264–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2020.1725237. Response to Lewis and Marantz, “What planners know: Using surveys about local land use regulation to understand housing development.”

Reports and Other Professional Publications

Lo, Lydia R., Eleanor Noble, Diane K. Levy, and Rolf Pendall. 2020. “Land Use Reforms for Housing Supply.” The Urban Institute, October. Available: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103104/land-use-reforms-for-housing-supply_0.pdf.

Gallagher, Megan, Lydia Lo, and Rolf Pendall. 2019. “An Introduction to the National Longitudinal Land Use Survey and Data.” The Urban Institute, October. Available: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/101275/an_introduction_to_the_national_longitudinal_land_use_survey_and_data_0.pdf.

Gourevitch, Ruth, Solomon Greene, and Rolf Pendall. 2018. “Place and Opportunity: Using Federal Fair Housing Data to Examine Opportunity across US Regions and Populations.” The Urban Institute, June. Available: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/98674/place_and_opportunity_brief_1.pdf.

Hedman, Carl, and Rolf Pendall. 2018. “Rebuilding and Sustaining Homeownership for African Americans.” The Urban Institute, June. Available: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/98719/rebuilding_and_sustaining_homeownership_for_african_americans.pdf.


Projects

  • Networked Resilience in Disaster Planning and Recovery (Illinois Campus Research Board, 2020–21).
  • Unleashing Housing Supply (Smith Richardson Foundation, 2018–20).
  • National Land Use Survey (Fannie Mae, 2018–19).
  • The Cost of Segregation (Metropolitan Planning Council, 2015–18).
  • Housing for Equity and Inclusion (Ford Foundation, 2016–17).

Engagement

  • Chair, Task Force on Undergraduate Planning Education, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and American Planning Association (2024–present).
  • Member, Education committee, American Planning Association (2024–present).
  • Editorial board member, Journal of the American Planning Association (2019–present).
  • Editorial board member, Housing Policy Debate (2015–21).
  • Editorial board member, Urban Affairs Review (2017–19).
  • Co-chair, Education Committee, American Planning Association (2005–06).

Recognition and Other

  • Visiting Scholar, Henry Halloran Urban and Regional Research Initiative, University of Sydney (2025), for collaborative research on equity & zoning in Australia.
  • Best Article of 2022, Journal of the American Planning Association (2023), for “Growth at the Extremes.”
  • Curriculum Innovation Award, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2023), for jointly developed course “Zoning for Equity”, with others.
  • Paul Davidoff Award, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (2007), for contribution to The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Editor.
  • Fulbright Fellowship, study in Peru (1987–1988).
  • Phi Beta Kappa (1984).